Hi lj,
In my experience we can get an expert to justify just about any circumstance we care to put forward. We have only very recently withdrawn the harrier and stood down all those personnel responsible for servicing that type of aircraft and to suggest we could not very quickly get these skills back onto a front line capability is perhaps being a little dis-ingenuous.
Is the government suggesting those personnel with these skills have had a part of their memory removed? Yes they may well need to re-qualify but is that going to take MONTHS!! My thoughts are that this is an insult to these highly skilled, dedicated crafts personnel. Yes it would take years to recruit civilians and train them to work on these aircraft. How long would it take a highly qualified pilot with hundreds, if not thousands of hours on this type of aircraft to re-qualify?
I guess I could tell the Prime Minister that the Ark Royal is in desperate need of a major, and very expensive refit and at this current time it is not a viable option to put her back in commission. Without an aircraft carrier there is not a need to bring back the harrier...
Illustrious???? You never asked about the Illustrious Prime Minister and what you do not know, you cannot talk about, but yes she is operational, she is at sea, she can deploy to the coast of Libya and yes we have warships shelling installations in the coastal towns of that country so we are confident we can operate our carrier within easy strike distances of the harriers. But if anyone asks about that ship then simply tell them she will be needed to replace the Ocean.
I hate using the Falklands as an example but the SS Canberra was a beautiful, luxury cruise liner but in just THREE DAYS.... Yes three days she was converted into a troop ship complete with a flight deck capable of receiving sea king helicopters, plus all the abilities to be able to refuel at sea. How long would that normally take?? I am certain we could all easily find experts that would be talking about months or even longer to carry out this type of work, but when push comes to shove we will walk on water!!
This all smells of someone somewhere making a decision to scrap harriers and now come hell or high water our Prime Minister will not back down and admit that in HIND SIGHT..... This decision might need reviewing.
Let's all keep insulting each other and not bother with using the best options that might even at this late hour still be available. I hate those that use hind sight to criticise those that have to make horrible decisions. This however might not be 'hind sight' The situation is still ongoing, we are still flying over a thousand miles to get to and from a target rather than having an airfield 30 - 50 miles from the theatre of current operations.