Vecvechookattack. Fair point.
But if we believe that Afghanistan is the only game in town, that defence of the homeland is no longer a robust enough argument for the retention of various capabilities, and now that the Harriers are no longer playing in theatre and the RM are doing the same role as army infantry - what does the RN bring to the party to justify its retention as an independent force?
Two's in - if you want to fly around Helmand in something like that, please be my guest. But I seriously doubt anyone with half an ounce of sense would sign off the risk mitigation for it, and the insurance companies would make it prohibitively expensive for the charter companies to operate in theatre.
Fat Chris - and what if we were fighting an air centric campaign? It could happen down the line you never know. Would we be seeing the same levels of support for disbanding the Army and transfering the resultant resources to the RAF?