Quote:
Originally Posted by JMH
I seriously doubt the British government will actually have two CVF's built for the Royal Navy considering the great reluctance, and delay in ordering and cuts in numbers of Daring Class Destroyers that will be needed to escort these carriers. Out of 12 planned Daring Class Destroyers, only six have been ordered and out of those six, four will be delivered to the Royal Navy and the remaining two will be sold to Saudi Arabia. With only four missile escorts, only one or two would be available to escort a an Aircraft Carrier. Besides, France has a Nuclear Carrier which eliminates any need for a large British Carrier. The only hope for the Royal Navy is if the Labour Party in the UK loses power and is replaced by a Conservative government in the next elections. This is unlikely to happen beacuse the millions of welfare depandent voters in Wales and Scotland will ensure a Labour victory in England.
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JMH - sorry to say this but you are clearly an idiot who spends too much time reading rabidly anti-Labour newspapers.
The fate of the remaining 2 Darings is unclear - your speculation on a Saudi sale probably refers to hulls 7 and 8 rather than 5 and 6 (Dragon and Duncan iirc).
All the indications are that CVF will be ordered - it is less certain (and contingent on the Sarkozy/Royal battle) if PA2 is ever ordered. CdG has not proved to be a successful design/vessel and is plagued with problems.
As for your neo-Conservative venom about some socialist unified EU military - not going to happen, certainly not with UK backing. Some moves to rationalisation certainly, more importantly, a genuine commercial effort to challenge the USA's high tech dominance of the defense market.
Ocean will be (longterm) the LPH component of the CVF mix. It's likely that the CVF's will spend a considerable length of time pretending to be a LPH due to airframe numbers and rotation issues. I very much doubt that Lusty will be refitted in the same way that Ark has, should the CVF contracts appear as expected..
Of course, I stand read to eat my hat should the govt do a complete u-turn on CVF