lestermay
06/30/2011 09:09 PM
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4 people
Con Coughlin's piece is barking mad if he thinks any navy can be succesfully run by landlubbers. What he fails to point out is the following.
The RAF is a waste of public money. £7bn a year, 40,070 people and 630 aircraft, of which 143 are gliders! Last victory was BoB 1940 and don't they bang on about it! The RAF has not shot down one enemy aircraft in action since 1945, so they have little to bang on about, I guess.
Only 5% of the RAF is overseas on operations in Afghanistan and over Libyan airspace, many of the latter living in hotels in southern Italy. Only 10% of the RAF is aircrew and, of the remainder, many rarely, or never, leave the UK, and some stay in the same air station for many years. The organisation is ripe for civilianisation if it's not abolished. Fully 14% of the RAF's people are classed as medically unfit or "not fully fit" for operations; that's very high when the numbers of RAF people injured in Afghanistan is very low compared to the Navy and Army.
All of the operations carried out by the RAF could be carried out by the Navy and Army; after all, the RAF mostly operates in support of land and sea operations. Abolish the RAF and there would be 20,000 fewer personnel and a saving of £3.5bn a year.
The country cannot afford the light blue any more, and certainly not a light blue that can't keep up the pace and claims it's "running hot". The UK cannot afford any more procurement fiascos, the majority of which have been RAF problems: Chinook, Typhoon, Nimrod, Sentinel ... the list goes on.
It's the Euromillions jackpot at £136m on Friday: the winner can afford one Eurofighter and still have £10m to fill up its tank! The RAF sure got the jackpot with the Typhoon from that crackpot Labour government.