Quote:
Originally Posted by James Langham
Depends if the cuts happen.
A few random thoughts about the army:
* will it move towards lighter troops as it has or keep with more mechanised? Depends a lot on what happens in the world.
* if the US had changed to 6.8mm what rifle are we likely to use, I can see a whole new design being favoured. SA80s may still be around for TA though.
* we might have our first aircraft to fly off a carrier by then...
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Right now what I have penciled in that due to the slow buildup of tension throughout the world the UK does increase spending to a point: both sheduled carriers are built and they squeak out a third a few months before the UK gets the first heavy strikes (more on why there was three later - in short the RN gets the bulk of the funding). The results is that that the manpower is only slightly increased, but become perhaps the best equipped and trained force man for man of any NATO force. The switch to 6.8 was never finished: and it was the US that was the push for it. The rest of NATO stayed with 5.56 (tempted to say the Brits made a total switch but havn't decided yet one way or the other). In the US the switch was being done by swapping uppers on the AR platform as well as building SAWs in 6.8. And as to the last point is that the f35 never got off the ground in a big way. With the increased spending for the RN they decided not to wait for the over time over budget aircraft and decided to go with the Super Hornet (so tempted to do a model of one in RN colours.).
More to come