Comments by "Billy Bob" (@davidrobertsemail) on "BFBS Forces News" channel.

  1.  @mistressofthewoods5333  I pointed out that the British military is already hollowed out and completely underfunded. Thus giving away what little we have is reckless at best. A Swede telling Brits that giving away what we have is fine and don’t worry is silly. You give away your military if you want and I’ll advocate for keeping ours.
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  2.  @mistressofthewoods5333  Britain has a third of the navy it had 40 years ago. A quarter of the tanks and half the Air Force. We don’t have the munitions to last a week in a real war. But we are giving what we need away. You really don’t know anything about the UKs capabilities or the lack of it.
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  3. Spot on. This is revisionist history. They knew how to solve the problem but they didn’t care.
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  4. Paul M except this is simply not true. In June, 2006 when this was first raised in the Lords, the defence procurement minister, Lord Drayson, insisted that these unarmoured Land Rovers provided "the level of protection we need".
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  5. Paul M the video. It suggests the minister solved the problem. In fact he was responsible.
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  6.  @jimbodimbo981  Chinese navy is the threat.
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  7.  @chrislye8912  they don’t work and there’s not enough of them. Besides what’s an aircraft carrier without aircraft?
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  8.  @jimbodimbo981  the availability of type 45s is abysmal. Only having six when 12 were planned. The purpose of the navy is to be able to fight. Peacetime sailing without sinking isn’t success. No early warning, not enough escorts and I hate to point it out but no aircraft!
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  9.  @jimbodimbo981  as I understand it there are 27 airframes available for two 65,000 ton carriers. Not enough for either carrier. Even if they were operational planes.
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  10.  @jimbodimbo981  the QE has 27 available….In theory if none require maintenance. This ship has none unless it borrows them from the QE Aircraft carriers. The clue is in the name.
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  11.  @jimbodimbo981  that was never the plan. The original order of planes was 148 and it has been cut multiple times. We will see how many we will end up with. Two aircraft carriers and not enough planes for one. A waste of money.
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  12. It is pathetic. There should be 20 plus frigates and a dozen destroyers.
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  13.  @T-1001  different ways to look at the problem. Firstly it’s priorities, we spend money on things like foreign aid and a huge welfare state. I’d say the money is available it’s just a choice. As to procurement waste you are right other countries waste money as well. It doesn’t excuse our waste or preclude us from not wasting it. As to outright defense spending we are the 6th biggest in the world which is also our GDP ranking. We are somewhere around 20th in terms of GDP defense spending. We used to spend 5% on defense during the height of the Cold War with tiny deficits. Now we spend 2% with huge deficits. We have the money. It’s a choice to spend it elsewhere. Not enough frigates but a massive public sector and nearly every Brit is in some way part of the ever growing welfare state.
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  14. 50 British pilots have been training the Chinese. I’m surprised they have time to do their day jobs. Traitors.
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  15. British pilots have been helping train the CCP to kill British and American pilots in the future. The CCP is our enemy. Russia is a joke.
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  16. @Guofu China runs concentration camps and mass organ harvesting. I know who the bad guys are.
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  17. @Guofu concentration camps, Mass sterilization and mass organ harvesting of live healthy people. Genocide.
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  18. @Guofu concentration camps. Mass sterilizations. Live organ harvesting killing the donors. That’s not happy!
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  19. @Guofu sure. Is that what you are told. Or is that what you are told to say.
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  20. @Guofu do you know the numbers you are talking about in the US? Quote me the numbers. You have millions in concentration camps. Millions of organs harvested. Mass sterilization of millions.
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  21. The MOD is too busy training Chinese pilots.
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  22. The US is drawing down munitions supply’s in South Korea and Israel. Every day China is getting stronger and we are getting weaker. Taiwan needs the weapons we are giving to Ukraine. China knows this and every day this war drags on the more likely we will have a war with China.
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  23. Men need not apply.
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  24. Giving away what we don’t have enough of already.
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  25. Imagine a day when Europeans pay for their own defense.
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  26. No mention of belt and road. “Journalism”
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  27.  @almightykingpin6322  you realize that I’m right. As to the frigates. You mean the order that was halved. Which was still less than half of what we had when the Falklands was invaded. Even the handful of new frigates won’t be all type 26s they cut that again to include less capable type 31s Don’t get me started on the few type 45s that live in port. The navy is a husk. Completely reliant on the US.
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  28.  @Bob10009  so the fleet is being cut.
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  29. David Houseman the changes were expensive because they were retrospective. No increase in spending meant less money elsewhere. Catapults are obviously better.
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  30. David Houseman because they need repairs, resupply and shore leave.
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  31. David Houseman if the type 26 is a destroyer now what’s the 45? ;-) There are always navies that call corvettes frigates and frigates destroyers. However usually 2nd world countries like Iran. Their latest destroyer is a corvette! Either way saying we don’t need frigates when politicians don’t want to pay for them reminds me of Cameron in 2010 when he gave away our recently upgraded harriers and scrapped invincible. He said we didn’t need it....six months later we needed it in Libya. Type 23s are old and our enemies won’t be using 30 year old ships so we have to keep up and modernize you can’t compare old with new as our adversaries don’t stand still. I’d like to see our navy as a full time blue water navy but it’s not. Decisions have been made that we are only a part time one. It is what it is. I’m saddened by it but I won’t pretend we are what we were or we are something that we are not just because of this big shiny ship that they are so proud of.
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  32. David Houseman I used the US in relation to the catapult point you were making no comparison. The f35b has low payload and range compared to the f35c. The beloved harrier is not in its class at all.
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  33. sensible driver it’s 65,000 tons. It’s not like they couldn’t find the space.
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  34. sensible driver I didn’t argue for nuclear I responded to the point made that there was room if needed. You don’t need nuclear for catapults. US carriers go through Suez.
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  35. sensible driver you’ve just highlighted how badly planned these carriers were. Brown interferes with them and we ended up with two huge ski jump carriers. Don’t forget Cameron scrapped our carriers in 2010 and sold off our harriers for a bag of nuts. We should have kept them until the new carriers came online. I agree it’s a farce.
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  36. David Houseman three is redundancy. Two isn’t. If we wanted ramps we could have had smaller carriers and more. The plans changed due to cost cutting. The conservatives tried to change to catapults but again they didn’t want to pay for it. Shambolic.
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  37. MI6 the Ford class is the best in the world.
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  38. David Houseman we aren’t going to agree. Thanks for keeping it polite though. :-)
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  39. MI6 I know. The C would be better on such a large carrier. More payload and range. Or 3 or 4 carriers of 22,000 tons with f35bs This is a ship designed by committee. We don’t have nearly enough ships either.
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  40. JohnB Wright true. I was exaggerating. I should have said not nearly enough. I debated the number at length above. We are getting 8 type 26 and perhaps 5 type 31 We need 15 type 45 and 30 type 26 Then we would have enough for our carrier groups and a full time blue water navy. With Rotation, resupply, repair,etc. you can halve your fleet. We simply have cut so far it’s just a part time navy now. Big ships like these are nice to show off but they are white elephants.
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  41. Imaginary aircraft
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  42. Biden picked Dudes in dresses to run the military!
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  43.  @Orbital_Inclination  you don’t have the internet?
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  44.  @Oxley016 do you know what specific ammo the Ukrainians have been given? Either way the ERA would have acted as spaced armor and the videos show the tank was still driving and all three crew got out alive. No doubt the bushmaster did some damage but what disabled the tank isn’t clear. The tank was disabled by two Bradley’s and at least one perhaps two FPV drones. The first drone likely disabled the tank.
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  45. How can you talk about this gun without mentioning lethal weapon and die hard!
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  46. Is this a joke?
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  47. If they doubled the aircraft order and doubled the destroyers and frigates then two aircraft carriers would be sensible. At best we will have one with insufficient protection.
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  48.  @jp3630 as a general rule the weaker foe loses.
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  49. Biden’s soft purge of the military.
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  50.  @dynamo1796 the navy can’t even go near the houtis without US air defense. Best in Europe!!! That’s a laugh. Europe is an absolute joke.
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