Petition to Save the Harrier

Sod the Harrier, save the MRA4

abso bloody lute ly

Sod the Harrier, save the MRA4

I also agree with the sentiment, but after all the noise of recent days is a petition with a few thousand signatures likely to make a scrap of difference? And it is not only the aircraft, it is the platform and the infrastructure.

Admiral Woodward & Sharkey Ward Petition to save the Harrier

After the Prime Minister made public the appalling decision to withdraw the Harrier from Naval and RAF service, my son Kris managed to raise the issue with him and in doing so hit the headlines. We wish to put pressure on the Prime Minister and the government to reverse this dreadful decision and I am now writing to you with some urgency to ask your assistance by signing the petition online at:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/primeminister/

If we do not retain the Harrier in service we shall lose all the expertise that is so necessary for operating from an aircraft carrier (over 90 years of dedication, huge combat success and the loss of countless lives in peace time and in war will have been in vain). Such expertise cannot be “reinvented” overnight. It would probably take decades to achieve this.
Hopefully, you will feel it appropriate to help publicise this petition request as a matter of urgency and pass it on to all your friends and colleagues and ask them to do the same.

http://www.uknda.org/plugin_news.asp?sid=1&nid=732&catid=-1&

I agree with the sentiment, but it is more than just retaining the aircraft as it needs the platoform and I’d worry what they’d drop instead….

My opinion is that, to work as Fed says, it needs the RAF to be onboard in spirit as well as body. That will require a significant upheaval in the RAF brass to happen. Frankly I dont see it.

If the RAF get the F35C’s under Strike Command’s control Carrier Strike is finished.

Well its a solution that could work, if it will turn out that way well my crystal ball doesn’t see that far at the moment.

That means one will be duty and the other in refit/workup/extended readiness state. Only one carrier out so only one routinely active air wing required.

Thanks Jonesy, didn’t realise thats how they were going operate.

Thanks Fedaykin for your response, a well informed answer.

In your opinion(s) do you think this will all go to plan?

Baz

A meaningless cut really considering the F35 isn’t even in full rate production yet and will still be rolling out of the assembly plant for the next twenty to thirty years. Remember it is meant to be the F16 replacement!

Firstly further orders can be slipped into those production runs in the future and secondly the RAF will want to replace the GR4 fleet in fifteen years time at least partially with a manned solution. If the F35C is the eventual GR4 replacement then you have a surge capability for the carriers.

During the seventies the only way the navy could keep Ark Royal flying Phantoms and Buccs was to rotate RAF pilots onto the carrier, those pilots when they returned to the RAF and land operations were the surge capability. I don’t see why the same can’t work again in the future especially with the advanced training aids available now.

They’re building 2 carriers Spit.

That means one will be duty and the other in refit/workup/extended readiness state. Only one carrier out so only one routinely active air wing required.

Not followed this in depth, however, did I read they cut back these F35 things so they can only fill 1 carrier?

The ships are being built so at this moment in time I would rather be optimistic that a fixed wing capability will return to the navy.

………. until the F35C become available for service.

Thats opimistic, they might carry a few helicopters………..maybe, for a couple of years, then get flogged on. Once we’ve run a couple of years without fast jets on carriers someone (MP) will have a bright idea we don’t need them and just use the RAF instead. Then they will realise we don’t have an RAF because they ran them into the ground also. So will then privatise the armed forces into a smaller leaner force called…….er…Group 4. The good news is of course will be cost, now a couple of secondhand Transit vans towing an inflatable with an outboard motor will sort the Navy out. I reckon Trotters Independent Trading Co may still have a couple of inflatables knocking about.

You don’t seriously think these carriers will ever be used for what they are being built for, do you??

Concur with Fedaykin. The Ark is gone and Lusty is under threat. Hard to justify a carrier air group when there isn’t going to be a carrier available permanently if at all!.

The irony here is extraordinary though. Ward campaigns for a carrier capability half a billion more expensive than it needed be and his son pays part of the bill!. Would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful!.

Sorry buddy but it is a waste of time! The coalition and David Cameron would lose far too much face reversing the decision.

A far better thing to do is press the coalition as hard as possible about how they intend to retain skills within the navy until the F35C become available for service.