[Skybird]

Kapitan,


the article mentioned international flotillas as escorts, yes. But I do not buy it, for me that is the maximum-optimism scanrio in case of a future major war at sea. Note that Washington refused to take clear sides with Britain some years ago when the tensions between the UK and Argentina went up and caused plenty of rhetorical exchange. With brexit, I again would not bet that this indicates a strengthening of international cooperation. Next, in NATO in case of a major war, memebers are not at all that surely to be counted as all speaking with on voice and agreeing on when to trigger article 5. Its formulation is wishy.washy and allows members to opt out of any alliance delcrtation os a state of war. And some NATO nations always have been uncertain members anyway, Greece for example. - To make the 6 billion coins investement of two carriers depending in its usability on foreign nations'S good will, to me does not sound like a clever move. Even more so when other nations may have as big problems as the Germans to fulfill their material obligaitons to the alliance.



Of clourse I have a war with the Russian or Chinese navy on mind. Amognst pother scnearios, but to exlcude this scenairo for being ocnsidere dunlikely, is not acceptable. You build tools of war not to play games or to hope the future enemy will play ball wioth yoiur intentions and will hpold hiomself back a bit. You do like in chess: you claculate with the strnongest moves by your opponent you can imagine, and then base your own moves on that. Anything else is careless. If these carriers are not meant to counter and survive the threats staged by the strongest and possible enemies at sea , why do you even build them in the first then? Just to scare donkeys and sheep in some forgotten desert?


You read a lot ointo the special relaitonship with America. But i think this has its strongest times already behind it. The Americans abused you and lured you into their Iraq adventure 2003, and then rejected to give you the promised economic reward after 2003. They will most likely not again line themselves up with you in case of another Falkland issue, like they did in the early 80s. They will try to get use of these carriers if they see them as useful, and this leaves oyu a little bit at their mercy if talkign abotu the options for global committment of these carriers - for I seriously doubt the RN has the means to provide the needed robust defence for them in case it is sending them against the russians, or China. And if it does, it necessarily opens wide open gaps in British naval dfeences elsewhere.



These carriers, says the article, were designed to host 36 aircraft. But the UK has ordered only 138 F-35 ordered, and that number is most likely to be cut back even further, due to the nightmare named "costs". If you take 35 or 70 planes away form that fleet to have the carriers actually being useful for something, That costs you over one half of the F-35 fleet for the whole UK defence and military strategy. I doubt that these carriers will ever be filled up with the ammount of aircraft they were designed for.



Your rotation and fleet size numbers do not change the fact that a force of this size will find it hard to compensate platform losses from enemy fire. The fleet that retook the Flklands, was build form ananvy that was three times the sioze of what the RN is today. And they sailed on after suffering several losses after Exocet strikes. The RN today would hardly be able to swallow such losses without being seriously handicapped and needing to reduce its ambitions and operations drastically. These carriers needs to be protected, and the F-35 is not known to have a really huge range, so you need to get you carriers closer than if you were operating with Tomcats and Superhornets, and you need to accept to beocme even more vulenrable due to increased air refueling operations. All this together - it does not compute well in my CPU. It just doesn'T.



The main diferenc ebetween yo and me is that you see many things far more optimistic than I do. But when it is about chess and about war, i always calculate with the worst. Doing differently to me makes no sense at all.



For the same reason I wonder why ships of war sail unarmed, like German subs, that just makes no sense. Readiness is all. Being prpared, for evertyhign, at all times. Else you must not even start to sail. A warship that sails unarmed, is no warship. And note, the article did not indicate that the free space on RN ships where weapons platforms were planned but did not arrive, means that you just need to armt hem up and then the ship is "complete". I understood it that the planned weaponry does not exist. It was cut, due to costs. It is said always that battles at sea costs imemnse quntities of ammunition, and today with all these smart weapons and missiles, ships hold even more limited ammunition reserves. This makes any defence very vuolnerable, no matter how sophisticate din tehcnology it is, becasue it coukld simply be flooded with incoming fire that needs to be shot down. The defender is at a disadvantage there, he will run faster out of ammo than the attacker who maybe even operates close to his own supply lines (China). The taks of hitting sooinjer or later, is easier to be accomplished than the task of preventing to get hit.



There are other tasks that must be financed for the British forces. Polaris on my mind. More aircraft and combat ships would be fine, aerial submarine hunters. Technological superiority is all nice and well, but ot does not allow you to stand in two difefrent places simulataneously, and it doe snot proivde you a magic ability to compensate losses.


Stanislaw Lem once wrote an ironci essay about wepaon systems of the comign century. In it he reasoned the US Air Force would consist of just three planes, because they are to expensive to build then, and they never fly and leave the bunker, especially not during war, becasue they are way to porecious to expose them to the risk of enemy fire or even just loosing them due to a profane accident . And it was some British former fighter pilot whose book I read back in the aklte 80s who said that over the time of the late cold war he and many of his colleaugues doubted that the superior tehcnology of Western jets and their shorter maintence times would allow them to compensate for the greater numbers of Pact aircraft they were up against. NATO would have lost the air war. Wiuth nhigh losses to the WP, yes - but the WP could afford them.



Being able to afford losses in war, is essential. Only fools expect to fight a war against an equal opponent without getting hit oneself. That would be like a boxer expecting to only deliver strikes, never to receive any hits. You do not need only quality. As important is sufficient quantity. I think this ghets systematically underestimated in NATO, to sell the image of a surgical, clean war in which our own forces do not need to suffer. BS.