I think the point being missed by the likes of Andy Netherwood complaining that the scheme would make the aircraft unusable for tasks such as daylight landings into Basra or Bastion is that this Government (and most likely its next few successors) has zero interest in getting involved in a new campaign of the type where:
1) Troop movements are needed into an airfield subject to a visually-laid threat;
2) The number and intensity of movements is such that one aircraft couldn’t be excluded from the Voyager plot;
3) The duration of the airlift was too long for exceptions to (2) to be manageable with the substantial additional mitigation of ‘night movements only’ for this one aircraft;
by which I mean that it has no interest in getting tangled up in another TELIC or HERRICK and thus can afford to take decisions such as this. As for air refuelling, well, something has gone *very* wrong if mitigations equivalent to points 2 and 3 above have not been possible, the DCA screen has failed, and an unfortunate tanker crew is forced to rely on a low vis paint scheme to keep themselves safe from enemy fighters. At that point, the infinitesimal extra mitigation it might provide is so close to worthless that you barely need to predict any benefit to justify the alternate scheme.
Justin Bronk has correctly identified the more contentious argument as being one of cost attribution, although really the paint scheme doesn’t change the substance: just brings it into sharper relief! It’s been observed that the PFI effectively protects Voyager from salami-slicing, which reduces MOD’s room for manoeuvre in the upcoming review, so if this paint scheme helps MOD develop an argument to extract a greater share of the PFI costs from other departments then maybe it will prove to have been a wise investment from that point of view alone. Who am I kidding, though... the PFI is a whacking great amount to quote towards the 2% GDP target so attributing it all to ‘Defence’ remains more likely.
Last edited by Easy Street; 22nd Jun 2020 at 09:48.