Thanks and that rather comes back then to my original point. If you're never going to deploy more aircraft because of cost, why do you need them if you can't afford to use them?
Oh give me strength. HMG specifies numerous Military Tasks for HMF. Those MTs do not all revolve around TELIC/HERRICK. If the Falklands/Kosovo/Iran* blew up tomorrow, we'd need more than 7 GR9s. For the same reason, the Army has far more CR2s/WRs/Rapier FSC/AS90 etc than are deployed on ops.
Supporting ops and maintaining a wider defence capability requires overheads. Period.
* delete as appropriate.