Arthur,

That was not a helpful suggestion.

The UK taxpayer already pays a lot of tax 🙁 . The Labour government is spending our money poorly:
£12 billion & rising on a national IT system for the health service, which probably won’t work, or work well
the UK spends £124 billion per annum on QUANGOs (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) like the British Potato Council & the Milk Development Council

😡

The government takes a lot of money from us, it is very bad at spending it. We could easily afford to spend more on defence.

Another option which will probably never happen…..

Since USAF has experience of operating IAI Kfirs (F-21A), how about buying/leasing surplus IDF/AF Kfir C7s for the air-defence mission, with a secondary ground attack role?

Kfir F-21Cs armed with 4 x Python 4 or 5 will be suitable for US homeland defence, although I don’t have any illusions about its chances against Mig-29s/Su-27/Su-30s.
How many commercial jets get lost in US airspace these days anyway?

I like the idea of reactivating F-16ADFs from Desert storage too….

Isn’t the problem for the French the fact that many countries who would like to maintain close cooperation with the US also want to maintain interoperability with the US e.g. South Korea, Singapore.

Buying American, for “big ticket” items helps maintain the political relationship.

Hence many countries in e.g. Europe have been buying F-16 block 40/50 etc, the basic design of which is 30 years old in preference to Rafale/Gripen, which are less than 10 year old designs.

Military sales are highly political.

How credible is this report?
Has it been corroborated by other, independent sources?

This deal could bring unwelcome negative publicity on China, less than a year before the Olympics.

Politically, China would have been wiser to seal this deal AFTER the Olympics.

PRC has already had negative press for its relations with Burma & Sudan (& Zimbabwe). Why ask for more?

The USAF seems pretty keen on the A-10 these days – despite the A-10s age.

Does anyone know how many A-10s are in the fabled “Desert Boneyard” (if any) & how many could be brought back to operational service?

Labour cannot be trusted with our defence. 😡

They are happy to spend £12 billion on a failing, delayed, over-budget NHS IT programme (NHSPfIT/CfH), but they are not happy to maintain even a modest war machine.

I read somewhere that France has more warships that Britain now.

Just as China & india are expanding their naval fleets, the Labour Government is contriving to decimate ours.

Labour = scum 😡

Nice pics!

I also love those XFV-12s 😀

Cheers 🙂

God I hope they don’t go with PFI. PFI gives the taxpayer appalling value for money; it saddles the UK taxpayer with debt stretching out over 20-30 years.

PFI is just a mechanism to hide debt using the out of sight, out of mind principle.

I would second the suggestion of EH101 Merlins for SAR, with a good 2nd choice being the NH90.

Do you think there is a role for RPVs in SAR, using IR/EO sensors, for the search phase & using the data to direct a “good to go” SAR helo to the scene?