Point 1 Guards and Ceremonial. The ceremonial side is tradition for the army stretching back centuries something the RAF doesn't have so why do the RAF need QCS? There are 3 companies who's role is ceremonial from Gren Gds, Scots Gds and Coldm Gds plus the Household Cavalry mounted regiment and Kings troop. All soldiers allocated to thease units are fully trained soldiers who can be used as reinforcements for operational taskings note many of the men in fancy uniforms on Trooping the colour also were weaing campaign medals. It also allows the Guards to have spare troops that can take some of the pressures of consatant deployments allowing troops to recover from wounds/illness but still bing useful. They not only do the ceremonial bit but also alot of keeping the armed forces in the public eye with kings troop appearing at shows up and down the country doing the Musical ride and the musical ride of the Household Cavalry doing the same thing. The Bns rotate into the role and it gives them a break from ops.
Point 2. yes there is a need for the red arrows as has been stated and the BBMF. But the resources put into the individual aircraft display teams and role demonstrations could be much better used. I note the Fleet Air arm historic flight and I think the AAC historic flight pilots aren't fully assigned to those teams.
Point 3. without the carriers there is no reason to have JSF. There is an excellent LPH HMS ocean we could do with a second and some more modern helecopters to fly from it.
Point 4 the Carribean Guard ship does more than just chase drug runners it also provides support in Humanitarian disasters, Acts as guard ship to our dependant territories and is also a good recruiting and retention tool for overstretched sailors. we actually need more frigate and destroyer type ships in the RN as over the recent past the Navy has cut to far to buy favour with the treasury for the carriers (which I strongly suspect will be cancelled after the next election no matter who gets in) yes a corvette type vessel would be useful. But the Navy is currently renting opv's 4(including the FIOPV) that replaced 7 vessels. BTW sometimes the Carribean GS is an RFA
Point 5. Typhoon actually may soon be the only show in town if JSF is cut and Typhoon devlops into the full multirole aircraft its ment to be. If it does work why not get rid of the Tornado GR4.
point 6. JSF is ment to be replacing the whole harrier fleet not just the FAA. I would sugest if the carrier program goes then JSF will go as well. The Navy should have bought Harrier II airframes and built Sea Harrier FA2 round them instead of trying to to modernise the FRS1 but that point has been past.
Point 7 Nimrod provides alot more than SAR support why do you think its been orerating ver Afghanistan and Iraq some of its roles there will never be discussed. We actually could do with expanding the current buy of Nimrod.
Point 8. The Airbus tanker looks like it will be a great platform for AAR/transport how we are getting them is ridiculous we should have bout them outright from the start instead of PFI (Pay for it indefinitly). Ad it will be probably in service for 20-30 years. A400m on the other hand we should never have gone into and bought more C17's and C130J's
Tucano on the frontline Hmmmmm..... think this is a non starter though Hawk might be a better option if we're getting a dedicated COIN platform.
There are alot of programmes that we could have spent better and bought of the shelf Chinook HC3 being 1. I can't believe that the CVRT hasn't been replaced by a variant of The Mowag Piranah like the Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Irish, Americans I could go on have done. When we buy of the shelf we seam to do OK things like Minimi and the 40mm GL its when we try and devlop kit that it goes wrong Bowman and SA80 being prime examples.
Yes the UK armed forces are short of cash having been starved of it and expected to do al manner of military adventures. We have had to waste huge sums of money on theatre spefic vehicles for thease operations which we will be stuck with and more general purpose items have been put on the Back Burner and will never now see full potential as the money need for them has already been spent on sticking plaster fixes to theatre specific problems.