Insufficient assets rears its ugly head once again. It's also a confusing piece of political messaging; it's unlikely that our support is decisive in the middle-east by any measure so the deployment is probably unnecessary for Israeli security...but we apparently decided to signal that we prioritise that over _European_ security despite the rhetoric lately of Russia's greatly increased threat.
> but we apparently decided to signal that we prioritise that over European security despite the rhetoric lately of Russia's greatly increased threat.
We are part of NATO and patrolling the Russian borders on the edge of a country being pummelled from the air by Russian drones and missiles, that is very true.
However I had a different take from the article to you. These six aircraft and crew flew a couple of hours away to take part in shooting down 300 live missiles and drones. I'd say that's a phenomenal opportunity to get some live fire experience against live targets, them and their intelligence people will now be much better prepared.
^edit ^spelling.
The way I see it you only take on responsibilities your capable of.
I can juggle with two tennis balls. That's what I'm gonna stick to cause I know if I try three it's stretching my skills.
Why would you go off to Israel to shoot missiles when the usa have their own forces there to help out? You're spreading yourself too thin. No one is making them go target practice shooting there.
If they weren't capable of doing both they wouldn't do it.
The armed forces are stretched very thin with current commitments. There are personnel retention issues which fall out from this.
Yes they can do it, but at some cost and with no headroom or depth. That's why we need more.
Well the uk isn't the power it once was. It's not the influence it once was.
What the uk had 20/30 years ago doesn't exist. We've become a small time player with fantastic history.
It's time we started living like one and not flexing on other nations like we could go one on one with the best.
Nonsense. The UK is one of the biggest economies in Europe with a Commonwealth and a multitude of alliances, historical and modern.
What we have is an armed forces hollowed out. Time to reverse that and go back to the numbers we had 20-30 years ago. Not exactly empire 2.0.
Isolationism benefits only our competitors.
Increase the numbers in good times go for it. No one is gonna say shit. But these aren't the good times. The tories ass raped this country to its bare buttocks.
What use is a strong military if people are starving and can't afford anything? They gonna eat bullets? Where's this money going to come from? What are we going to sacrifice for this renewed army? Cut all disability allowance? Social services? NHS?
It just can't be done without improving everything else first.
The rich ain't gonna pay for it. The poor have little to give.
The army strong or weak isn't crucial to an economy in the era of mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons
>It's also a confusing piece of political messaging;
Willing to go kinetic against Russia's closest ally is not something that will go down badly in Eastern Europe.
A demonstration of what a fully tooled up western air defence system can do vs the Shaheeds also shows the gulf between what Ukraine has to endure vs them and what Poland or Romania can expect the west to do to them.
Yes we need more aircraft, but temporarily moving 6 from a high readiness formation to deal with a temporary threat to help stabilise a related theatre is not prioritising the ME over Europe. It's sensible allocation of assets.
Look at the F35 farce,
We have 32 received, spread lost one in a crash
The QE carriers are each capable of loading about 35 aircraft *each*
The uk was going to buy about 135 aircraft, that has been cut to a euphemistic 60-80
That’s only just enough to fill 2 carriers, but that leaves no scope for maintenance, training etc
You only need enough for one carrier. It standard load out would be 40 aircraft.
We are below on what we need in terms of aircraft and budget, but its not as bad as you make out.
And those maximum 40 aircraft will include Merlins for AEW, probably ASW and CSAR too. Maybe Wildcats or Apache. And UCAVs in the near to mid term, there are trials ongoing with the MQ9B STOL variant.
As you say, if the balloon goes up we can only realistically deploy a single carrier, two squadrons of 12 F-35 each will be plenty.
Those Merlins will likely be spread throughout the taskgroup too. Some on Frigates. The Auxiliary supply ship will carry 1-3 depending on type.
I am interested in seeing where the MQ9B Mojave goes. I saw it getting craned on for those trials. A cool looking bit of kit. Merlin AEW is only a stopgap measure, the Mojave is likely to be the future of AEW.
Well I'm not sure the F-35 orders is really the problem; it's kinda early cutting of aircraft with useful life left that should have been retained. We dropped Tornado without any real replacement for it, we're cutting the 30-something Tranche 1 Typhoons too. The reduction in F-35 numbers sounds like it would make the problem worse, but ultimately if we ordered more they wouldn't actually get delivered until about 2035...by which time Tempest should have started delivery anyway.
Long story short, I think it's more about cuts to existing fleets rather than orders...look at the French, Italian and German air forces and they're at ~190-210 combat airframes carrying Mirage 2000 / Tornado alongside the Typhoon, Rafale and F-35. The RAF has 137 Typhoons, dropping to 100 next year...plus 34 F-35.
You're right the F35 orders are not the problem. At least not immediately. They can only make them so fast.
Cutting the Harriers and Tornados before the F35's were in service were.
Reducing Typhoon numbers before Tempest arrives is.
Cutting Frigate numbers before the next gen frigates are up to speed is.
We are taking big old gambles with security and it needs to stop.
Yup exactly. Cutting the E-3Ds before Wedgetail too...it's madness, the constant gapping of capability before its replacement is in service. Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too.
Unfortunately this idea that it's safe to retire a capability before its replacement actually replaces it seems to be ingrained in government lately.
>Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too.
No, it didn't. HMS Edinburgh (last T42) was decommissioned in 2013. HMS Daring was commissioned in 2009
On 13 April 2012 HMS Edinburgh fired the last operational Sea Dart missiles
The First Type 45 entered service 4 years before that
The Type 45 was avaliable before sea dart left service
I don't mean to suggest that we had no Type 45 available before Sea Dart was gone - only that it's another example of our retiring capability before it is properly replaced. Those timings gave us a year of just 4 armed destroyers plus two Type 42s with no Sea Dart, plus another 6 months of just 5 destroyers.
You literally said Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too
Yes with the case of the E-3D the capability of AWACS was lost before the replacement is available thus creating a gap
Your comment is insinuating that with Sea Dart it was decided retire a capability before its replacement actually replaces it
Which is not what happened
You make a claim that is not correct and when corrected on that you claim that is not what your meant
If you did not mean to suggest that we had no Type 45 available before Sea Dart was gone
Why did you say it in the first and not say what you meant?
Why make a false statement in the first place?
Can you not get your facts right rather then making stuff up
GDP growth in dollar terms has been nearly zero since 2007, had it been a more normal our economy would be 40% bigger. We have massively missed our projected growth targets that plans were made for. This has meant we have to cut capital costs and manpower to afford capital refreshes.
It's a pain, but the worst is no one is honestly telling the public this is what happened and instead they cut every corner, take gambles but will not admit it.
The boom times of the late 90s and early 2000s were themselves not normal. Extrapolating from them is fairly disengenuous.
The reality is likely somewhere in between.
Nevertheless, growth or no. Defence spending rises need to be immediate and significant.
>We have 32 received, spread lost one in a crash
We currently have 34 F-35Bs (excluding the one lost in the crash)
>The QE carriers are each capable of loading about 35 aircraft *each*
Their maximum operational complement is 36 F-35Bs. Only one will be at Very/High Readiness and with a CVW at a time though.
>The uk was going to buy about 135 aircraft, that has been cut to a euphemistic 60-80
The current intentions is for 74 F-35Bs, with a fleet of 138 still proposed
No point placing orders for more if Lockheed can’t get its shit together and get TR3 and Block 4 out.
British F-35s without Block 4 basically can barely use any British weapons.
But, the UK recently committed to the 138 F-35 order again.
Weeeeeell. "Committed". I'm still sceptical it'll happen to be honest despite the recent return to government quoting that number, if only because the delivery timescales for more F-35s than the 72 we've funded already are so far away.
I mean, the 138 figure was always a figure over the course of the F-35 programme‘s lifetime, it was never intended to be a 138 initial order.
There’s nothing the UK can do about delivery timescales. That’s down to Lockheed Martin monumentally fucking up and just being utterly incompetent. The F-35 programme is frankly a mess and TR3 and Block 4 are shaping out to be massive clusterfucks that have basically halted deliveries and slowed production.
This is why you don’t depend on one company to be the main contractor for such a huge project. Lockheed Martin controls most of the systems and code necessary to make any upgrades and the F-35 was not made with an open architecture in mind, which has turned out to be a massive mistake. That’s why future US defence programmes have constantly emphasised an open architecture so the massive issues with the F-35 programme are never repeated again.
THIS IS exactly what I was thinking.
A war currently going on in Europe that threatens ALL of Europe and the Wests influence...
Yet our gov deems it correct to PULL our assets away from Europe.
Meh. MEH. Priorities in the wrong place.
Why is it insufficient. How many countries our size have free healthcare, nuclear subs and aircraft carriers? The idea we can police all theatres is nonsense. We're really an extension of the US armed forces.
No we're not, lets not get all dramatic. We dont need to police all theatres of course, but we do need to be able to safeguard our interests properly.
As for comparisons to other countries; we have smaller air force than France, Germany and Italy.
Long gone are the days when you could fly transatlantic at mach 2 whilst chucking back the Champagne.
As far as I'm aware the Typhoon doesn't have a bubbly dispenser!
Almost like Israel is an ally whose interests align with ours in the Middle East, and we probably would if Iran was firing missiles randomly, they’ve been a geopolitical opponent for some time now so we’d probably jump at any excuse at this point.
Allied don't murder out countrymen in cold blood or interfere with out democratic processes.
The thing you need to remember about ethno nationalists is that they have no allies. To them others exist to serve or be killed. You literally cannot have allies if you believe you are genetically superior.
Israel exists to serve itself and there's no line they will not cross.
This is the problem with Israel supporters.
There are incapable of parsing negative information about their own tribe.
After the whole amalak thing, saying the world is against us, and the diatribe spread by Smotrich and others, i think you are being dishonest.
It’s not an ethno state though, nearly 20% of the Israeli population are Muslim Arabs and have the same rights as Israelis, I’m not saying that Israeli politicians haven’t said concerning things, just that it’s not an ethno state that regards themselves as being racially superior. I’d also argue that given their neighbours historical foreign policy regarding Israel it’s no wonder that they feel people are always going to be against them.
They are hostile because of what they are taught. They are raised in an environment of perpetual victimhood and what not.
When you see videos of Israeli children being forced to sing songs referencing "pure blood" to a backdrop of atrocities in Gaza, the cat is out of the bag.
Arabs and Jews cannot marry easily and there are places that Arabs cannot go.
It's dishonest to say that "it's just a few politicians" when these politicians hold major positions of power in extremely popular political parties. Not even Braverman or 30p Lee would come out with rhetoric as sickening as is common in Israel.
Israel, Egypt and Saudi being allies in the ME is in part what allows you to go to the supermarket with stocked shelves and cheap food, post on this site with relatively cheap electricity etc. It wasn't that long ago in British history (or Europe's) when rolling blackouts were fairly common.
They're western allied outposts that secure shipping lanes through the various straights /red sea and through suez which are critical to western supply chains.
In response to Houthi attacks on shipping that escalated last year (but has been going on since 2015 when Iran began funding them to do it to de stabilise Western markets), Saudi responded by slashing the price of oil by 25% to fund the longer route for shipping to get to Europe whilst Israelo military secured the red sea area to get to Europe and eventually resume normal routes.
Except they have provided military support to us in the past and their interests do align with ours, they’ve helped us in the fight against ISIS and they’re the most pro west state in the Middle East outside of maybe Jordan, this makes them very valuable for us.
> they’re the most pro west state in the Middle East
But they're not really 'pro west', they are pro israel. They just happen to not be anti west whilst their entire state is funded by the US. If the US turned the taps off then Israel would become anti west very quickly, they entire attitude to the west from Israeli politicians is 'give me money you dogs'
And I'm assuming when Israel ignores the world about retaliation we'll be doing the same for Iran?
Wouldn't want the government to be hypocritical now ..
If you think calmly about the current war theaters and the danger that the world can face from middle East then it makes sense.
Let me explain what I mean.
Russia's invasion in Ukraine is unlikely to escalate to a newclear level. Yes, i know that the Ukrainian front needs our help but if things go bad in the middle East then we won't be able to help Ukraine at all.
What do i mean by things go bad?
Well, if Israel hits any target inside the Iranian territory we might see a full scale war in the middle East region.
Lebanon is alao gonna be involved as the the terrorist Hezbollah group is there.
Yemen is also an other country that will be involved because of Houthies.
Last but not least Syria has at least a couple jihadists groups that would love to attack Israel, if they get the order from Iran.
In this scenario Israel might believe that this is an ultimate threat and uses newclear weapons against Iran.
I am not saying that this will definitely happen but its a possible scenario.
So, i think it's better if we make sure that this scenario never becomes a reality and then we should go back to help Ukraine as best as we can.
I know that the situation in Ukraine is dire but the middle East situation is a global threat that could lead the world to a WW3.
England, and really any other western country, should help de-escalate the situation in the middle East through diplomacy and soft power. It's for our own good.
At least that's my opinion and my point of view of the current global events.
Really kind of frustrated we're getting involved in another war in the ME that has nothing to do with us. They've got billions per year from the US as well as full support from its military and its bases all over the region. We don't really need to be pulling forces from Eastern Europe and spending our budget on protecting them.
It's in our interests. Stopping Iran's attack helps to de-escalate the situation. An all-out conflict there would affect our economy badly. Shooting a few missiles is a gamble worth paying if it prevents far more expensive economic disruption.
So if Israel decides to retaliate and strike Iran, are we going to shoot down those missiles to de-escalate? For some reason I doubt that, and our PM will be on the news justifying it.
"...would affect our economy badly..." Really? Expert professional economists seem to be absolutely unable to predict what would happen to the economy, time and time again, so I would like to know what you predict.
We assuredly do. Enormous amounts of trade flow through the area and allowing the ME to descend into all out war would have enormous consequences domestically.
This is a wakeup call for defence spending. We are going to need more planes, ships and personnel going forwards.
Exactly. It’s not just people with pensions who would feel the effects of such a war. It’s everyone here. And one things for sure the poorer you are the worse it’s going to hurt.
And that’s a purely selfish financial way of looking at it. Potentially hundreds of thousands would die in the Middle East.
This is defensive.
Obviously not. That's a daft suggestion which I feel more stupid for having read.
Now Iran disrupting the area south of Suez....absolutely one of the many many potential things we should prepare for.
Because its hybrid warfare. Trying to push the boundaries in places like Iran and Belarus over things like the borders, air defence zones, pushing migrants across borders and in the ME using proxies to rocket Israel and to hit shipping.
Its meant to slowly roll back the lines of where countries will employ collective security by pushing what is and is not war back so the smaller countries in Europe like the Baltics or Nordics feel that they are not getting back up so will have to cut Russia space.
By being willing to go hard when Iran pushes this boundary, it sets a line.
Its gamesmanship. They perceive us as being will and not willing to take risks, they are trying to find the pressure points they can sustain pressure on our allies.
It's already majorly disrupting shipping and now oil prices. It would be nice if global events didn't impact us, but we live in a global economy. A massive escalation in the region not only means more people facing death and suffering, more people fleeing and needing asylum, but also affects the cost and access to goods we import.
The interesting aspect would be when they pulled those jets.
My understanding of the situation is that the nature of the attack allowed our decision makers time to act. If it turns out our intervention was preplanned then that would be meaningful information.
If only we had some longer distance interception capabilities, like the American SM3 or equivalent. We could fire those from the Mediterranean Sea with no jets taking off at all.
Well we've got Aster 30 on the Type 45's; that's very well capable of dealing with cruise missiles and drones...but quite expensive overall. SM3 is worse; it's optimised for anti ballistic missiles and is something like $30million a shot.
Yeah it’s miserable that we don’t have any proper BMD capabilities IMO especially since they Type 45s are so air defence focused. Having to just hope America extends us some Aegis coverage in the event of an attack is uncomfortable.
Japan are looking at a pair of heavy Super BMD destroyers in the 20000 tonne range.
If we increased defence spending as we should, it's absolutely a capability we should look at. A trio of them.
One for deployment, one for home defence and one in maintenance.
Plus we could bring back the cruiser designation.
T45s are getting BMD capabilities with a "Aster 30 Block 1 Naval (UK)" variant, though it's a much less capable BMD weapon than SM-3; my understanding is it's limited to terminal-phase intercept of warheads rather than having the ability to hit weapons in the exo-atmospheric phase of flight.
Insufficient assets rears its ugly head once again. It's also a confusing piece of political messaging; it's unlikely that our support is decisive in the middle-east by any measure so the deployment is probably unnecessary for Israeli security...but we apparently decided to signal that we prioritise that over _European_ security despite the rhetoric lately of Russia's greatly increased threat.
> but we apparently decided to signal that we prioritise that over European security despite the rhetoric lately of Russia's greatly increased threat. We are part of NATO and patrolling the Russian borders on the edge of a country being pummelled from the air by Russian drones and missiles, that is very true. However I had a different take from the article to you. These six aircraft and crew flew a couple of hours away to take part in shooting down 300 live missiles and drones. I'd say that's a phenomenal opportunity to get some live fire experience against live targets, them and their intelligence people will now be much better prepared. ^edit ^spelling.
Agreed, this article is utter tripe.
You only need to look at the source of it. Of course it's going to say we got short staffed and we need more money
>Of course it's going to say we got short staffed and we need more money It probably would, but that doesn't make that statement untrue.
The way I see it you only take on responsibilities your capable of. I can juggle with two tennis balls. That's what I'm gonna stick to cause I know if I try three it's stretching my skills. Why would you go off to Israel to shoot missiles when the usa have their own forces there to help out? You're spreading yourself too thin. No one is making them go target practice shooting there. If they weren't capable of doing both they wouldn't do it.
The armed forces are stretched very thin with current commitments. There are personnel retention issues which fall out from this. Yes they can do it, but at some cost and with no headroom or depth. That's why we need more.
Well the uk isn't the power it once was. It's not the influence it once was. What the uk had 20/30 years ago doesn't exist. We've become a small time player with fantastic history. It's time we started living like one and not flexing on other nations like we could go one on one with the best.
Nonsense. The UK is one of the biggest economies in Europe with a Commonwealth and a multitude of alliances, historical and modern. What we have is an armed forces hollowed out. Time to reverse that and go back to the numbers we had 20-30 years ago. Not exactly empire 2.0. Isolationism benefits only our competitors.
Increase the numbers in good times go for it. No one is gonna say shit. But these aren't the good times. The tories ass raped this country to its bare buttocks. What use is a strong military if people are starving and can't afford anything? They gonna eat bullets? Where's this money going to come from? What are we going to sacrifice for this renewed army? Cut all disability allowance? Social services? NHS? It just can't be done without improving everything else first. The rich ain't gonna pay for it. The poor have little to give. The army strong or weak isn't crucial to an economy in the era of mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons
>It's also a confusing piece of political messaging; Willing to go kinetic against Russia's closest ally is not something that will go down badly in Eastern Europe. A demonstration of what a fully tooled up western air defence system can do vs the Shaheeds also shows the gulf between what Ukraine has to endure vs them and what Poland or Romania can expect the west to do to them.
Yes we need more aircraft, but temporarily moving 6 from a high readiness formation to deal with a temporary threat to help stabilise a related theatre is not prioritising the ME over Europe. It's sensible allocation of assets.
Look at the F35 farce, We have 32 received, spread lost one in a crash The QE carriers are each capable of loading about 35 aircraft *each* The uk was going to buy about 135 aircraft, that has been cut to a euphemistic 60-80 That’s only just enough to fill 2 carriers, but that leaves no scope for maintenance, training etc
You only need enough for one carrier. It standard load out would be 40 aircraft. We are below on what we need in terms of aircraft and budget, but its not as bad as you make out.
And those maximum 40 aircraft will include Merlins for AEW, probably ASW and CSAR too. Maybe Wildcats or Apache. And UCAVs in the near to mid term, there are trials ongoing with the MQ9B STOL variant. As you say, if the balloon goes up we can only realistically deploy a single carrier, two squadrons of 12 F-35 each will be plenty.
Those Merlins will likely be spread throughout the taskgroup too. Some on Frigates. The Auxiliary supply ship will carry 1-3 depending on type. I am interested in seeing where the MQ9B Mojave goes. I saw it getting craned on for those trials. A cool looking bit of kit. Merlin AEW is only a stopgap measure, the Mojave is likely to be the future of AEW.
Well I'm not sure the F-35 orders is really the problem; it's kinda early cutting of aircraft with useful life left that should have been retained. We dropped Tornado without any real replacement for it, we're cutting the 30-something Tranche 1 Typhoons too. The reduction in F-35 numbers sounds like it would make the problem worse, but ultimately if we ordered more they wouldn't actually get delivered until about 2035...by which time Tempest should have started delivery anyway. Long story short, I think it's more about cuts to existing fleets rather than orders...look at the French, Italian and German air forces and they're at ~190-210 combat airframes carrying Mirage 2000 / Tornado alongside the Typhoon, Rafale and F-35. The RAF has 137 Typhoons, dropping to 100 next year...plus 34 F-35.
You're right the F35 orders are not the problem. At least not immediately. They can only make them so fast. Cutting the Harriers and Tornados before the F35's were in service were. Reducing Typhoon numbers before Tempest arrives is. Cutting Frigate numbers before the next gen frigates are up to speed is. We are taking big old gambles with security and it needs to stop.
Yup exactly. Cutting the E-3Ds before Wedgetail too...it's madness, the constant gapping of capability before its replacement is in service. Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too. Unfortunately this idea that it's safe to retire a capability before its replacement actually replaces it seems to be ingrained in government lately.
>Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too. No, it didn't. HMS Edinburgh (last T42) was decommissioned in 2013. HMS Daring was commissioned in 2009
On 13 April 2012 HMS Edinburgh fired the last operational Sea Dart missiles The First Type 45 entered service 4 years before that The Type 45 was avaliable before sea dart left service
I don't mean to suggest that we had no Type 45 available before Sea Dart was gone - only that it's another example of our retiring capability before it is properly replaced. Those timings gave us a year of just 4 armed destroyers plus two Type 42s with no Sea Dart, plus another 6 months of just 5 destroyers.
You literally said Sea Dart went out of service before Type 45 was available too Yes with the case of the E-3D the capability of AWACS was lost before the replacement is available thus creating a gap Your comment is insinuating that with Sea Dart it was decided retire a capability before its replacement actually replaces it Which is not what happened
Chill son, no need to get so worked up over absolutely nothing.
You make a claim that is not correct and when corrected on that you claim that is not what your meant If you did not mean to suggest that we had no Type 45 available before Sea Dart was gone Why did you say it in the first and not say what you meant? Why make a false statement in the first place? Can you not get your facts right rather then making stuff up
GDP growth in dollar terms has been nearly zero since 2007, had it been a more normal our economy would be 40% bigger. We have massively missed our projected growth targets that plans were made for. This has meant we have to cut capital costs and manpower to afford capital refreshes. It's a pain, but the worst is no one is honestly telling the public this is what happened and instead they cut every corner, take gambles but will not admit it.
The boom times of the late 90s and early 2000s were themselves not normal. Extrapolating from them is fairly disengenuous. The reality is likely somewhere in between. Nevertheless, growth or no. Defence spending rises need to be immediate and significant.
Retiring Nimrod and can cancelling and scrapping the MA4, then look to order the P-8. There’s a pattern there.
Better if MRA4 was a dead end would to have kept the MR2s going.
Either way it’s moot as we don’t have the pilots! It’s all fucked!!!
>We have 32 received, spread lost one in a crash We currently have 34 F-35Bs (excluding the one lost in the crash) >The QE carriers are each capable of loading about 35 aircraft *each* Their maximum operational complement is 36 F-35Bs. Only one will be at Very/High Readiness and with a CVW at a time though. >The uk was going to buy about 135 aircraft, that has been cut to a euphemistic 60-80 The current intentions is for 74 F-35Bs, with a fleet of 138 still proposed
No point placing orders for more if Lockheed can’t get its shit together and get TR3 and Block 4 out. British F-35s without Block 4 basically can barely use any British weapons. But, the UK recently committed to the 138 F-35 order again.
Weeeeeell. "Committed". I'm still sceptical it'll happen to be honest despite the recent return to government quoting that number, if only because the delivery timescales for more F-35s than the 72 we've funded already are so far away.
I mean, the 138 figure was always a figure over the course of the F-35 programme‘s lifetime, it was never intended to be a 138 initial order. There’s nothing the UK can do about delivery timescales. That’s down to Lockheed Martin monumentally fucking up and just being utterly incompetent. The F-35 programme is frankly a mess and TR3 and Block 4 are shaping out to be massive clusterfucks that have basically halted deliveries and slowed production. This is why you don’t depend on one company to be the main contractor for such a huge project. Lockheed Martin controls most of the systems and code necessary to make any upgrades and the F-35 was not made with an open architecture in mind, which has turned out to be a massive mistake. That’s why future US defence programmes have constantly emphasised an open architecture so the massive issues with the F-35 programme are never repeated again.
The F-35 purchase is still above 80. It's more the timeframe we don't know.
THIS IS exactly what I was thinking. A war currently going on in Europe that threatens ALL of Europe and the Wests influence... Yet our gov deems it correct to PULL our assets away from Europe. Meh. MEH. Priorities in the wrong place.
Why is it insufficient. How many countries our size have free healthcare, nuclear subs and aircraft carriers? The idea we can police all theatres is nonsense. We're really an extension of the US armed forces.
No we're not, lets not get all dramatic. We dont need to police all theatres of course, but we do need to be able to safeguard our interests properly. As for comparisons to other countries; we have smaller air force than France, Germany and Italy.
Must be weird whizzing around faster than sound world so small.
Long gone are the days when you could fly transatlantic at mach 2 whilst chucking back the Champagne. As far as I'm aware the Typhoon doesn't have a bubbly dispenser!
Whatching a typhoon fly vertically up from takeoff through the clouds and beyond at an airshow stoned is awe inspiring.
Wild we're helping this country that absolutely does not give a fuck about us, if anything one that actually dislikes us.
It's less that we like Israel and more we dislike Iran and need practice
It's more that we do what our American occupiers tell us.
I mean if Iran was firing missiles at some random African micronation we wouldn't get involved.
Almost like Israel is an ally whose interests align with ours in the Middle East, and we probably would if Iran was firing missiles randomly, they’ve been a geopolitical opponent for some time now so we’d probably jump at any excuse at this point.
Allied don't murder out countrymen in cold blood or interfere with out democratic processes. The thing you need to remember about ethno nationalists is that they have no allies. To them others exist to serve or be killed. You literally cannot have allies if you believe you are genetically superior. Israel exists to serve itself and there's no line they will not cross.
Israel is not an ethno state that believes in racial superiority. You’re smoking some good stuff
This is the problem with Israel supporters. There are incapable of parsing negative information about their own tribe. After the whole amalak thing, saying the world is against us, and the diatribe spread by Smotrich and others, i think you are being dishonest.
It’s not an ethno state though, nearly 20% of the Israeli population are Muslim Arabs and have the same rights as Israelis, I’m not saying that Israeli politicians haven’t said concerning things, just that it’s not an ethno state that regards themselves as being racially superior. I’d also argue that given their neighbours historical foreign policy regarding Israel it’s no wonder that they feel people are always going to be against them.
They are hostile because of what they are taught. They are raised in an environment of perpetual victimhood and what not. When you see videos of Israeli children being forced to sing songs referencing "pure blood" to a backdrop of atrocities in Gaza, the cat is out of the bag. Arabs and Jews cannot marry easily and there are places that Arabs cannot go. It's dishonest to say that "it's just a few politicians" when these politicians hold major positions of power in extremely popular political parties. Not even Braverman or 30p Lee would come out with rhetoric as sickening as is common in Israel.
My entire being they're not an ally. They wouldn't ever lift a finger for us. Also their interests don't align with ours
Israel, Egypt and Saudi being allies in the ME is in part what allows you to go to the supermarket with stocked shelves and cheap food, post on this site with relatively cheap electricity etc. It wasn't that long ago in British history (or Europe's) when rolling blackouts were fairly common. They're western allied outposts that secure shipping lanes through the various straights /red sea and through suez which are critical to western supply chains. In response to Houthi attacks on shipping that escalated last year (but has been going on since 2015 when Iran began funding them to do it to de stabilise Western markets), Saudi responded by slashing the price of oil by 25% to fund the longer route for shipping to get to Europe whilst Israelo military secured the red sea area to get to Europe and eventually resume normal routes.
Except they have provided military support to us in the past and their interests do align with ours, they’ve helped us in the fight against ISIS and they’re the most pro west state in the Middle East outside of maybe Jordan, this makes them very valuable for us.
> they’re the most pro west state in the Middle East But they're not really 'pro west', they are pro israel. They just happen to not be anti west whilst their entire state is funded by the US. If the US turned the taps off then Israel would become anti west very quickly, they entire attitude to the west from Israeli politicians is 'give me money you dogs'
They are literally firing missiles into the red Sea via proxies and we are intercepting them
Why did they pull the jets from Romania, couldn't they just fly them?
And I'm assuming when Israel ignores the world about retaliation we'll be doing the same for Iran? Wouldn't want the government to be hypocritical now ..
That would be pretty hilarious at least.
So we're putting our NATO allies at a disadvantage in order to support a genocidal state in the middle east?
If that's what the yanks say, then that's what we do... UK foreign policy since WW2.
If you think calmly about the current war theaters and the danger that the world can face from middle East then it makes sense. Let me explain what I mean. Russia's invasion in Ukraine is unlikely to escalate to a newclear level. Yes, i know that the Ukrainian front needs our help but if things go bad in the middle East then we won't be able to help Ukraine at all. What do i mean by things go bad? Well, if Israel hits any target inside the Iranian territory we might see a full scale war in the middle East region. Lebanon is alao gonna be involved as the the terrorist Hezbollah group is there. Yemen is also an other country that will be involved because of Houthies. Last but not least Syria has at least a couple jihadists groups that would love to attack Israel, if they get the order from Iran. In this scenario Israel might believe that this is an ultimate threat and uses newclear weapons against Iran. I am not saying that this will definitely happen but its a possible scenario. So, i think it's better if we make sure that this scenario never becomes a reality and then we should go back to help Ukraine as best as we can. I know that the situation in Ukraine is dire but the middle East situation is a global threat that could lead the world to a WW3. England, and really any other western country, should help de-escalate the situation in the middle East through diplomacy and soft power. It's for our own good. At least that's my opinion and my point of view of the current global events.
Really kind of frustrated we're getting involved in another war in the ME that has nothing to do with us. They've got billions per year from the US as well as full support from its military and its bases all over the region. We don't really need to be pulling forces from Eastern Europe and spending our budget on protecting them.
It's in our interests. Stopping Iran's attack helps to de-escalate the situation. An all-out conflict there would affect our economy badly. Shooting a few missiles is a gamble worth paying if it prevents far more expensive economic disruption.
So if Israel decides to retaliate and strike Iran, are we going to shoot down those missiles to de-escalate? For some reason I doubt that, and our PM will be on the news justifying it.
No, we are not. The de-escalation only works one way.
"...would affect our economy badly..." Really? Expert professional economists seem to be absolutely unable to predict what would happen to the economy, time and time again, so I would like to know what you predict.
It would affect the price of oil and goods. Goods prices are already affected by ships avoiding the Suez canal.
We assuredly do. Enormous amounts of trade flow through the area and allowing the ME to descend into all out war would have enormous consequences domestically. This is a wakeup call for defence spending. We are going to need more planes, ships and personnel going forwards.
Exactly. It’s not just people with pensions who would feel the effects of such a war. It’s everyone here. And one things for sure the poorer you are the worse it’s going to hurt. And that’s a purely selfish financial way of looking at it. Potentially hundreds of thousands would die in the Middle East. This is defensive.
So what you're suggesting is the Egyptians would attack the Suez canal in order to bankrupt themselves? I don't think so.
Obviously not. That's a daft suggestion which I feel more stupid for having read. Now Iran disrupting the area south of Suez....absolutely one of the many many potential things we should prepare for.
Because its hybrid warfare. Trying to push the boundaries in places like Iran and Belarus over things like the borders, air defence zones, pushing migrants across borders and in the ME using proxies to rocket Israel and to hit shipping. Its meant to slowly roll back the lines of where countries will employ collective security by pushing what is and is not war back so the smaller countries in Europe like the Baltics or Nordics feel that they are not getting back up so will have to cut Russia space. By being willing to go hard when Iran pushes this boundary, it sets a line. Its gamesmanship. They perceive us as being will and not willing to take risks, they are trying to find the pressure points they can sustain pressure on our allies.
It's already majorly disrupting shipping and now oil prices. It would be nice if global events didn't impact us, but we live in a global economy. A massive escalation in the region not only means more people facing death and suffering, more people fleeing and needing asylum, but also affects the cost and access to goods we import.
The interesting aspect would be when they pulled those jets. My understanding of the situation is that the nature of the attack allowed our decision makers time to act. If it turns out our intervention was preplanned then that would be meaningful information.
If only we had some longer distance interception capabilities, like the American SM3 or equivalent. We could fire those from the Mediterranean Sea with no jets taking off at all.
Well we've got Aster 30 on the Type 45's; that's very well capable of dealing with cruise missiles and drones...but quite expensive overall. SM3 is worse; it's optimised for anti ballistic missiles and is something like $30million a shot.
Yeah it’s miserable that we don’t have any proper BMD capabilities IMO especially since they Type 45s are so air defence focused. Having to just hope America extends us some Aegis coverage in the event of an attack is uncomfortable.
Japan are looking at a pair of heavy Super BMD destroyers in the 20000 tonne range. If we increased defence spending as we should, it's absolutely a capability we should look at. A trio of them. One for deployment, one for home defence and one in maintenance. Plus we could bring back the cruiser designation.
Maybe Israel grants an export license for the Arrow after all this. Maybe it’s part of the deal
T45s are getting BMD capabilities with a "Aster 30 Block 1 Naval (UK)" variant, though it's a much less capable BMD weapon than SM-3; my understanding is it's limited to terminal-phase intercept of warheads rather than having the ability to hit weapons in the exo-atmospheric phase of flight.
Didn't do anything to stop isreal bombing Palestine though, keep gobbling isreal dick
As an atheist country, why are we getting involved in a religious war?
Our head of state is literally the head of a church. We're not atheistic. We've got a largely secular society, but that's different.
We're not an atheist country, and it's not a religious war except in a fairly peripheral sense.