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Post by Baron von Lotsov on May 11, 2024 4:24:39 GMT
We spend money on defence to prevent war by providing a deterrent.
The money we spend can either be used to buy foreign weapons or to make them ourselves.
If we buy foreign weapons we risk being cut off from that supply, rendering us vulnerable or subject to control by that foreign power who supplies us.
Now here is the pisser. If we make them ourselves the cost depends to a very large extent of how many we produce. This is because there is a huge fixed cost in setting up the production lines and in R and D. To make it cost-effective to produce our own we have to export to other buyers. The more we export, the cheaper our arms are, but in the grand scheme of the universe there is the law of no free lunch. The more we export, the more dangerous the world becomes, so the more weapons we need to defend ourselves. This is for two reasons. We may supply to an ally who turns agaisnt us, or the weapons themselves get into the wrong hands, e.g. via corruption in countries we have no control over, except the threat of withdrawing supply.
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Post by Vinny on May 11, 2024 6:19:04 GMT
Blame Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Blame dictatorships. Blame their aggression.
Without such evil in the world we wouldn't need a military to keep us safe. But such scum are in the world and so we do.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on May 11, 2024 9:55:22 GMT
Blame Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Blame dictatorships. Blame their aggression. Without such evil in the world we wouldn't need a military to keep us safe. But such scum are in the world and so we do. Why don't you deal with problem posed in the OP? |
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Post by Dan Dare on May 11, 2024 11:00:05 GMT
There is another approach: joint development and production with like-minded allies. In a European mutual-assistance organisation it would be easy to form such arrangements, in fact until 2016 it was probably the default approach. Since then the UK has attempted to go it alone and has ended up purchasing many of its more modern weapons systems off the shelf from the US.
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Post by Pacifico on May 11, 2024 11:26:42 GMT
There is another approach: joint development and production with like-minded allies. In a European mutual-assistance organisation it would be easy to form such arrangements, in fact until 2016 it was probably the default approach. Since then the UK has attempted to go it alone and has ended up purchasing many of its more modern weapons systems off the shelf from the US.such as? |
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Post by Dan Dare on May 11, 2024 11:29:09 GMT
F35?
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on May 11, 2024 11:58:30 GMT
There is another approach: joint development and production with like-minded allies. In a European mutual-assistance organisation it would be easy to form such arrangements, in fact until 2016 it was probably the default approach. Since then the UK has attempted to go it alone and has ended up purchasing many of its more modern weapons systems off the shelf from the US. A couple of observations:
This idea of a consortium comprising of many allies certainly helps keep costs down, but applying the no free lunch rule, we see it causes us to lose our independence which is the cornerstone of sovereignty under the UN charter etc. If we do joint manufacturing, it tends to encourage that to spread to joint military operations. We have Nato, but there is also a little known (on the BBC) organisation called the SCO which looks to me just as powerful as NATO, but never discussed in British media. Like the soviet union it can supply arms to many of our enemies. These multinational power blocs can be very dangerous and if they were to have a war, it would be a world war. We know what that is like.
The other problem is you don't just need the help of other countries, but your costs are also dependent on a large manufacturing sector, which can only be large if it does a lot of peaceful consumer production. All your nuts and bolts for your F35 could be made in the same factories that do the nuts and bolts for the dishwashers and all the other stuff you build. The key is economy of scale. The UK and US manufacturing sector is getting more and more defence dominated as consumer production is mainly handled by China now.
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Post by borchester on May 11, 2024 15:44:17 GMT
Could we not just continue sucking up to the Yanks ? They want Pax America and are ready to pay for it so why spend our money when we can spend someone else's ?
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Post by johnofgwent on May 11, 2024 16:48:59 GMT
We spend money on defence to prevent war by providing a deterrent.
The money we spend can either be used to buy foreign weapons or to make them ourselves.
If we buy foreign weapons we risk being cut off from that supply, rendering us vulnerable or subject to control by that foreign power who supplies us.
Now here is the pisser. If we make them ourselves the cost depends to a very large extent of how many we produce. This is because there is a huge fixed cost in setting up the production lines and in R and D. To make it cost-effective to produce our own we have to export to other buyers. The more we export, the cheaper our arms are, but in the grand scheme of the universe there is the law of no free lunch. The more we export, the more dangerous the world becomes, so the more weapons we need to defend ourselves. This is for two reasons. We may supply to an ally who turns agaisnt us, or the weapons themselves get into the wrong hands, e.g. via corruption in countries we have no control over, except the threat of withdrawing supply.
As a former manufacturer and former salesman, i tell you straight, i’d sooner sell weapons i know the self destruct codes for to ‘allies’ that might later use them against us than buy from ‘allies’ who might embed and exploit similar codes in weapons they do not like us using in ways we wish It is a fact that when the US took umbrage at UK engagement with Nasser over Suez they cancelled the supply of nuclear weapons promised to our V force to highlight the degree of their annoyance, which was why my father found himself sitting in a tailors shop (ok ok a maker of industrial tailoring equipment) writing new bomb aiming software for the Avro Vulcan, from an industrial estate in Cardiff. To this day i don’t know if they USED it or whether new missiles were designed. |
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Post by johnofgwent on May 11, 2024 16:50:29 GMT
Could we not just continue sucking up to the Yanks ? They want Pax America and are ready to pay for it so why spend our money when we can spend someone else's ? we CAN if we believe they wont self destruct the stuff if we use it. I have reason to believe we cant trust them on this |
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Post by johnofgwent on May 11, 2024 16:52:39 GMT
There is another approach: joint development and production with like-minded allies. In a European mutual-assistance organisation it would be easy to form such arrangements, in fact until 2016 it was probably the default approach. Since then the UK has attempted to go it alone and has ended up purchasing many of its more modern weapons systems off the shelf from the US. Yeah The Eurofighter We did the engines, the french did the wings, and tbe spanish did tbe little transfer stickers upsized from the airfix model |
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Post by Pacifico on May 11, 2024 17:07:38 GMT
The decision to buy those was taken long before 2016 and Brexit. |
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Post by Dan Dare on May 11, 2024 17:33:27 GMT
The decision to buy those was taken long before 2016 and Brexit. That's true, although the decision on how many to buy is still to be made. Brexit wasn't the watershed for poor decisions in defence procurement, it just means the likelihood of getting out from the under the US got that much harder. There are of course other examples. Do you need to have them listed? |
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Post by Dan Dare on May 11, 2024 17:39:46 GMT
There is another approach: joint development and production with like-minded allies. In a European mutual-assistance organisation it would be easy to form such arrangements, in fact until 2016 it was probably the default approach. Since then the UK has attempted to go it alone and has ended up purchasing many of its more modern weapons systems off the shelf from the US. Yeah The Eurofighter We did the engines, the french did the wings, and tbe spanish did tbe little transfer stickers upsized from the airfix model The Germans had a bit of a hand in it as well. As did the Italians.
At least it's in service and has been for a while. Last I heard the RN is still having to borrow F35s from the USMC to populate whichever of its carriers is in service this month.
They could have had proper carriers carrying Sea Typhoons from Day One instead of the present helicopter carriers .
The Sea Typhoon has been in service with the French Navy for almost 20 years, in the guise of the Rafale M. When the UK vetoed the carrier version of the Typhoon because it didn't have any proper aircraft carriers and its US-ordained NATO role as localised ASW specialist in the NW Atlantic didn't call for it to have any, the French said Merde to this and exited the Eurofighter project.
Bad choices.
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Post by borchester on May 11, 2024 20:41:16 GMT
Could we not just continue sucking up to the Yanks ? They want Pax America and are ready to pay for it so why spend our money when we can spend someone else's ? we CAN if we believe they wont self destruct the stuff if we use it. I have reason to believe we cant trust them on this Well, we have lived under the American Aegis for the 80 odd years and it seems to have worked out well so far, with most of the bodybags going to the US rather than the rest of the Western powers. Plus the Yanks spend more than two and a half times as much on defence as the rest of Nato combined.
So if anyone wants to join the UK's battle line and pay and extra 10p on the income tax then go for it and tell the Yanks to go fly a kite,  |
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