On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 19:11:37 +0000, Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , phil hunt
writes
On 23 Dec 2003 16:07:42 GMT, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Possibly. Another interpretation is that it's in continuation of
british policy of getting bad value for money in military equipment.
Another example of the same policy is the MRAV armoured vehicle:
Britain spent large amounts of money developing an 8x8 wheeled
vehicle (why? there are plenty of others on the market, and its a
mature technology so no big breakthroughs are possible),

See any hybrid diesel/electric 8x8s out there?

Does it matter? There are plenty of vehicles. both military and non
military, that manage to work perfectly well without being
diesel/electric. One must consider how much extra it costs to
develop and produce a D/E vehicle, and whether the money might not
be better spent otherwise,

Or any rapidly
reconfigurable vehicles available off-the-shelf?

Again, is it really that big a deal? If it is a big deal (which I
doubt) a reconfigurable vehicle could be produced by starting with
an existing chassis (which would have had all the bugs ironed out
of it and therefore be reliable, cut off the rear half of the
superstructure, drill some holes for bolts, and

MRAV had some goals, none of the off-the-shelf candidates met them,
turns out MRAV didn't either. But then MRAV wasn't too expensive.

If you work out the ratio of what it cost divided by the amount of
military benefit Britian got from it, it was infinitely expensive.

MRAV cost (from memory, so probably wrong) Britain $200 million, for
which we could have bought about 400 vehicles such as the Patria AMV
or XA series. (Less if configured with fancier weapons, of course).

BTW, do you (or anyone else) have design specs for FRES? As in
weight, armament, armour, etc.

The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
something wrong here.

Not really, no. The UK buys the strategic lift and the support
infrastructure to be able to put troops, tanks, ships and aircraft far
overseas and fight: other countries concentrate on headline-grabbing
numbers of frontline assets but aren't able to send them anywhere (and
aren't tested in their ability to commit them to combat).

There is a good transport infrastructure throughout Europe and in
any big war near this part of the world, I'm sure all European
countries would be able to cope, for example taking up civilian
assets such as aircraft. In other words, the transport etc assets
the UK is getting seem to be aimed at allowing it to fight
medium-sized wars with minimum (political and economic) disruption
to the rest of society.

It seems to me that there are 3 roles the UK armed forced can play:

1. small operations, typically peacekeeping or peacemaking,
involving a few infantry battalions, e.g. in ex-Yugosolavia or
Sierra Leone.

2. "poodling"; i.e. a force that gives a veneer of internationality
on an American invasion. This is a symbolic act (since the
USA's decision to go to war isn't affected by the size of the
poodle force) and can in principle be done with symbolic forces,
e.g. a brigade or so.

3. a big war in which vital national interests are at stake, and the
nation's entire military force is used in the struggle.

It seems to me that the UK is optimising its forces for type 2
conflicts at the expense of type 3 conflicts.

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