Originally Posted by PubFather

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