History repeating itself, or not learning from history? RAF launches dogfight for control of navy’s aircraft - Times Online And I love the fact that the only highlights of the FAA that they could find were the above three!!
Oh for crying out loud, i understand the logic, but at the end of the day a ship based strike force cannot have two allegiances.
For starters, I thought there was already a joint helicopter command, and the Harriers operated from carriers are entirely the RAFs GR9 version of the Joint Harrier force. What more rationalising can they do? An RAF - dominated Fleet Air Arm was a recipe for confusion and inefficiency in the 1920s and 30s; this was rectified only just in time for WW2 when the FAA reverted to Navy control. And the Army are pissed off enough with the RAF in Afghanistan as it is, without losing control of all their helicopters. And who's idea is it to cut the numbers of helicopters so drastically? It has become very evident that we don't have enough helicopters in Afghanistan even now.
Have they not referred to Grand Admiral Doenitz's problems with trying to get the Luftwaffe to co-operate with the U-boats? Thank god that the Luftwaffe did not co-operate in helping to find the Convoys ..... operating aircraft in a marine environment with marine problems calls for a vastly different set of parameters altogether ....You people up there must have Gorings great grandson at the head of the Royal Air Force ...that idiot declared that ..."Anything that flies is mine" ... no one plays with my toys. Good luck.
This does not surprise me at all. The two new carriers have been delayed (cost); the Army is stretched to the limit in Afghanistan and the Defence Budget is being squeezed to the extent that the Navy appears to be the loser. Flying aircraft from an aircraft carrier is not an easy task and best left to the FAA who are the professionals at sea. It is just another diminution of our Navy. Anyway, the downsizing of the Navy will fit into the Governments long-term plan of a European Naval force. We have hardly enough ships at sea now to seriously be called a Navy. Regards Hugh ex carrier matelot
The last time they tried to downsize the navy so drastically they discovered they had nothing to send to this little island in the Atlantic and had to beg some ocean liners. When will they learn? And as Hugh has pointed out, landing on a carrier is difficult. So how will they be cutting costs when they will have to have dedicated training for those RAF aircrew assigned to carriers? And they will have to expand that training to a large portion of the RAF if they want proper rotation.
Is the JSF capable of vertical landing like the Harrier? I seem to recall it has vectored thrust. Be that as it may, and admittedly RAF Harriers operated from the RN carriers over the Falklands, I have had serious misgivings about the reduction in the size of the RN for a while now. Pensioning off the Sea Harriers and effectively only operating one carrier at a time is ridiculous. Mind you, with the sale of frigates to South American countries etc, especially ships that have spent less than half their projected lives with the RN, I suppose it'd be hard to scrape together an escort for more than one carrier. Australia's present navy is smaller than it should be, IMHO, but the RN should not be approaching the size of the RAN!
An army officer got himself into trouble a few months ago for going public about this. Allegedly, the RAF cannot be relied on to provide close support; if you can get them at all they tend to miss entirely or bomb their own side. The Army prefer to ask the Americans for close support, so given the times they came under fatal friendly fire in Iraq from the Americans, they must be really desperate now. And there are nowhere near enough helicopters available, for casevac or anything else. There's a conventional version (CTOL) and a Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) version of the JSF (now known as the Boeing F35 Lightning II). The RN's new carriers are too small for the CTOL version and the MOD doesn't want to spend money on the STOVL. :doh:
Not that the Americans are happy about this: US accuses Britain over military failings in Afghanistan - Times Online
This is the link that I was looking for regarding my previous post: The Major’s Email: British Harrier Support in Afghanistan, Revisited
