France vs England

As we speak, UK (I assume here we are talking of UK more than England) has a much bigger navy. Though, with expense cutting in the military budget and France in the contrary increased those a lot. It might gonna change.

In fact, in 2015 France will have (probably), for the first time in something like 300 years, a bigger and more powerfull navy.

For the ground army, the French one is overrated I think. But the British one isn't that large either. I think the Air Force will make the difference. As we speak France has the upper hand but it's gonna change. UK will have Eurofighter and F-35 while France will be using Rafale and Mirage 2000. The only hope of France in this matter is the Neuron joint project (with Sweden and Greece).


I won't vote here. It's a very complicated question.


Edited by Exarchus

But what this thread is for? A military penis contest?

If you ask, where would you rather live, the answer is France for me. If you want, I can spam this thread of pictures after.

I think the Brits will be phasing out the Tornado soon when they get more Typhoons. They are outdated, and increasingly vunerable.

Jaguars have already gone AFAIK, fairly recently though. Phantoms went ages ago.

French Jags/Super Entendards (sp?) and maybe some of the older mirages?

Typoons are a general bit of everything for the RAF now, and whilst the Army will have some JSFs, most of the mare intended for the Navy AFAIK.
Basicly before, the Uk didn;t have a front line fighter aircraft, just ground attack, and a special varient of the Tornado that though labeled a 'fighter' was more of a long range interdiction type thing, presumably to cover part of the North Sea.
The new look RAF is supposed to be more flexable, hence more multi-role somewhat. The Typhoon was originaly designed to be a figher AFAIK, and it sort of mutated into some sort of figher/bomber hybrid along the way.

As for Britian giving the game away, it chose to specialise in certain areas, whilst France stuck with doing a bit of everything, and that is the crucial difference. Where as France still has a bit of everything, the UK sort of has specialised stuff that is no longer needed (much of its navy was designed with the aim of hunting Soviet subs down, and a good part of its airforce an d army geared towards defending Germany against the percieved Soviet threat).
Updating the armed forces to the new, still somewhat vaugly defined role is thus expensive, and the government would rather be seen to be cutting funding slightly. What becomes of it all remains to be seen, but either way, what happens over the next 5 years is going to have a lasting impact as much renewal programs are being decided now, and will dictate policy for the next two decades or so.