Drag
The VC10 and Tristar are still in service.
PFI’s are a fundamentally poor way of procuring capabilities that are unpredictable and involve risk because the cost of that risk is always transferred back to the customer and interestingly, one of the funding partners for Air Tanker is the Royal Bank of Scotland. We will therefore be borrowing money off ourselves because we can’t afford it!
The MoD has traded affordability for value for money, penny wise pound foolish as it seems so often to be.
Whatever the pros of FSTA, and there are many, I suspect it will ultimately be very poor value for money and will fail to deliver the capability that we actually need, with too much air refuelling for a fast jet fleet we longer have and not enough air transport of sufficient flexibility for future sustained expeditionary operations.
The A330MRTT with Rolls Royce engines is absolutely the right aircraft but in trying to scrimp and save we have knobbled the fleet, they will be inflexible, inappropriate and overly expensive.
Seems like a depressing pattern repeating itself.
Still, at least those nice chaps at Air Tanker have allowed the RAF to use its shiny new hangar at Brize Norton for C130 maintenance, awfully good of them.
Oh, hang on a minute, there is a contract involved.
You didn’t think they offered it at no cost did you!
