http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs...entId=blogDest

This is the original article which Lewis Page refers too. Stating that there has been a failure in the final qualification test. This to me doesn't suggest anything to get worked up about. Suggests that the missile was fired from the warship itself.

I don't believe for one minute that the ships are going to go to sea without missiles. For god's sake Daring was only handed over a year ago.

If you look at some of the early Trident tests they weren't exactly spectacular..

I say wait till more tests have been completed, in the mean time take what Page writes with a pinch of salt.

If they actually tested it on the ship, it'll be a huge advancement over the original schedule, at least according to the House of Commons:
Judging from all available evidence, this sounds more like the qualification test that IF it passes, they'll go to actually trying it out on the ship.

Well there's your problem right there. :03:

Does in service have to mean fully operational? I don't know of any weapons system of any complexity that is fully operational when it becomes in service.

The Type-45 is not alone. This again is a storm in a tea cup that is being spun out of control by a man with his own agenda whose experience is limited to being second in command of a mine sweeper.

Lewis Page is full of crap. His rent-a-quote "everything beeg in America" attitude is as nauseating as it is myopic. Today it is taken as an article of faith that US weapon systems have always been the best in the world, forgetting such lemons as Sergeant York, the M60A2 and Sheridan tanks, the Dragon ATGM, M60 GPMG, the structurally-unsound OHPs, the Incredible Melting Gun (XM8), etc. The fact that increased reliance on foreign equipment would only further damage the knowledge base and industry of the UK defence sector doesn't seem to have occurred to him. God, he's a useless diddy!

You can all alight from the Outrage Bus now.

http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...s/thumbsup.gif

Cohaagen are you a previous subsimmer but with a new name?

I can't remember his name but he was/is RN bubblehead and was based at HolyLoch. The only thing is you use punctuation, he didn't.

:rotfl2:

No need to duck - that was a good 'un!:rock:

You thinking of mickey1up, Xabba? :hmmm:

At least its a patrol boat.
Our wonderful leaders ordered a patrol boat but couldn't afford the deck gun, then they could afford the deck gun but had forgotten to allow for the deck to be able to take a gun when they had placed the build order.

I don't know if that is funnier than the patrol boat with helicopter facilities, that doesn't have helicopters anymore because apparently helicopters need servicing and the government didn't budget for servicing so it sold them instead.
I think there is still a replacement helicopter sitting in Yeovil for the past 3 years. As they can't decide if its ministry of defence(navy), ministry of transport(coast guard), ministry of health(air ambulance), ministry of marine(fisheries), justice ministry(law enforcement) or ministry of state(govenment taxi service) who should pay the final bill.

Bureaucracy and the inepititude of the aforementioned is universal it seems... :damn:

Wow.

Personally I think the Type-45 is progressing as required. Just we need anything to lambast the MoD or any defence project.

She's good, I don't disagree, and when she's in service she will rub shoulders with the big boys, I have no doubt about that. It's just all the messing around in the run up to that point, with cutbacks, delays, overruns, underbudget. Like the mess the Astute project was in before that new chap took it over and shook it up.
We can build them damn good, when we're given the chance to, and it's well known that our sailors are one of the best trained, well, they were under the Perisher course anyway, but I'm not sure they're still doing that.
It's not the MoD I blame, it's the people who decide the budget of the MoD, although to be fair, it's also public perception of the preference of butter over guns, and since we're...sort of...in peacetime, that's understandable. It's just the fact that since everything is run as a business these days, the corruption that is prevalent in big business is also prevalent in the upper echelons of things like the NHS and the government system itself which lead to budget sinkholes which draw more resources away from the actual areas which need it. Of course, one could also argue that this is the end result of the welfare state and that the lifestyle we lead does not come free, but to hear of bankers in the city who have already lost the public they are supposed to serve millions, receive something like twenty thousand pounds a week. That's where the anger kicks in.
But, what is to be done? It is the capitalist system after all, and this strange hybrid mix of capitalism and socialism that seems to have arrived in the UK, in that in one hand banks are allowed and encouraged to operate independently of the state, however the state is now having an increased say in the operation of the banking network and other sectors, such as, for example, the operation of the East Coast Main Line.
Which works?
Well, at the moment it seems that neither does!

Oh god...I'm rambling again...I'm going to bed before I do it again... :damn:

No, that's not me. I'm a merchant seaman - I work for a living! I do remember the USN at Site One in the Holy Loch, however - I got a lot of good early-import heavy metal tapes from them when I was a young lad :DL

On topic, it is a sad fact that the Land Forces are the current media darlings. They (the Army) have almost entirely eaten up the Defence budget since 2002 - UORs (Urgent Operational Requirements) since that date could have paid for the entire build costs of the Type 45s alone.

Matelots and air jocks are simply not dish of the day, sadly. They aren't even gormless bridesmaids at the ball in the context of the tabloid-sponsored, publicity-fuelled, ITV-aided, Quinetiq C4ISTAR, special forces, spy-satellite mutual compliment session.

In the period 2005-2009, unless you've got Ross Kemp bumming you up on ITV4, you're nothing in the MoD. This is the first time in the history of Britain that the ground forces have exceeded the Navy in prestige. It is a terrible time.

Actually, that was what is supposed to happen. We've lived so long under various degrees of corruption of this principle that we've almost forgotten it.

We can accept teething troubles that the trial program didn't catch. We are less happy to accept a situation where the trial program is far from completion even if everything goes perfectly.

Aegis passed its Two-Target Simultaneous Engagement test in 1977. Ticonderoga was then around six years from commissioning.

The Soviets DO do this. As I said this "experimental operation" is not well thought of, not even by the Russians themselves. At least when Kirov commissioned, they were already 3 years into the S-300F trials program, things were looking good, and its mother program had already passed a VERY intensive trials program that involved DOZENS of simultaneously attacking drones (in other words, they fired off more test missiles that one day than all of the Aster program), and they can blame the Cold War.

Remained experimental.

These aren't leaping successes, but the first two are limited production and the latter two are not quite disasters AFAIK.

In what way?

As long as the X doesn't come off...

More importantly, I don't think Page is asking you to buy any of those failures.

The defence industry serves the military, not vice versa. Indigenous military industry is all very well and good, but if they aren't producing, at some point you just have to accept your limitations as a medium-power.

Heck, even Russia, whose national policy and circumstances requires it to have an independent defence industry to a far greater extent than Britain, swallowed its pride recently to buy an amphib ship (Mistral) from France...