Posted on 02/13/2005 5:28:59 PM PST by Eurotwit
As a hopelessly patriotic sort of person, I have a fantasy of one day being on holiday in the south of France and looking up from, say, a biography of Nelson, to see an aircraft carrier appear on the horizon. Only instead of it being an American one, it will be British. No doubt the captain will come ashore in a smart launch and, if I were to be lucky, he might invite me aboard for a sundowner. All would be well in the world, and I would sleep soundly, dreaming of past glories at the Nile and Trafalgar.
I am not the only one with this fantasy. Geoff Hoon says he has now taken personal charge of the Government's pet defence programme - to build two super-carriers for the Royal Navy. These will be the largest warships ever built in Britain, with four acres of flight deck apiece. In fact, they are so big that no single yard can build them and they will be constructed in bits, by a consortium of companies, before being put together by a "physical integrator", otherwise known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of US vice- president Dick Cheney's alma mater, Halliburton. The Navy is salivating at the prospect of having some smart new toys to play with. The current military vogue is "expeditionary warfare", and Vice-Admiral Charles Style, commander UK maritime forces, says: "I absolutely believe this is a very relevant and important capability." Even the Department of International Development, eager to carpet-bomb Africa with aid, or, more usefully, help the victims of natural disasters, wants the carriers. So, how come, six years after they were first proposed, they have not yet been ordered?
Here is the rub. Despite all the brouhaha over the surprisingly fierce negotiating style of Mr Hoon, these carriers have got no further than the drawing board. They have, however, been provisionally named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Something about those names, chosen by an administration that axed the Royal Yacht, worries me. Are they just a bit too unreal, a bit too good to be true? The last vessel to be named Prince of Wales, also the pride of the fleet, sank in unfortunate circumstances in 1941, after Churchill rashly sent it to defend Singapore without enough escorts.
Sadly, there is not much prospect of the super-carriers having enough escorts either. Another handful of frigates and destroyers have been cut, so the Royal Navy now has just 28 afloat, half the number it had at the time of the Falklands. Assuming a typical carrier battle group has at least six escorts, the Navy will be stripped bare to provide the minimum support, once these ships are supposedly at sea from 2012 onwards.
All this points to the really serious question: can we afford them? The initial cost estimate, now six years old, was that the carriers would cost £3 billion, plus their air complements. In theory, we should be able to find the money. After all, Britain is the world's fourth largest economy and a global trading nation. The trouble is that, over the past decade, the defence budget has been halved in real terms by both the Conservatives and Labour, to just 2.4 per cent of GDP. Every bill that comes in from Iraq is quibbled by the Treasury and the MoD has been reduced in effect to cannibalising future capability in order to fund Tony Blair's wars. Furthermore, as far as I can see, such are the burdens on the defence budget, the MoD has resorted to some pretty novel accounting. It treats some items as "near cash", an oxymoronic concept. It also records its hardware as £27 billion of capital assets. All those weapons, so expensive to maintain, depreciate rapidly and so are an odd kind of capital.
But there is really only one very significant thing you need to know about the Ministry of Defence's budget. It is to be found in note 21 to the accounts of a quango called the Defence Procurement Agency and it says future commitments "contracted but not provided for: £14.4 billion". That is the current cost of newly ordered weapon systems, which have yet to be paid for. But the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales have not even been ordered yet, nor have their 70 joint combat fighters. The MoD protests otherwise, but that number looks to me like the black hole in the defence budget, blown by, inter alia, the Eurofighter. No wonder those doughty Scottish regiments are being merged or axed.
The "black hole" is also the ultimate financial consequence of the dualarchy which runs our country. On one side, there is Tony Blair, strutting around the world with a sword in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, sending the Armed Forces into battle. On the other side, there is Gordon Brown, with a fundamentally different idea of Britain as a soft power, a welfare state, whose principal foreign policy ought to be a "Marshall Plan" for the Third World. Mr Brown evidently has no time for the Armed Forces. Gerald Howarth, a Conservative defence spokesman, recently asked in a parliamentary question what defence establishments Mr Brown had visited. And the reply? Too expensive to find out. If any readers have ever seen Mr Brown at a defence establishment, perhaps they might write in to The Daily Telegraph to help solve the mystery.
The military are caught in the middle of this two-personality state - forced to deploy in Iraq and elsewhere, but without the proper support of the Treasury. So here is a pre-election challenge to Mr Blair and to Mr Brown, assuming they are speaking to each other. When will you order these carriers, and where, exactly, is the money to come from? Unless they can give satisfactory answers, my approach to the carrier question will be not to believe the Government, until I see the vessels bobbing on the horizon.
Even OUR beaurocracy doesn't niggle THIS much.
Gotcha. Understood.
I don't think he ever claimed to have any actual experience, he just refused to take my input to refute his google based expertise.
Appreciate your response to his request to validate my posts.
Props to my freep peeps. I don't watch MTV, but I find my sailors' vernacular pretty interesting sometimes.
Thanks, Its all been very interesting. :))
Remind me that next time I ping you I need to duck and cover. You Strike Eagle guys do a good job of redundantly targeting.
That's because they are used to carrying so many freakin' bombs.
I seem to have started a fire here. I better start smoke jumpin’. I have not read all the responses yet, but already I’ve detected some common themes. So I’ll respond to the ping list with one post, and then proceed to each post that has any substance & respond accordingly.
Rule of COIN. How do we know what an established fact of history is? When both sides agree to a fact, that usually seals it, such as in a court of law. The measure of whether something is a historical fact goes along the lines of an acronym I came up with: COIN. C stands for Concurring Sources, people who are friendly to the historical subject. Let’s examine the historicity of the claim that John Adams was president of the US. John Adams’s friends certainly agree that he was President. O stands for Opposing sources, the most significant in establishing historical accuracy. John Adams’s enemies acknowledged that he was President, they just didn’t like him. That tends to seal the issue of historicity. I stands for Indifferent Sources. These are the folks who “have no dog in the hunt”, such as innocent bystanders. Archaeological discoveries fall into this category as well. The historians and apolitical observers of the 18th century all agree that John Adams was President. And the final initial, N, stands for No Evidence Against. There is virtually no evidence to suggest that John Adams was a pretender to the title of President. If you follow all the elements of COIN, you can get to the established facts of history. I’m usually much less interested in the opinions about those facts, such as whether John Adams was a good President or a bad one. These lower level opinions are simply subordinate to the higher level facts of history.
Following the rule of COIN, the concurring sources would be the Myles book, Commander Ward's book "Sea Harrier over the Falklands", that kind of thing. These guys are published authors with verified history, not guys who signed up anonymously as Joe Flyboy. The Opposing sources would be the acknowledgement on both sides of the debate over at the debate forums that discuss flight strategy, such as atomicmpc.com, strategypage.com, and users.zetnet.co.uk. These tend to be secondary sources rather than primary sources, but the fact that both sides agree on certain facts tends to be highly significant. Indifferent sources are often the hardest to find. I would suggest the Kill Ratios found in “NATO Warplanes” article is an indifferent source, as well as the Harrier’s record in air-to-air kills, which I think is about 28:0. And on No Evidence Against, this is where there tends to be a lot of noise rather than signal, because people will vehemently argue back & forth and not venture facts for investigation. At that point it doesn’t matter if people think the Harrier is a piece of dog doo in the air, what matters are facts and primary sources. What is the evidence against the Harrier as a good dogfighter? It’s from Bandit, who proceeds from the supposedly poor turn rate of the Harrier, even though it is reputed to have the tightest turn in the industry. But he has said nothing about the posted kill ratios.
Primary sources vs. Secondary sources. Commander Ward is a primary source, because we can verify his story. Someone who signs up as Barfin Hound or Joe Flyboy might like to think he’s a primary source, but with no way to verify their identity and facts, they are operating as secondary sources, subordinate to primary sources. When you’re a hotshot, feisty fighter jock, you might think that you should be regarded as a primary source, but unless you’re operating in the clear, there is a disconnect to verification and you’re a secondary source. Anyone whose screen name matches their real name is operating in the clear and qualifies as a primary source, should they choose to reveal their expertise. We all need to learn Pukin Dog’s lesson. With his posting privileges suspended, it’s not even easy to find his manifesto unless you know it already exists. I was hoping to find out if he had ever posted anything on the Harrier, but you can’t even click on his name on “in forum” to see his posts. So how do we KNOW that the average Joe Flyboy isn’t a Hawkeye pilot who goes home to his dreary existence and wishes he was a fighter pilot? By the quality of the information he posts. That is, unless I missed the secret decoder ring seminar at the last VRWC meeting. And, proceeding from Pukin Dog’s fate, the quality of the information needs to be WITHIN that PARTICULAR thread. If Joe Flyboy’s posts fail the smell test, his credibility is open to question. He becomes an unreliable secondary source. And, since I’m operating at the N in my acronym, his evidence becomes unreliable and I will proceed to bolster my COIN case further. Once the suspicion radar comes up, it’s difficult to tone it down, I find myself wondering if Bandit’s tagline is intended to ward off timid questioners.
Facts/Opinion ratio. I suppose I should have been a little more explicit in terms of what I was asking from the ping list. I am looking for Primary Source Facts. Period. Opinions are good and enlightening, but think about it from the perspective of someone who comes across this material 2 years from now, searching to resolve the issue. The opinions expressed won’t be from Primary Sources unless someone is posting in the clear, so they will not be as valuable as the information. They might not know who Pukin Dog was, and they might not be able to follow up on his background. So I’m looking for lots of facts and not so many opinions, a high Fact/Opinion ratio.
I have been a member of this forum for longer than 99.8% of its participants. Unlike Pukin Dog, I’ve never lost my posting privileges; I’ve never even been chastised by a moderator. Heck, when I first started, Jim Rob was probably the only moderator. If someone with 7 years’ experience starts asking you direct questions, it probably isn’t a very good idea to ignore his posted primary facts, give oblique answers, ignore questions, and generally pour gasoline on the fire unless you don’t mind the subsequent treatment. Bandit has a tagline of “sarcasm engaged at all times”, so he can take the heat – if he can’t stand the heat, he should stay out of JimRob’s kitchen. I have to admit that I tend to go into pursuit mode a little quicker against such targets, but that’s just a personal preference. The Bible says that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” – we will both be better off as a result of this engagement.
Bandit claims to be an expert while I claim to be just an afficianado. I do like the line that the Titanic was built by experts, but the Ark was built by amateurs. I think that the greater the expertise on claims, then that means that he should be expected to carry a larger burden of clarity in a forum such as this. Something along the lines of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” After all, we’re supposedly in his back yard. Someone with my obviously limited knowledge shouldn’t be able to poke holes in his story so easily. This is his chance to educate the public but he chose to take a pass on that opportunity. Free Republic has become one of the strongest forums on the net. We have a chance to clear up the air-to-air discrepancy over Harriers once & for all, for thousands of people. Once Google updates their engine, this will become the best place for millions of people to read up on this issue. I would challenge all of the pilots and experts to do better than I have at digging up 20 year old source material.
We have a relatively straightforward factual discrepancy. The first fact at odds is the turn rate of the Harrier under VIFFing vis-à-vis other aircraft. I don’t know where to go & get that information, but it would be helpful if others could find it as well, a gold standard of turn rates for fighter aircraft. We would need turn rates of fighters and the Harrier with & without Viffing. The second fact is undisputed at the time of my last post, which is that the Harrier seems to have a strong kill ratio against supposedly superior planes in exercises and combat. Things like 10:1 against the F4 and F14, 3:1 against the F15, no combat losses against Super Etendards, A4s, and Mirages. The third fact is the fact that Harriers have been turning off VFF during A2A exercises, and we need to know some of the particulars of that, like whether Bandit would have been up against declawed Harriers. I look forward to resolving these discrepancies of fact, using the COIN approach, Primary Sources, good clarity, and high Facts/Opinion ratio. Then we can all go home and have a beer.
What do I think is the most likely outcome? I think it’s most likely that I’ll be proven wrong somehow, because of all the expertise lined up against my position. Do I really think Bandit is some kind of imposter? No, it is a distinct possibility but a very low probability, kinda like winning the lottery. Then what do I think? I think Bandit was just lazy, didn’t want to write more than one paragraph, didn’t want to spend the two hours it would take to research the discrepancy, overlooked facts and neglected that people in the future won’t know who he is from Adam. He passed up a chance to educate the public, posted factually incorrect information (and proceeded from it), and generally blew me off because he was annoyed. In my industry, Bob Pease wrote a fun article about being an Apps engineer and said that he was constantly being “nibbled to death by ducks.” I think that’s how Bandit viewed the situation, rather than a chance to clear up something that probably comes up all the time, and do his friends a favor. That would be unfortunate because it would mean his poor choice led to all of us wasting some time and bandwidth. There’s a possibility that the Harrier was once a good dogfighter but the pilots have gotten its number, kinda like the Stuka dive bomber in WWII. When it first entered service, it racked up some impressive air-to-air kill ratios, even though it was a bomber, because of its high speed and maneuverability. But gradually, the Allied pilots got its number, their fighters got faster and more nimble, and by the end of the war most of the Stukas were shot down. So, someone coming in claiming that the Stuka was a great dogfighter based on its kill ratio from 1939-1942 would be only half right, because by the latter half of the war it was toast. In that case the best primary source material would be kill ratios from later exercises than what I’ve posted.
FRegards,
<Basically this "hiding one's heat signature" would not have been effective for the past decade
***As I posted, "there’s a possibility that the Harrier was once a good dogfighter but the pilots have gotten its number, kinda like the Stuka dive bomber in WWII." Your comments?
Nothing like carrying a lot of iron to make up for the Viper's "impressive" one-pass-haul-a$$.
Someone has to do the work.
I guess you are taking back the following statement? Four separate people chime in, give their opinions, so you launch into that tirade on post 108.
When it first entered service, it racked up some impressive air-to-air kill ratios, even though it was a bomber, because of its high speed and maneuverability.
By the way the Stuka had a top speed of around 250 mph. Not very fast, even for the beginning of WWII.
While I seem to be wasting my time and efforts on you I have made four new friends here on Free Republic.
I don't really see it that way at all. I look at your posts like the "annoying man." The "annoying man" is the self educated expert on aircraft who learned everything he knows from the internet, but has zero experience.
***I never claimed to be anything but an afficianado.
He often shows up at airshows while you are standing next to your aircraft on display and lectures you about the "finer points" of ACM which he learned from watching "Top Gun" until the tape broke.
***At first I was a bit irked by this comment, because I didn't like Top Gun all that much, for one. But I've grown to enjoy it. First, this isn't an airshow, it's not your forum. Nor is it mine. We are both in JimRob's forum, and you are an anonymous secondary source, you're not standing next to your shiny aircraft. Secondly, our primary disagreement isn't over "finer points", like so much doctrinal chatter. It appears to be over some major points of fact. Third, most of my primary sources predate the internet. Fourth, I haven't necessarily been lecturing you, my aim was to bring primary source material into the forum. I recognized that need when Skinkinthegrass asked about the Vulcan raids, that many people might not have ever heard of VIFFing. You missed your chance to educate the forum, but I'm sure that will be rectified. Anyways, I soon came to realize that the demographics favor me rather than you. For every hotshot presumed fighter pilot on this forum, there's probably 20,000 afficianados. I see a great market here, for ANNOYING MAN videos, toys, books, action figures, and video games. Prepare to meet thy doom, ANNOYING MAN has arrived!!!
I've tried to offer my professional insight, but have obviously made the mistake of trying to educate someone with a V/STOL fetish.
***I woouldn't call it a fetish, but with your tagline I would accept sarcastic remarks. You kinda overlooked the opportunity you had to educate the forum and saved your friends from having to meet up with... ANNOYING MAN.
You'll have to do comparisons, I'm sure
Wrong again. Using afterburner when the opponents sensor nose or weapons are coming to bear is a bad idea. Not using afterburner at all, while engaged, is dumb. Of course you won't believe this because you read something different in a book entitled Harriers are Great and Everybody Else Sucks.
***I really sometimes don't understand your adilpated approach. When I say, "Using afterburners in dogfights is often a bad idea", your response includes the fact that, yes, sometimes it's a bad idea. Then you proceed to a straw argument to try to make the afficianado look foolish, all the while continuing to ignore primary source material. That does sound like a good book, though. Where can I get one?
Your time and effort weren't wasted. You made the points I was hoping you'd make and for those of us without that V/STOL fetish, we got it.
***I'm sorry my ANNOYING MAN clones have been so rough on you guys at airshows. I'll have to have words with them at the next VRWC meeting.
To me, the AV-8 is basically just fun to watch at airshows. That's about it. Given its lack of a fuel load, it basically can only bring one bomb to the table and even then, hope that no one on the ground with a BB gun gets lucky.
***Low Facts/Opinion ratio, especially since the discrepancy concerns A2A.
And for air to air, you have one advantage but if you use it, it costs you all of your energy and leaves you a sitting duck.
***Ok, let's see some primary source material on that and you might have something here.
Sure is fun to watch at airshows, though...
***I guess I have to agree with you on that, my ANNOYING MAN clones are real excited when they get to see it...
I agree with USNBandit. The Harrier is a technical exercise that became operational, a computer video game made real in aluminum and steel. Nothing more. It is interesting, has a sexy profile, plan form and fantasy potential, but that's it. It's a concept, not a weapons system.
***Virtually no mention of the A2A discrepancy, almost all opinion & little fact, low F/O ratio.
Before I say anything, I would like to commend USNBandit for having the patience of Job.
***The difference between Bandit & Job is that I don't pretend to be Bandit's "friend", and Job had the consideration to at least answer his cohorts' questions.
You are a credit to your nickname, and living proof that not all fighter pilots are arrogant assholes.
***Gee, I wonder where that reputation came from? Oh, well, let's not go there, let's stick with the issue at hand...
Kevin, I have pinged everyone I know on FreeRepublic who actually flies or has flown military combat aircraft.
Those aircraft include the following: A-6, A-10, F-4, F-15, F-16, and the F-18.
***Cool, thanks.
I not pinging them to gang up on you. I'm pinging them to give them the opportunity to validate or refute what USNBandit has been trying to help you understand.
***Just what I'm looking for and what this forum needs. Thanks again.
You are obviously a big fan of the Harrier, and there are many things about the Harrier that make it a great aircraft. "VIFFing", however, is not one of them. Neither is its air to air capability. In short, you really do have no idea what you are talking about.
***I would prefer a higher F/O ratio here with primary source material. I don't claim to know a whole heckuva lot about this, so let's see some comments on the primary source material using other primary source material. Folks reading this later won't know who you are any more than I do. But I appreciate your solid ping list, thanks.
I would like to believe that the fact that neither the RAF nor USMC considers the Harrier a primary air defense asset to be strong indicator that maybe your assessment of it is not accurate. Certainly USNBandit has done his able best to set you straight. But rather than listening to him, you reported him to Jim Robinson as being a fraud.
***And I publicly withdrew that accusation. However, one thing I neglected was to ping JimRob on that withdrawal, so I'm correcting that now.
Having read this whole thread, it is very clear to me the USNBandit speaks with the knowledge of actual experience. It is equally clear that you do not.
***I never claimed to be anything other than an afficianado. And Bandit's bytes look no different than any other anonymous poster's bytes, so I have been keying up on the primary source factuality of his posts.
I have flown with Harriers and against Harriers.
***Cool.
I think they are one of the coolest aircraft around.
***Yep, me too.
But air to air killing machines they are not, and they never will be.
***All right, then let's go & find some primary source material that refutes the kill ratios & Turn Rate stuff. Remember that unless you're operating in the clear, you're a secondary source. I think I agree with you that the Harrier will not be a very strong A2A vehicle in the future because of its limitations. The Falklands campaign was a pretty close-run operation. I don't think I would have embarked with just 20 Harriers to retake those islands. And the Argies could have pressed the attack when they noticed that the Harriers weren't coming up to altitude to meet them; the next day they should have returned loaded up with Exocets.
Despite the best anecdotes you can Google on the web.
***Don't forget the pre-web stuff that ANNOYING MAN came up with.
Ahhh. . . .not even close.
***Feel free to knock down the Kill Ratio contention with primary source material.
No, again. It can VTOL but where are you gonna position all the support and logistics necessary to support the jet? Weapons? Where are they coming from?
***Often there are still facilities that survive a bombing attack but the runway is unusable. The 1967 Israeli war showed that to be a modern weakness.
>>Its ability to "slap the nozzles" is unique and makes it the hardest aircraft to kick out of the sky in a dogfight, and its ability to operate from anywhere & ground-loiter makes it a very formidable aircraft.<<This statement makes no sense, no tactical sense and demonstrates no understanding of the dynamics of energy management.
***OK, HOW? What would be your primary source material on this?
Ever hear of the phrase, "Strafe Rag."
***Nope.
If hovering was all it takes then a UH-1 would be a "formidable aircraft" in a dog fight. Hint---it ain't.
***That misses the point. Its ability to go from hover to high subsonic speeds is what makes it formidable. A lot of dogfights end up in a twisting, turning, lotsa lost energy knife fight where the wings might be in danger of stalling. The Harrier doesn't have that problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.