You've been in the sun too long, chum!
Your view on the Jaguar is out-of-date and erroneous. You have a pre-TIALD/pre-EO Recce/Pre-Granby view of the aircraft, which has consistently proved to be the most deployable, flexible and economical OS platform available to force commanders in recent years.
Your view on the F3 is similarly behind the curve. With JTIDS and AMRAAM it does quite well enough, and with minor investment in ELS, TIALD and recce could have become a very useful multi-role aeroplane. It's Eurofighter by the way, not Euro-fighter.
Our post Cold War post SDR posture does NOT envisage autonomous national operations, so the lack of any one particular capability is not in itself a problem. The SHar just happens to be the easiest thing to ditch, and certainly represents a less useful capability than is offered by the Jag or the F3. If the Navy had been more realistic when it came to assessing the post Cold War usefulness of Trident, I'd be a little more sympathetic, but while it may be a bad choice to bin SHar, it's the 'least bad' choice if one fixed wing FJ fleet has to disappear.
Personally I'd have kept the SHar for land based air defence and binned the carriers, but there you are ..........
On a more serious note, were the forces serious about Smart procurement, and was best practise employed (following the Jag upgrade template rather than the GR4 template for other upgrades, for example) there might be more money in the kitty. Propping up BAE with inflated price contracts for gold-plated and often inappropriately Gucci programmes should not be a matter for the defence budget. If it's industrially necessary for BAE to prosper, then let the DTI pay for it.
WEBF,
I know you want to fly SHars. Get over it. Join the RAF and fly GR7s or if you must bob about on the briny, then fly a Lynx. You'd be lucky to do either job, and either job would give you just as much challenge and satisfaction.
Last edited by Jackonicko; 22nd May 2002 at 20:08.