New fleet of £8bn Royal Navy warships to be fitted with launchers that CANNOT fire British missiles

The Sun ^ | 27th February 2017 | CHRIS POLLARD

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sounds like Butter won big over Guns.

[Daniel Ramsey]

Sounds like the time i owned an old British made car, neither metric or SAE wrenches would fit. Wound up filing down some bolt heads eventually.

[Leaning Right]

> Royal Navy warships to be fitted with launchers that CANNOT fire British missiles <

To quote that great stateswoman Hillary Clinton, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

I’ve read that that Royal Navy is now weaker than the Japanese navy and weaker than the Indian navy. So why should the RN worry about missile launchers, or anything like that? Let the USN patrol the seas, and spend UK money on immigrants instead.

[Emergencyawesome]

The British better hope for another storm like the one that sank the Spanish Armada

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Do you mean these?

http://www.samstagsales.com/whitworth.htm

[Telepathic Intruder]

The enemy is already inside the borders anyway.

[cba123]

Looks like a nice ship to me.

So they buy American missiles for this ship. Not a bad choice, America has lots of experience at this.

Just saying.

[GreyHoundSailor]

Perhaps the Brits could afford the Evolved Sea Sparrow. They come in quad-packs for the MK-41 VLS.

[Oztrich Boy]

Well they have no immediate plans to acquire any missiles for the Mk41 launchers. (The separate Sea Ceptor launchers for the CAAM anti-air missiles will be loaded).

But fitting the Mk41 anyway still makes some sense.

For one thing, Australia's SEA 5000 program does not consider the Mk41 optional, and if BAE Systems doesn't come up with a completed design by the end of 2017, they will lose to either Fincantieri or Navantia.

BAE needs to realise for future export prospects the Australian order is the more important one: It's larger, more imminent, and specifies a more advanced ship (with a proper AESA radar system instead of that crappy little Brit Artisan rotator.)

[wjcsux]

The UK Navy already has the MK-41 VLS in their fleet. What is the issue here?

[Oztrich Boy]

Anti-air is not the problem. They will have a separate Sea Ceptor system fired from launchers smaller and shorter than even the selfdefence length Mk41.

Below Sea Ceptor quadpack in MK41. Note very loose fit

[sukhoi-30mki]

If i’m not mistaken, this is first installation of the MK-41. Earlier ships had an older VLS for the Seawolf missile and the newer ones had a French origin system for the Aster missiles.

[GreyHoundSailor]

Why only 24 cells on a $1.25 billion ship? TLAM to fill all those cells would be a fraction of a percent of total ship cost.

[MSF BU]

I like reading all of this by our resident active & retired squids. I’m still wondering if the gals aboard the vessels are physically capable of performing real damage control. My friends in the merchant marine tell me essentially no and in the event of a real emergency sailors may die because of it.

[bert]

Meanwhile, in America, the primary plant for manufacturing military explosives is run by BAE systems

[Mashood]

Psssst...Pete...”loose lips sink ships...”.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That was BS...British Standard measurement.

Usually BS bolts were located under the intake manifold or someplace equally inaccessible...

[Moltke]

Critics say it will cost a fortune to buy new Tomahawk missiles ...

Maybe they can pick up some used ones for cheap?

[jmacusa]

I'm surprised that Britain still even has a navy.