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Editorial
Three Cheers? .... Maybe Two
16 December 2005
On 14 December 2005, the UK's Secretary of State for Defence,
John Reid, announced a number of decisions affecting the Royal Navy's
vital Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF) Project.
In the first of what is suddenly (and unequally) a two stage
"Main Gate" approval process for CVF, he committed the Ministry of Defence (MOD) to spending
£300 million on detailed design for the new carriers. Some time
later, probably in early 2007, there will be another approval at Cabinet
level, and an order worth over £3 billion will then be placed for the
construction of two ships. Of course this process is largely
dependent upon no UK economic crisis occurring, no change of Defence
Minister, no change of Prime Minister and no change of government - any
one of which might instead initiate a defence review or outright
cancellation of an "unaffordable" carrier programme - as happened in
1965/6.
Rather complex plans for the construction and assembly of the new
carriers have already been agreed, Dr. Reid stating that he was
“allocating some 60% of the ships’ construction to named UK yards: BAE
Systems at Govan and Barrow; VT in Portsmouth and Babcock in Rosyth.
Final assembly of the carriers will also be at Rosyth”. The other
40% will presumably be awarded on a competitive basis, the results of
which may be very interesting if the MOD seriously wants to move outside
the traditional naval construction sector.
In another interesting but perhaps not unconnected development, on 12
December 2005 it was revealed that France would develop a "tailored" and
"adaptable" (shades of UK MOD announcements in 2002-3) variant of CVF
for its own needs. This second French aircraft carrier (PA2)
will be built in French shipyards, probably more quickly and for less
money than her UK half sisters. While this is an important and
flattering 'vote of confidence' in the CVF design, it remains to be seen
how much France will pay for its use of the CVF design, a design
which is set to cost the UK taxpayer £500-600 million to develop.
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