{"id":12075,"date":"2011-11-15T12:44:19","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T16:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12075"},"modified":"2011-11-15T12:38:47","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T16:38:47","slug":"idiotic-british-defence-decision-is-usmcs-gain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/11\/15\/idiotic-british-defence-decision-is-usmcs-gain\/","title":{"rendered":"Idiotic British defence decision is USMC&#8217;s gain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2011\/11\/15\/harriers_saved\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lewis Page<\/a> explains why the USMC is getting a lovely windfall from Britain&#8217;s crack-brained decision to get out of the aircraft carrier business:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Blighty&#8217;s famous force of Harrier jump-jets, controversially disposed of during last year&#8217;s defence review along with the Royal Navy&#8217;s aircraft carriers, have been reprieved: the radical vectored-thrust jets, believed by many to have been the best strike planes in Britain&#8217;s arsenal, will fly (and almost certainly, fight) again.<\/p>\n<p>However they won&#8217;t do so with British roundels on their sides or British pilots in their cockpits. The mothballed fleet of 74 Harriers, plus the UK&#8217;s inventory of spare parts, is being bought up lock, stock and barrel by the US Marines.<\/p>\n<p>The US Marines possess a substantial air arm of their own and operate a large fleet of Harriers, with slightly different equipment but structurally the same. They anticipate that the British planes, engines and spares, many of which are in nearly-new condition and have been recently upgraded at significant expense, will allow them to keep flying Harriers into the mid-2020s without difficulty.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them. It\u2019s like we\u2019re buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it,&#8221; Harrier expert Lon Nordeen tells the <em>Navy Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lewis Page explains why the USMC is getting a lovely windfall from Britain&#8217;s crack-brained decision to get out of the aircraft carrier business: Blighty&#8217;s famous force of Harrier jump-jets, controversially disposed of during last year&#8217;s defence review along with the Royal Navy&#8217;s aircraft carriers, have been reprieved: the radical vectored-thrust jets, believed by many to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,13],"tags":[123,617,30,514],"class_list":["post-12075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-military","category-usa","tag-aircraft","tag-carriers","tag-navy","tag-usmc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-38L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12076,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12075\/revisions\/12076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}