The lack of build of the W class definitely caused problems. And the US did have problems on the Virginia class. It has turned out all right in the end, but the loss of the 8th boat will cost us in the long run. Same as the loss of 2 T-45's (whether we could man them is another thing).

The MoD have had a recent outbreak of common sense, that seems to be sticking. The Astute and Nimrod MRA.4 fiasco’s have seen to that. They’ll stick with a fairly normal spec, don’t expect MAD booms like the Indian ones, but do expect Stingray integration and some UK comms gear (which makes sense). Whether or not we…

Personally I think they missed a trick when they didn’t develop the 37mm....makes the GAU-8 look puny...

Not sure about the 1B, but Phalanx in the early versions was well known for not working that often. By the sounds of it it’s now effective, but in it’s early days the RN trialled it after the Falklands and weren’t that impressed. The Goalkeeper was picked instead. Phalanx is now carried primarily as Phalanx is…

‘Rods from God’ I believe it was nicknamed. But weaponising space is an all round bad idea, the US and USSR saw that. All it does is add a lot of money onto the defence budget.

JDAM’s are cheap. One kit is $18,000. Add in a bomb at $3,000. Total outlay $21,000. Now if those Tu-22's drop 12 bombs each thats 24 in total.Lets be generous on Russian bomb costs, say $1000 each. Thats a minimum of $24,000. Now factor in the cost of flying the aircraft per hour. An F-16 is around $23,000 per hour.…

They do. The French make their own as do the UK. Norway makes a lot of rocket motors for everyone, including the US. A lot of warheads for everyone are made in Germany...including for US weapons.

And if you saw the strike footage from that yiou’d have seen them miss....physics hasn’t changed since WW2 when it come to unguided bombs.

The graphs are out there. Google is your friend. The UK dropped from 4.5% to 2%. All in all perfectly straightforward, we weren’t maintaining a 60,000 armoured force in Northern Germany in preparation for WW3 for one. We didn’t need 16 SSN’s and 4 SSK’s either.

We’ve got thousands of Hellfires in stock. It’s the AGM-114P for the Reapers we’re after. I’m guessing that the US is struggling to get them in the quantities necessary as well. I suspect the increase in production of Hellfire is pretty much all P variants as the US and UK Reapers are using them up fast at present.

I should say though that the UK had to go down that route as the JDAM kit would not fit UK iron bombs, and JDAM is a brilliant piece of kit, on price alone it’s hard to see much else better out there.

Longer ranged as it’s finned and doesn’t follow the old bag-bag method of steering, dual mode with laser guidance and GPS as opposed to either GPS only or Laser only on JDAM. It is a LOT more expensive though. Both are being developed, there are some interesting developments on the JDAM front, but PIV will be getting…

I should mention (I did on another post), that the Hellfire we’re purchasing at present are the AGM-114P. Which are specifically for the Reaper fleet, they’re burning through a lot at present. If I was a betting man that would be the version that the manufacturers are increasing production for, I suspect they’re…

You’ll struggle getting accurate figures on stockpiles from anyone. The usual rule of thumb is to look at the original buy, add in any additional then remove any expended in combat and a reasonable sum for training. But....it’s not exact. It usually gives you a maximum, but not a minimum. For the UK for example we…

All in all the airlift and tanking fleet situation for Europe and NATO as a whole has probably never looked better (a few years to go yet though). There’s some genuine Strategic Lift and increased Tactical lift there, particularly with the A400, C-17's and the retention of the C-130J by the UK and France. There’s a…

Oh don’t worry, no offense taken at all. It’s good to have a mate you can borrow things from. It’s a 2 way street, but if we’re honest the UK has borrowed a hell of a lot from the US over the years. Lend-Lease was just one of the many, much appreciated ‘loans’. In fact we’ve got a good number of US Coastguard…

Lots of those munitions around. Viper Strike, Textron Fury (a modified Thales product), ATK Hatchet and Raytheon Pyros. Most are aimed at UAV’s.

To add to your post..

FMS is actually a fairly quick way of supplying arms internationally. It has to be said they could order from elsewhere if it was an issue. A lot of the weaponry they could get is actually, whisper it, better.

It’s not the UK who are borrowing bombs, we use the Paveway IV that the US doesn’t use, we make them in the UK, we’ve got massive stocks of Paveway 2 and Enhanced Paveway 2 as well. Brimstone is made in the UK and not used by the US. We don’t use JDAM either, Paveway IV is way better....more expensive though.