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Dear The Register,
Please dont follow the tabloids into the shameful world of sensationalism and ignoring the fact's that get in the way of a good ol blamed filled story.
For one, I am very happy that the MOD do not just focus on ongoing operations. They have to plan for every eventuality. It's all very well equipping your forces to fight only in the middle east and Asia but what happens when a conflict occurs somewhere else?.
It is simply irresponsible to judge the MOD unfairly and negativity because every single procurement does not fit the exact requirements of the war in the Afghanistan. I use the term War for want of a better word, War implies that it can be won.
It is the MOD's responsibility to consider what has been, what is happening now and what might happen in the future while considering new equipment.
The lead time's on military hardwareare absurd i agree, but there is little competition. If the MOD were to say, right, we like Aircraft A and Aircraft B, the first one to get it ready for operations in the next 8 years including operational testing to ensure that quality is up to standard (an arbitrary but reasonable time frame) get's the contract. Now off you go.
You wait and see how quick these aircraft get developed then.
The comments somebody made about the Navy not be able to defend it's self during the Falklands are correct.
Wow, it is pure chance that our carriers were not sunk by Exocet, pure chance. They were fired at the Carrirer but hit Gallahd instead killing 50 Welsh Guards injuring 50 more.
The problem i have with that statement is that we were not fighting a 3rd world airforce, they had pretty much the same era of technology as us, The very latest French built Exocet anti shipping missile, Mirage etc...
Credit to the RN for shooting so many of them down (83 aircraft destroyed) but we lost 5 ship's, an awful lot of hardware along with them including 5 Chinooks hundreds of casualties. In fact the Argies inflicted more damage on us from a hardware resources point of view than we did on them. Only thanks to the Argentine's incredibly poor judgment and intelligence coupled with some good old British steel and elbow grease did we win that war.
Anyway, to the Register - can you please go back to writing factual, interesting and thought provoking articles instead of sensationalist, opinionated tabloid'esq rubbish and is a waste of your time and ours. This is what The Sun is for.
I have heard you fip flop between "buy it from the Americans, they already have cheaper and better ones available" to " our dependence on the American tech blah blah blah".
Come on will you, i'm sure you didnt start writing for a living to generate mindless rubbish just to get paid, grow a spine and write an article you can be proud of :-)