? Dark Christmas | Main | You can kill people with sound ?
December 10, 2007
Britanniae Romano nomini in perpetuum sublatae
Most of the Royal Navy is to stay in port next year as £15 billion is cut from the defence budget over the next ten years. Expect voters in key Labour marginals to shrug as voters in Labour's core seats throw candy to children in the streets. No need for the Thames to freeze over; the river has already been forded.
“The navy is looking at what options they have because the amount of funding is just not there,” one source said. “The overheating of the equipment budget is putting pressure on everyone.” The only major exercise expected to go ahead is Orion 08, in which the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, the destroyer Edinburgh and the frigate Westminster will head for the Gulf, defence sources said.
The navy is now resigned to losing five frigates, four Type22s and one Type23, taking it down to a record low of just 20 destroyers and frigates – insufficient to mount a major taskforce without coalition help.
All significant projects are threatened, including the navy’s two new aircraft carriers, which could be delayed after a campaign by the RAF to undermine the rationale behind their procurement and that of the Joint Combat Aircraft that will fly off them.
The navy is now resigned to losing five frigates, four Type22s and one Type23, taking it down to a record low of just 20 destroyers and frigates – insufficient to mount a major taskforce without coalition help.
All significant projects are threatened, including the navy’s two new aircraft carriers, which could be delayed after a campaign by the RAF to undermine the rationale behind their procurement and that of the Joint Combat Aircraft that will fly off them.
So Honorius wrote to the Britons: You will have to look to your own defenses; the state is no longer willing to do so.
Tangentially related: Organs from drug addicts used in transplants. So this is England. Not so much a nation as a warning to others.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at December 10, 2007 06:14 AM