I have always wanted to find time to read a national audit office report particularly on our defence industry. They are surprisingly accessible this one is about the Type 45:
http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/0809295.pdf
Building any sort of warship is an expensive exercise and the NAO are looking at cost overruns and how they could be mitigated. The government is always looking to secure "hi-tech" jobs as well as provide a capability. They generally achieve both but at greater cost.
These are really expensive warships, and Britain only ended up buying 6 of the planned 12. Each ship is just over £1bn. This buys the UK a "state of the art" air defence capability.
Some of the claims feel a little over stretched, a lot of the time making you feel the need to know that one ship is more capable then many Type 42 put together.
The problem lies in that with two aircraft carriers on the way, only one would be able to be at sea with 2 or 3 Type 45's as escort. We've bought an expensive capability and too little of it to be useful for our constrained budget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_45_destroyer#Propulsion
No comments:
Post a Comment