Are two new aircraft carriers
being built for all the wrong
reasons, asks ROBERT FOX |
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Just when the Army is complaining about the critical need for new Land Rovers in Afghanistan, a row is developing behind the scenes over plans to spend a fortune on two aircraft carriers for the Navy.
The expense is so high - possibly £100bn in all - that it dwarfs the controversy over the Trident replacement programme. And, just as with Trident, senior defence experts are asking whether the carriers are even necessary.
For once the Government cannot blame the media for the controversy, because the project has been almost entirely concealed from public gaze.
The row dates back to the Strategic Defence Review of 1998, when the Government declared its intention of acquiring two full-size aircraft carriers for the fleet.
Nine years down the line, it was planned to
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| The government cannot blame the media for this controversy, because the project has been concealed from public gaze |
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place contracts to build the two 60,000 tonne ships, to be named HMS Queen Elizabeth II and Prince of Wales, with a new streamlined consortium headed by BAe and Thales UK. The initial build would cost £3.6bn, though the second vessel would cost about 12 per cent more because it wouldn't be ready until 2020.
But that's just the bill for the two hulls. On top come the combat systems, radar, communications and weapons equipment that haven't even been designed yet. Finally there are the aircraft - the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by Lockheed Martin, likely to cost $48m (£24m) each. The entire cost of building and equipping the two carriers could be as much as £100bn.
But are they worth it? And are the carriers what the armed forces need in a new era of warfare?
The debate strikes to the heart of British foreign policy and strategy, and the tangled web of British defence/industrial policy, an obstacle no government has been able to tackle since 1945.
The Navy says it needs the carriers to  |
