Just what do the Reds bring to the party? I can't really think of anything apart from people to airshows and pride in their airships breasts. What training do they provide? And what war role? It can hardly be said that they bring in export orders as we are not exactly a great exporter of indigenous UK FW a/c - do we have any such aircraft apart from the Nimrod and the VC10 tanker? The Hawk line appears to have dried up.
And why no mention of BBMF and Cranwell? There's another £12M+ per year each.
Re CVF, SEAD etc, the fact is that in comparison to the US we have virtually nothing to bring to the party in these areas, so perhaps we should spend our money on the capabilities that we do dominate in....MCMV, small ship attack helos, SF, Defence Diplomacy (the latter only covered by the RN, neither the Army or RAF do this). I am struggling to think of RAF and Army niche capabilities that the US do not have. However, what all of our capabilities bring, and this is where CVF is important, is political purchasing power and overt support to our allies in periods of tension/day1-3 effect.
The reason that the Harrier Force is in such dire straits is that the senior RAF have lost interest in it and will not invest money in solving the training dilemma. Now if the RN were to pull out of it I suspect we would see a change of priority, surprise, surprise.
I am not anti-RAF but they and their supporters tend to protest a little too much.