Agreed we should be looking at 5th Generation aircraft. But the JSF and the carrier are tied up so closley together the Treasury will see getting rid of one means getting rid of the other. And unless the preformance of JSF is improved it should be reviewed.
Max hastings on question time stated programmes like trident and the carriers would have to be sacrificed to preserve the armed forces for the future and JSF and some other programs may have to go the same way for the same reason.
Agree there needs to be reviews and redundancies from the top heavy officer corps in all 3 services.
And yeap the budget is now to tight and there needs to be a united front to sort the mess out and unfortunatley this is going to mean pain for all 3 services.
However this pain should not be suffered if it means loosing the flexibility of the armed forces by reconfiguring it for only COIN warfare.
The problem is the politicised nature of the heads of the armed forces and the civil servants that run MOD. Coupled with short term planning ie planning to election cycles not for the long term.