1, We had 6 TriStar tankers, all paid for. Even a comprehensive life extension and servicability upgrade would have cost little compared to FSTA lease.
Except of course we require(d) a capability that would be operational for another 25 years, something that you could not achieve with the Trishaw. We would have been lucky to have got another 5 years from it and it would still have needed replacing.
2, RAF TriStar had a virtual full house of drogue clearances. RAF TriStar did not need Hi/Low speed drogue.
We did at the end of the Trishaw's service life (actually the VC10K had a bigger set of clearances) but it didn't magically arrive with those clearances, they grew over many years - so irrelevant. Are you really saying that Tristar could tank a C-130 with a normal drogue?
3, Cash/Credit flow was easy with RAF TriStar due to the fact it was paid for and, had a low utilisation cost.
That's debatable - aging aircraft, spares supply dwindling, costs going up, higher fuel burn and let's not forget the costs of your proposed MLU - and we would still need to repalce the aircraft in about 5 years time.
4, RAF TriStar fulfilled the role of NATO and European widebody AAR shortfall tanker for 25 years.
Really?!!? I'm not sure what the relevance of "widebody" is to a tanker, but let's not forget that the
6 Tristars were part of a much larger fleet that included
25 other tankers - so it may have provided a
small element of that shortfall.
Now when it comes to VFM of the PFI deal, I can't disagree with you
but you cannot blame the air marshals for that - that was Govt direction, so you can blame the pollies that thought PFI-ing a major operational capability was a good idea.
