To answer Lee Jung's elegant point:- we need 232 TypHoons to secure the future of the RAF into the hands of the single-seat Tactical Fighter mafia & to ensure that there are plenty of non-executive director "jobs for the boys" for their airshipfulnesses when they retire. We should just get with the program, SH isn't a core airpower role to the RAF, why do you think they were more than happy to sell us down the river to Land Command in 1999? Interestingly, this focus on tactical fighters might not do the RAF any good in the long run. "Global reach, global power" was the USAF mantra a few years back, and they can do it too with the triad of strategic bombers and a large tanker force. We have neither. The nearest we have is the MRA4, which threatens the GR4 force by it's ability to loiter, ID and prosecute tgts in a permissive RF environment without the use of tankers. Unfortuanately, at just over 3Bn quid for 12 ac we could almost have got B2s from Northrop.....So we're committed to a short range FJ force dependant on HNS, apart from JCA, which could be run in toto by the RN off the carriers. Soooo, where does this leave the RAF? Full of cold war ac (TypHoon/GR4) and cold war weapons (Brimstone) but with the upper echelons reserved for the FJ community and plenty of CSPs for leaving air ranks to get stuck into. And guess what, it's the SH/CHF that pay for all of this by being tasked to do the impossible by the ungrateful in the obsolescent platforms that we currently employ. Solution to the NAOs report? Scrap the Puma, Sea King and Lynx. Hire 212s to do the menial stuff, have a small fleet of squirrels so that the Generals don't have to get in a landrover, and equip the SH/CHF with a blend of Chinook (second hand "Ds" of the US?), Merlin (to keep WHL from bleating) and a small number of Cougar/NH90 to do the jobs that the Puma currently does. Oh, and let's pay for a proper DAS on all our platforms.
Standing back, opening bottle of quaffing red.