Alternative Royal Navy post 1997

[Scott Kenny]

It is perhaps hard now that Russia is rampaging to remember the 90s and the first decade at least of the 21st.Century when the West was focussed on the Middle East and terrorism.

At the same time costs for education and healthcare had elbowed defence budgets out of the top of financial management in the West.

In the UK's case the end of the Vanguard programme was supposed to see a modest SSN programme to replace some but not all the existing force.

The Italian carrier seemed to me to show what the RN could have provided for its F35s and Merlins. Three ships to replace the Invincibles and Ocean. The QE/POW only make sense if we could have made them.CTOL.

Yes, the failure to even just do a second run of Trafalgar class SSNs after the Vanguards were off the slipways was unbelievably foolish. As was the decision to not install catapults and arresting gear on the QE class.

 

[zen]

No it was time to start new on SSNs and that's why the W-Class ought to have proceeded. A new diameter of pressure hull was needed and arguably PWR-2, PWR-2b and who knows but potentially a less US content PWR-3 design or a PWR-2c (notional).

Arguably the larger Type 23 Batch II ought to have been run off and later versions trialled new propulsion.
This would have allowed a smoother progression into a Type 4X successor to Type 42.

Arguably early Type 23s would have been sold off in the 2000's.

WR.21 with it's US designed intercooler is an orphan and a legacy of NF-90 and this along with Horizon diesels.
The whole saga of replacing Type 42 actually goes back to the 70's, such that by the 90's time was running out.

Early designs of CVF used them, but at that time it was expected that we'd have 12 Type 45, and be building FE/FSC soon. So at the time fairly decent numbers of WR.21 were expected with potential licensing and exports.

RR threw the intercooler off and drove up the GT to produce MT30 and haven't looked back since.

 

[Scott Kenny]

No it was time to start new on SSNs and that's why the W-Class ought to have proceeded. A new diameter of pressure hull was needed and arguably PWR-2, PWR-2b and who knows but potentially a less US content PWR-3 design or a PWR-2c (notional).

Assuming that the W-class had a design ready for building, sure. If not, build a second batch of T-class until the W-class is ready. (and keep building whatever class while you're waiting for the long-lead items for the next class to arrive at the shipyard)

The point is to keep the yards constantly working. Either design the ships with a short life and scrap, or keep the existing life and sell them off surplus, doesn't matter. It's significantly cheaper to keep the yards busy than it is to stop and restart even 3 years later, nevermind 10.

Oh, and as to the PWR-3 in the Astutes? it had been so long since the UK designed a reactor that it took a new US tech infusion to get it working (over and above the original S5W/PWR1 infusion back in the 1960s). Which is likely a direct result of not keeping the engineers and shipyards constantly working.

 

[uk 75]

I still think Healey in 1966 was right and in 1997 Robertson was wrong. The RN had to be forced to choose between nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The UK has not got the resources to build both at the same time.
I would go further and suggest that as soon as 1991 the RN was more interested in replacing the Invincibles than it was in deploying a balanced fleet of SSNs and surface escorts.
As usual we now have the worst of both worlds. We have given up the solid progress made between the Dreadnought and Trafalgar classes and saddled ourselves with two giant helicopter carriers.
It gets worse. The R class boats were a successful programme delivered on time. The V class boats almost managed the same. I have my doubts as to whether the Dreadnought 2 class based on the Astute will be as successful?

 

[Scott Kenny]

I still think Healey in 1966 was right and in 1997 Robertson was wrong. The RN had to be forced to choose between nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The UK has not got the resources to build both at the same time.
I would go further and suggest that as soon as 1991 the RN was more interested in replacing the Invincibles than it was in deploying a balanced fleet of SSNs and surface escorts.
As usual we now have the worst of both worlds. We have given up the solid progress made between the Dreadnought and Trafalgar classes and saddled ourselves with two giant helicopter carriers.
It gets worse. The R class boats were a successful programme delivered on time. The V class boats almost managed the same. I have my doubts as to whether the Dreadnought 2 class based on the Astute will be as successful?

Probably not, but not due to any technical reasons. Just idiot politicians changing the specifications long after the design should have been frozen, like with the QE class.

 

[Yellow Palace]

As near as I can tell, the Japanese build their ships with a shorter expected service life deliberately

We tried that trick with the Type 23s, which were designed for a 18-year service life. The newest ship in the class has been operating for 21 years, and the oldest for 32 years.

 

[zen]

As near as I can tell, the Japanese build their ships with a shorter expected service life deliberately

We tried that trick with the Type 23s, which were designed for a 18-year service life. The newest ship in the class has been operating for 21 years, and the oldest for 32 years.

No one making those decisions expected the successors would be held off for so long.

 

[Scott Kenny]

As near as I can tell, the Japanese build their ships with a shorter expected service life deliberately

We tried that trick with the Type 23s, which were designed for a 18-year service life. The newest ship in the class has been operating for 21 years, and the oldest for 32 years.

Which is a "your politicians" problem.

Again.

It is vastly MORE expensive to stop and restart production than it is to just keep a line going, and you get the first of any given batch built more quickly because you don't have to redo a pile of security screenings and retrain a pile of workers because it's been more than 10 years since the last time you built a warship at that yard.

"Hey, Type 23s are getting old and the last Type 45 is coming off the slip. The Type 23 replacement design isn't ready? Why not, you've had since 2002 to refine it! Fine, let's buy another run of, say, 6 more Type 23s until you can get all the pieces for their successor class working."

More ships in service, lower costs between classes, everyone wins.

 

[Yellow Palace]

No one making those decisions expected the successors would be held off for so long.

Nope, but the circumstances that lead to the replacements being delayed are entirely normal practice for British naval procurement.

Looking at the timelines, the replacement for NORFOLK should have entered service in 2008. The replacement for BROADSWORD should have entered service in 2001. The replacement for BIRMINGHAM should have entered service in 1997. Construction would have needed to start five years before those dates, and design five years before that. Every one of those classes has laboured well past its design life, because the UK has a consistent pattern of not procuring the replacements early enough.

Even the INVINCIBLEs should have been retired in 2005, 2007 and 2010. Even the earliest dates I can remember for the CVF programme had the ships entering service in 2012 and 2015 - five years behind what they needed to be!

In other words, by 1997 the key decisions that meant the Royal Navy would shrink had already been made. Or rather, the ones that would allow it to maintain its size hadn't been made. Running ships beyond their life is disproportionately expensive, so the operating costs to keep them going swallows up the budget to replace them. And so the fleet shrinks.

Which is a "your politicians" problem.

Absolutely agreed! The problem with our politicians is that they don't actually want to spend any money on defence procurement at all, and have the economic sense of your average codfish.

Scratch that. It's insulting to codfish.

 

[zen]

Fine, let's buy another run of, say, 6 more Type 23s until you can get all the pieces for their successor class working."

Which is frankly what should have been done.
In fact the last 4 of extent production were to have been built larger anyway. Cut for modest savings frankly.
As much as they ought to have just added another propulsion set out of the Type 23 box to power a Type 43.......and avoided Type 45 altogether along with it's associate costs.

 

[Siberia]

Plus Japan has a Coast Guard of 13,740 with 455 vessels including 121 patrol ships - a lot of which are armed and carry helicopters. In contrast the UK has no such organisation.

It's duties instead being carried by half a dozen government agencies or private contractors. Have in the past wondered about the creation of a US-style Coast Guard, but one of the drawbacks is that they'd end up doing several jobs the Royal Navy does now and make it harder to justify numbers.

 

[Hood]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.
The Thatcher government explicitly cut Swan Hunter out the T23 programme to focus on keeping Yarrow going. Cammell Laird was also sacrificed at this time and only Yarrow and Vosper Thornycroft would produce future warships (VT doing mine warfare and lower end stuff). Vickers Barrow built its last ships (amphib support) in the late 1990s and the site was wholly turned over nuclear submarines (which in fairness were its bread and butter by then).

Then during the New Labour Years its was a free market free-for-all with all the defence companies in Western Europe up for grabs and every trying to merge with a competitor or buy their competitor and BAE Systems came out holding the bag having hoovered up the lot (it got VT in 2008). In those years industry was given free reign.

It's worth noting the last batch of T23s were not ordered until 1996 (the previous trio were ordered in 1992). Being reliant on a couple of yard limited what could be done, basically all that was left was the facilities at Yarrow with VT keeping busy with MCMVs and export warships. Thankfully today there is enough growth in the sector that building more than two warship classes simultaneously is actually feasible.

The failure of the Type 2400 (Upholder) on the export market (everyone seemed to prefer pimped-up Oberons for some reason) didn't help Barrow either. They might have been able to ride out the slack on export SSK orders but HDW had the world market sown up with the Type 209 at the time.

To be honest I think many serious BAD decisions were made in shipbuilding, aviation and military vehicle construction sectors during 1986-2006 at the governmental and executive levels.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

 

[zen]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

It's more than that since this an induction flow of capital.

 

[zen]

It's worth noting the last batch of T23s were not ordered until 1996 (the previous trio were ordered in 1992).

Vote buying?
The problem is they were standard Type 23s. Not the stretched version originally planned.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

But, and hear me out, what if the government bought fewer ships, thereby saving money, and got private companies to compete for individual contracts, thereby forcing the prices as low as possible? No, it doesn't work. But to the Treasury, it makes perfect sense.

The fundamental problem with the UK - and not just in defence - is the deep-seated political belief that the government shouldn't spend money on things. Pick a random government department or project, and you're sure to find the signs of underinvestment and an obsessive focus on in-year spend.

 

[Hood]

Plus you have to factor in the political desire by the Thatcher government to privatise everything - including British Shipbuilders which had been formed in 1977 in an attempt to salvage what was left of the industry. It had 32 shipyards, 6 marine engine works and 6 general engineering plants and owned 97% of the UK's merchant shipbuilding capacity and 100% of warship-building capacity.

By the end of 1982, half of its shipyards were closed to reduce over-capacity. Then in 1983 the British Shipbuilders Act 1983 began divesting chunks:

Yarrow: split out in 1985 under the ownership of GEC-Marconi to become Marconi Marine. It was GEC who put in the necessary facilities investment including the large Module Hall. When BAe merged with Marconi Electronic Systems in 1999 to form BAE Systems it got the Yarrow yard.

Vickers Shipbuilding: sold in March 1986 to an employee-led company, VSEL Consortium, which also include Cammell Laird. By the end of the year they had was floated on the London Stock Exchange. In 1994 takeover bids came from GEC and BAe. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission investigated the bids and recommended the government approve BAe's bid - but Heseltine ignored that and accepted GEC's bid. The yard became Marconi Marine (VSEL). When BAe merged with Marconi Electronic Systems in 1999 it finally got its hands on Barrow. Became BAE Systems Submarines in 2003 and then BAE Systems Submarine Solutions in 2007.

Vosper Thornycroft: management buyout in 1985, their export designs continued to do well and the yard had good times. They brought local company Halmatic in 1998. Becoming the VT Group it relocated all its shipbuilding operations to the Portsmouth Naval Dockyard as VT Shipbuilding. In 2008 they merged with BAE Systems Surface Fleet Solutions to form BVT Surface Fleet. Then in January 2009 the VT Group sold its share of BVT Surface Fleet to BAE Systems which then became BAE Systems Surface Ships (in 2010 VT Group itself was taken over by Babcock International).

Cammell Laird: sold to Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering in 1986, after the end of the Upholder programme in 1993 the yard was closed. In 1997 Coastline Group picked up the yard and name and it became a ship repairers and continues today and had MOD contracts to keep the RFA fleet running.

Govan Shipbuilders: sold to the Norwegian group Kvaerner Industries in 1988, they built HMS Ocean on subcontract from VSEL. In December 1999 Kvaerner withdrew from the shipbuilding industry, the yard was purchased by Clydeport and BAE Systems Marine took out a 20-year lease on the site which it retains today.

Appledore Shipbuilders: among the last parts of British Shipbuilding left, sold in 1989 to Langham Industries. It survived the 1990s mainly by building patrol ships for the Irish Naval Service and the Echo-class survey boats. Went into receivership in October 2003, acquired by the operators of Devonport dockyard, DML, then it was mainly installing engines on luxury yachts built by Devonport Yachts Ltd. In June 2007 Babcock International acquired DML, including the Appledore Shipyard. The CVF block contracts and another Irish patrol boat kept the yard going until in 2019 Babcock closed the yard. In August 2020 the owners of Harland and Wolff, InfraStrata, brought the yard for £7 million. The yard is now H&W Appledore and is refitting an old River-class minehunter for the Lithuanian navy.

Harland and Wolff had been nationalised in 1977 but was never part of British Shipbuilding. It was privatised in 1989 and sold to a management/employee buy-out in partnership with Norwegian shipping magnate Fred Olsen. It turned exclusively to commercial shipping. In the late 1990s, H&W was part of the BAe team for CVF with the plan that the ships would be assembled at Belfast. Then in 1999 BAE Systems was formed and they got their hands on Govan and Barrow and H&W was tossed aside. Their last ship was MV Anvil Point of the Point-class sealift ships. Much of the yard was sold off for redevelopment, the remainder used for ship repairs and work on bridges and wind turbines. Fred Olsen sold the yard in October 2019 £6 million to energy firm, InfraStrata (who acquired Appledore in 2020 and Burntisland Fabrications (what had once been the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company) in 2021). Today H&W is building waste barges but is part of the Team Resolute Consortium for the Fleet Solid Support Ship Programme to build the ships (assembly at Belfast, modules at Appeldore) alongside Navantia UK (another wind turbine builder plus modules and expertise from its Spanish parent).

So the main constituent parts survived and form the basis of today's shipbuilding industry but it was a rocky road.

 

[starviking]

Great summary Hood!

Let’s also not forget the Royal Dockyards that were whittled down/privatised over the years…

 

[Scott Kenny]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

But, and hear me out, what if the government bought fewer ships, thereby saving money, and got private companies to compete for individual contracts, thereby forcing the prices as low as possible? No, it doesn't work. But to the Treasury, it makes perfect sense.

The fundamental problem with the UK - and not just in defence - is the deep-seated political belief that the government shouldn't spend money on things. Pick a random government department or project, and you're sure to find the signs of underinvestment and an obsessive focus on in-year spend.

Need to have Treasury sit down with some economists who can explain just how much tax revenue they will recover from having people constantly employed at the yards, and all the yard-adjacent businesses that serve the workers.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

But, and hear me out, what if the government bought fewer ships, thereby saving money, and got private companies to compete for individual contracts, thereby forcing the prices as low as possible? No, it doesn't work. But to the Treasury, it makes perfect sense.

The fundamental problem with the UK - and not just in defence - is the deep-seated political belief that the government shouldn't spend money on things. Pick a random government department or project, and you're sure to find the signs of underinvestment and an obsessive focus on in-year spend.

Need to have Treasury sit down with some economists who can explain just how much tax revenue they will recover from having people constantly employed at the yards, and all the yard-adjacent businesses that serve the workers.

People - including several Prime Ministers - have tried to solve this problem. Treasury has spent the best part of a century actively ignoring those economists, and fighting anyone who tries to reduce their power. So far, the Treasury is winning, and everyone else is losing.

 

[Hood]

I should probably have added that the major naval architect in the UK today is the BMT Group, formed in 1985 as British Maritime Technology from the merger of the British Ship Research Association and the National Maritime Institute.
They do a lot of other stuff besides designing ships, but its been a big success story. But in terms of warship design they are close to becoming the de facto successor to the old RCNC.

Sadly we've probably lost Vosper Thornycroft's eye for the export market along the way.

Let’s also not forget the Royal Dockyards that were whittled down/privatised over the years…

Yes that's true, that's a whole other story.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Plus your underestimating the government's interest in the shipbuilding industry.

That's what I don't get. Constantly building ships means all the associated economic activity and therefore all the taxes coming back to the Crown.

But, and hear me out, what if the government bought fewer ships, thereby saving money, and got private companies to compete for individual contracts, thereby forcing the prices as low as possible? No, it doesn't work. But to the Treasury, it makes perfect sense.

The fundamental problem with the UK - and not just in defence - is the deep-seated political belief that the government shouldn't spend money on things. Pick a random government department or project, and you're sure to find the signs of underinvestment and an obsessive focus on in-year spend.

Need to have Treasury sit down with some economists who can explain just how much tax revenue they will recover from having people constantly employed at the yards, and all the yard-adjacent businesses that serve the workers.

People - including several Prime Ministers - have tried to solve this problem. Treasury has spent the best part of a century actively ignoring those economists, and fighting anyone who tries to reduce their power. So far, the Treasury is winning, and everyone else is losing.

Treason charges are starting to sound good...

 

[uk 75]

The period since 1945 has seen fewer warships ordered each time a new class enters service.
On the positive side the new ships have usually been bigger than their predecessors and shipping much more capable weapons.
This has been true for every country, which is why Navies are all much smaller than they were. The US Spruance class replaced a prodigious number of war built ships. The Spruances have not been replaced directly, their role has been folded into the Burke class.
The reorganisation of the Aerospace industry has been equally bloody with many great names disappearing.
The UK private sector sadly shares many of the woes of the public sector, notably.weak management and a poorly educated native workforce.
I chose 1997 rather than 1991 because the Blair Government's Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was the only thorough one we have had since Nott in 1981.
The SDR accepted that RN carriers had made a useful contribution to the various crises since 1991 and were likely to do so in the future.
This was reasonable but noone in the RN or MOD seemed to remember the problem we had with designing CVA01 with its steam boilers at a time when the RN was moving to gas turbines.
Italy sensibly kept to a carrier sized to its VSTOL air component, the RN hoped one day to get catapults and built its carrier to accept them.
The trouble was that in 1997 the technology to fit catapults in a ship without steam boilers did not yet exist.
As has been commented in detail above Whitehall made the job of building the carriers much harder than necessary.
The RN itself must take the blame for the lengthy in service lives of the T23 and T42.
The specifications for their successors kept shifting and becoming ever more expensive. The design process is well covered in other threads here.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The RN itself must take the blame for the lengthy in service lives of the T23 and T42.

The specifications for their successors kept shifting and becoming ever more expensive. The design process is well covered in other threads here.

That's the thing.

The problem is those cheapskates in Treasury, who seem to hoard wealth instead of spending it to make the economy move...

"Okay, so the Type 46 specifications are done yet, we need another run of Type 45s. Are there any systems from the Type 46 plans that could be included in the second batch of Type 45s?"

 

[uk 75]

To be fair to HM Treasury they only set the overall budget for the Ministry of Defence as part of the overall Government spending plans.
It is the MOD and the Service Chiefs who argue over how the money is divided up.
The RN like the RAF and Army have a tendency to overegg specifications and focus on glamorous things like carriers and Typhoons rather than bread and butter stuff.
That said HM Treasury do scrutinise how the MOD spends its budget.
The RN has a specific problem in that it has to use high end assets like T45 for peacetime policing community protection tasks more appropriate to a River class ship. In a navy with fewer and fewer ships this is unavoidable but is hard to explain to politicians.

 

[Arjen]

Treason charges are starting to sound good...

Most of this can be traced to decisions by elected officials, ratified by elected representatives. If you want to blame the officials, and possibly the representatives, remember who voted them in. In democracies, society gets the politicians/policies it votes for.

 

[uk 75]

The expectation of the public for what governments should do for them have boosted education and health/social services to expenditure levels unimaginable in 1953.
Even in my childhood the idea (currently being proposed seriously in England) that school children should receive free school meals during the holidays paid for by the taxpayer would have been the stuff of fiction.

 

[Hood]

The CVF was to provide out of area support - mainly for West Africa where we had no close friendly airfields (apart from Ascension).
Then the Balkans campaign somehow turbocharged the case for carriers - despite most of the sorties being flown from Germany and Italy. One thing the Med is not short of is nearby airfields!
Now we ignore Africa entirely and focus on the Indian Ocean and South China Sea as justifications. By 2035 we might be using another ocean as justification.
Plus now we're planning on doing fleet air defence, air strike, ASW, amphibious helo assault and drone recon/AEW all from the same deck. Something has to give. Refitting Argus just won't cut it, we need proper amphibious support ships if the Royal Marines are to have any valuable intervention role.

 

[uk 75]

The role of the Royal Marines ought to be clear. To provide an over the horizon force at sea to intervene or deter as necessary.
Unfortunately this capability.is expensive to provide, the force is fragile in the face of most likely opponents, and.worst of all it is rarely used.
We have as a result a costly light infantry brigade with modest artillery and tracked vehicles.
A single Commando spread around smaller vessels for routine day to day work is almost certainly necessary. But a whole brigade duplicates the army.equivalents.
As with most issues here the decision to have an intervention force is a political one.
Intervention against poorly.equipped and trained forces as in Sierra Leone is less and less feasible as the horrific scenes in Somalia and Sudan show.

 

[Topi]

The expectation of the public for what governments should do for them have boosted education and health/social services to expenditure levels unimaginable in 1953.
Even in my childhood the idea (currently being proposed seriously in England) that school children should receive free school meals during the holidays paid for by the taxpayer would have been the stuff of fiction.

Being a Finn, I fondly remember lunches provided free of charge by my hometown (Helsinki) to children on their summer holidays in staffed playgrounds. And we have had healthy lunches paid by tax money for all schoolchildren since the 1940's in Finland. It is of course a question of prioritising (many people might find spending Nordic levels of money to fund a welfare state a waste of taxpayer money and with the new extraordinarily right wing government which took power hear yesterday, the Finnish welfare state might really be at risk of collapsing), but school and holiday lunches, communally funded dentist checks once a year for all minors, baby boxes, low levels of segregation and crime, lack of tuition fees even at doctoral studies all help with productivity, health and feeling of belonging together, which then facilitates paying the necessary high taxes (Finns are amongst the world's happiest taxpayers) and also tremendously improves our readiness for total national defence (conscripts need to be healthy and motivated to be effective and a supportive civilian population is absolutely necessary to maintain the system).

 

[uk 75]

Topi Thank you for this info on Finland. I intended no criticism of social expenditure in UK merely to explain one of the factors that squeezed defence expenditure.
I think most Brits are pretty impressed by Finland.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The expectation of the public for what governments should do for them have boosted education and health/social services to expenditure levels unimaginable in 1953.
Even in my childhood the idea (currently being proposed seriously in England) that school children should receive free school meals during the holidays paid for by the taxpayer would have been the stuff of fiction.

Being a Finn, I fondly remember lunches provided free of charge by my hometown (Helsinki) to children on their summer holidays in staffed playgrounds. And we have had healthy lunches paid by tax money for all schoolchildren since the 1940's in Finland. It is of course a question of prioritising (many people might find spending Nordic levels of money to fund a welfare state a waste of taxpayer money and with the new extraordinarily right wing government which took power hear yesterday, the Finnish welfare state might really be at risk of collapsing), but school and holiday lunches, communally funded dentist checks once a year for all minors, baby boxes, low levels of segregation and crime, lack of tuition fees even at doctoral studies all help with productivity, health and feeling of belonging together, which then facilitates paying the necessary high taxes (Finns are amongst the world's happiest taxpayers) and also tremendously improves our readiness for total national defence (conscripts need to be healthy and motivated to be effective and a supportive civilian population is absolutely necessary to maintain the system).

Perkele.

I had no idea that anyone was actually happy paying taxes... (where's the "mind blown" emoji on this forum?)

 

[zen]

Finland to my knowledge retains a high level of homogeneity. The overwhelming majority in Finland are Fins.

But this is seriously straying from topic and although taxation and population are strategic issues they are extremely political and subject to ideological passions. Which is guaranteed to upset people.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Finland to my knowledge retains a high level of homogeneity. The overwhelming majority in Finland are Fins.

But this is seriously straying from topic and although taxation and population are strategic issues they are extremely political and subject to ideological passions. Which is guaranteed to upset people.

Agreed, that was more a comment in surprise than anything else.

Back to the Alternative Royal Navy of 1997!

 

[Dilandu]

The trouble was that in 1997 the technology to fit catapults in a ship without steam boilers did not yet exist.

Actually, it existed then - fuel-air combustion catapults.

 

[zen]

The value of the Marines is clear, but it comes at a higher price in terms of exposure to risk. But mostly to small packets of personnel operating far from substantial force support.

The risks attendant to a large standing Army are much lower due to lower rates of actual use.

 

[PMN1]

The trouble was that in 1997 the technology to fit catapults in a ship without steam boilers did not yet exist.

Actually, it existed then - fuel-air combustion catapults.

See link

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/aircraft-catapults.40703/

 

[uk 75]

Internal Combustion Catapult

www.globalsecurity.org

by existed I meant as an in service proven item. Sorry for being lazy.

 

[Pirate Pete]

I am currently re-reading David Hobb’s ‘Britush Carrier Strike Fleet after 1945’, and, whilst some of his narrative might, by some, be seem as having some bias (an awful lot of authors on Military subjects do), he doe say about the re-structuring over the years since the Ministry of Defence was set up. Now, you have ‘combined’ committes which are manned by rotating personnel. You therefore have Army/Airforce personnel deciding on shop requirements for the Navy (the same fir Army/Airforce equipment/requirements, bit with Navy personnel involved)…
Any sensible continuation of experience withing ANY of the Services has therefore become lost. But, in this case/discussion, it affects tge Naval equipment requirements!

 

[Garyjohn]

I still think Healey in 1966 was right and in 1997 Robertson was wrong. The RN had to be forced to choose between nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The UK has not got the resources to build both at the same time.
I would go further and suggest that as soon as 1991 the RN was more interested in replacing the Invincibles than it was in deploying a balanced fleet of SSNs and surface escorts.
As usual we now have the worst of both worlds. We have given up the solid progress made between the Dreadnought and Trafalgar classes and saddled ourselves with two giant helicopter carriers.
It gets worse. The R class boats were a successful programme delivered on time. The V class boats almost managed the same. I have my doubts as to whether the Dreadnought 2 class based on the Astute will be as successful?

And yet Healey said at the end of his life that his biggest mistake was to cancel the carriers and, I think,the Tsr2