In message <h4qbqf$ihd$1@news.eternal-september.org>, William Black
william.black@hotmail.co.uk> writes
Paul J. Adam wrote:

The historical record on predicting "who will our enemy be?" over a
decade or two is, well, pretty appalling really...

Not sure about that one.

They seem to have been bang on since about 1932...

Where's the memo dated 1945 or earlier, warning that we can expect to
deploy in strength to Korea?

Suez is maybe Perfidious Albion doing business as usual, but I'm not
sure it was planned or prepared (if only because having Hunters escort
Canberras from Cyprus shows either poor planning or dreadful innumeracy,
and while the crabs may not always be bright they tend to have a good
idea about fuel states).

Likewise Kuwait '61 wasn't particularly predicted or planned for.

The only one they claim they didn't see coming was Argentina, but,
interestingly, the previous Labour government did...

I was Army (well, reservist) in 1989. Two or three years from the start
of a lively engagement in the Balkans (battlegroups of troops,
artillery, aircraft carriers, lots of fun) and nobody at the time
mentioned it was coming or admitted to any planning for it. Kosovo might
have been envisaged as a follow-on but actually seemed to catch lots of
people on the hop. (No bases, no support, and Harriers having to use
unguided weapons through cloud because they couldn't find a land base,
couldn't land back on the carriers with weapons, so had to ditch what
they didn't drop on targets: so the Treasury wouldn't allow them to fly
with PGMs - a data point for 'any carrier, and preferably a better
carrier')

But then our little 1990-91 warlet with that nice friendly Saddam
Hussein (you know, sunglasses, moustache, beret, keeps the nasty
Iranians at bay) was only two years ahead of my attestation date. I
signed up to fight the Red Horde if Big Mistake 3 ever happened (and was
so good at it the USSR promptly collapsed in horror at the prospect of
taking me on) and nobody, but nobody, had said anything about a war in a
hot and sandy place. Indeed, we'd recently sold off all our old desert
combat clothing... to Iraq. Oops. (Hence all those 1990 pictures of
British troops in Saudi, wandering around in tropical combats until the
first deliveries of desert DPM came through).

Don't recall anyone predicting our involvement in Sierra Leone before it
happened.

And can you find me someone in any position of authority, writing in
1996 about our upcoming deployment to Afghanistan?

Most recently, we were lucky as fuck with Highbrow that Illustrious and
Gloucester were coming through Suez at the time and could be told "you
know you were going to turn left? Hang a right instead... and watch for
C802s" otherwise our nationals there would have been trying to hitch-hike.


Life was easier back in the Cold War days and even then we got caught
out. Now, the only certainty is that whatever we plan for, we won't get;
but we have the problem that non-state actors like Lebanese Hizbollah
now have more and better ASCMs than Argentina did in 1982. Doesn't mean
we have to go out fully tooled up for a fight... we just need
politicians willing to admit that it's got too scary and expensive to
play, so we're staying home and accepting the consequences.

Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message <h4q518$fri$1@news.eternal-september.org>, William Black
william.black@hotmail.co.uk> writes
I see that you agree with me.

What we don't need are a bunch of high performance carrier borne
fighter bombers...

In fact the old 'Harrier carriers', or even the low cost solution as
typified by HMS Ocean, is looking like a much better solution to any
foreseeable problem than the big expensive complicated fixed wing
carriers...

Several points there. Ocean apparently isn't proving as "low cost" in
service as her advocates suggested she might be - the reduced building
costs are having a downstream impact. Not crippling, but noticeable.
(Albion and Bulwark have similar issues).

They could do the 'escort carrier' thing and build them on cheap
merchant hulls and throw them away. There's no credible maritime 'blue
water' threat in the five years the government allows for threat
evaluation, and you can bet The Treasury will be shouting this very
loudly indeed.

The carriers aren't that complicated: the expensive parts are the air
wing, the command suite and the combat system, and you need all of
those for each ship whether you're buying a 40,000-ton carrier that
can embark 20 aircraft[1], or a 60,000-ton carrier that can take over
fifty. If you're only going to get two, get two good ones: two bigger
carriers are a lot cheaper than three or four smaller ones adding up
to the same capacity.

But it doesn't look, at the moment, as if a fixed wing element is
necessary. They could build something big enough to stash the big stuff
downstairs and still not fit all the clever stuff for the fixed wing
aircraft, which are, as you say, where the real costs fall.

The only people who are a credible 'blue water' threat are either on our
side or not in a position to go to war.

China doesn't look like being a problem for at least a decade and the
radical Muslims aren't 'wet bobs'.

Fighting terrorists means close air support and destruction of training

Fighting terrorists means close air support and destruction of training
bases.

The ability to destroy the airfields and shore batteries of middle
ranking countries may also be needed. Some of that can be performed
using missiles.

Andrew Swallow wrote:

Police handle individuals and small gangs. Armies need defeating by

Fighting terrorists means close air support and destruction of training
bases.

Do a deal with the people where they live. It's a police matter.

The ability to destroy the airfields and shore batteries of middle
ranking countries may also be needed. Some of that can be performed
using missiles.

Then you're no longer dealing with terrorists but agents of the state
and you need to go to war to get them shut down.

Who do you think we need to invade who we have a reasonable chance of
conquering by ourselves?

It does not have to be by ourselves, we just have to fight the forces