Squirrel 41
The reality is that we would only need to cost 9 x FSTA airframes, as the remaining 5 airframes are on long lease with industry on 30 days recall for major operations. As these 5 ac are planned for contingency use on AT rather than AAR tasks, DSCOM could just hire passenger ac from the civilian market. Admittedly civilian ac would not be equipped with DAS, but we could always cross deck the pax on to C130s for the last leg if the threat required it.
Of course, if we decided not to put a FSTA aircraft in the Falklands to fly a few hundred hours per year tanking, but instead used an A400 to tank the FJs then we would only need 8 x FSTA!! How can that cost £27Bn?
Last edited by Severus; 13th Mar 2008 at 12:14.