Glad to see all aboard are OK. The simple statistics of flying that many hours in that kinetic and environmental threat were bound to catch us up, and in the last couple of weeks it has - fortunately without casualties. Lucky we have plentiful attrition ac like the FJ fleet....oh, no we don't. Lucky we've got all those SABR Chinooks coming soon...oh, we took £1.5Bn out of the RW budget and didn't buy them. Never mind, let's get Mr Boeing to build us an attrition buy...what's that? We're behind the US Army, Australia, Canada, Dutch and UAE with no delivery slots until 2013+? Oh dear.
Oh well, we can always invoke the "Special Relationship" and get Barack to bump us up the queue...oh, we've released the Lockerbie bomber and soured that as well. What far sighted politicos we have.
How inconvenient of us to get embrolied in a war (yes Rifkind, a war...) where the fleets taking combat attrition (AT & RW) don't have meaningful attrition reserves....