The Shrunken Royal Navy

[cunningduck]

6 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Thin ice, mate, very thin ice.

 

As thin as this? (From Wikipedia)

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

Thin ice, mate, very thin ice.

 

Thin enough to surface at the North Pole?

 

 

Royal Navy Cricket Club 1

Australian Navy Cricket Club 0

 

 

 

[Ohmisterporter]

An article from Save the Royal Navy about the RN and RFA presence in the Caribbean. It sounds like a good posting doing useful work and popular with crews.

 

https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/in-focus-the-royal-navy-presence-in-the-caribbean/

[Ohmisterporter]

You may have missed this article in The National Interest.org about the Astute class submarines. Will the Russians be worried? Probably no more than usual. See what you think.

 

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-worried-about-britains-astute-class-submarines-115006

[Mike Storey]

50% larger than the Trafalgars, but described as "crampt" by the crews???

 

Good article, except it does not really explain why the Russians are worried, apart from it being a quiet sub.

 

[J. S. Bach]

4 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

50% larger than the Trafalgars, but described as "crampt" by the crews???

Too much equipment stuffed inside the hull? Obviously the crew comes off second best.

 

[Ohmisterporter]

It would certainly be cramped with a full load of thirty eight missiles and torpedoes. In practice they are probably on patrol with half a dozen or less. The article does make the point, well known, that government penny pinching delays to the programme resulted in higher expenditure and even longer delays. Will the Treasury ever learn? Nope.

[Barry O]

First RN boat with a berth for every crew member...cramped??  More space than the Trafalgars where you hot bunked

Baz

[Reorte]

I was on Trafalgar once, that didn't feel cramped, but then I was a kid at the time just visiting. I'll have to ask my dad, he was a submariner and is over 6' tall.

[peach james]

The instant problem with a sub is that you need to make it sink...(and hopefully float again...being a skimmer type sailor, I can say that...)

 

So, you need a fair amount of density inside the boat to make that happen.   While ballasting down with say, lead (or say, Mercury), is possible to allow more air space for the crew, the more practical way is to make sure that a bunch of the space is filled with stuff that makes "boom" sounds happen...

 

After all, we're getting paid to carry said things around for them to happen...  but that's from 10 years as a tanker @#$#@$er, so what do I know   

 

James

[KeithMacdonald]

Folks interested in what's likely to go aboard Big Lizzie and Big Charlie in the future might also be interested in this. We've mentioned drones before, it looks it's being scaled up specifically for navies.

 

"Airbus' unmanned VSR700 helicopter makes its first flight"

 

 

Quote

Powered by a Continental CD-155 four-cylinder, FADEC-controlled turbodiesel running on Jet A, the VSR700 is intended for navies to expand their surveillance and search-and-rescue capabilities at a relatively low cost. It will extend the ship's horizon, using sensors equal in quality to those carried by naval helicopters, and be able to target contacts if needed or survey them for extended periods of time.

 

More here:  https://ukga.com/news/view?contentId=47824

 

Dad's (like me) who wasted their breath shouting at their idle teenagers (that they were wasting their time playing simulator games) may suddenly find their grown-up teenagers gainfully(?) employed by our miltary drone forces.

[KeithMacdonald]

Docking soon in Swindon, the shrunken HMS Troutbridge on tour.

 

https://swindontheatres.co.uk/Online/tickets-the-navy-lark-swindon-2020

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

19 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Folks interested in what's likely to go aboard Big Lizzie and Big Charlie in the future might also be interested in this. We've mentioned drones before, it looks it's being scaled up specifically for navies.

 

"Airbus' unmanned VSR700 helicopter makes its first flight"

 

 

 

More here:  https://ukga.com/news/view?contentId=47824

 

Dad's (like me) who wasted their breath shouting at their idle teenagers (that they were wasting their time playing simulator games) may suddenly find their grown-up teenagers gainfully(?) employed by our miltary drone forces.

The forces, definitely so in the shape of the RN, area already quite keen on youngsters who spend a lot of time on their 'puters as they have found they can rapidly adapt to 'real' games on the shipboard kit.

 

Daughter and I had an interesting look around the action control part of a Type 45 at Navy Days a few years ago and spent quite a while looking at the aircraft information screen which was showing aircraft taking off from Glasgow while we were in a ship 'at a naval base somewhere on the south coast'.  I noticed that the display was running in Windows and suggested to the officer (who turned out to be the Gunnery Officer) who was explaining how good the system was that relying on a Windows based system in a warship didn't strike me as a good idea.  He replied that it was actually well worth a few occasional problems (I wondered about that) as all the youngsters coming aboard were very familiar with Windows and had played various computer games so adapted very quickly to the job they needed to do when on watch/at action stations.  

 

So no doubt controlling a drone will come just as easily to them

[Ben B]

Quote

So no doubt controlling a drone will come just as easily to them

 

A depressing conversation I had with my youngest, who's dreamed of being a Red Arrows pilot since she saw them at an air show when she was 3... she wants to actually fly fast jets for either the RAF or the Navy, and isn't struck by the idea of sitting in a portacabin somewhere twiddling a playstation remote instead by the time she's old enough to join up...

[alastairq]

Is it me? Or is the 'drone' helicoperter , actually footage from Thomas the Tank Engine??

Edited January 24, 2020 by alastairq

[KeithMacdonald]

6 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Is it me? Or is the 'drone' helicoperter , actually footage from Thomas the Tank Engine??

 

It looks a lot less friendly than a TTTE version in the top picture on this page.

https://www.airbus.com/helicopters/UAS/VSR700.html

or here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Helicopters_VSR700

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

On 24/01/2020 at 14:51, KeithMacdonald said:

 

It looks a lot less friendly than a TTTE version in the top picture on this page.

https://www.airbus.com/helicopters/UAS/VSR700.html

or here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Helicopters_VSR700

 

 

So potentially useful for looking for various things but needs reconfiguring for individual mission differences - although seemingly that wouldn't be difficult .  But that is all it can do while taking up part of a warship's helicopter operating space which may well prevent the vessel from carrying a helicopter which can do a lot more than look and can actually carry weapons or rescue people.  Might make sense on a small vessel by giving it longer range sensors than it can mount itself but isn't really a replacement for a fully capable aircraft even if that is inferred by the picture including the Type 45.

 

One of these might make more realistic sense for looking beyond the horizon   -

 

https://uboat.net/technical/bachstelze.htm

[RLBH]

On 21/01/2020 at 10:12, Barry O said:

First RN boat with a berth for every crew member...cramped??  More space than the Trafalgars where you hot bunked

 

Have heard that in order to have a berth for every crew member, the space required for berths has increased by more than the size of the boat and other stuff has been squeezed to fit it all in. It seems that submariners would rather have a bit more elbow room at the mess table and share a bunk.

[Kingzance]

On 26/01/2020 at 13:23, The Stationmaster said:

So potentially useful for looking for various things but needs reconfiguring for individual mission differences - although seemingly that wouldn't be difficult .  But that is all it can do while taking up part of a warship's helicopter operating space which may well prevent the vessel from carrying a helicopter which can do a lot more than look and can actually carry weapons or rescue people.  Might make sense on a small vessel by giving it longer range sensors than it can mount itself but isn't really a replacement for a fully capable aircraft even if that is inferred by the picture including the Type 45.

 

One of these might make more realistic sense for looking beyond the horizon   -

 

https://uboat.net/technical/bachstelze.htm

That is taking "for monarch / dictator and country" to the extreme! Being on a merchant ship and "down below" in a conflict area was as far as I ever went.

[Barry O]

2 hours ago, RLBH said:

Have heard that in order to have a berth for every crew member, the space required for berths has increased by more than the size of the boat and other stuff has been squeezed to fit it all in. It seems that submariners would rather have a bit more elbow room at the mess table and share a bunk.

Dont know who told you that one..unless the RN have modified them since leaving barrow thereis space on the boat. It is a larger boat. Mess spaceshave tvs fitted..and they are large ones.

Bunk area larger.. has all sorts of items for the sailor fitted as well.

 

Baz

[Ohmisterporter]

In case you missed it; an article from The thin pinstriped line blog about the reduction in the number of admirals. Hope this is of interest. Some interesting articles further back in his blog.

 

https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com/2020/02/changing-tune-why-is-royal-navy.html

[Kingzance]

Another interesting post Geoff. Well into it, I found something that seems to be critical in the wider scheme of things Civil Service wise:
 

"There is also the challenge that if you want to empower and change the culture in the HQ then relying on bulk civilianisation and trying to get staff in at low grades and low pay isn’t necessarily the answer. To really grow an impressive organisation and ensure you can get the best from it, you need to make the HQ somewhere that people want to come and work – and, to put it kindly, from a Civil Service perspective, Portsmouth isn’t always on most peoples lists of places to go and work in.

 

The challenge is that in a civilian system where London dominates and the majority of high calibre individuals who want to aspire for the top of the Civil Service structure usually work, moving outside London isn’t usually seen as a sensible thing to do. Even at its most basic, stepping off the London property ladder means accepting you are never returning – to move to Portsmouth means for many a stepping off of the career escalator in the wider system."

 

There is absolutely NO reason why so much of our Civil Service (one of the most expanding sectors of the state) is focused upon London, other than because the Civil Service demands that it is so. In the private sector, the employee goes where the employer wants him / her to be. Sir Humphrey's bit above shows a mentality that the Civil Service is the most important thing and everyone else has to adjust to suit. If HMG had any sense, it would be further de-centralising, opening opportunities to a wider catchment, giving a better sense of belonging t o the regions, reducing the costs for those employed in such roles and cutting the bill for office space. Why, after all, does HMRC need to take up significant office space in Canary Wharf, some of the most expensive office space in the country?

[Reorte]

6 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

There is absolutely NO reason why so much of our Civil Service (one of the most expanding sectors of the state) is focused upon London, other than because the Civil Service demands that it is so. In the private sector, the employee goes where the employer wants him / her to be. Sir Humphrey's bit above shows a mentality that the Civil Service is the most important thing and everyone else has to adjust to suit. If HMG had any sense, it would be further de-centralising, opening opportunities to a wider catchment, giving a better sense of belonging t o the regions, reducing the costs for those employed in such roles and cutting the bill for office space. Why, after all, does HMRC need to take up significant office space in Canary Wharf, some of the most expensive office space in the country?

 

Why does anyone else? All part of the same self-fulfilling viscous circle.

 

In any case whilst it would be good to have some of the jobs moving out of London, it'll make a mess of wherever they go if they bring the crowds with them. All rather a no-win situation.

[JeremyC]

22 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

There is absolutely NO reason why so much of our Civil Service (one of the most expanding sectors of the state) is focused upon London, other than because the Civil Service demands that it is so. In the private sector, the employee goes where the employer wants him / her to be. Sir Humphrey's bit above shows a mentality that the Civil Service is the most important thing and everyone else has to adjust to suit. If HMG had any sense, it would be further de-centralising, opening opportunities to a wider catchment, giving a better sense of belonging t o the regions, reducing the costs for those employed in such roles and cutting the bill for office space. Why, after all, does HMRC need to take up significant office space in Canary Wharf, some of the most expensive office space in the country

But its not just the civil service, if it's so much cheaper outside London why is so much of the private sector also clustered round London and the South East? Possibly because that's where people, for some strznge reason, want to work?

 

Edited February 3, 2020 by JeremyC

[Kingzance]

8 minutes ago, JeremyC said:

But its not just the civil service, if it's so much cheaper outside London why is so much of the private sector also clustered round London and the South East? Possibly because that's where people, for some strznge reason, want to work?

 

Whilst it is true that many "want" to be in London, we are talking about public servants here - people who are supposed to serve the public. The overall quality of life outside the overcrowded and polluted bubble is much better so shouldn't the state, in the best long-term health interests of its employees, relocate to an area outside the M25? I have no idea why "so much of the private sector" as you put it is clustered around London, other than the banks and law firms. Anything that requires space - manufacturing etc - is better off outside due to land prices / rents. Pharma, vehicles, steel etc are all well away!