Royal Air Force

The closure of QRA north would require the scramble decision to be made a lot sooner than it is now, this would not only effect the phoon but also its supporting tanker as by the time the tanker reaches the RV the phoon would have already used a fair amount of fuel. If Leeming is closed, one of the Scottish bases would have to be retained. my money would be on Lossie . If phoons were to be single based there could be a QRA north det at Lossie. SAR is already there and we know the contracterisation has already been put on hold Maritime co-ord centre could be sighted there plus it would give a northern airhead/mounting base.

Re Merlin I believe the trtansfer of Merlin along with crews both air & ground was an almost done deal before the general election.

A sad situation I don't know if you are aware but QRA (N) launches over the past 12 months has seen a steep rise.
WE are so broke our pensions are now linked to the CRI rather than the RPI. !!
TED

I shudder to think how the recent credit crisis might have played out had we not had a united free Europe and a non isolationist United States. Depression - civil unrest. Prime territory for extremist organisations with malign ambitions. Agreed there's a price to pay and things will hurt like hell for a while but we should come out of it intact. Arguably the temporary? loss of some conventional military capability is part of the price of that "victory" just as surely as rearming was to counter the Nazi threat of WW2.

And whilst the money is being allocated from the pot let's not forget about other 21st century threats just as potentially damaging to our freedom and stability - our IT and comms infrastructure springs to mind. That's one for the spooks I guess but it's scares me more than the threat of invasion... The floods in Pakistan are disturbing on many levels other than the humanitarian tragedy. Who offers to help the poor when governments cant cope? (and I'm not thinking charities here)

Is climate change going to cause pressure on resources in the near future - So many threats so little cash....

PNK;51332 wrote:

[SNIP] Look on the bright side, more disused airfields to explore.

And more airfields to be trashed by developers, unless we start to fight our corner. There is more to exploring these sites on a weekend - like getting together and figuring out ways to preserve our heritage.

All this is under the guise of a "strategic defence review". Lets not forget that this country has quite a lot of commitments throughout the world. We are responsible for the defence of 15 colonies and two dependcies, also the five power defence agreement in SE asia(a potential flashpoint). And not forgetting Britians longest operation(its been running since 64) Op TOSCA in Cyprus.

Now is the government going to give up some commitments? Well the last lot didnt, in fact they increased them. Now I know theyve made stupid statements over Afghanistan ie start withdrawing in 5 years, a great thing to say to your enemy!

And can really do those commitments with reduced manpower and resources? I know the government say theyve no money, but dont all governments say that?

Something I saw the other day is that apparently the govenment is looking to cut the helicopter fleet by a fifth, so the Army has been complaining about a lack of helicopters and now their looking to cut the numbers. And did you know that in the 21st century the British army has more horses than helicopters??!!

Back to the RAF , did anyone listen to radio 4 the other day? I didnt but a bloke at works wife did, the programme was titled "what is the RAF for?" one of the things mentioned was that the RAF doesnt really like doing guard at Buckingham Palace! Well talk to most blokes in the infantry(other than the Guards) and they dont like it either. A bloke at work was a CSM in an infantry regiment and he hated it when his regiment did public duties, basically a regiment cant do anything else when its on public duties.
As for the Tornado going, apparently its all tied in with the carriers. If the navy really really must have the carriers then the Tornado will go. As for the carriers, well yes if we have them then why not have a navalised Typhoon? Still dont know why the navy didnt keep the old Ark with Jaguars, yes its forgotten that the Jag was flown from carriers.

And finally Fox was talking before the election about finally bringing troops back from Germany. They were on about this in the early nineties, and the problem then was where to put them all.

I think there will be a lot of ex-RAF stations to house the stragglers from BAOR, some in Scotland I suspect.

Problem with the units in BAOR is that they are mechanised ie they have tanks and AFVs, the roads around most RAF stations arent that brilliant.

canberra;52114 wrote:

Problem with the units in BAOR is that they are mechanised ie they have tanks and AFVs, the roads around most RAF stations arent that brilliant.

This will probably be obvious but what is BAOR? I assume something to do with the army? Also AFVs?

British Army of the Rhine - the grunt equivalent of BAFO - British Air Forces of Occupation. Only BAFO was renamed Second Tactical Air Force and then RAF Germany - the Army in Germany didn't keep changing its name.

I think the newly disused RAF airfields will offer excellent housing for mechanised units - those that survive the SDSR that is. They are already talking about mothballing Challengers and MRLS, which might mean that there will be no need for lots of road running anyway. Moreover, with the cutbacks, I suspect that fuel allowances will be slashed and their running hours will be minimal - that will reduce the maintenance costs also.