Head of Royal Navy threatens resignation over push to scrap Harriers

[exscribbler]

Here we go again! We're back to the old RAF argument that land-based air assets are more effective at power-projection than carrier-based ones. If that's the case, why are the USN and USMC happily building what appears to be an almost complete set of carriers - and the Russians and Chinese are joining in?

Do we know something they don't know? No, we know it pretty well in this country but we (Tory and New Labour alike) we haven't learned from history. We suffered from it after 1 April 1918 (a suitable date for the RNAS) more or less until 1942 when the RN started getting US carrier aircraft.

It continues to this day; Torpy is no more keen on jointery than was the CAS when the nuclear strike capability was transferred from the RAF to the RN all those years ago, so he'd like to gather everything that flies to the bosom of the RAF. That's what Goering did and look what happened to him...

We can afford the T45s (at £560 million each) to defend the carriers; what we can't afford are the serried ranks of Typhoons (at £30 million each) at Coningsby. I have yet to hear Bob Ainsworth say that Typhoon is so capable that we don't need all of them - but he said that about the T45 and a lot of people believed him!

When will we learn? If we want to have a greater say in the world, we need the assets and we need them at sea. If we don't want a greater say then let's have the RN become a coastal defence force, let the RAF have all the aircraft (Coningsby and Waddington should be quite adequate) and stop bloody worrying about what the others think...