Do what most other fleets seem to do - paint a big 50 on the fin...............

That Jaguar picture makes a nice wallpaper thank you :)

Bin 'em - its over.
 

Alright I'll say it - bin them. Its over.
I drove up the A1 on Monday and down again yesterday and there is barely a sign of life on the 3 airfields (and you know which ones.....).
The public aren't the mugs you take them for and they see the RAF for what it is in 2014.
Red Arrows are from another era.
Use the aircrew and money to defend our interests and not to flatter our egos.

Quite right. They aren't. I'm 'the public' and you 'aint speaking for me...:=

One wonders if it will be a version of the colour scheme applied to the ETPS Gripen:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...gripen_arp.jpg

Perhaps including the pelican that is indicative of CFS heritage.

What would be truly novel - No manning shortages among the groundcrew?

Exactly what I said Fox, with the best will in the world, and to be honest I always thought they were under recognised and seen as a necessary evil.... been there, seen it, read it and got the teeshirt .
Personally I think each pilot should be spend at least week in a hangar each year to appreciate the work involved in generating a jet..... The end of the day, YOUR life is in their hands, no one else's, you can have the most reliable, safe aircraft in the world, but under service it or skimp on the support and it's your life your putting on the line

In my service career I had one episode I remember vividly, I was prepping a Jet off to Gib from Deci for a weekend on the piss with several others, it had a hyd leak dripping from a door, I had it checked by an A/F Chief that said it's ok.
On start up I checked it again, drip was worse and fresh, so I signalled him to shut down as the rest departed, I was then confronted by a pilot throwing his helmet on the floor and a tirade of verbal abuse, If I wasn't in the Airforce he would have been sh*tting teeth for a week! but I stood my ground and said no, eventually the door was opened and he was informed the jet wouldn't have got there... Never really got a proper apology, no "Good Show" certificate etc, not that I was interested having already having some, BUT he knew I had probably saved his life, and HE KNEW IT, you could we it in his face everytime we saw each other .
Through out my 35 years plus as an aircraft engineer, I have always worked to one standard, "would I let my Mum Fly in it?" If that answer was no or I was unsure, it stayed on Terra Firma until I would.

If you could put that into a memo for the Prime Minister, who has decreed that even thinking about offering the Red Arrows up as a cost saving is a waste of time, copied to the editors of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, I suspect that you may see a result.

Namely that you'll be given a stiff ignoring, since the merest hint of the disbandment of the team gives the Mail and Express guaranteed wesbite hits and links, plus letters (some even not written in green wax crayon) for some days - prior to the 'campaign to save the Red Arrows' ending with a front page story proclaiming 'victory' for the newspaper and its readership.

Bin them? - Get lost. You may feel an emasculated shadow of your former self, but the public love 'em. A lady friend of mine met R10 recently and has walked the precipice of involuntary orgasm ever since.

Perhaps unsurprising, given that, according to its own website, Red 10 is :
That must the first use of the words 'stylish' and 'Doncaster' in the same sentence!

Bin them - we can no longer afford it.
 

Ourselves as others see us (today).


How we can still have a small (possibly now dysfunctional) RAF flying display team in these times, when some much more relevant use could be made with the money and the people within it, escapes me.
Not so much a display team but a fig leaf.


Read this chaps thoughts about UK defence below.


UK not 'full partner' with US, says former defence chief - Telegraph


But as long as some aging trainers flying about, this is all ok?

My mum's house is in Tornado Alley just off the end of the Red's runway. In the last 10 years they are the only fastish jets I have seen over the UK. Although I have a certain sympathy for the bin 'em view, we can't do that because if we did no one would know the RAF existed!

This argument about binning the RAFAT is regularly advanced by those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I can't imagine the French would ever consider retiring the Patrouille de France - seen here just down the road displaying at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Seen a photograph on UKAR website.

It could be a photoshop photo, and these days any image can be created.

What a mess. Hoping it is a photoshop.

Replace the Red Heart with a Bullseye.....and the Red's would be on to something.:E

I've seen a photo somewhere of a private biz jet that has had a Spitfire silhouette painted on the underside, I should imagine you could paint a complete Reds Concorde formation under a Voyager and double up on the Airshow circuit..... Think of the savings...

:p

I'd rather they spent the 'Reds' money on keeping the Vulcan (and preferably more than one) in flying condition. As long as it's, or they're, painted anti-flash white.

I would suggest that those who know, and probably care, little of the RAF as a whole, would feel a great loss of a national institution should the Red Arrows ever be dis-banded. If cost is an issue perhaps we should reduce our 'Foreign Aid' funding to pay for them.

Or the Shack, already in white and they're working towards getting it airborne again.



.

Bin them.
 

Use Typhoons instead? Something new, better. Let the UK taxpayers see what their hard earned pays for.
Reduce the formation to say, five.
Paint them red, but keep them within the admin of a proper operational RAF squadron.


The only way forward, far as I can see. Sorry but I think the old way is past it.