PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Three more airbases to close?
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Old 25th Jan 2010, 20:43
  #21 (permalink)  
Biggus
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: The Roman Empire
Posts: 2,449
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gh

We are all just armchair experts, making free with our opinions. However, I believe in the past the RAF has:

Used a sim at Gatwick for Tristar crews.
Flown helo (presumably Puma) crews to Norway to use a sim

So nothing would surprise me. While I realize that Kinloss is "safe" for now, people are talking post SDR, and an airbase with only 9 airframes on it looks very vulnerable (a 4* once told an audience I was in that 16 airframes was the "break even" point for Kinloss).

I know moving to Waddington was looked at previously, and there were many infrastructure issues that you have highlighted, but they are closing Lyneham and moving enough infrastructure to support 70-80 odd large aircraft to Brize, with the need to build extra quarters, etc, so it can be done if enough will is there (although many predict the closing of Lyneham and expansion of Brize will be a disaster!)

What may well save Kinloss is the expense involved in any move at a time when the MOD is broke.

We are all simply offering are own versions of "what if".
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