Comments by "Billy Bob" (@davidrobertsemail) on "Up Close To Britain’s Most Powerful Warship: HMS Queen Elizabeth | Forces TV" video.

Shame it’s a ski jump. At 65,000 should have had catapults for the proper f35s No frigates either. Sad state of affairs indeed.
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Correct about the destroyers and frigates. The current number is a joke. We had 42 frigates in 1982 13 now And they keep cutting back on their replacements. Eg type 31!!
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Tea Lover 65,000 ton with no catapults? That’s quantity not quality. 13 frigates. With half of their replacements being type 31s That’s neither quality or quantity. I wish it wasn’t so but don’t kid yourself.
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MidgetDylan the NHS is a joke as is the education system. Overfunded not underfunded. Gold plated pensions in both fields and early retirement guaranteed. Incompetence runs rife in both government run sectors. The military has been gutted for decades. In 1982 we had 42 frigates. Now 13
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Mark Cooke we don’t have enough of either frigates or destroyers. 1982 we had 42 frigates now we have 13 and they aren’t being replaced with nearly enough. Hence the cost cutting from 12 to 6 destroyers and the cost cutting measure of the type 31s. Simply put if this shop goes to sea we don’t have any ships elsewhere. It’s numbers that are the problem.
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Kwek Jeng Yong the design of these carriers was decided by politicians who wanted to save money. They chose to have ski ramps instead of catapults for political reasons not defense driven requirements. That was decided by then chancellor Gordon Brown. The next PM David Cameron wanted to install catapults by because of his cost cutting to the military budget stuck with cheaper ski ramps. Both these governments between them cut the number of replacement frigates and destroyers significantly from the already inadequate number. So the whole history of military spending on these projects has been a farce. The end result is a large carrier with short range jets with low payloads and not enough ships for the navy. Notwithstanding no carrier capability for over a decade and the loss of skills associated with it. The whole thing has been a shambles.
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Mac 73 well said. Encounters require missiles. For every ship added you significantly increase your chances of winning. We simply don’t have enough ships.
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David Houseman ships can’t stay at sea all the time. That halves the fleet. 6 destroyers and 13 frigates is pathetic. It’s a big world and if we want a blue navy we have to pay for it. What we have is a part time blue navy. We used to have a full time one. Nothing against the people in it at all but these big shiny ships are white elephants without decent aircraft and the ships needed to project power. It’s sad.
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David Houseman also I would add that the decision to only buy 8 type 26s and make up with the 5 type 31s is a bigger cut again. The type 31s won’t be frigates they will call them that but in reality they will be corvettes much less capable. Nothing against them at all they are valuable but type 26s are capable and what is required.
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David Houseman the US operates both With catapults and without. The ones without aren’t deemed carriers. They serve different needs so yes in some instances the smaller America/wasp class is required but it’s certainly not better. The f35bs have low payload and range which defeats the point of two 65,000 ton aircraft carriers. FYI HMS Invincible class was 22,000 tons. If we wanted ski jumps we should have built ski jump carriers a third of the size and built three. This current choice is a mess. Two hulking carriers with short range jets and only enough ships to guard them. Any other blue navy operations have been gutted to pay for them. We are pretending to be one of the big boys with big shiny elephants but we can’t even protect our ships in the gulf as we don’t have any frigates to do so. I’m repeating myself but we had 42 frigates in 1982 and still didn’t have enough to avoid an invasion. Now we are cutting to 8 real frigates and 5 type 31s
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David Houseman 5 31s and 8 26s simply are not enough. It’s not about doing more. It’s about have a full time blue water navy. Building 65,000 carriers without catapults is dumb. Only have 6 destroyers and 8 frigates and 5 fancy corvettes simply isn’t enough. These “Strategic” defense decisions are shambolic. Driven by cost cutting as they are too weak to cut costs where they should. The navy simply doesn’t have enough ships. You can still be proud of those serving and recognize that. In 4 years we may be able to send a carrier group out but any other commitments be dammed. Sustained operations simply are not possible with a carrier group at sea. There is no redundancy for shore leave, repairs or resupply. We need 30 frigates and 15 destroyers. But to pay for that domestic welfare spending would need to be cut.
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VIPICCB6 the latter half of my last post was in regards to the cheaper type 31s As to the limited number of f35s we will be getting it applies as well to the f35bs which are a compromise on such a large carrier.
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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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David Houseman because they need repairs, resupply and shore leave.
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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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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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sensible driver it’s 65,000 tons. It’s not like they couldn’t find the space.
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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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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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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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MI6 the Ford class is the best in the world.
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David Houseman we aren’t going to agree. Thanks for keeping it polite though. :-)
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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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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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