Navy carriers '£1bn over budget'

A £1bn cost over-run is threatening the future of the publicly-funded project to build Britain's biggest aircraft carriers, the BBC has learnt. A memorandum from the lead contractors seen by the BBC suggests there will "be a fight for the programme's survival".

BBC

There have been rumblings for a while now about what will be cut from the MOD budget after the next election is out of the way, could it be that these will end up paying the price instead of the nuclear program? then what happens if the Argentinians decide they really do want to make a serious effort to get the Falklands back? secondly what will we need the type 45's for now? aren't these air defence destroyers designed to protect these aircraft carriers?

Reply to post by solidshot

If the RN kills their future carrier, their participation in the F-35 program may not last either. Can the Jsf operate from their existing carriers?


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Not sure tbh, personally i would have thought they may have needed more deck space to take off and land? then there is the question about how many can be stored aboard the older ships when traveling and repairing them?

It's quite unbelievable that one project can see its costs rise by 25% in only a year.

£5 billion ? That's over USD$8 billion. Can't help thinking the RN would be better served by 3 Wasp class ships with any money left over being used to increase the numbers of Type 45's. That'd make for a better balanced fleet too.

Originally posted by Ulala
...Can't help thinking the RN would be better served by 3 Wasp class ships with any money left over being used to increase the numbers of Type 45's. That'd make for a better balanced fleet too.

Not sure I agree... The CVF is a modern carrier and designed to the needs of the RN. For example, it has a "light" crew complement and comfy accommodation with all the mod cons.

The Wasp class (correct me if I am wrong) are amphibeous assault ships, so not strictly aircraft carriers. The RN's equivilent of the Wasp class is the Ocean class, which (if memory serves) carries 800 Royal Marines to c. 1,000 US marines in a ship half the size and with a fifth of the crew. A simplistic comparison, I know. Maybe the US Navy should get a bunch of Oceans!

On topic... I wonder why such an increase. It could be down to inaccurate costings, variations in prices from industry or assumpions on technology development costs, all of which would have been accepted project risks. The "public" price may have been the the lowest possible price with all risks coming in at zero and this would have been used to appease the doubters to get the necessary signatures.

Regards

A big problem has been how much the £ has fallen against other currencies especially the Euro as many items may be purchased in such currencies

One way of being able to sav the two new carriers, SCRAP Trident altogether, we would save 20 billion would we not.

Reply to post by Laurauk

why would you scrap your only real and most survivable deterence?


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reply to post by FredT


I could have swore they were buying the STOVL variant. i could be wrong though. It would make since as the aging harrier is becoming even more tempermental in it's old age.

reply to post by FredT



The problem the UK has is that the current government has effectively bankrupted the country whilst underfunding the military, we really need more regiments and boots on the ground as shown in Helmand province in Afghanistan where we are having to get a load of US troops to help us out because we don't have enough of our own out there, whilst all this is going on we have the new nuke programme about to get under way in a year or two so any government that wins the next election next summer will have to make some serious choices do we scrap the nukes that very likely may never get used, the carrier fleet, our regiments of heavy tanks a combination of them all or what? personally it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they scrapped the carriers and the nukes

Another story along similar lines here

The UK should consider slashing defence spending by up to £24bn and revisit plans to renew its Trident nuclear deterrent, a think-tank report says. Britain cannot afford much of the defence equipment it plans to buy, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report says.

BBC

to answer the question about the current carriers and teh F35 , the short answer is NO ,

the long answer is no the deck is too short even with a ski jump.

the fat ass on the F35 means it needs an extra 20m take off run empty, and more loaded , and since the deck on invincible is 200m (the new one is 280) its too small.

reply to post by FredT



For 1, we as a country cannot afford to spend 1 billion never mind 20 billion on a cold war weapon. Will take us years to crawl out of the Debt hole that we are in.

And besides I want rid of nuclear weaons altogether, is that a bad thing?

Originally posted by Laurauk

And besides I want rid of nuclear weapons altogether, is that a bad thing?

Personally I've felt for some time that we should be concentrating less on the larger nukes like trident and more on smaller more tactical ones instead, tbh though the way successive governments in this country have run our military into the ground we probably do need nukes as a deterrent.

IIRC the T-SSBNs already have a number of smaller yield MIRVs on board to cover the full spectrum of potential targets and uses..
As for the Carrier programme running over budget sounds like someone has taken their eye off the ball in monitoring the costs overrun...

I read somewhere which I now can't find, that 2 thirds if the increase is because of moving the in service date back 2 years.

Originally posted by Laurauk
For 1, we as a country cannot afford to spend 1 billion never mind 20 billion on a cold war weapon. Will take us years to crawl out of the Debt hole that we are in.

It is all a bit misleading though because the £20bn is spent over many years - I think the project has a 30 year life. In the great scheme of things the defence budget is small in comparison to health and welfare.

The problem with the nuclear debate is that it becomes messy not because of the cost, but because nuclear is something that people have a problem with. Even if is cost £2.56, people would object.

Often the focus is on these big projects which by their nature have long lead times and long lives. Don't forget there is more to defence than the big projects.

Regards

reply to post by paraphi


Oks, but we as a country as a whole cannot afford to pay for trident, unless we cut public spending else where.

So what do we do spend billions of pounds on a cold war weapon, or use the saved money by building those carriers, improving the equipement and resources, our Armed forces need?

To me the over estimate to the biudget for the carriers is a drop in the ocean compared to the costs for trident.

Can anyone tell me the last time a Major Defence project was delivered on budget?

Perhaps they should turn to the U.S. and ask for an aircraft carrier that are being currently built, especially the Nimitz version. The Ford class won't be ready for awhile, but the Nimitz is. Hell you got a carrier nearly twice the size for what the QE class is for the cost, I think its the same cost currently. Don't know how much American carriers cost now these days.