PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Red Arrows are safe after Ministry of Defence plans to retire entire fleet of 76 Hawk
Old 27th Mar 2021, 18:25
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Jackonicko
 
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That's a good point NutLoose, though I suspect the numbers are MUCH smaller. Many or even most of the Hawk T1s are in sustainment, so you're probably talking about 18 (mainly civilian/reservist?) pilots with 736 and a similar number of RAF aircrew on the Tatty Ton.

One would hope that the latter, at least would be seen as a useful means of solving the manning crisis on the Typhoon/F-35 fleets?

But whether it's a good idea to save the Red Arrows rather than the adversary training units is a really interesting question.

Unless the answer is to replace 736 and 100 with more synthetic training, they'll have to relaunch ASDOT, or something similar, and contractorise the whole shooting match, with a solution that will be more expensive and of dubious airworthiness and sustainability.
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