Who will you vote for?

Seeing as the Coalition has turned into precisely what we in the blogosphere said it would; New Labour all but in name, who are you going to vote for in 2015 (if not earlier)?

One should not bask in the glory of self righteousness but there is, inevitably, something regal, not to say grand, about being right again, again and again... Fret not, for I jest, but turning on a note of seriousness instead; every serious blogger from Mr North to Guy Fawkes said that this venture would go tits-up and they would just frolic in Blair's shadow, for secretly they adore him. That is highly inconvenient for us who don't, those of us who cannot find a single person who has been more detrimental to life in Britain, on every echelon, as a suitable analogy for comparison.

He truly is a nation-state destroyer.

The Americans have a very special military honour bestowed upon officers of absolute distinction. The honour is known as 'General of the Armies' and it is the equivalent of being a six-star general which is an exorbitantly high rank by modern day comparison. I mention this because Blair and New Labour ought to be bestowed this regal order for their dis-services to the United Kingdom. But what is more, the Coalition should do some deep soul searching before they enter the next election. Either they fight in Blair's shadow with the empty mimicry and zero principle approach to politics that was his zest. Or, they fight on their principles, from the spirit of their hearts; for what they truly believe in and for what is right.

I do not believe that 646 people who are well above average intelligence cannot see the problem with bowing to a foreign court, to disable the defences of the realm, to give money to those who do not deserve it, to those who would rather rip of the arm that feeds them, let alone bite it. It cannot be that 646 people of such statute, who have fought a campaign into that Mother of all Parliaments, should just lay down their arms and accept that status quo. I cannot accept such frugal subservience to power. People must have higher aspirations for their country, and especially MPs, than what currently passes for informed governance of Great Britain.

For make no mistake, if they do not change their ways, we will change their place come the next election. Right now there is no discernible difference between the three main parties, all we know is that the country would be better run without any of them.

Defence Cuts and Libya

I have looked around everywhere for a post or article on this topic; the SDSR with regards to Libya. It seems that people are avoiding this topic like the plague, perhaps because it is monumentally obvious that if we are going to play any part in military action against Libya then we simply cannot go ahead with certain parts of the SDSR. It simply is not possible, why I will explain in a few minutes. First consider in full, again, the cuts as envisaged in the SDSR courtesy of Wikipedia.

British Army

• Challenger 2 tanks will be cut by 40%.
• The British Army presence in Germany will end by 2020.
• Overall personnel numbers will drop by 7,000 to 95,500.
• The number of Challenger 2 tanks will be cut by 40% to an estimated number of just over 200.
• The number of AS-90 heavy artillery will be cut by 35%to an estimated 87.

Royal Air Force

• The Harrier will be retired in order to maintain the Tornado as the RAF's main strike aircraft until the Typhoon matures. The latter and the F-35 Lightning II will constitute the RAF's fast jet fleet in the future.
• Personnel will be reduced by 5,000 to 33,000.
• Nimrod MRA4 project, after spending £3.2 billion and the first aircraft being completed, to be scrapped. RAF Kinloss, where the aircraft were to be based, will close.
• Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft procurement will go ahead, as will the Airbus A400M. These aircraft, along with the current C-17s, will form the future air transport fleet. The VC10 and TriStars are approaching the end of their service lives and the C-130 fleet will be retired 10 years earlier than planned.
• 12 Boeing Chinooks will be added to the current fleet, a cut to the original order for 22.
• The Harrier GR9 will be withdrawn during 2011.
• The RAF's future fast jet fleet will be based on the Typhoon and the F-35 Lightning II. The latter, which will also be flown by the Royal Navy, will be the more capable and cheaper F-35C version. The UK has originally planned to buy the F-35B, a Short Take Off and Vertical Landing aircraft. The F-35C has longer range, greater payload capability and the MOD envisages life cycle costs to be 25% cheaper than the F-35B.
• The Sentinel R1 will be retired once it is no longer required to support forces in Afghanistan.

Royal Navy

• The Royal Navy flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, will be decommissioned "almost immediately" rather than in 2014. The Joint Force Harrier aircraft will be retired. Both of these measures will save money for the purchase of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
• One of the Albion class landing platform dock ships will be placed at extended readiness.
• Either HMS Ocean or HMS Illustrious to be decommissioned, whichever is least capable as a helicopter carrier.This was decided in December 2010, Liam Fox stated "HMS Ocean should be retained to provide our landing platform helicopter capability for the longer term. HMS Illustrious will be withdrawn from service in 2014".
• One of the Bay class landing ship dock vessels (later identified as RFA Largs Bay) would be decommissioned.
• Replacement of the UK's nuclear deterrent, based on the Vanguard class ballistic missile submarines, will be delayed by four years, deferring £500 million in spending. Changes to the size of the missile tubes will save £250 million.
• 7 Astute class submarines will be built as previously planned.
• The surface fleet of frigates and destroyers will be reduced to nineteen ships; the current thirteen Type 23 frigates, the three active Type 45 destroyers, and the three Type 45 destroyers currently under construction. The remaining Type 22 frigates and Type 42 destroyers are to be disposed of. "As soon as possible after 2020", the Type 23 frigates will be replaced by new Type 26 frigates.
• The strength of the RN will be reduced by 5,000 (to a total of about 30,000)

And that is it, few might wonder why we even bother having an armed force when there is no one in it, not our politicians of course they do not wonder any such sensible thoughts.

What is currently being planned to stop Gaddafi going all 15th century on his people, is to impose a no-fly zone. What is this? A no-fly zone is a territory over which aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in a military context, somewhat like a demilitarized zone in the sky.

Now the Geography of Libya is somewhat arduous if we are to contemplate using post-SDSR resources to corner Gaddafi. As you will see from the map on the left, Libya is not exactly surrounded by tea-loving cricket monkeys; Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Egypt are not our best international allies bluntly put. In the north there is water, a lot of water, so much water in fact that you need a ship. A big ship, something on the scale of an aircraft carrier. Why? Well, the americans have a lot of bases dotted around that region which can accommodate fighters jets of our pedigree, and they also have the tech needed to service them. Moreover the closest ally which uses the Typhoon is Italy, though they might not be over-joyed by the prospect of lending their bases to pesky Brits they would probably relent if leaned upon a bit. But that is a big 'if' and the italians have not been known to favour big expeditionary military missions since about two millennia ago - crossing the Rubicon and all of that. They are more embroiled in their Prime Minister's latest shenanigans. Hence were we to take part in the no-fly zone operation it would almost, without question, be with the help of the Americans. But then one must ask, why should we take part at all when they US Marines boast more fighters jets than our Navy and Airforce combined? Wont we just be in the way of a properly equipped fighting force? Chances are that this would be the case since we have no means of fielding any heavy equipment of our own except for choppers.

We still have a lot of craft which can accommodate choppers, and substantial numbers of them as well; that said a chopper is peanuts compared to a fighter jet and it is like comparing apples and oranges if you are to analyse a no-fly zone whilst only keeping choppers as your option. They are useful for close support but certainly not for patrolling an area four times the size of the UK.

The current UK flag-ship is HMS Albion, a grand lady indeed, but she cannot carry aeroplanes only choppers.

We have sold, scrapped or decommissioned the following Invincible class carriers; HMS Ark Royal and HMS Invincible. What remains is HMS Illustrious due for decommissioning in 2014 after HMS Ocean has undergone extensive refits.

Lets make this abundantly clear to those of you who do not yet realise the significance of an aircraft carrier. It is a floating bit of sovereign space. It is a tiny floating UK which can blow stuff up very quickly should circumstances so require it. Circumstances are not requiring it yet in Libya but if every armed conflict to date is anything to go by, they will. There is a difference between being belligerent and pragmatic and knowing your history and ignoring it. We are terribly good at forgetting our history in the UK and as a result tend to repeat an awful lot of mistakes which could have been avoided if people in command where not being so optimistic about the prospects.

They know that they need Illustrious more than ever, they know that they can halt the sale of HMS Invincible to a Turkish scrapyard and re-install the Rolls-Royce engines at the blink of an eye. But they wont for the simple reason that they will look weak and incompetent for having completed botched the SDSR. If any of them are reading this let me make this very clear; you already look like amateurs for thinking that no aircraft carriers would be needed during an entire decade. It took four months -four months- for your defence review to become obsolete. To save some face, or at the very least, listen to the people in the know, you can reverse some of these decisions. There is waste in the MoD, yes no one denies this, but there is also a time when you have admit and consent that you were wrong. Own up to your shortcomings and move on. These assets are gravely needed for a no-fly zone cannot be established without them, it simply is not possible since no one, down there, likes us enough to lend us their airbases and we would just be in the way of the americans as said.

What is more; the Typhoon cannot fly off aircraft carriers, it is not a carrier jet like the French Mirrage 2000. The Harrier GR9 can, but like everything else useful, it is being scrapped to save money. The Harrier and the Carriers are perhaps our most valuable asset right now, one cannot topple Gaddafi with nuclear submarines nor with Cyber Commands no matter how intriguing the prospect of that might sound.

The Government knows what they have to do in order to remain a significant player in the world, but they wont since they will loose face if they do. We have had so many politicians like that who were afraid to do the right thing, and as a result history only remembers them for their failure to do the right thing. Not for all the good they also did. What will the Coalition be? A Chamberlain or a Churchill?

Update:

Word is catching on...

Since the Libyan crisis began, the Coalition has faced repeated criticism over the decision last year to decommission HMS Ark Royal and the Royal Navy’s Harrier jets, leaving Britain without a functioning aircraft carrier. Dr Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, insisted that such criticism was a “red herring” because the base in Cyprus meant Britain could still operate jets over Libya if required. And would it, pray, still be a "red herring" if this had happened in Zambia instead, where are no conveniently placed RAF stations. I cannot believe that this man is using geography as a defence for scrapping HMS Ark Royal. What an idiot. A five year old could pick holes in that defence.

And for our daily dose of idiotic comments, the Guardian never disappoints when it cannot understand why special forces operations are kept secret and furthermore argues that they should be publicised. Why are lefties so fucking stupid?

Mr. Mercer you EU mong

Mr. Mercer,

As an elected representative of the British people, it is your duty to explain to us why our govt. has agreed to replace the British military with an EU Military, without our approval, consultation, or consent.

In particular, I ask the following:

Why did our govt. sign this EU-SOFA agreement (UK sig. on page 10), which merges the militaries of European nations into an EU Military?

Link: EU-SOFA agreement, signed by UK

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2003:321:0006:0016:EN:PDF

Why did our govt. agree to ATHENA, an EU mechanism to administer the 'common costs' of military operations on behalf of 'Europe' ?

Link: ATHENA

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=746〈=EN

Why did our govt agree to ERASMUS MILITARE, an EU mechanism to create a common defence culture via exchange of young military officers within training colleges around the EU ?

And why did our govt agree to the EUROPEAN SECURITY and DEFENCE COLLEGE to train military personnel from EU member states for a mission defined as 'To support a Common Security and Defence Policy and to promote a common European security culture.' ?

MP Mercer, this is not only a betrayal, it's a pre-meditated, wilful a betrayal by stealth.

I suspect that there will soon come a day where the British people remind those they perceive as traitors that betrayals of this magnitude have a way of consuming, in very unsavoury ways, those who perpetrate them.

Excellent

Think Defence

Ruled by Retards

We truly are ruled by incompetent fucking retards. Not even Labour were this stupid. This particularly pisses me off, since a fair few of my friends were intending to go down this route. Bloody fucking idiots that is all I can say, the party of the armed forces my fucking arse. This is their record so far, try convince anyone to vote for them come the next election. UKIP are going to have a field day.

• Reducing the planned purchase of 22 Chinooks to 12
• Delaying Trident for political reasons that will cost billions
• Cancelling Nimrod MRA4
• Reducing armour and artillery, if reports are to be believed, to the bone
• Reducing surface vessels
• Reducing Tornado
• Withdrawn Harrier GR9′s
• Withdrawing Sentinel
• Slashing allowances and expenses
• Setting up the armed forces for a post Afghanistan change in terms and conditions of service
• Implementing a 2 year pay freeze
• Reducing pensions
• Reducing service personnel by 17,000
• Reducing the MoD Civil Service by 25,000 which will likely result in more work for service personnel
• Removing the External Reference group from reporting on the Military Covenant
• Trying to convince everyone that the SDSR was a considered and balanced review (thats my favourite joke of the year)
• Sacking 25% of RAF trainee pilots

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now. Just slash and slash and slash until the blood is flowing, and then the wolves will come... I am all for cutting public spending but not at the cost of national security.

Military Procurement; US-style vs. EU-style

This is of course not a commanding example and more sample data is need to draw conclusions, but it is fair to say that when dealing with the US you get more of your stuff in time, on budget and it does what is says on the tin. Again I know that this does not apply to everything (see JSF e.g.) but compared to cooperation projects with other European nations (to foster some spurious belief in a future EU armed forces, and supposedly to reduce costs), the Americans drift across the pond like white feathers whereas the European partners are more like bowling balls (which sink).

Boeing has announced that it has successfully completed -- ahead of schedule -- its industrial participation (IP) programs for the first five C-17 Globemaster III aircraft operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF).

Lets compare this with

According to a February report to the French Senate, the A400M is €5 billion over budget, 3 to 4 years behind schedule, and 12 tons overweight; aerospace experts estimate it is also costing Airbus between €1 billion and €1.5 billion a year.

Not exactly the fiat of business integrity.

TSR2

Mr North has an excellent video of the TSR2 which I had not seen before, I shall re-post it here because I simply love this aeroplane which was so viciously clawed from us in what must be one of the lowest points in the 'special relationship' ever seen, at least to my mind (or at the very least in engineering terms).

Here is another very very long piece I wrote some time ago, on the TSR2, which is well worth the read if you are interested in aeronautics. One thing is for sure, Britain does some quite frankly amazing engineering, quite unmatched in any other country in the world. Unfortunately we also have the drawback of creating arguably the worst kind of politicians a country could ever have or need.

Must Read

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/8114634/Britains-long-slow-journey-to-remembrance.html

Eye-watering defence fact of the day

DE&S employs 22,500 people. Its equivalent in Israel, a country under direct military threat, has a reported 400.

It is not so much 'doing more with less' in the UK now, we are reaching new heights of breathtaking incompetence as every day passes, with every new departmental cost book laid open. It should really be, given the size of the civil service, 'do more with nothing' and that would actually work.

I must hasten to add that the media are ignorant as fuck when it comes to the MoD though. This I stole from ThinkDefence, I hope they wont mind, but here is how it is and take fucking note you ignorant slobs (MSM):

THERE ARE NOT 85,000 PEOPLE IN THE MoD PUSHING PENS

9,600 are in the Trading Funds, that’s the Met office, Hydrographic Office, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Defence Support Group. All of these provide vital services to the MoD and all but one actually return a profit.

10,500 are locally employed civilians outside the UK, educating service families children, maintaining the estate and running stores for example.

2,700 are in Defence Estates, 7,700 involved with Policing and Guarding (and these chaps don't simply police defence estates, no, they are also employed to protect the privately run and managed nuclear facilities dotted around the country) and 2,700 in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

The only bearing relevance they have to each other is that they are funded out of the same defence budget which is allocated by the MoD. For some inexplicable reason the media can create separate sections for the army, the airforce and the navy but when it comes to the rest their cognitive reasoning skills simply seem to disappear.

Defence of Realm

Seeing as I am on a bit of a roll tonight let me just say this; something always turns up. Nobody predicted Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone or two Gulf wars. If they cut the armed forces below operational level (my relative term) it will be the 1930' all over again. As I recall from my history lessons that ended in a complete shit-storm.

Royal Navy to get new uniforms

I know what you are thinking; "what the fuck", yes I am on the same page as yourself. If there is one project to scrap then surely it is fashionista tendencies of Her Majesty's rear admirals if you get my drift - or perhaps I am not being colloquial enough?

A swedish company called the LBM Group have this statement on their website (beware these people have never heard of the concept of paragraphing):

The British Royal Navy, is well-known, especially in England, the Anglo-Saxon world and the British Commonwealth. The British Navy image has been built up for centuries and is one of the oldest brands in the world. The licensing program that LBM has developed together with the British Navy has been developed in order to achieve a clearly defined objective, to make it possible for the brand Royal Navy to create an increased strategic value for the brand that they have built up over the years. The responsibility of LBM has been to make sure that the values and the ethical standards of the British Navy are projected in an adequate way. The Royal Navy is characterized by a strong brand and a well-known logotype that also includes several dynamic and historical sub-brands [sic] such as the Royal Marines. The brand is characterized by capacity; clothing that at the same time is designed to be unique, functional and unified. To achieve this objective, three distinct requirements have been set by the licensor; Functionality, Prestige and Specialty. The objective is to position Royal Navy in such way that it simulates, and is associated with, the property and attributes of the British Royal Navy. Not only will the Royal Navy collection be produced in high-quality material, but it is also important that it will be perceived as appropriate, tough and resistant in order to attract the consumers. Both the products, as well as the way that the marketing is being made, shall reflect the values that the British Navy stands for. The Board of Directors for LBM considers that it is important to position Royal Navy in the higher price segment to convey a feeling of luxury and outstanding quality. The objective is that Royal Navy shall be considered the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of the industry. The brand has to be marketed through established distributor, and in relatively low volumes to achieve this. In this was the market is allowed to assimilate the brand and that rather creates a demand than forces LBM into push it out to the consumers. During the first years in the United Kingdom, the strategy will be focused on retail companies that are specialized in marine and lifestyle-related shoes and clothing collections. Beyond this, there is a pronounced objective to establish sales through larger department stores such as Harrods and Selfridges as well as specialized companies as Yacht Boot Company. Within the framework of the cooperation with the British Navy so far, LBM has developed a sample collection of shoes and initiated the design of a clothing collection. LBM estimates that the first products will be launched in retail during spring 2011.

[My Emphasis]

How about it Mr. Fox? Does the Royal Navy really need new uniforms, has the colour of the sea changed that much to warrant a complete overhaul of the naval fashion? Perhaps they are fighting in variable terrain, like the army, and need new uniforms in order to blend into the environment. Yet last time I checked, regardless of what the demented warmists say, the sea is still blue which coincidentally goes strikingly well with the colour of the current uniforms which are, lo and behold, 'navy-blue.' Thus, flabbergasted I remain; surely Mr. Fox, surely, this project will not go ahead. Surely their uniforms are good for at least another war, surely.

One would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this money could be better spent on say, oh I do not know; more ships, more aircraft and more marines.

SDSR...

I have been meaning to write a long, very long, post on the Strategic Defence Review as ordered by the coalition. I started writing it months ago, before the election, but I cannot bring myself to its conclusion because it is going to truly destroy the mere concept of 'defence' that today exists in this country. Naturally though the boys over at Think Defence are doing a majestic job of keeping their trained eyes firmly on the ball.

As ever, I salute them.

Having spoken to a couple of senior officers (well the most senior was a lieutenant colonel) down at the pub you get the feeling that they really, really, despise the government - past and present. It is not so much a feeling really; they said so themselves.

For myself, well, I am just glad that the fucking PFIs are finally coming to the end and in particular the MoD ones. Those which could be most vulnerable to cuts are the £13.8bn defence training academy; a £7bn programme to replace search-and-rescue helicopters, which has already been put under review; and a £10bn contract for aerial refuelling planes.

I have written a lot about these bloody things:

• Defence Academy in St Athan, Wales - utter shite
• The SAR rescue package from bloody Sikorsky and a load of other wankers
• And my favourite hating object; the A400M - what a load of dog shit

Now, a lot of people disagree with me about private contractors in the armed forces. Of course the are a lot of good arguments for them, they do save a substantial amount of money for example, but there are also a lot of arguments against them; they have no allegiance and their soul purpose is to make money. This makes them dangerous and complacent so much so that they take a very cavalier approach to human life. That is my biggest grudge against them.

If you want a bit less of the adolescent hodge podge that this blog is currently producing, and instead what to read a proper defence analysis then I suggest this piece.

What we could have bought for the foreign "aid" money

My friends over at Think Defence paint a nice picture of what we could have bought if we had not given £2 billion to India over the past 10 years. You know the country with its own space program who are buying more C-17s than we are.

£2 bn. would have bought us e.g. 220,000 prothetic legs. Could be useful what with all those pesky IEDs lying around.

Furthermore might I suggest that we raise one large middle finger to the Yanks in the West (particular the Democrats with Obama in the lead) and another massive piss off to the EU to the East of us. It would seem that we are currently being caught in the middle, and parties appear to be taking turn in screwing us over.

Hibernation with propellers

Dear readers and kinsfolk, Mr. Spitfire has entered the unholy period of revision and will as such, as the circumstances present themselves, inhabit the vast realms of the blogosphere somewhat less in the coming weeks. Fret not, for he shall return, stronger than before and all the more vigilant in telling our rulers precisely what they do not want to hear. Long I do for the day when I have the honour of being such a thorn in the political side that I am being censored. Somehow I reckon, my relative unimportance will most likely render such a fantastic hope moot. But who knows.

Now wipe that tear out of your eye and rejoice at the picture below, which is the first of a set of four propellers being built for the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers.

Anyschmoot, revision calls, mañana ye dwellers of the past.

Update:

It has come to my attention that this is going to be a very dirty election and that all sorts of foul treatments are thrown around. For your benefit, here are what some the 'insults' actually mean:

RACISM: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

XENOPHOBIC: an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.

TIME's take on the British Armed Forces - interesting

An interesting article from the Time on UK Armed Forces.

Well worth a read

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1978680-1,00.html

Update: At 02:09 AM I made up my mind to emigrate, once I am done with my degree. The United Kingdom is not united and it certainly is not part of something "great" know as Great Britain. We have lost; they won. I think we lost because we only talked about the problems and never actually did anything about them. We never put up a fight, never resisted, never protested; we publised a few meekly articles but for the better part of the day we just rolled with something we knew in our hearts was inherently wrong. I am resigned to the fact that we wont make a jot of difference and though we preach very strong words, we're really only a lot of mouth but no trousers. Hence, I would only like to add this, in proper British fashion, bollocks to them all. Come 6th of May I hope they crawl up their own arses and think about their lives, and ours, and how they have successfully not added one fucking useful thing to this planet since the day they were born.

Alternative Future Nuclear Deterrent: Resurrection of TSR2

Over this weekend I attended a fantastic event which was extremely interesting. There were lots people there to which I could relate to very easily. The nature of the event led us naturally to consider aspects of Britain's military history, present and future. There are few countries which can be so wholesomely buggered as Britain when it comes to research. We have this inane ability as a people, to have these wonderful, marvellous and quite frankly, crazy ideas - but we never have the money to fund them.

I was once told that what is now ethos in the MoD is to have British scientists dream up the ideas, sell them to American, let America develop the idea into a final product, and finally buy it back and improve it. This have been done a lot over recent years in the UK with regards, at least, to military hardware. The Apache is perhaps a quasi-example; the UK did not buy the supplied avionics software for the apache but instead developed their own, which turned out to be so good that eventually the Americans bought it back from us. Who'da thunk?

Which leads us to perhaps the most depressing story yet in Britain's aviation history; the cancellation of the English Electric/Vickers-Armstrong TSR-2 which was terminated in 1964. This aircraft was so revolutionary that even today it would be modern and it was designed 50 years ago. The whole story is drenched in failure and political dereliction. It has produced one of the, to my mind at least, finest but most depressing statements to date

All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.

-Sir Sydney Camm

There are of course many theories surrounding the whole sorry story of the project mainly relating to economics and politics. The British economy in the 1960s was in huge financial debt and was still struggling to pay back monies owed to America from WW2. The Labour Government was politely told you will buy the F111E, you have no choice. All tooling and production lines of the TSR2 are to be destroyed. This is the unofficial version of the reason why the project was cancelled. Over the years the government has denied these accusations completely. They of course would, but most people who worked on the project know that this is precisely what happened. All tooling, production lines and blueprints were certainly destroyed, so afraid were the Americans that they had their British embassy personnel shipped into the factories to personally make sure that everything was destroyed.

There is more to this shameful piece of British history than meets the eye. The only remains of the project are the prototypes XR220 and XR222. They only survived because they were shipped around the country for engine testing and evaluation. It would have been a scandal to chop up and burn these aircraft in front of the public. Instead a team was dispatched to the testing grounds and took pick axes to the inside of the prototypes so they could never be flown again. Their internal organs were ripped out like savages, where cold calculated economics destroyed one of the finest machines ever built.

I am in favour of the 'special-relationship' and I have vigorously defended it in times of need on this blog. But 50 years ago American politicians were frightened TSR2 would affect their exports of aircraft. Coupled with Lord Mountbatten's desire for this plane not to succeed and personally telling the Australian government not to pursue its commitment to purchase 30 airframes. Previously before being made aware of the whole TSR2 scandal I would have defended the 'special-relationship' but what they did was just mean to put it politely. There is not even a hint of good sportsmanship and while the defence industry in this country is still going fairly strong, Great Britain has never recovered its lead in the aviation world since the destruction of the TSR2 project.

I am often called an 'old man' by my friends and I think that is because I am very cynical about the world, I think this is fairly obvious when you realise how often we do not end up on top on every sphere of international cooperation. We always manage to get ourselves screwed, this if anything has been the enduring ethos of the past century. There have not been many international cooperations where we have actually benefited. This is not to say that we should not cooperate, we most certainly should, but not in engineering. This is something we do much better on our own and always have done. Look at some current defence cooperations and consider their worth:

A400M - crap and £9 billion over budget

Type 45 destroyer - crap and over budget

Typhoon - crap and over budget

F35 - unbelievably crap and so many many billions over budget

.

.

.

There is hope though at least if you are willing to look outside the box and look back to a time when we could built very gucci stuff. TSR2 was to be nuclear weapons capable, and also able to carry conventional bombs. The roll of the fighter/Bomber was to fly from a short runway from within the UK to attack Russia, remember the Cold War was very much still on. The aircraft was to enter Russian air-space at extreme altitude over 58,000ft. Then descend to under to under 200ft to avoid ground radar. Once near the chosen Russian target a nuclear bomb or missile would be released to devastating effect. Now the Cold War is over but the Tories are committed to a new nuclear deterrent in the form of nuclear submarines. I suggest you consider the content of the article below if you have not already guessed where I am going with this





The TSR2 story is one of incompetence, mismanagement and failure. It is also a story of brilliance, determination and courage. It might sound crazy but if we want to we can build things like the TSR2 again -if we want to. Someone only needs to tell the boys in Whitehall that British manufacturing is nails.

The TSR2 story ended with XR219, XR221 and XR223 being taken to the shooting ranges at Shoeburyness, all eventually to be destroyed as 'damage to aircraft' targets. XR220 was kept at Boscombe for a year or so for engine noise testing and then placed in storage at RAF Henlow after it had much of its flight test equipment ripped out (even the wires were cut rather than disconnected). It was later transferred to RAF Cosford's Aerospace Museum. XR222 was gifted to the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield for instructional use. She was later donated to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. All the other airframes were scrapped. In the months after cancellation, all the tooling and jigs were destroyed, and a wooden mockup of the TSR2 was burned while BAC men filmed it for publicity purposes. In many ways the destruction of so many aspects of the project reflected the even greater act of vandalism that had been perpretrated on the British aviation industry.

The Defence Sector must be royally fed-up with the UK

I have noted before that it seems rather pointless being a defence company in the UK, when the government in said country is doing everything in their power to stop you from being just that a; a company. Over the past few months a lot of contracts have gone out in excess of £15 billion pounds worth of equipment. There is of course the issue of where this money is going to come from but what is more interesting or disheartening, to put it another way, is to whom the contracts have been awarded. They were all given to American companies.

I hear you screaming and shouting about the free market principle and certainly I embrace it with my fullest compliments. But this country is royally fucked right now, and I know that might sound crude but we really really are. I do not need to convince you of this, the mere fact that you made it to this blog in the first place means that you are fairly informed person in the first place. To repeat: Labour has introduced 111 tax rises since 1997, taken a trillion pounds in additional taxation, and still left us with a Greek-level deficit: 12.6 per cent of GDP and rising. Of every four pounds Gordon Brown spends, one is borrowed. Our national debt is rising by nearly £6,000 a second. We can’t afford another five weeks of this, let alone another five years.

The manufacturing industry is a means to an end for the next government as is science and technology. £3.5 billion a year currently spent on publicly funded research generates an additional annual output of £45 billion in UK companies. Labour's response is to cut the number of university places. Good and bad I suppose (I think there are far too many students and far too many shit universities which should be deleted but I can see Boris' argument as well). But if we relate this to defence technology there is a really weird picture. In times of dire need, as these, a person of honour and stature and genuine regard for this country would say, 'right, chaps, fuck the rules' and they would go and do just that. £15 billion in defence contracts is a lot of money and it would do hell of a lot more in this country than over in America.

Politicians no longer care about the long game, as in what is good for the country, they care too much about themselves and popularity much in line with celebrity culture. Look at where Government spending goes (Just ignore the fact that £1 in 4 is borrowed) short term social projects that are popular and likely to give that lovely ego and popularity boost. I’m not against that, far from it, but a massive percentage is pure waste and could be much better spent elsewhere or spent more efficiently while still doing the same job. Next to that there is still a trickle of money to do actual good for the country things such as infrastructure investment and research spending in various things. Instead of taking tough decisions and sticking too them for instance getting on with building nuclear power stations or legislating that newly built houses must be much more environmentally friendly using less energy. They instead shy away sometimes saying that It is not the role of government when in fact it’s bloody hypocritical to say so when they are trying to socially engineer the population.

Ignore the arguments for a minute about buying of the shelf - I am not entirely convinced by all of them, though there is certainly merit in a few. If you buy stuff from this country you can expect long term invest in infrastructure, jobs, test ranges, factories, tooling, supply chains, supply companies, land development, several thousand dependent jobs and trades etcetera. Nothing, not a single one of the previous will happen since the development is taking place in another country and they will at the very most have a workshop here and that is that. When Rolls Royce a few years back were choosing a country to place their new labs in they settled on Germany, because the UK had such, and has such, unfavourable business environment.

Why would you come here as a defence company, or any company, you might as well head to any other country but the UK for the simple reason that you will make so much more money elsewhere. I say all of this for the simple reason that we are not winning right now. Those of us who are part of the right-wing spectrum of society who believe in a free market (yes I know that contradicts this post, but please read my reasons for putting aside the free market principle just this once), a small state and a strong foreign policy. The left have this country clenched within an iron fist, so ignominious has reasoned debate become that it is pointless to even attempt to start one. The Armed forces have become entrenched in a bloody political war which will lead to them sustaining even more casualties on the battle field because some fucking minister decided that he was lobbied enough to award a contract to the highest bidder, setting aside his duty to Queen and country. Contracts are being rushed in, quicker than ever before (more than £15 billion in little less than five months) to harm the Tories when the Strategic Defence Review does come around. I am no massive fan of the Tories, but this is so wrong but obviously it is not below Labour -nothing seems to be- but they are literally willing to offer lives to save their political skin. This is no different from blood money albeit blood contracts. I think it is so fucking disgusting that I am honestly struggling to write this post, for it is making me physically angry and putting together a string of words with a hint of intelligence is proving quite the chore. New Labour really are a dangerous party and there is no wonder that only 7% of the armed forces would vote for them if there were an election today (compared to 52% for the Tories). And perhaps the Tories wont be better but I think, at the very least, they have enough ethics and ideals to realise that you do not put a human life before short-term political gain (I would like to say 'long-term' but that would contradict the entire history of warfare so I wont).

(The comment section over at Think Defence is raging right about now). Finally to add insult to injury now the fucking super-mong Mr. Moonbat has entered the defence debate (why, god why?) - you know the guy who has been the mouthpiece for the AGW industry since the dawn of AGW, who has been subsequently been ripped to pieces by everyone with an ounce of common sense. Since he failed in adding journalistic value to that sector he has now decided to tarnish the defence vestige as well, fuck...

A Nunn McCurdy Breach - why don't we have one?!

Why in the flaming f**k does not the UK have a Nunn McCurdy breach? For those of you who didn't get the memo a McCurdy breach is this

A "Nunn-McCurdy" unit cost breach occurs when a Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) experiences an increase of at least 15% in Program Acquisition Unit Cost (PAUC) or Average Procurement Unit Cost (APUC)1 above the unit costs in the Acquisition Program Baseline.

Then the shit hits the fan, and the politicians get notice and start complaining about stuff they do not really know anything about, when in fact they were the ones who were actively involved in the campaigning of said program. Happy days 'innit'?

The British defence books are in a veritable shit-state as it currently stands, where there is a £21 billion funding gap. I will put that in bold for you lest you missed the gist of that lovely factor of 7 number; £21 billion funding gap. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a ridiculous amount of money. Now Labour presided over this ginormous cock-up but as is always with socialists; they will not foot the bill. We will, the taxpayers. Anyhow, they will be lined up and shot by firing squad come may anyway (figuratively speaking of course).

Cost overruns and delays in long-running equipment projects such as the Eurofighter, the Merlin helicopter, the Nimrod MRA4 subhunter planes and the Astute-class submarines began to seriously affect the MoD's finances as long ago as the late 1990s. Most of these projects are still in the delivery stages, costing heavily, many years after they had been planned to finish and drop down to maintenance expenditure.

Nonetheless, Geoff Hoon - Defence Secretary from 1999 to 2005 - not only failed to deal with this situation but signficantly worsened it. He added new and expensive plans like the Type 45 destroyer, the Future Carriers, the rejuvenated Bowman comms network and the F-35 supersonic jumpjets, all without cutting a single one of the previous projects.

Hoon managed to balance his books temporarily in 2004 by swingeing cuts to existing combat units across all three armed services, most controversially by cutting ten per cent of the Army infantry in the midst of one big infantry war and with another looming on the horizon. He was removed and demoted in 2005, before the new Prime Minister's need to rebuild support in his own party brought him back this year in charge of Transport.

But the slo-mo train wreck in the MoD's budget continues, with a £2bn shortfall foreseen in the coming financial year and no real end in sight before the end of the next decade. By that point, however, the need to replace the country's nuclear arsenal will be pressing and it seems likely that the strains will continue; the more so without any economic growth to swell the tax revenues.

You could of course fix this shit-storm by simply, yes I am going to go against the capitalist ideal now, not buying all that expensive kit or just not as much of it. Douglas Carswell has some good and bad points where it comes to defence procurement and in particular he does not like protectionist spending, he wants the best kit. I am one of those staunch optimists who continue to believe that British kit is in fact pretty good regardless of the Great-Wall of Crap surrounding the manufacturing sector and preventing it from growing. That said our indigenous British defence companies are not without blame, what they normally do is to fire people in a slow steady trickle (BAE Systems, just to pluck a name from the air, has ditched more than three in every four Brits it employed in 1990. The firm has made UK workforce cuts of more than 15 per cent just since 2003.) Politicians find that sort of thing hard to resist, and senior forces officers find it hard to resist politicians. Although they stick the Union-Jack on every piece of kit they make, they are actually not that benevolent as they might seem (you will often see BAE playing the 'victim' card).

The American Breach is at 15% ours would need to be more in the area of about 5% because for some reason, industry here is so unbelievably incompetent when it comes to staying within the budget. Why, I know not. Annoying, yes it very much is.

Finally to top it all of I suggest you read this article by the Times. Four major defence projects have been awarded to four American companies/consortiums in as many months. Protectionism issues or not, the really fantastic thing is this; where the fuck are they getting money for £10 billion worth of kit when they can barely keep the TA running?

FRES fail by Labour again....

Again I am going to let the eminent Howard Wheeldon take the lead on this one.

Howard Wheeldon on a supposed press leak from government suggesting a US firm will be chosen over BAE to supply 750 armoured vehicles...

Not content with attempting to give regulatory control of the UK banking industry away to our competitors and potentially killing off thousands of what one high ranking supporter of ‘New Labour’ called ‘unnecessary UK banking industry jobs’, it seems that the government has the same in mind for thousands of UK based defence industry jobs as well! In what appears to have been a deliberate and time sensitive leak to a very well heeled financial newspaper it seems that the government has ‘decided’ that US based General Dynamics with its untried and unproven ASCOD-2 vehicle as opposed to BAE Systems with its already battle proven CV90 was to be awarded the initial block 1 batch of up to 750 armoured vehicles – part of the proposed and already long delayed Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) family of military combat vehicles.

Official confirmation might come as early as this week we are told. However, given the nature of the government beast plus that we are talking here about spending money on defence – something that is abhorrent to Gordon Brown – it may also be a good idea not to take this particular government leak for granted!

Included in the leak was also that the crucially important and urgently needed Warrior armoured personnel carrier upgrade program would again be put back by at least another year, despite BAE Systems having put £50m investment into de-risking the programme and demonstrating the MTIP FRES demonstrator on the back of funding concerns. This particular part of the leak is as appalling as it is believable. So, it might on first sight appear that the government, just ahead of an election and in a constituency widely regarded as an absolute Labour stronghold, is prepared to see thousands of jobs at the former Vickers tank factory at Newcastle-upon-Tyne thrown to the wall. Why is it that I think not? OK, so I am taking a bit of a gamble here and while I readily admit that I could be wrong, I see more into this particular press leak than some others. But on the very basis of best product for the mission and that in the case of BAE Systems there are so many UK based jobs involved, plus events in the US this past week that show protectionism is not only alive and well but positively thriving, there is no reason why BAE Systems should not be awarded the first stage of FRES.

Perhaps though we might dig just a little deeper into what might also lay behind reasons for this rather surprising let alone strange leak:

Try this for one possible scenario: Rather than spin and then subsequently announce what most had been led to believe awarding a contract intention for between 600 and 750 FRES vehicles sometime later this week, my guess is that given the current MoD funding status and budget shortfall and given the unlikely prospect that any part of the long delayed FRES requirement would likely be based on an Afghanistan type UOR (Urgent Operational Requirement) that for the government to agree a contract of this size before the election and, more importantly, before the result of the upcoming Strategic Defence Review would be very unlikely. OK, the government could order now and cancel later – even completely reversing the decision of who it awarded the contract too perhaps. More likely though is that to save its own skin it will slip the potential of an award being made to the most unlikely candidate, let the arguments and angst commence and then blame the cries from the so called loser as reason enough to delay!

And another on the same theme perhaps: It seems to me that with the government knowing that if GD was to be awarded a contract of this size with a product that had not even been seen let alone tested by the MoD (a quite impossible scenario surely?) that BAE Systems would quite rightly scream more than enough of a scenario has been created to delay not only Warrior upgrade but also this first phase of FRES yet again.

And what about this one: It is just possible of course that by dropping the suggestion that GD as opposed to BAE Systems had won to the press (just as the government had done through a similar press and media drop several years ago when it was suggested that Thales as opposed to BAE had won the design contract for the CV aircraft carrier program – something that I was later able to dispel) it just may be that the government could be doing this just to put pressure on BAE Systems to sweeten its deal.

Not surprisingly and quite rightly in my view BAE Systems has risen to the bait throwing its toys out of the pram big time on the basis that:

1.) The government should not be buying a completely unproven product that has never been deployed on operations from a competitor and that maybe two to three years behind the CV90;

2.) Giving part of FRES to GD would potential destroy more UK high end defence industrial capability;

3.) In the wake of the ‘forced’ decision by EADS and its Northrop Grumman partner that it had no choice but to pull out of the US tanker program because of US based protectionism;

4.) Following significant work by BAE Systems to generate cost savings on the program that benefit the taxpayer and given that the CV90 is already a well proven product there is in my view no reason to not award the first phase of FRES (should this really be about to occur) to anyone other than BAE Systems.

If through this leak the UK government is intentionally attempting to buy itself more time whilst at the same time also attempting to appease public concern that it is failing to order equipment that troops urgently need all that I can say is that it is going about it in a stupid and very dangerous manner. At this stage I am left to conclude that we probably will not see any order being given to General Dynamics or BAE Systems later this week for anything other than a handful of vehicles for test purposes. Mind you if I am right then I guess that the government will cover its tracks by making additional promises. We will see!

Howard Wheeldon, Senior strategist, BGC Brokers

Guess what becomes fully operational this month

Why it couldn't be could it (no you super-mongs it is not the Death Star)? Yes it could, why it's a Brazilian Aircraft Carrier - bang on time as well! Now is that not very convenient for them.

NAe Sao Paulo

Why is this of some importance? Well the Brazilians just put a not-so-polite request to the UK, along with a load of other South American countries, to hand over the Falklands. This new aircraft carrier puts the ball firmly in their court when it comes to leverage. Hopefully this is only a lot of hot air fuming from a bunch of people on a power trip, hopefully. The only good thing about this horse dump of a situation, is that the aircraft carrier is French built so it will probably surrender if good turns to bad.