FB11,
Having worn light blue (scruffily and briefly) you can assume that I know what banter is. But as someone who wears a uniform that looks more like that of an Isle of Wight ferry captain, I wonder whether you do. However, I'll take your advice and ask the milk-drinking poofs what it is next time I see one of them, rather than quiz any Navy type, since they obviously wouldn't have a clue. (See what I did there? Alienated people from two services at once - great journo trick. Just a pity I couldn't have thought of some way to piss off the dung-eating cabbage suit wearing mob, too....)
In case you misunderstand my misapprehension about your perception of my perceived misapprehension (and I liked what you did there so much that I plagiarised it. It's habit. I just can't help myself. As my editor would confirm.) I'd like to agree with you.
I absolutely agree that
1. It would be silly to overstate capabilities, or to throw them in to embellish a point. Which Jag capabilities do you think I have embellished, exactly?
2. I'd also agree that there is potential for damage to be done when the focus is back not forward.
Which is why my primary concern is how the GR9/9A and GR4 are to reach their OSDs. In the future (FORWARD FOCUS!). Like you, I'm not an engineer in either IPT, but unlike you, I've spoken to engineers in both, and in BAE Systems, about this very issue, so I do have an idea of the exact dates these jets are expected to reach. Which are 2017 for the GR9/9A and 2025 for the GR4/4A. (Is that focusing forward enough for you?)
Annual utilisation rates are also available (not least in Hansard), and average and fleet leader airframe hours have also been published. It's abundantly clear that neither fleet can be sustained at its planned size to its planned OSD, even if these dates don't slip again.
While the Jag is probably of cock all use in Afghanistan (let's ignore what the Indians managed to do with theirs over the Kargil and Siachen) that doesn't mean that it might not be of use in operations elsewhere. They seemed to fulfil a useful role in Warden/Resinate North, and indeed in the Balkans, and keeping them in service might allow the admittedly more useful, more important assets to be kept in service longer. On exactly the same basis, I wouldn't howl down anyone who wanted to keep ALARM armed (and who knows, TIALD and JRP equipped) SEAD F3s in service to keep hours off the GR4s.
Sometimes the requirement isn't to tote large numbers of heavy weapons a long way to a target, from a hot and high, short runway, and to do so by night or in all weathers. In an ideal world I'd want every jet I owned to be capable of doing exactly that, but in today's cash strapped times I'd look hard at the usefulness of a cheap, easily supportable, rapidly deployable asset that could do some oft-needed roles adequately, especially if it helped me keep my best assets in service until they can be replaced.
And I'd perhaps be looking at the kind of weapons that would allow a Jag to achieve the same effect as a Tornado dropping an inert, concrete 1,000-lb LGB - a weapon used in action in Iraq in 2003 because we lacked a proper low collateral damage weapon.
And I know you're hairy because you lot all are. But I'm still up for the hug. I'm a journo. I'm unnaturally curious.