SO, Sir Michael Fallon has told critics of the £3 billion spend on the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier to “shut up” ("Fallon tells warship critics to shut up", The Herald, July 25).
Let me see, £3bn on an air craft carrier for which there are currently no appropriate aircraft (F35 fighter jets) and which will not be in service until the 2020s (official projection). As if that was not concerning enough the whole shebang, he says, is to deal with terrorists such as Islamic State. Wait? But to crown all this bunkum he added that we don’t know what we will require to defend the UK in 30 or 40 years. So why then waste billions when there is so much poverty and lack of hope for so many?
Oh dear, I have had a dreadful image of Sir Michael Fallon singing Rule Britannia when playing with his toy ships in the bath.
Christine Grahame, SNP MSP,
Constituency Member for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale
Room Q2.01, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh.
I NOTE that the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) reported to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury that the three major nuclear projects run by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) are being poorly managed, over-budget and beset by technical problems. Reading between the lines it is obvious hat they believe that the Trident replacement will run massively over budget.
However I would suggest that another piece of news emanating from the United States renders the whole project already obsolete. The press announced that some US Navy ships have been equipped with laser cannon. These weapons are currently being described as anti-drone weapons. Because it utilises light travelling at 186,000 miles per second the destruction is virtually instantaneous as soon as the laser is fired. When asked by a journalist if the weapon could be used against missiles the captain of the vessel would not definitely confirm it but the smile on his face spoke volumes.
Surely the time has come to scrap the Trident replacement, as this illegal weapon is only designed to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and it now appears it can be nullified relatively inexpensively. I guess we could do quite a bit of good with £200 billion.
David Stubley,
22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.
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