RN vs Daily Mail

[Kukri]

This time, possibly for the first time in my life, I am wholly on the side of the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...billion-Royal-Navy-fleet-hardly-went-sea.html

The Royal Navy are a bad joke. There is nobody in the whole of the organisation who either knows how to do their job or who does a day’s work.

If the excuse is that the propulsion system shuts down in warm water (allegedly because it was under specified by the MOD) why did two of these fancy toys not spend a single day away from Portsmouth in 2017.

There is nothing difficult about a cut and shut to instal a diesel generator or two; it happens every day, with a lot of change from £160M, the work can be done in a few days and the sea trials can be done in hours.

The only thing the Navy are good at is getting each other pregnant.

Sack the lot of them, stop their pensions and close down BAE systems.

In other news, China just commissioned five similar ships. But theirs go to sea...

 

[Mark-1]

This time, possibly for the first time in my life, I am wholly on the side of the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...billion-Royal-Navy-fleet-hardly-went-sea.html

The Royal Navy are a bad joke. There is nobody in the whole of the organisation who either knows how to do their job or who does a day’s work.

If the excuse is that the propulsion system shuts down in warm water (allegedly because it was under specified by the MOD) why did two of these fancy toys not spend a single day away from Portsmouth in 2017.

There is nothing difficult about a cut and shut to instal a diesel generator or two; it happens every day, with a lot of change from £160M, the work can be done in a few days and the sea trials can be done in hours.

The only thing the Navy are good at is getting each other pregnant.

Sack the lot of them, stop their pensions and close down BAE systems.

In other news, China just commissioned five similar ships. But theirs go to sea...

Can't fault any of that, but building ships and weapons systems for the Navy subsidises a load of high-tech jobs in the uk. We might find the Navy turns a profit for the UK. Not least in terms of maintaining a skilled workforce. I know a ton of quality technical people who got their start on Defence projects.

I strongly suspect the RN isn't there for the reasons we all think it's there for!

 

[Kukri]

Can't fault any of that, but building ships and weapons systems for the Navy subsidises a load of high-tech jobs in the uk. We might find the Navy turns a profit for the UK. Not least in terms of maintaining a skilled workforce. I know a ton of quality technical people who got their start on Defence projects.

I strongly suspect the RN isn't there for the reasons we all think it's there for!

It’s there to get it’s officers SNO jobs through the finest old boy network in Britain and of course to pay for BAE Systems.

But I fancy that it is quite a while since we last exported a proper new warship and when we did the company that built it was Vosper Thorneycroft.

 

[mainsail1]

And now the brand new HMS Forth is so badly built they have had to take her out of service and revert to HMS Tyne. The incompetence has no end .... I prefer to go sailing and shut my eyes and ears to it all.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Look on the bright side. If any part of our armed forces was competent, we might get as much trouble as the Americans do.

 

[lw395]

Can't fault any of that, but building ships and weapons systems for the Navy subsidises a load of high-tech jobs in the uk. We might find the Navy turns a profit for the UK. Not least in terms of maintaining a skilled workforce. I know a ton of quality technical people who got their start on Defence projects.

I strongly suspect the RN isn't there for the reasons we all think it's there for!

We put a great deal of R&D money into defence technology from the 50s through to the 80s. We had electronics people working for Ferranti, Marconi, Plessey, GEC and so forth, all getting training on military products and keeping us at the forefront of electronics.
But it's been extremely poor at supporting civilian high tech jobs. I think it's actually been destructive, all the effort and best people went into military programmes, now we have very little. There are very few UK component manufacturers, chip foundaries, not much computer hardware industry. Likewise we don't do trains or commercial ships very much.
I don't think throwing money at HMS Big Liz will have done much to create a workforce able to build commercial ships competitively.