Why whinge it was your pollies getting their fishnet stockings in a twist that caused this debacle. Looks to me like the RN/RAF still need a bridging capability [which you had] to move into the next round of CV ops. Bit like the "let's have no MPA aircraft" for a while because we don't need them!

For a maritime [once] nation it looks like the Lordships have dropped the port bottle once to often.

Davef:

Are you suggesting that the AV-8B was not able to attack at night? :confused:

Could you elaborate on your post a bit?

EDIT: never mind, went back and looked at program history, I see what you were getting at.

For everyone else, AV-8D was originally the designation given to those AV-8Bs equippped with FLIR (Usually referred to as B(NA)), there is documentation referring to this. I think they reverted to B for political reasons.(i.e. not a new type)