Before you whinge about how many Deutchy-Markies you've potentially lost because of the RAF flying dangerous roles, remind me again of the paint scheme applied to the DHL Airbus A300 that was SAM'd over Baghdad.
Thanks for bringing up that incident - it proves my argument on many fronts! First, Iraq was a totally different set of circumstances to what is happening in Libya - Iraqi resistance had regressed way beyond the situation that is current in Libya - they were opposed to all foreign intervention. It was exactly the opportunity that a commercial arm of 2 group could have exploited.
I don't know whether you were in Iraq, but did it never occur to you the irony of watching a blacked out UK or UK military doing a steep approach into BIA, with chaff spouting out of the back, then watching a civilian airliner three minutes later flying down the ILS with landing lights on? The civ pilots were taking much more risk - as the DHL incident showed - they were the only aircraft who took a direct hit as far as I can remember.
Now imagine that the RAF had been flying the DHL contract into Baghdad, with a C17, able to do steep approaches, with full passive defences? I suspect that DHL would have far preferred to be able to hire and insure an aircraft that was properly equipped to fly into a threatened airfield than a civilian aircraft that was forced to fly a 3 degree ILS without defensive aids!