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[Bowwave]

As I have said before with out the RFA the navy goes  nowhere!
Bowwave

[duttydozen]

Do the RFAs still RAS outside normal working hours for the overtime?
 

[Bryan Young]

No "overtime" has been paid in the RFA for many years now as all personnel are salaried...and thats it.

[farrow]

Some interesting points brought up, but lets see the RN has a very large superfluous of officers which could take over the RFA officers posts, but the big sticking point is ratings, the RN can barely man what vessels they have without the RFA posts. The MoD did do an interesting thing recently with the Salvage officers who have always since the last war have been civilian officers. They have now been made reserve RN commissioned officers I believe, so that when they go into a war zone they come automatically RN commissioned officers.
As to privatisation, most of the Military equipment is shipped by short termed charter vessels off all nationalities when big operations take off such as Desert storm etc. Also Maersk offered the MoD if they were given the contract to refuel RN ships at sea any where anytime, that they would fit at there own cost and operate full NATO standard refueling rigs on all their tankers. Need less to say the MoD was completely taken of guard by this offer and never pursued it.
As for RFA contract crews they have been with the RFA for a long time, I cannot say I agree with the notion of privatisation as the person who would suffer is the crews, with lower pay and demanning and the RFA was until recently the biggest virtually Merchant Navy fleet under UK registration. But the RMAS was privatised recently, the MoD got a bad deal out of it and the crews suffered demanning etc. I hear that Serco Denholm are still losing money supposedly on the contract.
Though regarding the Bay boats , an Army officer said that the old TLC where prefered to the new boats because they put the bow on the beach and everyone gets ashore quick, where as now you rely on a few helicopters with small capacity which are very vulnerable to anti-aircraft weaponry.

[allnightin]

Though regarding the Bay boats , an Army officer said that the old TLC where prefered to the new boats because they put the bow on the beach and everyone gets ashore quick, where as now you rely on a few helicopters with small capacity which are very vulnerable to anti-aircraft weaponry.

The ability of the old "Sir" Class LSLs to land vehicles directly ashore has been theoretical for a long time as they stopped doing the annual check of this at least 10 years ago and it was not carried out in exercises either.  The new Bay class offer so much more capability including a much larger flight deck for heavy air lift and a dock to take modern LSUs which do land on the beach that I doubt your army contact was in date on this. 

[Bryan Young]

One of the reasons that the LSLs were "restricted" when wishing to do a beaching was due to their "civilian" status and registration.
The beaurocratic mind-set dictated that a beaching (even a well controlled one) was, in effect, a "stranding" or "grounding" and so the ship involved should be subject to a survey. Absolute clap-trap really, as that was what the ships were designed to do in the first place.
I last drove an LSL "up the beach" just south of Tromso...but we didn't tell everybody. But at least that was done on purpose, and only a few days after one of our "through-deck-cruisers" had done the same thing (inadvertently) only a few miles north of us. But as the Grey Funnel Line is not insured in the normal way only the tax payer was charged for repairs.
The LSLs were absolutely the right size for this kind of operation. With one drawback. Obviously one wouldn't choose an area strewn with rocks to plonk a biggish ship down on, so a sandy or shale area with gentle declivity was needed...and the ship trimmed accordingly. Just tough luck if the "invasion" was to be on a coast with cliffs and/or rocks...you'd lose the ship. But the "drawback" I mentioned was something entirely different. Run up the "beach", and then open the bow doors. The bow doors then pushed all the sand/shale aside and the resulting hole was then filled with water. Oh, how we laughed when the more "gung-ho" types decided to be the first on to the beach. The extendable ramps filled the gap..but I guess it was a bit slow if it was in a real fire fight. Much easier and better for the vehicles to be discharged when the beach had been secured.
LSLs were basically a very large raft with massive buoyancy and ability to absorb punishment, but with the addition of a lot of "stuff" on top to make them look like a real ship (and to make life bearable for those on board). Ocean going trucks, and quite wonderful to drive.
But times change. The new ships are much larger and more valuable than the LSLs, nor do they need to beach. An LSL would beach at around 4 knots, loads of time for an "enemy" to target it.
The word "amphibious" when referring to a ship is really a mis-nomer. They are not frogs or toads. It really just means that they can conduct operations on both land and sea.....or at least, the forces on board can.

[Bartapuss]

It was recently reported that this government has pumped £47 million of British tax payers money into the Yemeni economy with more to follow, to fund road, dam and house building projects etc, to get young Yemenite men into work due to that country is a fertile recruiting ground for muslim extremist groups.

[farrow]

Yes the Bays have a dock aft which is flooded on the same principle as the Fearless, but it is small. Only capable of taking a single landing craft such as the small current ones that the Army now use. They have no Helo storage, an when I saw the first one exercising of Lee on Solent there was space only for one Helo at a time. Never the less I took several photo's if any one is interested. As BY says the MCA and Lioyds are not keen on vessels taking the ground, but in the event of hostilities different rules apply especially if they are built to do it..