Royal Navy

[wellinghall]

The Royal Navy has 44 admirals and 41 warships. That's according to Whitaker's Almanack 2011, published last week, and before the defence cuts announced this week.

ETA: Royal Marines: 8 generals. Army: 78 generals, 386 tanks, 877 artillery pieces. RAF: 46 air marshalls, 285 warplanes.

Comments

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

It is a sorry state of affairs, and will continue to be right up until the moment that Navyboy becomes one of them. At which point it will all be justified, I will be a kept woman, and everyone else can go hang!

;)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

How about this (from Jon Snow)? The newsreader, not the Warden of the Night's Watch...


UK defence capital spending: £10billion pa
Israel defence capital spending: £9billion pa

Number of civil servants administering UK defence spending: 23,700
Number of civil servants administering Israeli defence spending: 400

[colinbj.livejournal.com]

I don't find this shocking in itself, a modern hi-tech Navy needs a lot of management to keep it running at full effectiveness. Even the US has 216 admirals to 285 ships I think, despite the economies of scale.

What IS shocking is that those carriers were ever ordered. There should have been more HMS Oceans instead. She is the poster child for flat-top ships. Not classed as a carrier, she can deploy helicopters of all sizes and landing craft. I went to a talk by the guy who wrote her spec, he was impressive: she was built at about a tenth the cost of a comparable size carrier, based on civil rather than warship hull. Perfect offshore platform for disaster relief, UN peacekeeping, out-of-harm's-way mission support of all kinds. Can carry and land big cargoes, could fly Harriers and UAVs at a pinch. Deploying her sends a significant message, which was what Blair really felt he needed the carriers for.

She's always kept busy and will have a finite lifespan. A few more HMS Oceans would have cost nothing by comparison. Given the RAF's big new fleet of Airbus tankers to support long range missions from land bases (to say nothing of unorthodox options *cough*), it's very doubtful if the carriers were sensible buys.

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

There is, however, a serious question over her defense capability - the style of her hull means she would be much more easily and quickly sunk and with potentially very high casualty rates.

[colinbj.livejournal.com]

Curiously enough, next week I am going to a talk by Simon Atkinson, who earlier in his career was the engineering officer who took HMS Ocean from build to operational status. I will ask him about this, are you a Navy person?

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

I had it from someone who was an engineering officer ON Ocean and remembered when I reading your comment. But I'm not an engineer so I do hope I've got the details right - the conversation was to do with problems regarding adapting a civilian ship vs building one that was designed for active combat.

[widsidh.livejournal.com]

It is also worth bearing in mind that a tank does not have quite as many crew as a warship by a factor of several hundred, which somewhat changes the way those statistics look.
HMS Ark Royal alone has 685 crew (i.e. sailors - pilots or any other miltary personnel she may carry are extra).

The bit about civil servants in philophlegm's post is interesting though...

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

It was ever thus... Digging out my copy of Parkinson's Law (1958), the very first table shows changes in the RN between 1914 and 1928: Ships, down 67.7%; Officers and men, down 31.5%; Dockyard workers, up 9.5%; Dockyard officials, up 40%; Admiralty officials, up 78%.