The future for the Red Arrows?

While you’ll all focusing on yesterday’s accident and what caused it…..someone, somewhere in the MOD is working out the exact total cost of it, and its implications. On the basis that one should never let a crisis go to waste I wonder someone might think this is an opportune time to dissolve and close down the Red Arrows.

The type of flying done (formation and aerial air to air combat type) bears no resemblance to modern day to day military aviation where missiles are the thing. So they are solely a display team (with engines slightly tweaked to give better throttle response) – for the benefit of whom exactly?
If their UK displays are a ‘recruiting sergeant’ for the RAF – then that role is not required anymore. Apart from the number of RAF pilots going to be dispensed with I’m sure if the RAF needed some more trainees all they need to do is put up an advert on-line these days.
If the are those who believe in the ‘marker for UK exports’ their display visits overseas create then I fear that they are living in the 1950’s when the ‘fuzzy wussies’ might have been impressed by such things. No longer, any more than they were by the Royal Yacht which likewise got pensioned off. I confess I’ve never understood the argument that ostentatious displays of something from the UK mysteriously morphed into more orders for the UK – and I worked in UK exporting for 20 years.

Discuss………