His plan B is what, is the Eurofighter carrier capable, buy used F14's, what is he gonna fly off a carrier?? LOL a French plane!!! anyone?
This is the exact truth.
The current UK plan is to build two new carriers, proper ones, to replace the baby Invincible carriers we have now. The plan was to use the JSF as the main strike plane from them. We ARE buying Eurofighter (largely because we have put so much into it and are building part of them) but Eurofighter is not designed for carrier operations.
If we cannot acquire JSF from our loyal allies, then we will have to buy RAFALE-M (French) because it would take too long and cost too much to design our own. If we buy Rafale, we will have to redesign the carriers because the size, landing characteristics etc of Rafale are different from JSF. This will delay the project, and increase its cost, (and enable the French to build a carrier themselves cheaply off the back of our order).
As for the gung-ho attitudes expressed by the Yanks on this post, have you not figured out that you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? You complain that your "allies" don't back you (in spite of Britains heroic efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan) and you will be able to do so again in ten years time when the next war pops up, because Britain wont have the capacity to help, due to the fact that its existing carrier fleet will have been scrapped and the replacements wont be in service cos we wont have any planes to fly off them. Good plan. Well done.
Alliances work both ways, or they dont work at all. Perhaps it isnt so strange you have so many enemies in the world - I mean look how you treat your friends.
Well said. I´m with you on this one.
I agree with you and Michael81Dus . The British and the Australians are the truest allies we have. What's bad for them is bad for us and vise-versa.
I apologize for the attitudes of some in this thread. The Brits have been staunch allies for a long, long time and have shared technologies with us in the past (Chobham armor and many others) going back to WWII. I have no objections to sharing this technology with our good friends and allies.
Your country at this moment appears to be a playground for Russian spies and Muslim extremists.
Get back with us when you have your own house in order before demanding that we give you our strategic national secrets.