Ref: Macrihanish & Stornoway
My understanding is that both these airfields were retained on behalf of a NATO tasking committment. Stornoway (complete with serviceable hangar)was the hub for Joint Maritime exercises in addition to nearby SU and Macrihanish the UK base for all sorts of hypersonic black things. I'm not sure that NATO as an institution has any credibility anymore as a byproduct to the Afghan centric nature of some, but not all, european military forces. It is £££ as opposed to logic driving many decisions these days, many of which will be looked back upon in the future as a major error of judgement. Whilst there are numerous examples of this (hardware) that you could flag up; for me it is the demise of Harrier that is unforgivable.