You'll recall we're currently spending £7 billion (and rising) on building a pair of brand-new aircraft carriers, the Queen Elizabeth Class. The lead ship, the Queen Elizabeth, will be mothballed the instant it's launched, which will leave only one ship, the Prince of Wales. It will enter service in 2020.
Meanwhile, our existing aircraft carriers have all been decommissioned, and the Sea Harriers they carried scrapped. So for the next 9 years there will, apparently, be no requirement for an aircraft carrier at all, but thereafter we will need one, extremely expensive, one.
But now two more things have emerged. While the aircraft carrier will be ready in 2020, the planes that will fly from it will not be ready until at least 2023. Er...
And this is the killer: because we will only have one, and it's extremely complex, it is planned that it will spend a total of three years out of every eight undergoing "refitting", during which, of course, it will not be available at all. Doubtless the government is already working out how to fit in wars and conflicts to the "five years in every eight" in which the carrier will be available (but only once it's got some aircraft).
Genius. Though the real question for me is simple: either we need an aircraft carrier as part of our defence systems (in which case we need two ships, right now); or we don't (in which case why are we spending £7 billion?).
4 comments:
Joined up thinking from cut-happy Tories was always going go be wishful thinking. I just wish it wasn't so idiotically dangerous and obviously (and expensively!) hypocritical.
Cuts - they don't always save money in the end. Tories - say what? Public - *facepalm*
Some months ago in the context of an article in a german journal about budget cuts in european navys there was a short notice about the intention of the french and british navys to form an anglo/french aircraft carrier task force (or is it groupe d'intervention francais/anglais ;-)
Obviously on the grounds, that neither France nor GB is able to cough up the cash needed for an fully operational aircraft carrier task force. So with two carriers each available 5/8th of the time there should be at least one carrier available anytime in case of need ;-)
IIRC that's also one of the reasons for the move from the STVOL F35B to the F35C.
But you are right; the unit costs of military equipment has risen with the effect that the lots are very small leaving doubts about the effectiveness of the equipment (an availability of 5/8th is a good ratio for any complex equipment; notwithstanding the stories about aircarft carriers w/o aircrafts or Eurofighters w/o air-air missiles).
We (Bundeswehr) have ordered the tremendous lot of 12 (in words: twelve!) armoured heavy mortars for infantry support ...
The peace-lover in me envisions with delight the potential decision-making process surrounding the potential entering into a future conflict: the War Ministry (or whatever it'll be called then) votes against the politicians for fear that actual battle might scuff their one-and-only shiny new toy (still in the original wrappers!).
Didn't the nature of the contract Mr Brown had HM Government sign with ship builders in his constituency mean that it was to expensive to cancel?
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