Oh and Labour just raised taxes. I mean... this is a country where people are paying 40% on incomes after 50,000 pounds. No offense to any British people, but you're pretty broke.
Oh and Labour just raised taxes. I mean... this is a country where people are paying 40% on incomes after 50,000 pounds. No offense to any British people, but you're pretty broke.
Lethe
Captain
A few days ago the UK government announced the latest round of defence cuts, retiring five ships: both of the RN's LPDs HMS Albion and Bulwark, the frigate HMS Northumberland, and the tankers HMS Wave Ruler and Wave Knight.
The retirement of HMS Northumberland will bring the Royal Navy down to a total of fourteen missile-armed surface combatants in service, of which five are currently undergoing refits.
Navy Lookout offers a measured but nonetheless sombre assessment of the situation:
It strikes me that this at least superficially similar to what is going on in Australia at the moment. On the one hand, the mainstream parties are hyperventilating about unprecedented threats to national security and announcing ever more grandiose plans for future capabilities, while on the other hand existing assets are being retired left and right for efficiency gains owing to shortages of personnel and the economics of maintenance and repair against return on investment, etc. Within a certain narrow framework, this makes sense. Yet, if the threat is so dire, a naive observer might enquire just how the RN or RAN can justify drawing down on present capabilities irrespective of the short-medium-term efficiencies derived from doing so? After all, those capabilities may be needed at any time. The obvious answer to this question is that, despite all their bluster, the UK and Australian governments do not actually believe their own propaganda about the threat environment and as such are unwilling to increase military funding to levels sufficient to both maintain capabilities in the present whilst also funding development programs for the future.
Yet there is a deeper issue here: current cuts are justified in order to advance future grandiose plans, to be fueled by increased spending. Yet if the money can't be found now, why should one assume, as it is assumed, that the money will be found later? Indeed, the progressive ageing of the population base over the next generation, with corresponding implications for both healthcare costs and the relative size of the taxation base, suggests that budgets are likely to be squeezed ever more tightly between competing priorities going forward. In all likelihood, the increased funding that is envisioned to bring these future plans to fruition will not eventuate, or will do so only partially. In all likelihood, envisioned production orders will ultimately be cut back, and per-unit costs will therefore increase beyond those originally budgeted for. Perhaps ships will be completed, only to be sold off to nations that can afford to crew them. When the demands of the Treasury require the axe to be swung on future grandiose plans, the resulting cuts are likely to be considerably uglier and more compromising than if more modest plans had been pursued in the first place.
The retirement of HMS Northumberland will bring the Royal Navy down to a total of fourteen missile-armed surface combatants in service, of which five are currently undergoing refits.
Navy Lookout offers a measured but nonetheless sombre assessment of the situation:
It strikes me that this at least superficially similar to what is going on in Australia at the moment. On the one hand, the mainstream parties are hyperventilating about unprecedented threats to national security and announcing ever more grandiose plans for future capabilities, while on the other hand existing assets are being retired left and right for efficiency gains owing to shortages of personnel and the economics of maintenance and repair against return on investment, etc. Within a certain narrow framework, this makes sense. Yet, if the threat is so dire, a naive observer might enquire just how the RN or RAN can justify drawing down on present capabilities irrespective of the short-medium-term efficiencies derived from doing so? After all, those capabilities may be needed at any time. The obvious answer to this question is that, despite all their bluster, the UK and Australian governments do not actually believe their own propaganda about the threat environment and as such are unwilling to increase military funding to levels sufficient to both maintain capabilities in the present whilst also funding development programs for the future.
Yet there is a deeper issue here: current cuts are justified in order to advance future grandiose plans, to be fueled by increased spending. Yet if the money can't be found now, why should one assume, as it is assumed, that the money will be found later? Indeed, the progressive ageing of the population base over the next generation, with corresponding implications for both healthcare costs and the relative size of the taxation base, suggests that budgets are likely to be squeezed ever more tightly between competing priorities going forward. In all likelihood, the increased funding that is envisioned to bring these future plans to fruition will not eventuate, or will do so only partially. In all likelihood, envisioned production orders will ultimately be cut back, and per-unit costs will therefore increase beyond those originally budgeted for. Perhaps ships will be completed, only to be sold off to nations that can afford to crew them. When the demands of the Treasury require the axe to be swung on future grandiose plans, the resulting cuts are likely to be considerably uglier and more compromising than if more modest plans had been pursued in the first place.
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Hard Left party increases taxes to bloat the state further, it's a political decision, not an economic one (economically illiterate though)
GCA seems like a newer 5th gen aircraft. Like the jump from Mirage 2000 to Rafale(not even F-16 to KF-21). It really is not a sixth gen like the Chinese and US, which seem to use all new design concepts. Compare this to NGAD concept or this new Chinese 3 engine. Not even close.
GCA promises all the 6th gen features, including advanced engines with extreme energy/heatloss metrics, from the day 1. And there's RR behind those promises, which isn't exactly behind China in engines.
If anything, let's see of course, but I am not yet sold that we see something especially conceptually new with j-xx.
Big isn't new, big is simply that - big. For other things, let us see the thing first. J-XX also has to deliver.
Yes, GCA retains vertical stabilizers, but it isn't obvious that anyone other than US, maybe, will be able to drop them before 2040. Maybe, because US also has to DOGE their way out of debt first.
DOGE did not slash military budget.
Tell me what RR has achieved comparable to China/US, or even Russia.
China moving toward large stealth interceptor like design is unlike any pre-existing aircraft ever. Not unless you count NGAD variants.
Su-57 also promised plenty of extreme features.
We'll believe them when the platform drops and see what it looks like, same as with J-XD and NGAD.
Everything about Tempest and now GCAP seems to just be an a modernized version of F-22. All of that is fine, but it is essentially a 5.5 gen aircraft. There is really nothing about it that would make it a 6th gen aircraft.
The part that separates 5th and 6th gen manned aircraft isn't the engine, but the much longer range, the much higher power electrical platform with huge space for radar, EW, communication antennas, AI computation, power supply and cooling system needed for all of that. All of this while having significantly improved all aspects stealth.
I actually don't know how you get to that level of electrical platform without the aircraft being just huge.
I think we are all eagerly waiting to see what CAC's 6th gen look like, but if it's planform looks like GCAP model, then it would be a disappointment.
Future again.
(1)Ej-2000 is already basically a 5th gen engine, with inlet temperature and thrust ratio just baaarely below ws-15. It's operational for two decades though, and ws-15 is not, as of 12/2024.
From tech level perspective, ej-2000 is higher than "even russian" 117(117s) - one may argue it's simply newer basic design, but the fact stands. 117/117s, in turn, is the best operational Chinese engine, still ahead of ws-13c in every metric.
Apart from that, RR also did F136.
(2)being large isn't exactly sign of anything, unless you consider fuel tank volume as technology metric.
Small stealth fighter the size of ARL Piranha can be no less advanced than large stealth fighter the size of J-xx.
Being large is a sign of unique Chinese operational requirement, aimed at disrupting US order of battle in Pacific theater. Just as being large was a sign of unique operational requirement of Russian arctic interceptors.
All key aspects of 6th gen, including LO, advanced architecture aspects, CCA and adaptive engine, are listed for GCAP.
F-22 can't even be fully updated to 2020s level, and openly struggles to even keep up; comparing this dead end to anything is disingenuous. GCAP was listed as open platform with CCA integration as the basic design goal from day 0. F-22, as it seems, may not even be able to work with them at all.
I also don't really get 5.5/6 gen separation in the context of those two. VLO? if j-xx has stabilizers as reported, I don't see how we differentiate. Unless, of course, we fall into f-16.net level turtling, and any unfavourable input is countered with a block phrase "but us technology".
What is 5.5 and 6 gen respectively about J-XX and GCAP? 3 engines? Will a 12-engine aircraft be more advanced still?
(1)GCAP lists all of those(as does FCAS, it isn't kind of knowledge that only we at sinodefense has access to). Also, while the engine is most certainly not important, the high-power electrical platform must come from somewhere.
(2)I am very firmly against considering range and size generational metrics. They were generational metrics for battleships - because those were effectively stuck technologically, and growing size was the only way to increase combat efficiency.
Range is a metric of geography and requirement. Flanker isn't higher generation than F-22, after all.
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