Hawk
I think that some replies have, with the greatest respect to Forum contributors, perhaps been wandering a little off-track.
I am making a serious proposal based on the near-future air requirements an increasingly irrelevant country actually needs/can afford. (Mr Putin took the time to phone Merkel, Hollande and Obama viz the shenanigans in the Ukraine. He didn't bother with our own great statesman "call me Dave").
It's easy for some to be taken in with slick marketing/propaganda. It can be very persuasive.
Look at the Panavia Tornado. Plugged to the irons from about the early 70s until well into the 80s (originally as MRCA). This was to be the all singing and dancing panacea for Britain's air striking needs. A scourge-in-waiting for the Warsaw Pact hordes...
Yet Tornados took the heaviest losses of all Coalition aircraft in Gulf War 1. (No comment of course on the incredibly brave pilots/navigators for whom I have the greatest respect) Just the mission they were tasked to fly. (JP233)
But this was against IRAQ, remember? Not the Warsaw Pact. Not the most intense and effective air defences yet known. If Tornados took those kind of losses against a rather primitive power like Iraq. Then sending Tornados against the WP would have been akin to Fairey Battles against the Wermacht.
But that's not what we were told. Was it?
History repeats itself. F.35 is now marketed as the all singing and dancing panacea for Britain's air striking needs. Accept no substitute. But I'll wager that come the day it not deliver. Literally.
What I was suggesting was akin to a two-tier air force. Why do you need a £120m White Elephant to fire multi-million pound smart ordnance at caves or to strafe insurgents bowling along in Toyota 4x4s? You don't.
So, using Hawk 200 Series as a starting point. Instruct the Treasury to provide the requisite funding (see a previous post of mine) and upgrade the design to the end product of a cheap, rugged, fast, maneuverable, tough and simple to operate light-attack-aircraft taylor-made machine for the kind of conflicts we have ACTUALLY been involved in. NOT the operating environments some contributors seem to have envisaged.
Thus, you have a relatively cheap, ideal light-attack-aircraft that can operate in greater numbers against more primitive defences. Saving your Typhoons
for the more demanding missions.
You also keep all or most of the work and jobs here in the UK/Europe instead of exporting a precious skills-base to a foreign land.
F.35 is a criminally expensive triumph of marketing over actuality. It will have a crippling effect on an already hard-pressed defence budget (ongoing effect) and that can only be bad news for Britain.