That's against the Geneva convention, surely .

Note : I didn't say we can do without air power, I said we can do without the RAF. We need planes and pilots but there's no obvious sense in having a separate service, with all the attendant duplication of effort and resources, just to fly them. We don't have a separate organisation to drive the tanks, they're just part of the army. Same should go for planes. The AAC could operate planes over land and the NAC could operate them over sea, with the AAC including all the long range transport (as I say, 99% of what it moves around is the army anyway).

If you want to bomb some terrorist out of his rathole, you don't need a whole extra set of officers and admin and facilities to do it. He won't care if the bloke dropping the bombs on him wears a blue uniform or a green one. Have the planes and the helicopters but give them to the people who use them, rather than having this whole separate edifice just to run them.

As to the navy having been cut back, it's actually true that the Navy now has more admirals than ships. Mind you, the army also has far more generals than it needs for example. The armed services are all far too 'top heavy'. Lewis Page recently wrote a piece about this in The Register, it's quite an interesting read if you can dig it up.

Jon

The RAF haven't had nukes for decades.

I think that the Navy has a slight edge in that is needed to extend the power of Britain. Though the RAF are necessary as first line of defence. No victory can be achieved without air superiority. The Army are needed to actually win any ground war.

Army

we need all of them, that's why they are all still there.
I have a close friend who is a chinook pilot. He's RAF and flies to and from ships and boats and also used to ferry army and Navy personnel around. (used to as he has long since been promoted to a higher job) ..
The different services have different specialities- you can't do all the jobs well by removing any of them.

As for the argument that we'll never use nukes so why have them .. surely the point is to have them so we never have to use them...

Also the RAF do have a ground fighting force, the RAF Regiment.

Didge

Private Eye has been running articles on that recently

Agreed but if cut backs are to be made I would suggest Trident and use it for the new carriers and equipping the army.

Where's the option for "they all take up too much public money, cut them all equally"?

Option 4 I believe.

Ah yes, I read that one wrong!

Yes, but that regiment's main role is actually to guard air facilities, a job that could be done by any decent squaddie. There's no real justification for having it as a separate organisation from the rest of our ground forces. If you roll the land based forces of the RAF into the AAC, you can roll the RAF regiment into the general ground forces command structure. Even keep it as a separate unit if you like so they don't feel liek they've been dissolved (although we've been perfectly happy recently to dissolve other ground forces regiments with just as illustrious a past).

What it comes down to is this : there is no job that the RAF does that members of the NAC or AAC can't be easily converted to do (don't tell me a Typhoon pilot is by definition different from a Sea Harrier pilot, because they aren't). There are jobs in the Navy and Army that members of the RAF cannot easily be converted to do. Therefore, if you are looking to make cuts, the RAF is the obvious choice. Get rid of the RAF, cut 1/3 of your useless brass hats and desk pushers while keeping hold of your combat capability by spreading it between the other two. I'm not entirely convinced there's any practical downside.

Jon

Money.

Mark

I would support the idea of a freeze but since there is loads of waste particularly at MOD HQ then that is where they should start and next with procurement, which has been appalling.

Like the Swiss nuclear deterrent?

Attack us and we burn your money.

No the Swiss do the attack us and we tell everybody your secrets