Originally Posted by
nigegilb
SB, so it all comes down to military risk,
You cannot do war on the cheap, it costs lives.
Has the new Nimrod got fuel tank protection? It bloody well should have.
Keep up the good fight Nige, eventually the pennies will drop, one after the other! Doing war on the cheap costs money as well as lives. The whole point of RAF Flight Safety, of which I am proud to say I was involved in some 35 years go, was not to avoid military risk, which we all signed up to, but to avoid it when it is inappropriate. This includes all shades of technical shortcomings which are by definition avoidable. The bottom line aim of Flight Safety is force maintenance, to avoid losses that therefore reduce capability. Having suspect plumbing, or unprotected fuel tanks, are classic examples of being penny wise and pound foolish. Whatever happened to Flight Safety these days, gone the way of powers of a subordinate commander and an integral chain of command? The sooner old ways that work are reintroduced, and all the myriad quangos with the cryptic initials scrapped, the sooner we will regain a balanced military capability that is now conspicuous by its absence.