Bengo
If politicians decide, or through ignorance allow the British military to become a "look pretty and zoomy in peacetime but **** all use at war" vanity project military like so many other around the world, then that is not ok!!
We should obey the governments order as to who and when we fight, but we should not stand by and allow the destruction of our military.
It is a vicious circle.
The flight safety movement was started for the very good reason that our loss rate was affecting our OC, and initially had a very good definition, something like - "To increase operational capability by reducing our unnecessary loss rate"
This was a brilliant idea as these kind of loss rates are unsustainable.
This was very successful, but has slowly plot shifted to something like - "avoid all avoidable accidents at all costs and sod OC", and the returns are now not worth the effort.
The initial gains were spectacular, but the law of diminishing returns has flight safety firmly in its grasp.
Because of this, despite the fact that in all other realms of manufacturing things have got cheaper, aircraft have got more expensive!
Every new airworthiness requirement and test costs more money which makes the aircraft more valuable which makes the loss more damaging to the military so we buy less so they become more expensive per airframe to cover development cost which get more expensive as requirements are brought in to avoid more losses etc etc ad infinitum until eventually we have 3 Typhoons and a Merlin which nobody can afford to fly.