PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - What's the future of the Red Arrows?
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Old 13th Feb 2014, 14:11
  #66 (permalink)  
WH904
 
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The Red Arrows have always been (and still are) a great asset. A national treasure of which we're all proud. Okay, a few people will always raise silly questions of value-for-money, but a proper analysis of the team's value always illustrates that they have always been worth every penny.

But it seems pretty certain that their future is dictated by the remaining fatigue lives on their Hawks. There's no realistic prospect of replacing the Hawks so once they've reached the end of their useful lives in jut a few years from now, that must be the end of the team too. It will be an incredibly sad day when they go, but it seems inevitable.

As for BBMF, I think there will always be far too emotion connected with this issue. Realistically, all of the BBMF fleet would inevitably continue to fly if they were sold to civilian owners, therefore it does seem slightly absurd that spending is still allocated to them when they could all continue to fly in civilian hands.

Ultimately, both units are politically-touchy subjects and nobody has any appetite for "killing-off" either of them. Who would want to be painted as the man who destroyed the Red Arrows and the BBMF? However, when the RAFAT no longer have any Hawks, it's obviously easier to claim that disbandment is an inevitable consequence. Finding a similarly plausible excuse to dump the BBMF is rather more difficult!
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