Quotulatiousness

October 19, 2010

UK defence cuts announced

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

As I blogged yesterday, quoting a Guardian article, the British government will be cutting their armed forces substantially:

I want to be clear there is no cut whatsoever in the support for our forces in Afghanistan.

The funding for our operations in Afghanistan comes not from the budget of the Ministry of Defence but instead from the Treasury Special Reserve.

So the changes to the Ministry of Defence that result from today’s Review will not affect this funding.

That will help the morale of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan, but the army overall is still being reduced.

Our ground forces will continue to have a vital operational role so we will retain a large well-equipped Army, numbering around 95,500 by 2015 that is 7,000 less than today.

We will continue to be one of very few countries able to deploy a self-sustaining properly equipped Brigade-sized force anywhere around the world and sustain it indefinitely if needs be.

And we will be able to put 30,000 into the field for a major, one off operation.

In terms of the return from Germany half our personnel should be back by 2015 and the remainder by 2020.

And tanks and heavy artillery numbers will be reduced by around 40%.

The garrison in Germany is a relic of the Cold War, and it’s amazing that they’ll still be there until 2020.

We will complete the production of six Type 45 destroyers one of the most effective multi-role destroyers in the world.

But we will also start a new programme to develop less expensive, more flexible, modern frigates.

Total naval manpower will reduce to around 30,000 by 2015.

And by 2020 the total number of frigates and destroyers will reduce from 23 to 19 but the fleet as a whole will be better able to take on today’s tasks from tackling drug trafficking and piracy to counter-terrorism.

Those are the same Type 45’s that haven’t actually had effective main armament, according to The Register.

We have decided to retire the Harrier which has served this country so well for 40 years.

The Harrier is a remarkably flexible aircraft but the military advice is that we should sustain the Tornado fleet as that aircraft is more capable and better able to sustain operations in Afghanistan.

RAF manpower will also reduce to around 33,000 by 2015.

Inevitably this will mean changes in the way in which some RAF bases are used but some are likely to be required by the Army as forces return from Germany.

The retirement of the Harrier is a simultaneous victory for the RAF against their two most dangerous enemies: the army and the Fleet Air Arm. The Harrier was the one aircraft that could provide both naval and ground support, and was therefore considered readily dispensible by the fighter jocks in the Royal Air Force.

We will build both carriers, but hold one in extended readiness.

We will fit the “cats and traps” — the catapults and arrestor gear to the operational carrier.

This will allow our allies to operate from our operational carrier and allow us to buy the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter which is more capable, less expensive, has a longer range and carries more weapons.

We will also aim to bring the planes and carriers in at the same time.

That is probably finis for carrier operations in the Royal Navy: but expect both of these ships to show up again in the fleet of India within 5-10 years.

. . . we will retain and renew the ultimate insurance policy — our independent nuclear deterrent, which guards this country round the clock every day of the year.

[. . .]

…extend the life of the Vanguard class so that the first replacement submarine is not required until 2028;
…reduce the number of operational launch tubes on those new submarines from 12 to eight…
…reduce the number of warheads on our submarine at sea from 48 to 40…..
…and reduce our stockpile of operational warheads from less than 160 to fewer than 120.

October 18, 2010

Royal Navy’s Ark Royal to be decommissioned

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:23

The Royal Navy is losing its carrier HMS Ark Royal effective immediately, according to The Guardian:

The prime minister will underline the scale of the cuts to Britain’s annual £37bn defence budget tomorrow when he announces that Britain will be without a carrier strike capability for a decade. HMS Ark Royal will be decommissioned immediately and its Harrier jump jets will be withdrawn from service.

The Royal Navy will have to wait 10 years until as many as 50 new Joint Striker Aircraft can be launched using the catapult and trap system — “cat and trap” — from the new Prince of Wales aircraft carrier. This system, which will allow French and US planes to fly from Britain’s new aircraft carrier, will cost about an extra £500m.

In reality, this means that the Royal Navy will probably never have a strike carrier capability again. The next government will have lots of reasons to further reduce the RN’s Fleet Air Arm, and the will to reverse these cuts can’t be found on the opposition benches. The Royal Navy will now move toward being a pure coastal defence force.

The cost of only 50 F-35B aircraft will sink the carrier fleet more effectively than torpedoes. They were already going to be ultra-expensive with the original planned order of more than twice as many. Ordering so few guarantees that they’ll be even more expensive per plane. Whether the current government survives a full term in office or is defeated in the house, the next government will have even less political reason to buy these planes.

The Prince of Wales will be the second of the new aircraft carriers to be built at a cost of £5.2bn. The first aircraft carrier — the Queen Elizabeth — will be in service for just three years, between 2016-19, as a helicopter carrier. It will then be mothballed, a process known as “extended readiness”, and possibly sold off.

Cameron told the cabinet today that the decision to abandon a carrier strike capability for 10 years — and to put the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier into service for just three years — was one of the most difficult decisions he has made. “The prime minister told the cabinet that this was one of the hardest things he has had to grapple with,” one source said. “But this decision was taken collectively.”

It’s not mentioned in the article, but I assume that the reconfiguration of Queen Elizabeth as a helicopter carrier also means that the RN will be losing the relatively new HMS Ocean as well as the Ark. I guess the “frigate captain” branch of the service won the battle for funding.

Argentina’s opportunity to liberate “les Malvinas” coming up shortly . . .

Update, 19 October: The Prime Minister’s speech to the House of Commons confirms most of what The Guardian reported yesterday. The planned F-35B purchase will be switched to F-35C, one carrier to be completed then mothballed, the other to go into active service, and the Harriers to be retired from service. Trident fleet to be replaced, but five years later than planned, and both tubes per boat and number of boats to be reduced. The Army loses 7,000 troops, and 40% of their tanks and heavy artillery. On the plus side, the British will no longer be maintaining a garrison in Germany after 2015. The RAF will be reduced to 33,000 by 2015.

October 11, 2010

F-35B to learn Royal Navy landing trick

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

The carrier version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may be about to learn another trick developed for the Sea Harrier, Shipboard Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL):

According to the US announcement, made last week and flagged up first by Flightglobal.com, Lockheed will be partnered with the UK side of BAE Systems plc for the task of ensuring that the F-35B can get down on a ship at sea using SRVL. BAE is already involved in development of the jet, and in fact the lead test pilot for the F-35B, Graham Tomlinson, is a BAE employee.

The idea of SRVL is that the F-35B will not set down vertically supported solely by thrust from its lift fan and downward-swivelled jetpipe. Rather it will come down still moving forward slowly, supplementing the vertical thrust with lift from its wings. The forward speed would still be slow enough that there would be no need for arrester wires and a tail hook.

This should allow an F-35B to set down on a carrier deck while carrying a larger amount of fuel and weapons than would normally be possible. The Royal Navy is well-known to be anxious about this issue as it led to the early departure of the late, great Sea Harrier fighter.

October 8, 2010

Does SDSR stand for Slashing Damage to Strategic Resources?

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:22

Well, no, it stands for Strategic Defence and Security Review, which is what the British government is conducting right now. Lewis Page (who is a former naval officer, BTW) is still hoping that the Admirals can manage to save the core components of the Royal Navy from the budget cutters:

The Telegraph reports on the matter today, quoting unnamed insider sources at the heart of the ongoing Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR, the new government’s name for the savage cuts that will be necessary to sort out the UK defence budget crisis).

According to the paper’s informants, the navy has proposed cutting its fleet of “escort” warships (submarine-hunting frigates and air-defence destroyers) from the current 23 down to 12 — a couple more than we here on the Reg naval desk suggested under We Want Two. We didn’t think that the navy could preserve its vital amphibious-landing capability without cutting the tremendously costly — and largely useless — escort fleet a little further. It seems that we were on the money, as reportedly the two-carrier, 12-escort plan calls for “all amphibious craft” to be dispensed with.

If the paper’s sources are correct, some version of the escort-slashing, carrier-saving plan will go ahead. Reportedly the ministers of the National Security Council, meeting yesterday, “stopped short of a formal decision”, but “insiders now believe both ships will be built”.

Getting the two carriers through the first skirmish in the budget battle is a good start, but the ships are cheap compared to the proposed aircraft to equip them. The F-35B supersonic VTOL/STOL aircraft will cost a lot more than the ships they’ll be based on.

Although it makes for a fairly cheap carrier, the F-35Bs would be horrifyingly expensive, particularly if bought in time to equip the ships as they are completed. Not only is the F-35B the world’s first ever supersonic stealth jumpjet, it is currently suffering severe delays in flight testing: for quite some few years, until the production line gets into gear and economies of scale kick in, it will be very pricey to buy. It will also be comparatively expensive to own and operate, as perhaps the most or second-most complicated jet in the world today. Worse still, the need to carry a lift fan, swivelling exhaust nozzle and multiple lids and doors to cover these things when not in use means that the F-35B jumpjet will not be as good a combat plane as the F-35A and F-35C versions (runway and catapult respectively).

If we dare to assume that the hulls will be built, then a quick budget fix would be to omit the F-35B and install catapults on the carriers to allow them to use cheaper tail-hook aircraft (the F-18 or perhaps the F-35C). That’ll chop a few billion off the total cost of the package, and the only fly in the ointment is that the carriers are gas-turbine, not steam or nuclear-powered. That means depending on the not-yet-in-service electromagnetic catapult designed for the USS Gerald Ford, the next big American carrier.

The US Navy is committed to the electromagnetic catapult working, or they’ll have to pay a lot of money to re-engineer the Ford to use older technology and accept a multi-year delay in commissioning the ship. The US Navy could buy the entire Royal Navy out of petty cash, so it’s not a huge risk to depend on them getting the bugs worked out of the new mechanism in time.

The Telegraph thinks that the plan will be to convert HMS Prince of Wales, the second carrier, to an amphibious assault ship. Page thinks this is a bad idea on multiple counts:

The Telegraph‘s sources think that this is on the cards, saying that “ministers have discussed reconfiguring the first new carrier as a helicopter platform that would also carry Royal Marine commandos. The carrier would then ultimately replace the existing helicopter ship, HMS Ocean“.

This is a foolish plan, however. HMS Ocean is new: she doesn’t need replacing. Furthermore, having only one proper carrier is much, much worse than having two, almost as bad as having none: an enemy need only wait until the sole proper carrier is in a planned refit before becoming aggressive, happy in the knowledge that the UK can’t even rattle its sabre effectively in response. (One of the main ways that the USA resolves or responds to tense situations around the world day to day or week to week is to move its carriers about.)

In effect, the amphib downgrade plan sacrifices a hugely important and powerful carrier — gives up the critical one-carrier-always-up capability — and throws away the perfectly good HMS Ocean, which was actually quite cheap to have anyway (she cost less than a typical escort and her crew is no larger). The only upside here is that one or two more frigates or destroyers are preserved, a largely meaningless gain: the more so as there would now be fewer capital ships actually requiring escorts.

The problem with any kind of military spending is that you’re trying to make provision for the unforeseen future contingency. The last time the British government was on the verge of scrapping the aircraft carriers, Argentina kindly kicked up a ruckus that required military action — which would not have been possible without the carriers.

This time around, there’s no likely trouble spot to flare up and force the government to reconsider (unless we can prod Argentina to do us a favour again . . .)

October 6, 2010

British forces facing imminent cuts

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Lewis Page makes what I think is the correct call for the British government’s National Security Council to keep the Royal Navy’s carrier program and gut the RAF deep bomber fleet and the army’s heavy combat arm:

Thus it is a good bet that the first of the two new carriers for the Royal Navy will go ahead. The second may be downgraded to serve as an amphibious-warfare ship full of troops and helicopters rather than combat aircraft, or it might be cancelled altogether — which means British shipbuilding would be kept alive by bringing forward plans for a new generation of navy frigates.

The RAF and even the Army will be offering up massive cuts of their own — it is expected that the entire Tornado deep-bomber fleet will be retired years early, and the current Cold War style armoured-warfare juggernaut of tanks, mobile artillery and infantry fighting vehicles is set for a major trim back — so there is only one way that the government can preserve a two-carrier navy.

A navy with pretensions to independent action requires aircraft carriers. Plural. A single carrier isn’t enough, and places too much of your naval “capital” in a single hull. Two is the minimum (and three would be even better): you can, with care, always have at least one carrier fully worked-up and ready to deploy.

Even if the RN gets both carriers through the NSC flensing mill, they still face other cuts:

That one way is to finally cut the Royal Navy’s force of frigates and destroyers — collectively known as “escorts”, as their primary role is to protect and defend major warships — down to numbers suitable for actually escorting our biggest ships. For the past many decades, for reasons of history and jobs for the boys, the RN has actually maintained far more escorts than it needs to escort major units such as carriers and amphibious task groups.

Realistically, a combat carrier can actually protect herself using aircraft far more effectively than her escorts can: but it is reasonable to say that sending a carrier out to a major war alone, when just one bomb or missile or torpedo could eliminate Britain’s reach into a given theatre — perhaps cutting off air cover, supplies, even the chance of evacuation for our troops ashore — is a gutsy call.

Reducing the number of frigates and destroyers would make a lot of sense (except if you’ve “spent your whole life in an effort to be a frigate captain”). A bigger-ticket item than the carriers themselves is the required aircraft to equip the ships. Current plans are for the role to be given to the ultra-expensive F-35B. Politics aside, it would make brilliant economic and military sense to replace those techno-wonders with slightly less capable F-18s:

Really we need a maximum total escort fleet of say 10, as compared to the Navy’s current lineup of 23. Savings just in running costs over the next decade would add up to at least £11bn. Then we can save at least another billion-odd in acquisition costs by not buying the last two Type 45s and their dubious missile systems. All this is far and away more than enough to ensure that the second carrier is built, and to give the two ships catapult launch. This in turn would permit the purchase of much cheaper and more powerful aircraft for them, easing the problems caused for the MoD budget by the rising costs and delays facing the F-35B supersonic stealth jumpjet (currently grounded following the discovery of technical snags during flight testing).

And why would I, a former ground-pounder, be so enthusiastic about aircraft carriers? Because the British experience has been that the RN has been there for the army when needed:

It hasn’t been often that British troops have needed fighter cover since World War II, but when they’ve needed it they’ve really, really needed it. Just ask the Welsh Guards, chopped to pieces by Argentine jets at Bluff Cove. When there has actually been any fighter cover for British troops in combat since World War II, it has come from the navy, not the RAF. Every time a British fighter has shot down an enemy aircraft since 1945, it took off from a ship to do so. Even back during WWII, lack of carrier air killed a lot of sailors and soldiers — and the presence of it saved many more.

October 5, 2010

Let me read that again

Filed under: Britain, France, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:01

The Royal Navy has had some of their new Type 45 destroyers in service for a while, but they’ve only just gotten around to arming them?

The Royal Navy’s new £1bn+ Type 45 destroyers, which have been in service for several years (the first is already on her second captain), have finally achieved a successful firing of their primary armament.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced yesterday that HMS Dauntless, second of the class, has made the first firing from a Type 45 of the French-made Aster missiles with which the ships are armed. All previous trial shoots were carried out using a test barge at French facilities in the Mediterranean.

Well, at least they’re getting closer to being armed and equipped as they were originally supposed to be:

Each of the six Type 45s will now cost the taxpayer £1.1bn and counting. At the moment the only weapons they can use operationally are their basic 4.5-inch “Kryten” gun turrets and light 30mm autocannon, principally useful for bombarding undefended foreshore targets or shooting up pirate dhows and the like. This is armament barely above the gunboat level.

The big attraction to the (very expensive) PAAMS/Sea Viper missile system is its claimed ability to shoot down the latest generation of Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles . . . oh, and that it wasn’t the cheaper (and proven) American AEGIS system.

As it is, we will pay at least double and get none of these things. Our Type 45s will have no serious ability to strike targets ashore, and we will continue to have no capabilities against ballistic missiles. Most glaringly of all, the Type 45 will have no weapon other than its guns with which to fight enemy ships — Sea Viper has no surface-to-surface mode.

You might feel that preservation of British high-tech jobs in some way justifies such horrific overspending for such lamentable amounts of capability, but in fact the relatively few Brit workers concerned have now mostly been fired anyway.

We can’t poke too much fun at the Royal Navy over the jobs issue: most major purchases for the Canadian Forces are driven more by “spin-offs” and regional employment concerns than either cost or military efficacy.

I did like The Register‘s cheeky graphic:

September 27, 2010

EMALS back on track in time to save British carrier fleet?

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

As discussed earlier, the Royal Navy has been watching the US Navy’s ongoing EMALS project carefully, as it might provide a major cost-saving for the new carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Recent testing shows the program appears to be back on track:

The US Navy’s plan to fit its next aircraft carrier with electromagnetic mass-driver catapults instead of steam launchers is reportedly on track, with shore trials using test weights a success. The progress of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), the first of its kind, is of interest to the Royal Navy as it could offer a way to massively cut the money spent on the Service’s two new carriers — or, more accurately, to cut the money spent on their aeroplanes.

A statement issued last week by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) says that the EMALS test installation at Lakehurst, New Jersey is going through its planned programme without difficulty.

[. . .]

CVN 78, aka USS Gerald R Ford, is the next US Navy supercarrier, now under construction. It’s very important to the USN that EMALS works, as it is acknowledged that it’s now too late to change the Ford’s design and fit her with steam catapults like all other US (and French) carriers. If for some reason EMALS isn’t a success, the US will have bought the biggest and most expensive helicopter carrier ever.

Though the steam catapult is actually a British invention, Blighty’s present pocket-size carriers don’t have any catapults at all. Thus they can only launch helicopters and short-takeoff Harrier jumpjets.

The problem for Britain’s decision makers is that the current carrier design limits them to the ultra-expensive F-35B, which will be roughly twice the price of the ships themselves to provide sufficient aircraft to make the carriers fully operational. Being able to swap out the deluxe F-35B for cheap-as-dirt F-18E’s may be enough to save both carriers from the ongoing cost-slashing by the ministry.

September 16, 2010

Army, RN, RAF, and Trident replacement: pick any three

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

The British coalition government has declared that they will retain the nuclear option (that is, buy replacements for their current Trident submarines), but still seem to think that you can take £20bn from the Defence budget (in addition to the 10-20% savings you’re already demanding be made) and still have three viable services. Perhaps it’s a strange form of new math:

The £20bn replacement of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent could be put off until after 2015, according to reports.

The BBC said ministers were considering delaying the planned 2014 date in an effort to reduce short-term costs and head off a pre-general election political row.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said no decisions had yet been taken on the future of the submarine-based missile system, which is currently the subject of a value-for-money review.

It has been formally excluded from the ongoing strategic defence and security review (SDSR) but the Treasury has made clear the under-pressure MoD budget will have to pay for it. An influential committee of MPs yesterday warned that that decision would have very significant consequences for future defence spending.

Just as the coalition took office, it was mentioned that the previous Labour government had committed to spend £37bn on various new weapon systems, but had not actually provided the funding to make those purchases. Add a Trident replacement bill on top of that and there is no way to successfully pay the bills out of the current military budget.

There are always economies that can be made in military spending: it’s not unreasonable to assume that savings of 10% can be found in any military force. 20% is pushing the envelope too much unless a scaling-back of commitment is also part of the reduction. 20% cuts, no reduction in tasks, and the Trident replacements (even if you reduce the fleet from four to three) can’t be done.

Update: Lewis Page thinks the Trident replacement is essential:

Proper new Trident, with submarine-launched ballistic nukes, is the right call for the UK. Its cost is tiny compared to UK government spending — just half of a single year’s Department for Work and Pensions budget would buy new Trident boats, arm them, crew them and cover their running costs for decades.

Compared to the MoD’s much smaller budget the costs look bigger, but they are still small — and ICBM submarines represent far and away the best value for money in the MoD. For perhaps £20bn to £30bn in acquisition costs you get an unstoppable, unfindable nuclear hammer capable of shattering a nation in an afternoon. When one reflects that we have spent the same money to get the Eurofighter — a wildly expensive and now rather oldfashioned pure air-to-air platform — new Trident looks like a steal.

One major reason that the Eurofighter is such poor value for money, of course, has been repeated delay so as to achieve short-term savings in the past. This is also true of nearly every other procurement project in the MoD: cumulatively, past politicians failing to grasp nettles are now costing us billions every year. It has to stop, and stop now — as a taxpayer, quite frankly I don’t see why I should pay still more billions down the road just to keep Mr Cameron in Downing Street and Mr Clegg in the Cabinet today.

September 14, 2010

When the bureaucracy strangles its young

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:42

Noah Schactman uncovers the reason it takes a decade for the Pentagon to buy new weapons:

And you thought winning the Afghanistan war was tough. Try building the Army’s new armored vehicle. Or piecing together the Navy’s new network.

All of the complexity of the Afghan conflict — and all of the bureaucracy NATO used to manage the counterinsurgency effort — was summed up by a single spaghetti monster of a PowerPoint slide. “When we understand [it],” war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal joked when he saw the slide, “we’ll have won the war.”

But that slide was child’s play compared to the three-foot wall chart the military uses to explain its gajillion-step process for developing, buying, and maintaining gear. The “Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management” diagram is kind of a precis to the whole interminable progression, from “decompose concept functional definition into component concepts & assessment objective” to “execute support program that meets materiel readiness and operational support performance requirements and sustains system in most cost-effective manner.” Stare long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why marines are still reading web pages with Internet Explorer 6.

The chart is put out by the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisitions University, where the Pentagon educates 180,000 people a year on its, um, unique process for purchasing equipment.

Full-sized horror of the slide at the link. If you think you can survive the insanity of it.

September 10, 2010

The bitter choices facing Britain’s new National Security Council

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:40

The new National Security Council will have its first meeting next week. It’s expected to report on Britain’s defence priorities next month. For any kind of government body, that’s a breathtaking pace to set — and the decisions to be taken will have a huge impact on Britain’s armed forces for decades to come.

Thanks to poor decision-making on new defence purchases, the current government has to cut spending by an estimated 10 to 20%. Each service has major new equipment already in the pipeline, which means cancellation won’t automatically mean monetary relief for the government. The RAF has their priority purchase of 40 more Typhoon aircraft (costing £2.8 billion). The RN is desperate to keep their two new aircraft carriers on schedule for 2016 and 2018 (costing £5.2 billion for the ships and a mind-bending £10 billion for the F-35B aircraft to load on to them). In addition, the nuclear option needs to be renewed or (saving £20 billion) scrapped.

The Economist anticipates the bulk of the cuts going to the RAF and the army:

The RAF looks certain to be hit hard. Douglas Barrie, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, reckons that the air force will shrink dramatically, losing perhaps 200 jets through the early retirement of Tornadoes and Harriers and a scaling back of the plan for a 160-strong Typhoon fleet. Attack helicopters and unmanned drones will increasingly be used to support ground operations instead. The order for F-35 jets, which are to be shared between the navy and the air force, looks certain to be more than halved to around 60, saving more than £5 billion in purchase costs and at least as much in maintenance.

Theoretically, one or both of the navy’s aircraft carriers could be cancelled. That would drastically reduce Britain’s expeditionary capability; but the advanced state of construction, the amount of money already spent and the 10,000 or so jobs at stake make it unlikely. Ditching just one of them is impractical, since two are needed if one is to be continuously available for operations. Despite some excitable recent talk of sharing a carrier with France, the difficulty of agreeing what to do with such a shared vessel make that idea unworkable. Dr Fox has ruled it out, though he is exploring other areas of co-operation.

[. . .]

And despite Afghanistan, the army will not escape entirely. A growing emphasis on special forces in ground warfare, combined with rising scepticism about the future utility of heavy armour should allow two or three battalions of infantry to be eliminated, the mothballing of most of the army’s main battle tanks and thus big savings in manpower and logistical support. A smaller army — comprising perhaps 95,000 soldiers rather than the current 107,000 — would also make it possible to repatriate most of the roughly 19,000 British troops still stationed in Germany without building new bases or housing.

Can anyone adequately explain why Britain still has nearly 20,000 troops in Germany at this late date? What possible strategic value are they, sitting in the middle of Europe?

September 5, 2010

No longer “underhand, underwater and damned un-English”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:38

BBC News looks at the newest nuclear-powered attack submarine in the Royal Navy, HMS Astute:

It is the stealthiest sub ever built in the UK, able to sit in waters off the coast undetected, listening to mobile phone conversations or delivering the UK’s special forces where needed.

The 39,000 or so acoustic panels which cover its surface mask its sonar signature, meaning it can sneak up on enemy warships and submarines alike, or simply lurk unseen and unheard at depth.

The submarine can carry a mix of up to 38 Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes and Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise missiles, able to target enemy submarines, surface ships and land targets, while its sonar system has a range of 3,000 nautical miles.

[. . .]

HMS Astute itself should never need refuelling over the next 25 years, thanks to the latest nuclear-powered technology which means it can circumnavigate the world submerged.

It even creates the crew’s oxygen from seawater as it sails, meaning that the air on board is no longer heavy with diesel fumes, as submariners used to complain of older vessels. The only limit to how long it can stay underwater is the amount of food on board, enough for 90 days at sea.

Rather a big step up from the diesel-electric clunkers we bought from them, wouldn’t you say? H/T to Adrian MacNair for the link.

September 1, 2010

British and French navies consider going “sharesies” on aircraft carriers

Filed under: Britain, Economics, France, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:06

Matt Gurney reports on a bizarre scheme for Britain and France to share their carriers:

The rumoured plan to share the vessels would have certain advantages, to be sure. But it would also have certain ironies. Until the very recent past, the French and the British hated one another for approximately a thousand years, give or take a century. They battled each other endlessly, usually on the high seas. Progress is great and peace is nifty, but could anyone ever again look upon Lord Nelson’s monument in Trafalgar Square without chuckling if they knew the British Isles were protected by a glitchy French carrier named after a colossal thorn in the revered Churchill’s side?

The British have been quick to stamp out these rumours, calling them unwarranted speculation. But it’s interesting to even consider. Set aside the issue of the French and Royal navies co-operating, because stranger things have happened. Not many, but some. Every major Western military power, including Canada, is facing the same crunch. Sure, Prime Minister Harper made a big splash when his government announced plans to spend $16-billion on F-35 fighters, but lots of other things aren’t getting done. New destroyers? New search and rescue aircraft? An armoured vehicle refit? Frigate modernization? Show me the money! Or don’t. There is no money. If they are indeed discussing sharing their carriers, the French and the Brits at least deserve some credit for original thinking.

Original yes, but flawed. The rumoured plan doesn’t involve jointly constructing or manning vessels, but coordinating the patrol schedules of their respective carriers so that at least one would be at sea at all times. This would give both countries the capability to respond swiftly to threats in their shared North Atlantic area, or to react immediately to crises and disasters around the world (Whether for battle or rescue, few military assets can equal the utility of an aircraft carrier). Whichever carrier was deployed at any given time would remain under the command of its own national government, but there would apparently be contingencies to deal with a purely national military situation.

I doubt that the plan, even as scaled-down as indicated, would be workable, but it does show that the Royal Navy is seriously concerned that the new government will deprive them of the funds needed to complete the two new aircraft carriers already underway. Any extra leverage to persuade the government to avoid killing the program (like getting the French involved) may be seen as a good tactical tool.

Update, 3 September: The Guardian reports on the prospect of French/British military co-operation:

Fox stressed the coalition government’s “willingness to engage in stronger bilateral co-operation with France”.

He added: “And why France? Because there are two things that matter most when it comes to defence co-operation: the willingness to deploy and the willingness to spend on the research and development required to maintain modern military capabilities. That makes France the natural European partner for the United Kingdom.”

Fox said it was not simply a response to budgetary pressures. “It has to be driven by wider security interests.”

Morin said the two countries would come up with precise proposals by the end of October, after Britain’s strategic defence and security review.

August 13, 2010

UK to reduce number of senior officers in armed forces

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:46

In a desperate search for economies in the army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force, Liam Fox announced a good first step:

The number of senior military officers could be cut in an attempt to curb spending in the Ministry of Defence, the defence secretary, Liam Fox, said today.

In a speech setting out his vision for the future of the MoD, Fox said the reforms were intended to make the department leaner, less centralised and more effective.

He said military chiefs would be given greater control over the armed services as he attempted to sweeten what he described as “difficult and painful” cuts he blamed on the “dangerous deficit” left by the Labour government.

Fox said it was a “ghastly truth” that Labour had left the department with a £37bn “unfunded liability” over the next 10 years. However, he made no specific commitments on cuts, which are not expected to be announced until October.

It’s probably a safe bet that you could reduce the number of generals and admirals by half without in any measurable way decreasing the effectiveness of the armed forces — this is true in almost any nation’s armed forces, not just in Britain. Above the rank of Brigadier/Commodore, there are very few combat posts to be filled, but lots of administrative ones. When a senior officer transitions to being an administrator, their focus shifts from supporting the combat mission of the service to building their bureaucratic empire. It’s startling to see that an army of 100,000 troops “needs” 85,000 civil service workers to support it. (I’ve touched on this before.)

Each of the services has been starved of capital improvements so that any reduction in funding at this point will be very detrimental to long-term defence capabilities. The Royal Navy is starting to look more and more like a coastal defence force than a blue water navy . . . and getting rid of one or both of the new aircraft carriers would end Britain’s pretensions to be able to do any force projection at all (but Argentina would be happy to see it). The RAF had hoped to be next in line for shiny new aircraft to replace their current lot. The army has been wearing down their armoured vehicles at a steady pace and were also hoping for new, improved models in the immediate future.

In spite of the statements of the new coalition government, I don’t see why they’re bothering to replace Trident: you’ve already admitted that you can’t support the current force levels — which are clearly inadequate to meet the challenges of today, never mind those of tomorrow. Forcing the Trident replacement into the military budget could almost literally mean scrapping the rest of the RN just to retain those few nuclear submarines and their support structures.

August 4, 2010

The costly San Antonio class

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Strategypage recounts the sad story of the LPD 17 class:

The U.S. Navy is having major problems with its LPD 17 class amphibious ships. Originally, the plan was for twelve of these ships to replace 41 smaller, older and retiring amphibious ships. Then, disaster struck. Five years ago, the USS San Antonio (the first LPD 17 class ship) entered service. Or at least tried to. The builders had done a very shoddy job, and it took the better part of a year to get the ship in shape. The second of the class, the USS New Orleans, was also riddled with defects that required several hundred million dollars to fix. This pattern of shoddy workmanship, incompetent management and outright lies (from the ship builders) continued with the five LPD 17 class ships now in service. Now the order has been cut to ten ships, partly because of all these problems. To add insult to injury, the last ship in the class is being named after politician John P. Murtha, who is generally hated by soldiers and marines for the way he politically exploited and defamed the troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is particularly painful because the LPD 17s carry marines into combat.

Many consider the San Antonio class as a poster child for all that’s wrong with American warship construction. The ships are being delivered late, and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The list of problems with the ships is long and embarrassing. Although the San Antonio did get into service, it was then brought in for more inspections and sea trials, and failed miserably. It cost $36 million and three months to get everything fixed. The workmanship and quality control was so poor that it’s believed that the San Antonio will always be a flawed ship and will end up being retired early.

July 20, 2010

Cooling the (Navy’s) jets

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

The carrier variant of the F-35 fighter and the V-22 tilt-rotor helicopter both present an unexpected problem to carrier crews: the risk of melting the deck. The heat of the exhaust on both of these aircraft can cause damage to the carrier’s deck if they are left running for more than a short period of time. Strategy Page reports:

The navy sought a solution that would not require extensive modification of current carrier decks. This includes a lot of decks, both the eleven large carriers, and the ten smaller LHAs and LHDs. This began looking like another multi-billion dollar “oops” moment, as the melting deck problem was never brought up during the long development of either aircraft. Previously, the Harrier was the only aircraft to put serious amounts of heat on the carrier deck, but not enough to do damage. But when you compare the Harrier engine with those on the V-22 and F-35B, you can easily see that there is a lot more heat coming out of the two more recent aircraft. Someone should have done the math before it became a real problem.

The solution to the V-22 heat issue is pretty straightforward: put heat-resistant pads under the exhausts, but the F-35 requires a (hopefully minor) redesign of the exhaust nozzles to diffuse the heat.

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