I have to take my hat off to Tim Collins. He's good - in fact he's almost as good as he thinks he is. But when it comes to actually understanding the RAF and what it does, then I suspect there is a big gap between what he thinks he knows and what he actually understands.
So we disband the RAF and give it over to the Army & Navy. And of course the AT situation will miraculously improve over night. 'Dave' won't be put back several years, the Kipper fleet won't have all the problems it's having and the SH fleet will actually get some proper well thought out and targeted investment. And all that just by changing cap badges ..... quick someone pass me a Gems form
What passes for understanding of the RAF and airpower - more so in the Army than the RN - is quite frankly frightening. I remember sitting through an ISTAR lecture given by an Army WO1 ISTAR "expert" and I shall use that word in the loosest sense of its meaning. He went on for the best part of an hour on formation recce, troops being dug into OPs miles from anywhere for weeks at a time and the high tech Phoenix UAV which was going to solve all our problems. As we got towards the end, he went on to what the RAF bring to the ISTAR party - a single photo of an E3 and "oh yes and the RAF have a few of these things" and that was it. And that was from an "expert" - god only knows what the rest of the army know / understand about RAF ops. That has, unfortunately only been reinforced by recent experiences out in the sandpit.
The fact that having been already formed almost 30 years before the Americans took our lead in setting up their own independent air force should also surely make the point that in this case, he is completely wrong. God, even the Belgians have their own independent air force having split it off from the Army in 1946. First of all the Navy compare our Fleet to the Belgian Navy and now Collins thinks we should take a step backwards to something even the Belgians realised could be done better as an independent force.
Collins needs to climb down from his own arse and realise that the RAF isn't the enemy - the politicians, bean counters and yes-men are. Instead of spouting his ill informed drivel, based on what evidence I'm not sure, the better. Instead, the motion should be "In this current fiscal climate, the country can no longer afford this government".