RAF Chief: 'Govt To Halve Warplane Order'

SKY NEWS

Yet again it seems like Brown and his team of sycophants are selling our military short, the way things are going our military will soon end up being disbanded and we will be relying on the TA

Labour obviously is preparing Britain for invasion, why? because they are spineless globalist traitors who serve foreign masters. Before labour came to power there was 66 fighters to guard london alone, today there are 0. The military is under-funded, the troops are treated like crap. How much longer must the British live under these treasones scum.

Britain Prevails!

gosh he talks # - today they ordered 40 , and will order the other 44 later on bringing the UK fleet to 208

Things are getting worse and worse for HM Armed Forces. How much more cutting can they possibly do? Are there any organizations that can lobby Parliament in favor of more defense spending?

The British military has been reduced by over 100,000 personnel since 2000 alone.

well thats new - £75 mil each - compared to the much touted figure of way over £100 million - makes them cheaper than the F35

The Euro fighter isnt a great fighter plane anyway, compared to the F 22 and F35, which are a generation ahead. what's the point in these jets anyway. They were designed to fight against soviet Migs and sukhoi's. All a waste of money in this day and age.
if we want to support our troops, we'd be better with more helicopters and better equipment for the soldiers on the ground.
A Eurofighter can't do jack against the Taliban, not unless they have some Migs I havn't heard about.
They are also useless against homegrown terror, which seems to be the biggest threat to national security.

We need a dynamic government which can react to situations rather than just ploughing money into projects that take so long that by the time they are completed the hardware is out of date.

[edit on 31-7-2009 by woodwardjnr]

Well pointed our Harlequin, I'm personally quite sick of hearing ridiculous price tags for the Typhoon. For its capabilities and technology it is suprisingly good value. The F-35 on the other hand is not only poor value for money in terms of purchasing, but also increasingly unwanted by most airforces.

Jensy

reply to post by Harlequin

---

F-35A unit cost in non-LRIP is significantly lower than 75 million pounds even in future year dollars from non-Lockheed estimates.


You've either got it the wrong way around or are confusing the F-22 with the F-35. Over 3,100 F-35's are anticipated to be built, even if we cut that by, a factor of 5, it is still 620 aircraft. It will not enter service for some time, so there is still loads of uncertainty about price, export capability, and so on. There is a reason many Air Forces want, but haven't ordered, the F-35.


Depends what the aircraft is needed for, both are multirole but still somewhat different in how they fly and fight, and the F-35 still won't be operation till 2016 at the earliest.

[edit on 31/7/2009 by C0bzz]

reply to post by woodwardjnr

---

You obviously know precisely what you are talking about - its certainly inconceivable that an aircraft could attack ground targets when there is a distinct lack of aerial targets to engage.

I wonder why none of the worlds airforces have looked into using aircraft to carry weapons to attack vehicles and infrastructure on the ground - wouldn't it be handy to be able to hit that hilltop strong point from above, rather than having troops wait for armour to be able to gain ground.

I guess the F-22 was never designed to engage "soviet Migs and sukhoi's", even though it was conceived in the late 1980s (as was the Eurofighter), developed during the 1990s (as was the Eurofighter), put into service in the 2000s (as was the Eurofighter) but still has less of a ground attack roll than the Eurofighter.

I'm also wondering about the merit of bringing the F-35 into this discussion, since it wasn't even conceived until 1993 - a whole 10 years after the first steps toward the Eurofighter were taken.

Also going against the F-35 is the fact that it isn't available for delivery for another 3 years - and add another 5 years to that for active deployment capability.

As for the 'home grown terror' argument - isn't this what police forces are for? Commit a crime, get arrested, tried and punished for it. I don't see a role for the military in proper anti-terrorism actions - its purely a civil police matter.

Bit about the eurofighter here BBC seems to indicate that they are 100mil each?

reply to post by solidshot

---

www.nao.org.uk...

That report says it's 70 million GBP. If you give the F-35A a 130 million USD in 2015 then it's close to 70 million GBP current year dollar.

[edit on 31/7/2009 by C0bzz]

I say after the afghanistan malarkey is over we should cut our military budget and make the military even smaller.We don't need it and its a waste of money that could be put to better use.Scrap trident while we are at it aswell.

History has proven that we most definitely do need our military...

reply to post by RichardPrice

---

History doesn't have to be cyclical.A lean defensive military is all we need.Course Britain is a country that has killed millions and decimated countries for economic means so i doubt that will happen in the near future.

Right this fascinates me because the UK has the worlds fourth largest military defense budget at 64,005,100,000 USD. Source Wikipedia

So I wonder why we are cutting back on the Eurofighter. For those who mention Afganistan it costs the UK $4 Billion to be in Afganistan and Iraq. Not much in comparision to the total of the defence budget. So I think in the UK we are developing something to replace the Eurofighter and that would be why we are cutting back.

Wrong. The airframes of those two aircraft are more stealthy, and it seems that comes at a price with them also being very high maintainance and ahangar queen is something we cannot afford. A plane in the sky is worth several on the ground, as you might say. Equipment wise, the Typhoon is just as modern as the F-22, having the same capabilities. The F-35 is just a prototype, when it does arrive in fighter guise it shoud be more advanced than the Typhoon, otherwise it will have been a waste of time and money, but by the same token, Typhoon will also be upgraded.



So whats the point of the F-22 and F-35 as well in that case? The Typhoon is a swing role fighter that will also provide a survivable (in theory) A2G asset that can deliver the smart bombs so beloved of CNN during the gulf war. Tornadoes are being used against the Taliban *right now* in this role. I do agree about the equipment for troops on the ground though, shame we have to buy a replacement for Trident.


Agreed, but we are fighting more than one war, we cannot forget the need for bombing assets, which Typhoon provides.



Loath as I am to look as if I am defending the Govt (and believe me I am!) ALL military projects take a long time to bring to fruition, it is the nature of the beast. Having said that we have been pretty 'dynamic' in the exact way you describe when you look at the RAF Reaper and Diamond operations which proceeded from request to service very rapidly to meet a need. However when you are dealing with complex and expensive systems, a long gestation is unavoidable.

Can I just clarify something? You didn't just rubbish the Typhoon in comparison to the F-35 and then call for us to be able to procure systems quickly, in the same post, did you?

Name one country which doesn't have a history bathed in blood - thats going to be a hard task, since every country has a bloody history if you dig deep enough.

Having a defensive-only military is all very well and good, but they do not work against a sustained attack - if your forces cannot put the opponents airfields and infrastructure out of action, then all that they need to do is wear you down by attrition. And they will win, because they are not afraid of pounding your country into dust.

History has proven time and again that you can make all the honourable decisions you wish with regard to aggressive military forces, but the final say in the matter is not yours.

Britain did not have an offensive military capability at the start of WW2. That didn't matter, we ended up needing one anyway.

America did not have an offensive military capability at the start of WW2. Again, it didn't matter, they had to produce one fairly quickly.

Frances military at the start of WW2 was defensive. Look where that ended up.

None of those countries had the final say in what military force they needed to survive. In the end they all ended up with a vastly capable offensive military force.

A defensive force does not win wars - and when *you* are one under attack, winning certainly has a certain charm to it.

For the record, I am against the current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that does not change my view on the requirement of the British military. We need a military that can reach far and wide. We need it to stay relevent. We need it to protect ourselves, our overseas territories, our allies and anyone else we can help along the way.

And as a British taxpayer, I gladly pay my taxes to that end.

reply to post by C0bzz

---

is that with or without engine sir? would sir like a spares package as well? maybe training? add tax of course and your air fund tax and we`ll get you a real cost...


also you can`t compare the F35 as sold to the USA by lockheed to the rest of them - as i have allready shown , the export version will be a degraded monkey model

also a nice read - the typhoon has RAM on the fronst edges , and the inlet faces are hidden

[edit on 31/7/09 by Harlequin]

reply to post by RichardPrice

---

Im talking about recent history.Iraq,kosovo,indonesia,iran, Kenya,Malaya,Chechyna,East timor,Afghanistan etc etc And yes every country has blood on their hands in one way or another...but we tend to try and put on an illusion that we are the good guys trying to help the world.One million deaths in indonesia alone in 1965 through britains complicity.But sorry,i shouldn't have went off topic in the first place.

[edit on 31-7-2009 by Solomons]

Yeah, a coup attempt by communist China and the USSR backed forces is certainly something to blame on us...