Originally Posted by Tourist
FormerFlake.
There are a lot more countries with coastlines than with neighbours who will give overfly/basing rights to Brits, so they are a lot more viable than land based a/c
And how many of countries on the coast are we likely to go to war with? Even if it is Iran we will probably fly out of Iraq. Sudan perhaps, but will JSF have the range? If it needs AR support then we might as well use the same base for the fighter/bombers.
The UK armed forces need far more AT and AR assets for a start. Plus we need a AR cabability for the C17s and a better AR facility for the C130s.
I am not aware of any issues with deploying Typhoon??
During Telic 50% of the ordance for the entire war was dropped by the B1B. Does that give you a clue to the assets we need?