Sunk Costs: New Carriers Commit UK To Buy Escorts & F-35Bs, Says 1st Sea Lord

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http://breakingdefense.com/2014/08/sunk-costs-new-carriers-commit-uk-to-buy-escorts-f-35bs-says-1st-sea-lord/



Sunk Costs: New Carriers Commit UK To Buy Escorts & F-35Bs, Says 1st Sea Lord
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on August 01, 2014 at 12:54 PM

WASHINGTON: 65,000-ton ships are hard to turn around, and they can drag a lot else in their wake. That’s the $10.4 billion (£6.2 billion) bet the Royal Navy has placed on its controversial program to build two new aircraft carriers. While a third smaller than American nuclear carriers, the ships’ costs have grown so much that the British government is considering temporarily mothballing the second ship, HMS Prince of Wales, as soon as it’s complete, while the first ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was christened July 4th but won’t get its F-35B fighters for years.

But First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, Adm. Sir George Zambellas, assured a Washington audience Wednesday that — to paraphrase his guarded Britishisms into American bluntness — it’s too late to cheap out. Building the carriers has already committed British politicians not only to funding their operations, escort vessels, and aircraft, but also to a carrier-centered naval strategy that puts warfighting first and peacetime presence second.

If you don’t buy adequate F-35s, “you build £6.2 billion worth of carriers, you then don’t put a tiny piece of butter on the bread,” Zambellas said to general laughter at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You’ve got to do it properly. And I’m absolutely certain, with delivery of a credible carrier strike capability, we will see a growth of commitments to F-35s to meet the maximum value the government would want to derive from the strategic assets they have bought and are paying for [already].”

Likewise, the Sea Lord said, while carrier critics say the money would be better spent on a larger number of smaller vessels, the political and strategic realities are otherwise. “The truth is this, if you can’t afford carriers, you may not necessarily afford more ships, but if you’ve got the carriers, you may have to afford more ships,” Zambellas said, prompting more laughter. “So I think some of my predecessors were extremely wise.”