Barking, absolutely barking. Has my namesake made a re-appearance??
If you abolish the RAF, unless you decide you are going to do without an attack / CAS, rotary/AT, maritime, ISTAR etc capability, then all these capabilities will have to be done by the modified FAA & AAC. So where do you make savings? You still need ac, crews, ground crews, infrastructure etc. On the financial basis alone, the argument doesn't stack up.
Furthermore, with the projected costs for replacing Trident, there could be a very good argument (financial / political rather than military) for re-structuring the nuclear deterrent and returning it to the RAF. Lets face it, when it comes to the nuclear deterrent, the Army don't get a look in. To project that sort of strategic power needs air or a maritime-derived capability. If the naval option is looking too expensive, then lets look at the air option. Getting rid of it in total just isn't a sensible option at the moment.
I would also have to question the sanity of giving air over to the army. They just don't get it - in the same way you wouldn't expect a flying sqn to 'get' the art of clearing a house or hand to hand fighting. Two examples of the danger of letting the army loose with air:
I remember talking to a FC who was telling me about Gulf 1 when the Army rolled out their MLRS and thought they could just let rip. They had no concept that they might need to coordinate, or the sort of damage that could be done by launching an MLRS battery through a COMAO. Then last summer I was working in Div HQ in Basrah. Discussing recce provision, for the coming days I was posed the deadly serious question: "RAPTOR - that's the one that hovers over the battlefield for 24 hrs".
Interesting to see that this argument hasn't been posted in any of the quality UK press. It's very easy for commentators to snipe from the sidelines of another country's press or online, but the fact that it isn't appearing anywhere else suggests it isn't a particularly credible argument.
This is nothing more than a divide and conquer scare story. Yet again, another attempt by the politicians and their Machiavellian sidekicks to get the Services to turn on themselves rather than standing united against those who have spent a decade destroying the country and those who would likely spend the next decade destroying what is left of the country.
Instead of destroying the defence of the country (the Army are so busy in Afghanistan, the Navy are too busy with their new toys - who is keeping an eye on the Russians every time they send a Bear round the Cape?) lets look at the real areas of inefficiency - ID cards, the NHS IT system, millions spent on foreign aid and useless left-wing social engineering policies to name but a few.