Royal Air Force

Yes and may I refer you to a statement in the house of lords by Lord Craig? He made this statement in 98 when there was talk of the RAF being disbanded under labours defence review, he said "there is talk of disbanding the RAF and its roles being taken over by the army and navy. Well the navy has the royal marines and the raf has the raf regiment so why not disband the army and spilt its roles between the raf and navy. Now that is a silly thing to do, just as silly as disbanding the raf".

Should it ever happen it would be a recipe for disaster. Neither of the other services understand aviation, they think they do but they dont. I for one could see a situation where the navy sends a c130 to say Rome for example half empty, and the Army send one to say Milan half empty. Whereas the RAF would send one full one out and route it to both.

And as for airfield closures. Sculthorpe, it is used as a training area, but it was supposed to sold off in 94. West Freugh, Macrihanish, Arbroath-move the gliding school to Leuchars, likewise Kirknewton. And look at the vale of York, Topcliffe and Dishforth. Why not move the AAC from Dishforth to Leeming, or is that far too easy?

airfields wrote:

Well today on the Jeremy Vine programme on Radio Two the discussion was to get rid of the RAF altogether.

The bloke's a twonk, a sensationalistic 'journalist' if ever there has been one. Almost as bad as his 'ban all 4X4' discussion a couple of years ago.

Well maybe hes just trying to provoke a debate? As for Trident, someones made a cracking idea of replacing it with nuclear armed harpoon missiles fired from subs, an excellent idea.

Denis;51307 wrote:

The bloke's a twonk, a sensationalistic 'journalist' if ever there has been one. Almost as bad as his 'ban all 4X4' discussion a couple of years ago.

Yes I agree, he's an irritating git most of the time but some of his topics are of interest. Todays about getting rid of the RAF was downright infuriating, people phoned-in to agree with this plus ofcourse others who didn't. If the stupid governmeant want to cut-back why don't they stop waisting the billions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq...and all those wasted lives.

I for one could see a situation where the navy sends a c130 to say Rome for example half empty, and the Army send one to say Milan half empty. Whereas the RAF would send one full one out and route it to both.

Quite so and Ryanair or Virgin crewing for example would depart and arrive on time and make a bit of extra cash on any empty seats... seriously though the country is broke so there are no sacred cows - it's cheaper to buy in or contract out services as applicable and nothing to be afraid of. The glory days of the beautiful Comets and Britannias of Transport Command are long gone and never to return. (We couldn`t have mounted the Falklands campaign without civilian capability)

As for airfields - consider the possibility of joint operations out of Robin Hood or Durham Tees for example as a potential contingency measure or location for low intensity flying units.... the possibilities for moving the pieces around the board and maintaining capability are with precedent and endless.

Of course there will be core capability required from a highly trained and motivated air component (hopefully an independent RAF) - but brace yourselves because We're broke.

Looks like the ARG will need to offer its services to the MOD to compile photographic records of all these places before they bite the dust.

The very suggestion REF put forward at the last EH meeting!

One major problem with for instance contracting out the air transport fleet. What month of the year did the first Gulf war kick off? Correct August, holiday time. I can imagine the scene when Prime Minister tells CDS "right send a brigade to Bosnia immediately", and CDS replies "sorry Prime minister but becasue of the contracorisation of the air transport fleet we cant do anything for at least a month".

Mind you the good thing about contractorisation meant that we never flew weekends at Cranwell!! CFI wanted to at one time, then he saw how much it would cost in overtime.

Golly gosh - my provocative thoughts have stirred some reaction! I must say that the comments here show a lot more open-mindedness than some of the comments on other military-orientated forums. Canberra had made some interesting comments - here's my take on them:

Valley cannot handle the [volume] of flying training. Well, it seems to me that with the number of fast jet platforms to be melted down, the volume of flying training will be cut by at least half of what it is today, and I suspect that we are training only half as many pilots as we trained in 1994. So, no problem.

Leuchars to close. If you believe the Daily Telegraph, the buy of 'Phoons will be slashed and the number left will need only one base. That has got to be Coningsby because BAE has built its new hangar there to service them in. Q would have to be mounted from where the aircraft are - it would just take a few more minutes to get to the Sovs when they leave the Kola. Anyway, I though the threat today was terrorism, and that means shooting down high-jacked airliners over London, doesn't it? In fact, isn't that what happens now or do we still have a Northern and Southern Q running in parallel?

45 Cdo Arbroath. Will the Commando force survive as an independent organisation or will it be merged with the Paras and moved down south? Anyway, if Lossie stays open their bus could take the shorter run north rather than head south.

MRA4. We already have a 'capability gap' following the demise of the MR2. Presumably they are happy that the Trident boats can get in and out of the Loch without ASW support, so there is no reason to suppose that they [the politicians] will worry about that issue in the future. The Perisher graduates might have other thoughts.

Benson to close. Well, I think so, if the Puma goes. It seems likely that the RAF's Merlins will be given to the Navy to replace their jungly Sea Kings - so Culdrose will become the single Merlin base (makes sense really). Odiham could remain the centre of Chinook basing, including the extra 22 we are suppoosed to be getting.

Dhishforth/Leeming. Why go to the cost of moving the AAC from Dishforth? Just close Leeming. If you want to move the Dishforth units, take them to Wattisham and single base the Apache - they've got the real estate.

C-130J. Its demise is already on the cards. If we get a few more C-17s and some of the planned buy of the Grizzly then the J models could be sold off to generate some cash flow. It would do a lot of people at Marshalls out of a job though.

As AiX Admin says, we are broke and the armed forces will be making their contribution to the savings. The situation is not helped by the MOD's procurement system being bust and broke and the political view that the MOD should fund any Trident replacement. We are past thinking the unthinkable - the RAF now has to amputate great chunks of its limbs if the gangrine is not to spread to its body.

Which all begs the question - what does the political policy and leadership say about the UK's future role in the world? Bit of a bummer if we axe all these capabilities and they suddenly decide they want to go to war again, or to defend our shores from some unstable state or other.

Perhaps we should add RAF Topcliffe and RAF Weston-on-the-Green to the list, as well as RAF Digby. True, it will be cheaper to relocate some UAS/AEF/VGS units to nearby civil airports.

Regarding the proposed or rumoured cuts in the RAF; Perhaps one day there might be more ATC cadets than RAF personnel.