MGD - d'accord!
Pheasant
He understands the proper position of the RAF as a supporting arm to the Army and RN (the RAF will never be the "supported" arm, that is not its role).
Realy? So what about strategic Air Power delivery? Ranging from 'No Fly Zone', 'QRA' (including anti-terrorism stuff), Storm Shadow shots to bring another country to the negotiating table by taking down their air defences, positioning high end assets to deter agression (which we failed to do for Ukraine), etc..? No brown-jobs or fish-heads in sight for this type of mission.
We need to stop reliving the ground war that we are just winding up; a future conflict may not have any sea or land requirements at all. If we had not let our high-end warfighting capabilities whither so badly then we might have been able to save more lives in Ukraine but showing that strategic presence and intent that I have just spoken about.
I think the biggest problem is that we have allowed parochialism enter the debate too many times before. It shoukd be simple: if it floats then let the Navy have it (I never did understand why the RAF had its own Marine Branch - why couldn't the Navy have run this?); if it stays on the ground (ie. it doesn't float or fly) then let the Army have it (yes, I would include the RAF Regt in this); if it flies then let the Air Force have it (that would mean the FAA and AAC becoming light blue). That way it is simple, we can manage our highly skilled types like aircraft engineers and aircrew in a bigger pool and ensure that each Service Arm is supported and tasked by a Joint Force HQ (where we support each other depending on the military task). At present the numbers of these highly-skilled personnel is too small and we have seen manpower issues creep in with Sea Harrier, Apache and other small fleets of aircraft in the past.
Maybe I'm too simple for my own good!
LJ