Royal Navy getting worse by the day
The Daily Telegraph has a story quoting unnamed 'senior officers' saying that the Royal Navy is a shadow of its former self, wouldn't be able to retake the Falklands (or a similar operation) and worse - quelle horreur - it is inferior to the French Navy. The Times had the story last week.It seems like the bit about the Falkland Islands has been written every week for about 20 years. Similarly, the Telegraph says:
It is likely that they will eventually be sold or scrapped. There are also fears in the Admiralty that two new aircraft carriers, promised in 1998, might never be built.
Meanwhile the French navy, which will be far superior to the Royal Navy after the cuts, will announce before the April presidential elections that a new carrier will be built.
Is it really superior? The budget of the French Navy is pretty much the same as that of the Royal Navy (it's not that easy to make comparisions as defence budgets strip off much of the expenditure into categories such as R&D, or head office) and I don't see why it would be so much better, unless the French public sector is a lot more efficient than the British. My old International Politics teacher at Oxford (who I won't name in case he is now employed by the French Navy, though I think he's at one of our staff colleges) used to say that the French navy was only good for sailing up and down the west coast of Africa. In any case surely if we don't build our carriers, they aren't going to get theirs?
ps This comment piece is somewhat odd. Apparently the naval chiefs keep buying destroyers, and don't realise that we really need carriers, which will be cheaper. Quite why someone who wrote a book about military waste believes the carriers will be built entirely on budget I can't say, particularly as I've seen him before claim they are not value for money.
Labels: defence
posted by Matthew @ 1/05/2007 04:32:00 PM
Comments: 0
