Hello RW types. You appear to be dancing around a subject vexing the light blue side of the FW equation.
If you are going to go to sea, which the RAF 'will' (for the sake of argument) do to augment CHF or replace CHF...pick either, it doesn't really matter...then you either have to fit into a system or bring one with you. A whole one. At the moment we have an ever decreasing amount of maritime expertise. For fairly obvious reasons RW is better placed than FW. That dwindling expertise is keeping us safe to a degree and crucially, to my mind, the 'we can do without the niche capability, gold plated capability' argument misses the point. It is that core that allows the 'bolt on' to function. It is that core that provides the guys who run the deck, who position the ship, who grew up through CHF and now supervise it.
Does Odiham want to provide a full time flyco team? How about ATC? If not full time then for how long prior to an embarkation? Who will validate the Air department? Who will check the camrex?
You can't rely on a system being in place whilst arguing for the removal of the very thing which feeds it.
If the RAF, or some within it, want to replace CHF because it's a niche capability, just like some would argue they have the same aspiration to man FW in its entirety - could they please be coherent enough to tell us where the Cdr Airs, Lt Cdr Flyings, SO2 RWs, SO3 HECs are going to come from?
If the answer is: 'The Fleet Air Arm of the RAF' where you go from RAFC Cranwell to RAF-det HMS Collingwood to earn your spurs on a bridge and then spend your career operating from a ship or at least on a badged FAA-of the-RAF squadron with a higher embarkation cycle than the RAF SH fleet, and then go on staff tours directly related to the capability...then that is a sound answer and I applaud your thinking. But the implication of that isn't just distasteful to those joining the RAF, it's impractical as well. It's everything wrong with our Joint thinking. We have asystem that provides this already, manned by people who want to do it. Bizarrely enough they don't spend every waking hour dreaming up reasons to take over the AAC or any other SH provider.
So come on then, what's the plan? Let's hear what the end-to-end RAF plan is to replace CHF. Not just in the cockpit, but in the ships, in the hangar, in flyco the whole darn shooting match. Because all that is fed by CHF.