We whinge, we moan and we whine, and we would all love to have better equipment - I for one am not entirely happy that every aircraft on the fleet I fly is considerably older than I am, and I'm not in my 20s! The fact remains, however, that for Britain to remain a viable world power - and I mean things like permanent membership of the UN security council - then we have to be considered a country that can develop, build and maintain its own armed forces from the ground up. Lose that hard-won capability and you become a dependant country, losing your ability to effectively conduct diplomacy with other "world powers" and living at the behest of whichever nations
do build and maintain your armed forces. BAE and Wastelands have us over a barrel on that front and, without joining Europe (
), they always will.