OK, quick poll. If you could choose just one of the armed forces to save from defence cuts which would it be? Which do you consider to be the most vital to the security of Britain and her interests abroad?

you mean in case of an invasion by those pesky french?

I would say the Navy. They have the biggest guns (nukes).

I would say get rid of the nuclear deterrent.

I remember reading about the cost of Trident and the numbers are frightening.

At the end of the day - we will never use them, so why have them?

Better off spending the money on things we will use - like more armoured vehicles or other equipment.

Without a Navy our little island can't get anywhere so cut that and we wont need any thing else.

Navy. It has the fleet air arm too so it still has air capabilities.

True. The next ones might be cheaper though as they can just stretch the new Astute class. The last time round it required an totally new sub design.
It is a staggering sum, but nothing compared to the current budget deficit. It makes you realise how much the government is overspending at the moment.

i firmly believe you can judge any country's defensive capabilities by its Pie Cannons

but srsly probably the navy. They have jets, subs and nukes. What more do you need?

Technically, you're always going to need the army. Regardless of how you defeat an enemy, unless you have blokes with guns on the ground keeping things in order, he's more than likely going to come back. Plus nuclear submarines do you sod all good agains Osama and the like. The RAF do have nukes though but not as big as the navy's. The army even have a few, even smaller than those. But with nukes 'smaller' is kind of an irrelevant term anyway.

I'm not sure you can get by just with one but you could definitely do without the RAF. The bald fact is we're only going to be fighting abroad from now on - I can't really see the Danes invading us again - so you're always going to be operating aircraft either from a carrier or from impromptu airstrips; which at the moment is pretty much what the Naval Air Service and the Army Air Corp do. The RAF's reason to exist - fight large organised opposition air forces and/or maintain air superiority - doesn't require a whole extra service of it's own any more, frankly. Move all the heavy lifting gear into the AAC (after all, all it does is shift the army around anyway), put the CAS aircraft and the Apaches in there too so they're close to the people who need their services. Move the interdictor/air control roles into the NAC operating from fleet carriers and you're left with air recon, which these days you can do with drones that any idiot can fly.

We still need pilots, but we can get rid of the RAF and put them nearer the people they are supporting in aircraft that are better equipped for the job. For example the Typhoon is a weapon that was obsolete before it ever took off - designed to fight a major air war over western europe that never did happen and now never will. Not only were they hugely expensive and almost instantly useless, UKGov is now spending astronomical sums of money converting them into strike aircraft so as to get some use out of them, which is a role there are already at least a dozen cheaper just as good equivalents for already.

I remember reading that if we hadn't bothered with Eurofighter and had instead just bought F-16's, which are perfectly capable multi-role aircraft, we'd have saved so much money you could give every defense worker in the UK a million pound redundancy payment and still have spent less overall. And we'd have had it five years before the first Typhoon was handed over to the RAF.

It's quite simple - the RAF is largely redundant and there's no apparent threat that will change that in any of our lifetimes.

Jon

Agreeing with most people; the navy has generally been considered quite important in defending our various islands. I'm no military expert, but from what other people say the fleet's already been cut too much.

I don't believe we can do without the RAF - control of the skies more or less makes control of the ground a done deal in many situations, or at least it used to when we were less concerned with 'collateral damage'.
Without an air force, the caves at Bora Bora would have cost us many, many times more men, and it was a fairly short engagement for the RAF.
I'm undecided. I presently think we're too thinly stretched as it is - the RAF may be expensive, but surely that's poor management rather than their role?
If, for arguments sake, the Russians started flying Bear bombers at us, with every intent of dropping their payload all over this green and pleasant land, are the Navy going to deal with it, or is it the RAF? I'm not sure the Navy have the intercept capacity of the RAF. Let's not be too complacent that there aren't nations within striking distance that wouldn't want to invade if things all go wahooney shaped.

I think The Falklands are more on people's minds at the moment, and frankly Russia has issues far closer to home.

The navy has its own air force and ground force, where as the RAF and army can't offer the same. Being able to rain instant radiological hell on your enemies at any time is quite a convincing defence. In fact if all you had was a nuclear deterrent you could probably do away with all of the traditional services. That is unless you wanted to go on the offensive in search of oil, terrorists or peace keeping exercises.

The navy.
Although, they are now almost completely reliant on the RAF for aircraft.

My Gas.

Can clear a room of any threats in seconds