Not sure if I go along with the general trend of opinion in this thread.
Seems to be that there is a wish to reduce or even eliminate elements of our strategic defence in favour of higher spending on tactical equipment to strengthen our efforts in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The AQ threat may be real but our response is really rather pointless, wherever we invade, they will dissappear elsewhere (like from Afghanistan to Yemen) and leave us and the by now very pissed off indigenous population to fight it out. We will then bleed money, equipment and of course Trained manpower, very slowly but very steadily with a cumulative effect on our operational capability to defend ourself when it really matters.
I hope that this is an accidental outcome of our own stupidity and not a result of clever planning by OBL and AQ, otherwise we really are fu**ed.
The planet is undergoing some seismic shifts in power and influence with a strong emerging Asia, particularly China, of course and western politicians don't seem to find anything odd about mortgaging our economies to an upcoming rival to fund a totally pointless (but bravely fought) regional military operation.
At the same time, some very unpromising and unreliable political systems are getting their hands on nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile we have narrowly escaped by the skin of our teeth from global financial meltdown, and historically this kind of financial meltdown has given way to wars resulting in staggering levels of death and destruction (that would make 9/11, 7/7 and anything else that AQ could pull off, look like a quiet afternoon on the front).
On another thread there is discussion that we will be giving up our nuclear deterrent. This would be a disaster. By all means give up trident, but giving up nukes altogether while the Pakistanis, Indians, N. Koreans and others are only just getting their hands on them, what the hell would we be doing ??
Would we be relying on the US ? have they not shown that their only real interest is the US ?
And related to this thread, I have read somewhere (correct me if I am wrong) that JSF has been ACM with up to five F18 against one JSF, and it has ended with a 5-0 JSF victory, before the F18's could even find the JSF.
So you could put up
50 Hawks against new technologies and they would all be splashed before they knew WTF was going on. Broadswords against Musket, Bows and Arrows against Rifles, Cavalry against Machine Guns, Blenheims and Defiants against Messerschmidts (that worked out well didn't it
) technology moves on guys, so must we.
We need to work out what possible real threats of the future will be and prepare ourselves to fight the most dangerous ones and not allow our treasury and our budget to be deflected in to focusing on an expensive, painful but ultimately ineffective sideshow.
Rmac