Hello iRaven, it's nice to see some alternative views even if they rub against the grain.
In response to your recent posts, it wasn't our (UKs) idea to send MPA on overland ISR. The US had been doing it for nearly 10 years and it was very successful. We (RAF Maritime) eventually got some investment from some people who know what they want (not the RAF, and they asked repeatedly for weapons which was resisted by the RAF for some reason!) a spin off was it also provided more utility to the rest of the regular forces (read multi-role, value for money, etc.) of a predominantly maritime platform, at the time no other platform was available with the range, flexibility or capacity.
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and others thought it was such a bad idea that they have/are trying to develop the role we were doing overland for thier MPAs, the US who can buy whatever they want to do the roles think it's so flawed and achievable by a UAV (RPAS) that it is by far the largest part of their P-3s tasking (despite the myriad of other ISTAR platforms available) and will be a core role of the replacement P-8.
While I can accept the Governments choice to ditch Nimrod if they consider it tainted (I know it worked BTW), we still need it's ISR, and Above Water/Under Water Warfare capabilities and that is what I heard from CAS on Wednesday. Given the train set he has just been left with, is he prepared to readjust it to save a vital capability quickly (i.e.: Order some P-8) or does he want to leave the RAF open to more cuts, like it or not we still don't need that many FJ. 2015 could easily see the FJ force halved and cancelation of the JSF if the CVs are cancelled once the MOD has paid to employ a large part of the UK workforce for 5 more years , especially as they do not fit into the plan outlined in NSS, however one platform seemed quite useful for most of the tasks
Anyone outside our community couldn't understand that just because we were an MPA and did ASW we could do other things from the air. Submarine = Cold War and Maritime = Ocean. We should have used LRPA, Long Range Patrol Aircraft, and I know we didn't like the name but UWW, Under Water Warfare solved the other issue and it was better than Under Water ISTAR!