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The aircraft carriers do not suddenly stop costing money one they're built. You have to man them, fuel them, do maintenance.
Paying a crew of several thousand (who apparently have to stand on deck and wave their willies at Argentina so it's quite a specialised job requiring extensive training investment) plus all the other associated costs is a hell of a lot more than just the build cost.
Then divide the nhs costs by the number of people that will benefit from it.
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Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after youI'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
The various forces don't tend to complain of the cancerous press when they're dropping snippets to that press in order to put some pressure on government. That's the problem with dealing the press whether you're a military force or a reality star: one day, they'll bite you in the arse.
But firstly it breaks down entirely if we buy foreign-made systems (eg American) because that money is then permanently lost to this country, and secondly it would always still be possible to spend the money, generate the jobs and tax income etc by making something that is actually useful instead.
I don't dispute that we need to spend money on defence. It's actually the single most basic and important duty of a state - to protect its citizens. But I do completely disagree with the idea that we need to spend money on things which "give us the ability to project power around the world". We no longer have an empire, and poking our noses into other people's countries has caused almost nothing but trouble both for those countries and for ourselves.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
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Rightly or wrongly, you have the carriers because there may be some other need that we haven't yet seen coming. Given the lead time on building them, you can't build them when the need arises.
The other side of that, is that a lot of effort was put into battleships in the build up to WW2 that would have been better spent on carriers. We may be reaching the point where the traditional carrier is going the way of the battleship. Who knows?
It says so in our national anthem
Perhaps all that expertise could be used to make something that is beneficial and that we would have no qualms about selling t even the most despotic of dictators.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
In fact I'd go further and say we need to more fully fund the armed services and specifically reverse the decline in naval funding over the last few decades.
Ideally we'd back that up with improvements in military procurement and purchase more from UK manufacturers and suppliers.
I think there might have been some better planning around the delivery of these, but with Gordon Brown involved that was pretty much a given!
They're pretty cool considering they can be deployed in waters the world over.
The first, is as the guardians of Britain and it's territories. The force in being capable of defending or re-taking land belonging to us which has been taken by someone else. The most obvious example of us doing this in our recent past was the Falklands War, which depended on Aircraft Carriers for the win. Also crucial were other uncommon military capabilities we maintain, at some significant cost.
The second, complementary objective is what we bring to the table as (lets face it) a junior partner in the Pax Americana. This is the role we have played in Kosovo, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Syria etc. Britain to pull it's weight (and indeed exceed it) in this role, has certain exceptional capabilities for a country of our size. One of these has always been to take on a role otherwise requiring the deployment of a US Carrier Battle Group. Before, this has been heavily restricted by the capabilities of our old baby Invincible class carriers, but their success in deployment for years was always admired and respected by the USN. We now are building a capability with the QE class and F-35 that we could genuinely deploy a CBG of our own with comparable capability to the US CBGs. Only France currently maintains this ability some of the time, we will have it all the time, with better planes.
We also, FWIW, maintain a deployable ready-reaction force of troops and air lift capability which can be deployed pretty much anywhere in the world. This is something really only the US, France and the UK can do (with China soon to join the club, no doubt). Britain also has a large capable fleet of transport aircraft and tankers which would be relied upon by our European allies if there was a major conflict.
Britain maintains a respectable fleet of nuclear attack submarines, in fact we are generally regarded as one of the world's most deadly employers of same, with only the USA and Russia in the same club. We have the ability to land a battalion of troops on an opposed amphibious operation, and support and supply them. We also have a significant capability at anti-submarine warfare, and an anti-air warfare capability from the Type 45 Destroyers regarded as world leading.
Unfortunately...
We also have a massive budget deficit, a government struggling to balance the books and terrified of tax rises, an NHS at full stretch, a pending massive unknown with Brexit and a productivity crisis.
As a result globally what military force really depends on, economic and industrial capability and cold hard cash, are in extremely short supply. Therefore the QE class carriers, an expensive military luxury when we are struggling to keep even the most basic capabilities paid for, can easily be made out to be a massive white elephant.
But we do have them now, so we may as well stick the planes on them, get them operational and try to pay for them, keep them crewed and keep the escort and sub fleets to a sensible capability to protect them. With the current MOD budget situation this is challenging, and leads to such terrifying thoughts leaked to the press of essentially getting rid of the Royal Marines aforementioned landing capabilities.
We aren't alone, we are part of NATO and if the current stand-off with Russia gets worse, or if god forbid there was a war in the Far East, we might be glad of being able to send a big well-defended warship with stealth aircraft to take part in the USA's next conflict, rather than having to deploy some troops on the ground.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.