A recent crisis in The Royal Navy, brought about by a lack of personnel among other events, is having a marked affect upon the number of days ships of the Type 23 flotilla is able to spend on active duty at sea.
There are thirteen frigates in the class known as "The Duke Class" as all the ships are named after British Dukes. And of the thirteen, four, Richmond, Portland, Lancaster and Iron Duke, have, up until the end of September so far this year, remained in port.
The ships, first commissioned in 1989 with an intended lifespan of 18 years, which is currently extended, though they will soon be replaced by the new Type 26 ships (see previous article).
With the home ports of Portsmouth and Devonport, the ship's main function is anti-submarine warfare. Although with a recent host of cut-backs throughout the services, the Type 23 is being called upon to cover extra duties, in turn needing increased periods of servicing and days in port.
This is the moment the first British Jet the F35 Lightening Stealth Jet, touches down on the flight deck of the Royal Navy's Aircraft Carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, on Tuesday the 25th of September. The Aircraft Carrier was originally planned to carry a compliment of 36 of the F35's now reduced to 24. Yet still a formidable force, offering a capability matched by very few other nations. To support British and Allied naval operations across the globe.
An interesting and no doubt important 2000 year-old Roman Fountain Garden Ornament, found in Colchester back in 1998 now thought to be of immeasurable value. Has been "thrown-out" by the local council, due to the fact it was said to be "too big to store."
Reportedly the item was damaged in excavation and through exposure to the British weather and may have been too expensive to restore. Colchester council, have stated a balance must be struck with the level of public funding and storage space available, for such items and occasionally difficult decisions must be made.
On the day of the London flypast 9 July 2018 I was having a flypast of my own, to be honest a fairly regular occurrence, as I live in the Lake District, a low-flying training run for the RAF. I've long given up worrying about a Hercules Transport colliding with my Gable End! Don't know if they fly the F-35 through here, I keep hearing a screech of engines in the sky and by the time I look up the planes are gone. On that particular day I was surprised to see one of these, can't say I'd seen such a craft before,
In the London Flypast, they were using only and all aircraft currently in service with the RAF and not the one above, so could only assume the aircraft I saw was the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey or some variant. Which has the traditional or vertical take-off capabilities and may well have been doing some training for President Trump's visit to the UK two days later on 11 July.
The said aircraft could possibly have been a CV-22 as I noted the propellers were in the "normal" horizontal flight position. Something which is favoured by the USAF with extra fuel tanks for increased range missions and special operations.
This is the Type 26 Frigate, which will be the new generation of fighting ships entering service with the Royal Austrailian Navy. The order is for nine ships, which will be built in Australia, but using a design engineered by BAE Systems, ahead of other potential European designs.
The new ships will give the Australian Government a cutting-edge force to act as deterrent and security of her coastline and are seen as a suitable replacement for the "Anzac" group of frigates.
The ships will be built at the Government's yard in Adelaide by ASC shipbuilding and is expected to create around 4000 jobs in Australia. Although there shouldn't be many extra jobs in the UK there will be a large increase in exports and military equipment supply. And also scope for future orders with other nations.
The military capabilities of the Type 26 have already been discussed in a previous article, but the ships are designed for anti-submarine and air-defence activity.
The Royal Navy currently has eight of the Frigates on order, being built on the Clyde and are expected to begin entering service sometime in the 2020's.
There have been many surprises in recent months from the industrial titan Elon Musk and his Tesla Motor Group, not least of all blasting a car into space via his SpaceX Rockets.
Presently, Tesla Cars are rushing to get their Freemont, California car plant up and running and in full production. And with time fast running out, Tesla hopes to be producing 5000 cars, by the end of June 2018. A radical step has been taken to speed up the works in the form of a 1000ft hanger like structure, similar to a tent, being raised within the grounds of the car plant. Built using available on-site materials and erected in less than two weeks, "the tent" is expected to become a finishing point for the assembled vehicles.
Tesla's Model 3 an electric car, aimed at the mass consumer market, should cost around £26k and there are already future orders on the books for over a half-million units. The projected figure of 5k cars per week is hoped to turn the company profitable after a series of setbacks and delays.
Although there is a certain level of scepticism from analysts and numerous factions of the financial world. Although others see this as an ingenuous attempt to side-step an otherwise expensive and time consuming construction of a more traditional assembly line.
August 10 Update
Despite improving revenues Tesla is said to be slipping to even bigger losses, although sales remain ahead of forecasts of £3bn for the second quarter of it's financial year. Now stringent efforts are being made to ramp up production of the Model 3 to 6k units per week by the end of August. The eventual desired figure will be 10,000, units per week and as soon as this is viable.
These are difficult times for the manufacturer, with losses reaching £547m The efforts to increase production are causing Tesla to spend billions of extra dollars, increasing long term debt to as much as £8.2bn.
Had to spend a little time working upon this Banner, not just a case of doing the work myself but I'm trying to build a "team" of people who may help me in the future. Which means encouraging and using a certain young woman whom is working upon a degree in photography, a very useful person as I'm hardly a photographic genius, even in the digital age.
The subject is very important as well, the Langdale Pikes, on the left, a part of my family grew up in the shadow of these majestic fells. If you live in the Lakes, you may as well extol the virtues of the area. In fact, just turn up at Waterhead, any time of the year and there's always a number of people with varying camera skills, taking shots of more or less the same image. So to get something a bit different and more or less unique, thanks to the cloud, is something of an achievement.
And the book cover, well I had to do that myself, using the Amazon Book Cover Designer and certainly not easy, but until I can organize something more interesting, the image will do the job. Really I could do with some help from a friend and not someone wanting to make buck! You're always thinking to yourself one day you'll get some book deal, and all these problems will be sorted.
