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Subject: VT, BAE to finalise JV after MoD gives go-ahead to Navy Carriers
DragonReborn    5/20/2008 2:45:52 PM
So the Carriers still looking pretty certain then? But will we have much to fly off them once their built?? h!!p://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/20/afx5029874.html ONDON (Thomson Financial) - VT Group Plc. and BAE Systems Plc. (other-otc: BAESF.PK - news - people ) will launch their long-awaited joint venture to combine their shipbuilding and naval support operations after the UK Ministry of Defence approved a project to build two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, the companies said Tuesday. The two groups said they would finalise arrangements for the venture, which has been on hold while they awaited the MoD's go-ahead for the carriers. There had been speculation that the 4 billion pound CVF carrier project, first announced last July, might fall victim to defence spending cuts. BAE and VT said they expect to sign the JV transaction documentation shortly. The agreement will then be subject to VT shareholder approval. BAE chief executive Mike Turner said: 'This is an important milestone in the development of the CVF programme and plays a major part in the long term sustainability of the UK naval sector and the transformation of our business. 'The programme will provide a strong order book and forward workload over the coming years and, most importantly will provide our armed forces with significantly enhanced capability.' In a separate statement, the MoD said it had completed all the necessary financial, commercial, and management arrangements for the project, adding that the super aircraft carriers will be the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever constructed in the United Kingdom. The new VT-BAE joint venture will be a key member of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance which will construct and assemble the new carriers at shipyards in Portsmouth, Barrow-in-Furness, Glasgow and Rosyth, said the MoD. Other members of the alliance include Bab International Group Plc. and Thales (other-otc: THLEF.PK - news - people ) UK. Bab said the contract will be worth some 600 million pounds to Bab through the duration of the programme to 2015. Thales said the contract will be worth well over 500 million euros to the group. 'We are delighted with the decision which has been taken today. We have been working on the programme since the very beginning and the design which has been processed so far is a Thales design,' said CEO Denis Ranque. VT is also awaiting a government decision on a 6 billion pound military flight training contract and last week said it and Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ) were expecting to reach a financial close on the project before the end of May.
 
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flamingknives       5/30/2008 11:58:30 AM
The thing about multiple smaller units is that the cost and logistics don't scale linearly.

Compared to one 65,000 tonne carrier, two 30,000 tonne carriers need twice as many radar sets, twice as much communications equipment, twice as many trained bridge officers and heads of department, more crew of all stripes and they can't operate as many planes for as long, even when you've got two of them together. Plus the consumables goes up much more than the layman would think, as the larger hull isn't twice as hard to push through the water. That's why a 100,000 tonne carrier can outrun a 4,000 tonne frigate.

As for survivability, no carrier has been successfully engaged, to my knowledge, since WW2.

More smaller carriers are more expensive, no more survivable and are less capable. There are limits on size imposed by available crew, production facilities, harbours and the like, but half the size does not mean half the cost.
 
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Nichevo    You are officially a jackass, neut   5/30/2008 2:02:36 PM

 
I've been doing some research on Okinawa, etc, despite forlorn attempts to divert the subject to the strategic level and gloss over previous nonsense.  Okinawa was planned as an opposed landing, with a total invasion force of 8 divisions.  It was expected to be opposed because all other Pacifc Island invasions had been.  The fact that the Japanese changed tactics and deployed otherwise and this was not discovered before the US tps hit the beaches is of course, yet another in the glorious traditions of US intelligence failures.

 

Conversely Madagascar is far closer to the Falklands that I had remembered.  Invasion force 7 bns in 2 bdes (yes OK a reserve bde remained afloat) plus No 5 Cdo.   FI 2 bdes with 8 bns plus SF.  4 btys in M, 5 in FI.  Two carriers at each, not disimilar numbers of escorts and the use of a similar number of troop ships. FI cas were somewhat higher compared to 100 KIA in M.  All in all the similarities between CORPORATE and IRONCLAD are surprisingly close.

 


It's true, Okinawa - to - Falklands is a preposterous comparison.  The Japs, after an appetizer of kamikaze'd-ship flambé, would have eaten your lot alive, and buggered the survivors to death when they were full.  A nice day at the beach like Madagascar is much more like what you were capable of.  Even so it was a shower, you were lucky to pull it off.

As for intelligence failures...fellow, you are revealing things about yourself that I'm not sure you want to show.  Personality defects I mean.  Do you want to talk about the British intelligence failures at Singapore?  No, I guess you don't.  How about Burgess & Maclean?  Jackass.





The repeated refs to Ivory Coast pass me by.  The French 'peacekeeping' arrival a few years ago was a logisitic landing to support on of Chirac's African chums.  As a logisitc landing it was similar to the more recent UN logistic landing in Lebanon or the Aust, etc, landing in the Solomons.

 

I think there may be some on this list who are a tad slow on the uptake.  Listen carefully I will say this very slooooowly.  UK CVF is designed to provide the capabilities that UK wants (we'll ignore the issue that in the ideal world the RN would like something all singing all dancing).  They have designed a ship for this purpose.  It doesn't matter a sod if some parts are less than ideal in the minds of some people.  All design involves tradeoffs, you can never have the perfect solution to every element of a requirement.  This is system engineering 101.  Obviously one of the governing requirements for a carrier is its ability to sustain the required sortie rate.  As long as CVF can do this it doesn't matter whether it has 1 island or 10.  All the ship has to do is meet all the customers requirements.  Self-evidently two islands have some advantages and if these don't compromise more important requirements then it makes sense to have them, it's the same with any other feature that offends the prejudices of any Tom, Dick or Harry.  Now what's difficult about understanding this?  I apologise for having to use some polysyllabic words.

Gad, you're a homer.  As for polysyllabic words, "not disimilar?"  Since anything from the US is obviously crap to you, let me throw in your teeth the words of one of your own:
("http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit")

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

...

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

....


The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even qu

 
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Nichevo    You are officially a jackass, neut   5/30/2008 2:02:57 PM

 
I've been doing some research on Okinawa, etc, despite forlorn attempts to divert the subject to the strategic level and gloss over previous nonsense.  Okinawa was planned as an opposed landing, with a total invasion force of 8 divisions.  It was expected to be opposed because all other Pacifc Island invasions had been.  The fact that the Japanese changed tactics and deployed otherwise and this was not discovered before the US tps hit the beaches is of course, yet another in the glorious traditions of US intelligence failures.

 

Conversely Madagascar is far closer to the Falklands that I had remembered.  Invasion force 7 bns in 2 bdes (yes OK a reserve bde remained afloat) plus No 5 Cdo.   FI 2 bdes with 8 bns plus SF.  4 btys in M, 5 in FI.  Two carriers at each, not disimilar numbers of escorts and the use of a similar number of troop ships. FI cas were somewhat higher compared to 100 KIA in M.  All in all the similarities between CORPORATE and IRONCLAD are surprisingly close.

 


It's true, Okinawa - to - Falklands is a preposterous comparison.  The Japs, after an appetizer of kamikaze'd-ship flambé, would have eaten your lot alive, and buggered the survivors to death when they were full.  A nice day at the beach like Madagascar is much more like what you were capable of.  Even so it was a shower, you were lucky to pull it off.

As for intelligence failures...fellow, you are revealing things about yourself that I'm not sure you want to show.  Personality defects I mean.  Do you want to talk about the British intelligence failures at Singapore?  No, I guess you don't.  How about Burgess & Maclean?  Jackass.





The repeated refs to Ivory Coast pass me by.  The French 'peacekeeping' arrival a few years ago was a logisitic landing to support on of Chirac's African chums.  As a logisitc landing it was similar to the more recent UN logistic landing in Lebanon or the Aust, etc, landing in the Solomons.

 

I think there may be some on this list who are a tad slow on the uptake.  Listen carefully I will say this very slooooowly.  UK CVF is designed to provide the capabilities that UK wants (we'll ignore the issue that in the ideal world the RN would like something all singing all dancing).  They have designed a ship for this purpose.  It doesn't matter a sod if some parts are less than ideal in the minds of some people.  All design involves tradeoffs, you can never have the perfect solution to every element of a requirement.  This is system engineering 101.  Obviously one of the governing requirements for a carrier is its ability to sustain the required sortie rate.  As long as CVF can do this it doesn't matter whether it has 1 island or 10.  All the ship has to do is meet all the customers requirements.  Self-evidently two islands have some advantages and if these don't compromise more important requirements then it makes sense to have them, it's the same with any other feature that offends the prejudices of any Tom, Dick or Harry.  Now what's difficult about understanding this?  I apologise for having to use some polysyllabic words.

Gad, you're a homer.  As for polysyllabic words, "not disimilar?"  Since anything from the US is obviously crap to you, let me throw in your teeth the words of one of your own:
("http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit")

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

...

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

....


The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even qu

 
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Herald12345    AFAIK.   5/30/2008 3:32:39 PM

The thing about multiple smaller units is that the cost and logistics don't scale linearly.

Compared to one 65,000 tonne carrier, two 30,000 tonne carriers need twice as many radar sets, twice as much communications equipment, twice as many trained bridge officers and heads of department, more crew of all stripes and they can't operate as many planes for as long, even when you've got two of them together. Plus the consumables goes up much more than the layman would think, as the larger hull isn't twice as hard to push through the water. That's why a 100,000 tonne carrier can outrun a 4,000 tonne frigate.

As for survivability, no carrier has been successfully engaged, to my knowledge, since WW2.

More smaller carriers are more expensive, no more survivable and are less capable. There are limits on size imposed by available crew, production facilities, harbours and the like, but half the size does not mean half the cost.
        The Queen Elizabeths are probably the  best current compromise  that the designers could plan given their time window, the politics, and the absolute budget limit they were given. I would have tried some kind of side trunking to vent the stack gases and single-islanded, but that is just me. The designers were very conservative, given the major problems they face. I tend to be more radical in solutions when I face radical problems.

Hwerald

 
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flamingknives       5/30/2008 4:50:08 PM
Herald;
The thing is that radical = risk.

And risk = civil serpents running away, with their buckets of money.

Nichevo;
Don't be an arrse.  The US were fairly obviously superior in the Pacific - it was their stomping grounds and by the time they reached Okinowa they'd had a lot of practice. Equally, had the US tumbled ashore in France in the same manner as they did in Algeria the Wehrmacht would have been able to invade the UK by walking across the American dead floating in the Channel.

Neutralizer may be having some kind of strange turn where Madagascar is anything like the Falklands in terms of military threat, but I see no reason to disparage nominally allied nations over a personal spat.
 
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Yimmy       5/30/2008 6:59:32 PM
Erm, ok.  What exactly is wrong with "not dissimilar" - it is not overly complicated or pretentious, while it is perfectly good English.  Being only two words, it is not even any longer or harder to say than "is similar".  The online Cambridge dictionary entry for "dissimilar", is in fact, "The new house is not dissimilar (= is similar) to our old one except that it's a bit bigger."  Every idiot under the sun knows what it means, and given the poor standards of written word on the internet, it seems a funny thing to pick up on.
 
With regard to the Falklands, big implications and meaning don't come into it.  It was an inane little war over some worthless soggy islands, penguins and sheep.  I don't care if the locals want to stay "British" (a seperate island chain altogether), there is only something like 3000 of them, and I am under the impression they don't pay taxes towards the British Crown.  The only use for the Falklands, is if oil is located nearby, if we find a use for the areas of antarctica we claim through the Falklands geography, or if we start developing the place for cheap British housing.  The results of the war said a lot for technology, weapons and tactics.  It did not say much of anthing for global politics.  In the great scheme of things it would not have mattered one iota had we lost - what would we have lost?  A few soggy islands and (biologically likely given small numbers) inbred islanders?  It would be a hit on our pride, but that's about it - in the great game that was the Cold War we still had many tanks and nukes.  While with the Thatcher government gone (as many would cheer her leaving as her historic staying), and just another tin-pot dictatorship lasing a few more years, Argentinas economy would have still have gone to pieces.

  
 
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Nichevo       5/30/2008 8:12:16 PM

Nichevo;
Don't be an arrse.  The US were fairly obviously superior in the Pacific - it was their stomping grounds and by the time they reached Okinowa they'd had a lot of practice. Equally, had the US tumbled ashore in France in the same manner as they did in Algeria the Wehrmacht would have been able to invade the UK by walking across the American dead floating in the Channel.

Neutralizer may be having some kind of strange turn where Madagascar is anything like the Falklands in terms of military threat, but I see no reason to disparage nominally allied nations over a personal spat.
Oh, no offense intended, FK, to your nation.  Though as I think you have conceded, the correlation of forces would have been ridiculously against you in my scenario of the Falklands task force (or two of them, i.e. the whole RN?)  being deployed against Okinawa. 

This is not an insult but, among other things, if it is a national reflexion, it is an expression of genuine alarm at the parlous state that you, my dear cousins across the pond, have sadly let the Andrew degenerate into.  In neut's case, it could be taken as a jab, but I hope you will allow for the necessity of same in the context of this thread.

I did not wish to be an arrse but you would have to admit I have been putting up with a lot of shiite, including perfectly gratuitous, and erroneous, national reflexions on the part of an ally. 

Incidentally, I am shocked and saddened at your use of "nominal," as there is nothing nominal about the Anglo-American relationship, unless my dictionary is quite broken.
 
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Nichevo       5/30/2008 8:15:59 PM

Erm, ok.  What exactly is wrong with "not dissimilar" - it is not overly complicated or pretentious, while it is perfectly good English.  Being only two words, it is not even any longer or harder to say than "is similar".  The online Cambridge dictionary entry for "dissimilar", is in fact, "The new house is not dissimilar (= is similar) to our old one except that it's a bit bigger."  Every idiot under the sun knows what it means, and given the poor standards of written word on the internet, it seems a funny thing to pick up on.
 

Right.  Bollocks to Orwell, Yimmy knows better.   This abuse of the language is a pet peeve, but there were others I chose not to list.
With regard to the Falklands, big implications and meaning don't come into it.  It was an inane little war over some worthless soggy islands, penguins and sheep.  I don't care if the locals want to stay "British" (a seperate island chain altogether), there is only something like 3000 of them, and I am under the impression they don't pay taxes towards the British Crown.  The only use for the Falklands, is if oil is located nearby, if we find a use for the areas of antarctica we claim through the Falklands geography, or if we start developing the place for cheap British housing.  The results of the war said a lot for technology, weapons and tactics.  It did not say much of anthing for global politics.  In the great scheme of things it would not have mattered one iota had we lost - what would we have lost?  A few soggy islands and (biologically likely given small numbers) inbred islanders?  It would be a hit on our pride, but that's about it - in the great game that was the Cold War we still had many tanks and nukes.  While with the Thatcher government gone (as many would cheer her leaving as her historic staying), and just another tin-pot dictatorship lasing a few more years, Argentinas economy would have still have gone to pieces.
Inbreeding, forsooth.  Yimmy, I would like to see your teeth.  Perhaps not just before or after a meal, however.

 
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Nichevo    On a different note...ELEVEN pop-up windows?   5/30/2008 8:20:55 PM
SP / SYSOP, Firefox says it prevented this site (the window I am looking at now, though I have lots of SP pages open in tabs) from opening 11 pop-up windows. 

ELEVEN?!?!?!??!  Isn't that rather a lot?  Frankly I'd like to request an explanation.  Thank Heaven fasting that Firefox does block them, because if I ever saw those windows, SP would never see my "arrse" again!  As it is I know some are getting through, tribalfusion etc. 

I DON'T LIKE IT.  Neither, I would imagine, do my compatriots here on the boards.

Be good chaps and knock it off.

 
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Yimmy       5/30/2008 9:10:27 PM
I'm not quite sure what my teeth have to do with anything.  For the record though, my teeth are all perfectly straight, with perhaps some mild staining in places.  All in all, I would rather have my 100% natural teeth, which I have never had a problem with, than scrape away perfectly healthy teeth and have plastic white plates fitted (which look stupid).
 
And Orwell's books and the plays resulting are lame.
 
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