Ok, now we know why we have QRA. It's all part of a strategy.
That's very re assuring.........as long as the first strike with Russian missiles launched at max range from their aircraft were part of a VERY small attack force
I wonder how well our QRA would cope with a small force of say forty Russian aircraft all in individual locations and heights and with fighter escorts and their bombers actually using their ECM stuff and defensive guns?
Of course, being a sneaky first strike the Russians would probably throw in a diversion of something like two civil airliners going off track and not responding to ATC.
After the RAF had launched QRA aircraft to respond to an airliner over Dundee and one over London how many QRA aircraft would be left to incercept and the destroy the forty Bombers and their escorts?
That's the first part of the strategy that might fail, now what about some pesky Russian subs that may also be waiting off shore to launch nukes at us at the same time so we don't get any warning with missile flight times, what is the RAF strategy to counter those?
Don't forget, the subs wouldn't even need to be launching nukes to reduce our response to zero. They could target RAF runways and any type 45s floating about and not on full alert........as it would be a sneak attack.
Going back to the strategy. As long as the Russians send an attack force of one, and as long as they don't launch any missiles until within visual range, and as long as they let the RAF get close enough to take photos (without using the Russian defensive guns) then we are OK
The readers of the daily mail only get upset when they hear that a Bomber got within ten miles of our coastline.............as their minds probably think the aircraft would be dropping bombs in the same manner as the RAF did over Germany in WW2
None of the above is to say we don't need QRA. I am sure we do, and that it is perhaps now even more serious and tense at times than it was during the Cold War, but that a call to intercept an airliner would focus the mind a lot more than a bear on a fairly predictable course on a probing mission.