vortex
I wasn't referring to any cracks in any particular system, but merely to the arguments often spouted by the Navy and Army that they should subsume the RAF because they could do all its tasks so much better. You rightly point out that CAS, airlift and SH is RAF work. But everyone seems to forget that perhaps the RAF's most important task, even now, is the air defence of the homeland, which is an activity that the Army could never do and the Navy could only ever do on a tiny scale (ie fleet defence) however many carriers they had.