Tourist.....I can understand your sarcasm; disparaging someone with Cdr Ward's achievements and experience seems very wrong.
However comma! I have read his blog, and also his book on the Falklands. Both display a clear, deep and almost pathological hatred of the RAF. Now it may well be founded on something solid, but then one could equally have the same feelings towards any of the services based on certain facts...after all, no-one (or organisation, including the Navy) is perfect. But even his natural bias for the Navy does not excuse the glaring multiple factual errors in his blogs. And that is where the shock lies; that someone of his clear intelligence, experience and standing could be so blinded by his apparant hatred of the RAF that he allows such bias to influence his words to the point that he truly is becoming a laughing stock in the aviation community. We have serving Naval Officers where I work and they agree that he has truly lost the plot.
The argument for the Harrier has been fatally wounded by ramblings based on heresay and, dare I say it, outright lies (and I personally know them to be untruths) of many publishing in the public arena when a reasoned argument based upon fact may have stood a chance.
I truly wish we could still have GR9 & SHAR in operational service. Sadly we don't, and even if the Govt is going to revisit some of SDSR, what do you really think they'll do? Restore a couple of sqns of a another airframe, or simply not cancel 2 existing sqns. The easy, most logical and financially sound answer is the latter.
JMHO of course.