Well wouldn’t you know it?
More FAA and AAC centric bol.locks from the usual suspects.
First Brandnew, whose witless nonsense needs no response.
And then ObiWanRussell, who comes out with the usual RN
PR spin
“SINCE WW2, all British Military air to air victories have been achieved by Fleet Air Arm aircraft flying from aircraft carriers. The RAF hasn't shot anything down since the forties!”
RAF owned fighters may not have done (stand fast those itching to leap in with the politically sensitive subject of kills in the Confrontation), but RAF fighter pilots have done so. Flying F-86s in Korea and your beloved SHars in the Falklands.
You may recall that the RAF hasn’t actually deployed fighters in most of the conflicts that resulted in kills. You can’t get a kill if you’re not there. Which is why SHar got no kills in Granby.
“The Royal Naval Air Service (which had invented strategic Bombing)….”
“All the Navy airmen who were behind Strategic bombing were absorbed into the RAF….”
Like Trenchard, you mean? The father of bombing for strategic effect.
While I would not wish to diminish the work of officers like Marix in flying long range bombing missions against Zeppelin sheds in their Short 184s, to claim from this that Strategic bombing was a Navy game is a bit of a stretch, and ignores the pioneering (and rather more effective) work of Louis Strange and other RFC officers.
Yes, the RNAS ordered the 0/100 – but then used it first for recce, and later, rather ineffectively, as a bomber, while the RFC’s DH4s and FE2bs were more effective, if less headline-grabbing.
And the Independent Force was dominated by ex-RFC officers, and by RFC doctrine.
“Putting Naval Aviation in the hands of a land based Air Force with other priorities has been done three times in the last ninety years, always disastrously.”
Oh yes, the parlous state of the FAA in 1939 was all the fault of the wicked RAF, and nothing to do with the funding priorities of the Sea Lords……
“In the last few years the Navy was forced to give up it's Sea Harriers because the RAF was having budget problems, leading to Joint Force Harrier, supposedly a 50/50 split of RAF/FAA manning.”
The RN put up withdrawal of the SHar as an option – a cut the Admirals were willing to bear. And they got more from JHF than was fair or sensible. You take an RAF Harrier Force that had never had a problem manning three squadrons with 12-16 aircraft and 18-20 pilots each (and with countless pilots on exchange, or on instructional tours) and an RN SHar force that struggled to man a pair of eight aircraft squadrons… (even with RAF exchange officers). What's the logical split? 75:25? 66:33? (The Navy might struggle with the latter.....)
No. You aim for a 50:50 split, and give the RN half of the senior posts and two of the four squadron numberplates.
The RAF had to get rid of people, while the Navy failed to meet its manning obligations. And then you blame the RAF for the ensuing mess!
Cancelling the carriers saves billions. It removes the immediate requirement for JSF, saving billions more. The Japanese are an island nation dependent on sea trade and exist without carriers and a blue water Navy, and so could we. And carrier air power is one of those ‘nice to have’ niche capabilities – and one that we haven’t actually NEEDED since 1982.
Two’s in,
It’s 180 Typhoons today, for a total cost of about £20 Bn including R&D. NOT £32 Bn. (Did you get that from that useless tw@t Page?).
That will give us enough aircraft for five squadrons – the bare number required for peacetime UK AD, QRA and Falklands commitments.
Mercifully, the British public are intelligent enough to see UK AD as a core role, and it will get more support than niche expeditionary capabilities that are so niche that they are of little or no use to current operations (yep, I mean carriers).
We need the RN to finally take its share of the pain. The other forces have been dramatically down-sized since the 1980s (the RAF’s FJ force is about one third of the size it was then, infantry battalions have been cutback similarly), yet the surface fleet is still about half the size it was, and yet is far less relevant.
I'd be rightly criticised if I exaggerated the extent by which the Navy should be cut back, or if I suggested that it should be run by a resurrected RAF Marine Branch, but actually, if you had to take a radical solution, cutting the Navy is more justifiable than cutting either of the other services.
We don’t need cavalry horses any more. I am not suggesting that nor do we need much more than a coastal defence Navy. But we should now let the Admirals finally take their fair share of the pain.