@eleonorasfalcon@cjsnowdon@SimonMagus Maybe the same way we don't let them buy cigarettes or alcohol, and people who enable those purchases are prosecuted
@AnnieEaves It was baked into FIFA from the start. Jules Rimet was clear that he was fine dealing with Hitler etc as he had a democratic idealist view. First World Cup went to Uruguay bcs they could pay for it after FIFA lost their shirt in the wall st crash
@KevinASchofield Reminds me of a Morrissey lyric, “You don't know a thing about their lives…
And if a fight broke out here tonight
You'd be the first away, because you're that type”
I am worried that the MOD has normalised "UK warships take a decade."
The data says otherwise, and the strongest counterexample is… the Royal Navy!
Type 45: six destroyers launched in five years.
Type 23: sixteen frigates, one a year.
That was the Clyde, a currently expanding shipyard, within living memory.
Cadence (“Drumbeat”) is a choice, not a capability.
Glasgow took 5+ years to float because the build profile was financed that way. We have the answers in Hansard and written evidence responses to the Defence Committee.
Cardiff, same yard, same class, built markedly faster.
Italy slotted two extra FREMMs into its line for Egypt and delivered them in months.
Hot production lines can do that.
BAE, Babcock and Navatia are all reporting physical space, training pipelines and “capacity” across all of their shipyards.
If you place an order with a cheque today they will not turn you away.
The perceived “fast builders” - Japan, Korea, Italy - share one habit: they evolve, they don't reinvent.
Frozen design, mature combat system off the critical path, steady drumbeat.
🟠 Type 26 or Type 31 are mature and modifiable
🟠 Exercise modification discipline
🟠 Sea Viper or AEGIS are mature, evolvable, and off the critical path
🟠 Release cash flow
The cautionary tale is the opposite habit: proven hull or new hull + heavy changes + new combat system pitch + cold yard (see FFG-62 with 85% changes, Hunter with structure-changing mast changes).
Right now the UK has more escort hulls in build simultaneously since the 1980s, three classes of large surface vessel, hot yards, training pipelines.
Type 83 is the chance to continue to build at rate:
🟠 Pick a hull in production
🟠 Exercise modification discipline
�� Keep Sea Viper evolving
🟠 Pay the invoices on time
Deferment and slowdowns add to costs by HMT’s own reports.
Do not accept the normalisation of slow drumbeat as an excuse to not spend on Defence.
@danielnewmanUV It literally isn’t and it would’ve.
If that industry dies - as it will in the age of token-based billing - the world keeps on functioning.
Is the bail-out increasing in billions every year?