WW
That is exactly what I mean, there is little or no propaganda about the role the fast jets are playing either at home with air defence or in theatre, I suspect the public think all they do is airshows(might be right considering some of the threads on here about hours flown
).
I think you are right about selecting one aircraft to do all roles, ok it might not be the best at each, but only needing one set of spares, one training programme, should allow us to have more, but need less of the expensive things like aircrew. You can have a common pool of aircrew type rated for what ever it is, and then rotate them through various roles. Come back from mud moving on the frontline to UK air defence(should be more mundane and allow time with family etc).
I know that there is some publicity about SH, but then again just how many people if stopped and asked could answer correctly, who the chaps in green are? Arguably could you take the same approach there, and only have one helicopter type? Is there enough reason for wokka and the eurothing(ok navy like it) Should RAF operate a larger fleet of Chinook, all at the same mod state, likewise the navy operate one helicopter type. Sure it might be wasteful(and not as comfortable) to move some bigwig by Wokka, but surely the longterm savings are greater. Again from a crew perspective you should need fewer aircrew, but as they are all of the same ilk, less time would be spent in theatre.