HMS Invincible, one of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers Photo: Royal Navy
Posted on 03/04/2010 7:01:02 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Can Britain afford not to build £5bn Royal Navy aircraft carriers?
Two aircraft carriers weighing in at 65,000 tonnes each may not be the obvious stuff of romance, but HMS Queen Elizabeth and her partner HMS Prince of Wales have become the will-they-won't-they couple of the defence world.
Every time the £35bn cost overrun at the Ministry of Defence is mentioned, the question of whether to scrap or build the £5bn carriers follows. Can the country afford two such vessels? Even if they are both built, there is a persistent rumour the second could be sold to India. Or that one ship will have to share the other's complement of fighter planes and helicopters, an ignominious fate for an aircraft carrier. Expectations of a happy ending for the pair are not strong.
But what is not often mentioned is that the carriers are already being built. The first cut of steel happened at BAE Systems' yard on the Clyde in July and work started last week on the first section to be built in Portsmouth. Some 80,000 tonnes of steel have already been ordered from Corus. Pulling the plug on the programme will not be straightforward.
There is also the small matter of the 10,000 jobs around the UK that depend on the carrier programme, a figure which is likely to rise to closer to 15,000 at the peak of the building programme. But even this is not a solid tick in the programme's favour – with work being done in Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle and the backyard of the Prime Minister's constituency in Fife, there are also accusations this is a job creation scheme for key Labour seats.
The carriers, due to go into service in 2016 and 2018, are a totem for both sides in the debate over
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
HMS Invincible, one of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers Photo: Royal Navy
The brits used to build good looking watships.
Obviously the building process takes many years, but with the Falklands in the news, I would hope that the UK understands the value of power projection.
If the Brits want to defend the Falklands, all those sheep and ALL THAT OIL they will have to build the carriers!
Why is the island so darn big?
Given the resurgent rumblings over the Falklands, I’d say the Brits HAVE to build those carriers.
I’d like to see a photo of one of our Nimitz class carriers next to this big tug boat.
5 billion UK pounds converts to $7.5billion USD
I think the Lion class and Hood battlecruisers were the most aesthetically pleasing capital ships ever built; nice to look at but had glass jaws. It is such a shame only 1 ship from that era, the USS Texas, still survives.
at 65,000 tons these ships will be about 2/3 the size of a Nimitz ... roughly comparable to the French carrier CHARLES DEGAULLE, or USS MIDDWAY (CV-41).
If Britain would drop the failed Socialism experiment they’ve been trudging through, they could probably generate the wealth needed to pay for these.
I knew that. I was just being facetious. Thanks.
I wonder if we could donate them one of our CVNs?
That way, an ally keeps power projection capability and we can cut down on the maintenance cost of a CVN.
Correction: The proposed Brit carriers will be 50% larger than the Froggish flattop.
Not sure Prince of Wales is a particularly well-omened name for a warship.
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