Originally Posted by
Foghorn Leghorn
Alas, the MoD do need to stop with the notion that it’ll only pay chump change but want an Aston Martin solution.
I think this is the key point. Operating a fleet of 4/4.5 gen aircraft has a minimum cost associated with it, regardless of size (hence the normal rationale in SDSRs past of chopping entire fleets rather than half of 2 separate ones). If there's no confidence that the MOD has any willingness to spend money, who is going to stump up the cash to run a small fleet?
If your business plan is "we'll start small, and the customer might possibly love us so much they'll pay for more" with all the above evidence to the contrary, that won't make it past most company's boards I'd suggest, especially when the cost of entry, regardless of how small you aim, is inevitably relatively high.
Possibly a bigger company like Draken could detach a small sub-set of aircraft to the UK, but the red tape involved would be massive even though they've already got all the other kit to support the jets (noting they'd probably be reticent to deploy a lot of that overseas). In this we're not helped by having the Atlantic between us and a major consumer of red air!