Border Farce.

[oldgit]

Local TV news item recently on police patrolling the coast and waterways of the southeastern area of UK in an attempt to deter all sorts of bad-uns.
Camera crew spent time with a black rib tootling up and down the Merdeway.
Towards the end of the report a map illustrating the area covered by the patrol went from half way up the East Anglian coast down to Dover.
Pretty impressive for one medium rib and three or four blokes,even if you add the patrol boat seen around,it is a vast area to cover.
The chap basically inferred,we have no dough.
Can remember when Chatham had its very own customs launch and crew.
You get exactly what you were prepared to pay for. ?
Not that long ago you would always get a visit around Greenwich inbound up the Thames.

 

[capnfishy]

When I was in the Navy (cue rush for the exit), we had 250 surface ships plus those nasty black tube things down below. Now we have only a handful of poorly equiped ships, ribs and boats. It doesn't matter who you vote for, the bloody government always gets elected and reduces the defence budget. Head for the hills!

 

[JumbleDuck]

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the bloody government always gets elected and reduces the defence budget.

 

[Sandyman]

When I was in the Navy

You've been watching Fools & Horses again Easier to say when I was in the mob

 

[oldgit]

It may well be worth adjusting that graph for inflation !
Inflation between 1970 and 2016 1,385.980 %

 

[JumbleDuck]

It may well be worth adjusting that graph for inflation !
Inflation between 1970 and 2016 1,385.980 %

True,but even so it shows that defence spending has kept up with inflation overall. The interesting question being "where is all the money going", since we are spending just as much but no longer have much by way of ships, the BAOR and so on.

 

[oldgit]

In 1970 it was a bloke with a musket leaning against a recently disused stable.
Now we are trailing the Russians in the battlefield electronics stakes.
Just compare the nav gear on your boat in 1970,probably a compass with a resident spider and a 20 year old chart.
Today even my olde heap has 2 fixed nav systems,1 x laptop system,2 x fixed vhf radios and a portable aboard.
Lets not even mention the couple of mobile phones with all the apps.
Why would our forces expect to go to war with less techno junk than their opponents. ?

 

[JumbleDuck]

In 1970 it was a bloke with a musket leaning against a recently disused stable.
Now we are trailing the Russians in the battlefield electronics stakes.
Just compare the nav gear on your boat in 1970,probably a compass with a resident spider and a 20 year old chart.
Today even my olde heap has 2 fixed nav systems,1 x laptop system,2 x fixed vhf radios and a portable aboard.
Lets not even mention the couple of mobile phones with all the apps.
Why would our forces expect to go to war with less techno junk than their opponents. ?

My boat was new in 1986. The original purchaser paid £2,000 (in 1986!) for a Decca receiver, £2,000 for a set of B&G instruments and £1,500 for a SSB setup. The modern equivalents would be far cheaper; the price of electronics has plummeted over the past forty years.

A quick google suggests that US military spending has remained sort-of constant over that period, though with medium term drops at the end of the Vietnam and Cold wars, yet I don;t think the size of their armed forces has fallen anywhere near as much as ours.

 

[Sandyman]

TThe interesting question being "where is all the money going", .

Thats simple. Into the pockets of shareholders of defence companies. Mainly BAe.
The MoD gets stitched up on contracts because they are incompetent idiots.
Only last week it was announced the MoD had paid out some 60 mill on incorrect invoices where defence co's had claimed for expences, junkets, transport, hotels & the likes which they were not etitled to.
The MoD is in effect unaccountable, hiding behind the Official Secrets Act, yet the Commons Select Committee on Defence turns a blid eye to it.
The defence industries have manoeuvred themselves into such a position that they have the Government & you, the tax payer, by the bollox.

 

[oldgit]

" original purchaser paid £2,000 (in 1986!) for a Decca receiver, £2,000 for a set of B&G instruments and £1,500 for a SSB setup. The modern equivalents would be far cheaper; the price of electronics has plummeted over the past forty years."


.......and all of it about as much use today as a lodestone.
All your new stuff will be buying some chinese factory owner his new Bentley (and probably a nice pad in Chelsea) esp. with the screwed pound and produced by the million for world consumption.
You will probably not want your new army battlefield communications drone designed and built in a factory within a bullet train ride of Peking.
However perhaps your new nuclear power station

 

[JumbleDuck]

.......and all of it about as much use today as a lodestone.

The instruments are still working fine, thanks, and I plan to keep them as long as possible because I don;tthink anybody has ever made cockpit repeaters as clear and just goshdarned nice to look at as the old B&G analogue one.

All your new stuff will be buying some chinese factory owner his new Bentley (and probably a nice pad in Chelsea) esp. with the screwed pound and produced by the million for world consumption.

Exactly, but there is a terribly tendency for the military to demand something slightly different from what's readily available on the market. Because, of course, nobody ever got a pay rise and promotion for saying "Just buy a thousand Garmin E-trexes - we can probably beat 'em down to seventy five quid a pop" when the alternative is "let's run a five year procurement programme to specify and commission something very nearly the same as a Garmin E-trex at ten grand a time".

And so we and up with a string of military projects which go over budget and, if they deliver, never come close to spec. Why should we buy off-the-shelf AWACs from Boeing when we could fit non-existent radar into refurbished fifty year old aircraft, eh?

 

[NormanB]

Exactly, but there is a terribly tendency for the military to demand something slightly different from what's readily available on the market. Because, of course, nobody ever got a pay rise and promotion for saying "Just buy a thousand Garmin E-trexes - we can probably beat 'em down to seventy five quid a pop" when the alternative is "let's run a five year procurement programme to specify and commission something very nearly the same as a Garmin E-trex at ten grand a time".

And so we and up with a string of military projects which go over budget and, if they deliver, never come close to spec. Why should we buy off-the-shelf AWACs from Boeing when we could fit non-existent radar into refurbished fifty year old aircraft, eh?

Of course you would agree that buying off the shelf is the right thing to do always? Like sending snatch Land Rovers out to Afghanistan? Nice one that must have saved a few bob.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Of course you would agree that buying off the shelf is the right thing to do always? Like sending snatch Land Rovers out to Afghanistan? Nice one that must have saved a few bob.

You introduced the word "always". I didn't.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

As for the Snatch Landrover ... I wonder how many lives would have been saved if we had just bought off-the-shelf Cougars instead of spending years trying to develop a home-grown alternative?

 

[NormanB]

You introduced the word "always". I didn't.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

As for the Snatch Landrover ... I wonder how many lives would have been saved if we had just bought off-the-shelf Cougars instead of spending years trying to develop a home-grown alternative?

The clear intention of your contribution was to generalise with 'terrible tendency'. I responded appropriately.
Don't cry when you are called out.