Andy said: > Uhh...it's more because of budgets. The carriers we have can't fly > conventional jets, but they manage the Harrier (which is admitedly > aging) and will fly the VTOL JSF varient.
The carriers we have were designed to deploy helicopters for anti-submarine warfare, a job which they do very well. The Harriers were part of their secondary role, which was providing close air support for amphibious assaults. > The Tornados are airforce. Yes, I said so. > They're optimised for missile warfare. Well, no. The original Tornado was optimised for interdiction behind Red Army lines in Central Europe. When Britain badly needed a new fighter to replace the Lightnings and Phantoms, it was decided to adapt the Tornado as a second-rate modern fighter until a proper replacement could be developed. The Tornado Air Defence Variant (now the Tornado F.3) was thus born. Essentially its role wasn't the establishment of air superiority, but intercepting Soviet bombers over the North Sea. > The Marines have HMS Ocean, which can carry a substantual landing > force... Yes, but HMS Ocean is new, having been commissioned in 1998. She only completed trials in 1999. They also, of course, have quite a few conventional amphibious assault ships, which were originally intended, if I recall correctly, for landings in Norway to stop the Red Army from capturing key strategic airfields there. There are also two newer ones, which are for force projection across larger distances. [developing and deploying new capabilities] > Maybe not as long as you think. Long enough. For example, the Eurofighter Typhoon was conceived in the 1980s as a new air superiority fighter for Europe and won't be deployed to squadrons for a few years yet. (As mentioned above, the Tornado ADV was a temporary measure to provide some kind of fighter capability.) Major warship programmes take around a decade to go from requirements to actual vessels. The new British airlift capability has been under discussion for a decade or so and still hasn't arrived. The Army decided that Apache helicopters were a great idea after the last Gulf War and yet it still doesn't have enough trained pilots to operationally deploy them. The Trident subs took comparably long to develop and deploy. I think it'll take until at least 2010 for the British armed forces to be fully reconfigured for post-Cold War duties. The other European militaries are presumably similarly optimised for their Cold War duties, and as UK defence spending is generally higher than elsewhere in the EU it'll probably take longer to retask them. > The JSF will be an important step I agree. It certainly will. Rich _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
