I'm with you on wanting to preserve our once great aviation heritage but we can't consider pensioning off the VC10 and C130K just yet, even though they are well past retirement-age until our wonderful govt and MOD(PE) provided us with some replacements!
The trouble is made worse when those planned replacements suffer delays (C130J, A400M, C17) and when operational losses are not replaced
. Through my rose-tinted galsses I seem to recall that after the Falklands that Maggie at least did the decent thing and ordered replacements for the aircraft losses we experienced, including those lost on Atlantic Conveyor, and even the RN got some new ships to replace Coventry, Ardent, Exeter etc.)
It seems so un-necessary now as we managed to sustain ops in places such as Borneo, Aden, Oman and other far-away places with far less capable ac such as the Argosy, Britannia, Andover, Beverley, Hastings, Belevedere in the 1960's yet struggle to do so now?
The scary bit is that even the Tornado is 25 years old and will have to soldier on for many more years in the ground attack/CAS role before a replacement comes along. The post Cold War defence review promised a smaller and leaner BUT BETTER EQUIPPED armed forces but although we may have shrunk the equipment is getting very lonf in the tooth!
The RAF is rapidly becoming the R&AAF - the Royal and Ancient Air Force
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MB