Originally Posted by Pontius_Navigator
Need to be careful harking back to a 9/11 scenario.
Suppose there were 4 aircraft targeted at major centres in UK such as London, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Bradford. Do we have 6 aircraft on QRA so that we could send 2 against each potential threat?
Nice maths, PN. (always find it amusing exchanging banter with PPRuNers as you old salts are probably several ranks above me and I'd never get away with it in real life!)
I think that the public aren't really aware of the necessity for UK AD, as it's not a very tangible asset of the RAF.
After all, them doing their job is to make sure that nothing happens, be it intruding Russians, or hijacked jets, and people rarely notice the absence of something. Add to that some people will question why we need to spend millions of pounds on our jets being ready to intercept Russians when the Cold War is over, and the Russians wouldn't in their wildest dreams bomb us - what would they have to gain?