Originally Posted by
oojamaflip
So, with 14000 fewer people we operate 70 vessels and 200 combat aircraft and we can take a fight to a lot more places than you can. You may have noticed that UK foreign policy isn't winning us friends and influencing people. Friendly overseas airfields are getting thinner on the ground. If we binned the CVF's and ordered 350 Typhoons, how would they be used? Towing RAF Marham to the South China seas, for instance, could prove a logistical challenge. Presumably you'd want the 40000 extra personnel to fly these 350 jets too?
I know the RAF all walked past the RN recruiting office to get there, because the Air Force is the soft option, but it would be nice if a larger proportion of you got your hands dirty once in a while. I think if I were a GR7 or Chinook mate, I'd feel aggrieved at the time away considering the number of 'fat wheezy boys with a note from matron' who think one night away from the mrs is a deployment.
By the way, I do hope you twirl your moustaches in a Terry-Thomas stylee whilst pursuing said fillies.
200 combat aircraft!! Somewhat disingenuous. You do not have 200 combat aircraft - you have some Lynx and some Merlins which might at some stretch count as combat aircraft, which, as mentioned above, might, as long as they stay close to mother, be effective at dropping a torpedo or 2 against that great and well known submarine threat we are currently fighting. Some may have door guns - wow! You do not have any long range strike aircraft, you do not have long range maritime aircraft, or transport or tankers, or elint, or long range SAR or or or.......... You might claim to have a few GR7s but then we all know that, despite the change of sqn markings, those really belong to, are supported by and in the main operated by the RAF. Fixed wing FAA? About to implode!! Unless of course you count the Jetstream T3s as combat aircraft!! You might as well in the FAA it's about all you have left. And to compare a Lynx to a Nimrod, get real!! Range, endurance, weapons load recce, elint and, if StormShadow and LGB, are integrated long range strike and CAS in one platform and it isn't the Lynx
