Not any more than the Scots would want them.
However, such a division leaves England with two huge airports right on our border and we would only have Leuchars and Machrihanish, although the Cowal Peninsula would extend a long way into the English part of the Atlantic.
I suspect that things will get worse before they get better and survival may become more important than Independence before the SNP get around to having a vote on splitting away from Westminster.
Some real cuts to public services are going to be needed, not this fannying around we have seen so far. Proper money saving cuts to budgets that leave the taxpayer funding what’s required not all the nice to have crap. Let’s get the Police, Fire and NHS funded and then see what money is left over for national defence.
Leave all the rest of the leeches like the Scottish National Orchestra and the Opera, National Portrait Gallery and Historic Scotland to stand, or fall, by their own means. If the people want Opera, let them pay for it the way that Speedway clubs need to survive on what they get trhough the gate from fans.
Cut all the waste of the economic folly that is the regeneration budget. All this free money from the government has to come from somewhere and if it were not so readily available in huge lumps, then the taxation burden would ease upon the rest of us.
Instead of the Police cutting 10% across the board and seeing crime fighting suffer, why not just do away with entire, non productive, departments and staff like the Diversity Co-ordinators and Marketing Executives.
Let’s have fewer council staff doing plant pots in the town centres and flower beds along the edge of the motorways. Everywhere you look you can see public money spent on things that only the recipient of the money actually wants.
£50 Million quid for a painting? If the Titan is really worth that then let someone with 50 million quid buy it, not the taxpayer.
To return to Air Defence, Scotland could operate a small airforce to protect the Scottish border and offshore assets, without the need for an expeditionary warfare capacity. Such an airforce could do without a lot of the waste that currently holds back the RAF from getting value for money.
It’s not going to happen of course, we’ll see the whole system fall apart first, as the money men hold out until the very bitter end like Gadaffi did.
Watch what happens in Greece when they can't find the money to pay the Police and the Army.
Control your ambition, or it will bring you down.