liquid sunshine has touched on the most significant point - the utter lack of proper strategic thinking. Moving the Typhoon jets north to Lossie will leave the QRA ideally placed for a faster reaction to those nasty Tu95 Bears and Blackjacks that violate our airspace and are such a threat! Oh, but I forget - that was the Cold War. Silly me.
Liam Fox is shaping up to be a true "Son of Sandys" the Tory Defence Minister who wreaked havoc on our military and our defence industry. He simply does not understand Defence. When he axed the Nimrods he said (and I quote exactly) : ".. if we do need that capability we may have to get it from somewhere else." As though there's an MPA force sitting on a shelf somewhere.
But the real strategic mess in all this is, as already alluded to earlier, is in our defence against the current terrorist threat. The Typhoons at Coningsby are too far north as it is; a 9/11 type airplane bumbling across the channel at a thousand feet ot two would be buried in Big Ben long before a Typhoon scarmbled from CGY could get to it. That threat has been demonstrated for real. And let's not forget that we also need to provide total protection for the 2012 Games. Our brilliant MoD answer - move the Typhoons even further north out of harms way. You couldn't make it up. :