I suppose if you look at one of the cariers the Royal Navy is meant to be getting, fitting an A2A group of SHARs, an A2G group of JSF, ASW/AEW/transport Merlins/Ospreys and maybe some Apaches from the AAC would be crowded place. But still it would be an extremely formidable air group.

I don’t think its a case of their ability to do things better than army units. Having troops directly attached to the airforce means they don’t have to go through the army to get things lazed or have to organise army troops to protect their aircraft. Its just a way to save time. Airforce ground troops can also spend their time working permanently with the airforce rather than being borrowed from the army to do work for them.Ok, you do end up with troops operating under different command in the field but you have to weight this against having to try to organise interservice co-operation which is not great at the best of time.Also if you think about things like army troops trying to bring in CAS it doesn’t really work great because everyone is trying to work on different communications nets.
Not all airforces operate their own ground forces, I think its just a historical thing were the airforce got assigned its own troops because of the thinking of the time.For instance in WW2 the German paratroops were under command of the Luftwaffe, not the army.In the UK the RAF Regiment are not a special force but fairly normally trained and equipped squaddies.They just have responsibility for guarding airfield, operating AA systems but often undertake normal field deployments.

Its just a bit blurred because his foots moving and the cameras shutter speed musn’t be very high.Nothing more intersting than that.The foot is a bit bluky though because the NBC suit has foot bag things on it to seal it better.And one last thing the MG42 is the joint ancestor of the G3/CETME rifles.

Despite firearms being something I’m good at IDing im not sure about that rifle. It looks like one of the Spanish built and designed CETME rifles derived from the German G3s but the carrying handle should’nt really be there. It doesn’t appear to be a G36E either which is the standard Spanish rifle so im a bit stumped but I think it is most likely to be some version of the newer CETME versions.

Actually come to think about it having two Ardvaarks flying with a tanker and a large triangle shaped aircraft does make some basic sense.The scales in the pic are wrong because it is only a representation and it was only made as an example and was then presented as a real pic. If you wanted to fly an experimental craft, sending it out over the North Sea to probe Russian (this sighting was furing the Cold War, can’t remember year right now) defenses from a base that SR71 Blackbirds were flying to Russia come from and thus has great facilities, the tankers with the high performance JP fuel, and top security in place makes sense.
Flying it with two ‘Varks mean you can just claim that it was 3 Varks with their wings swept back (making a big triangular shaped plane), and that the observer wasnt trained and made a mistake. It could be considered poor luck that an extremely well trained observer saw it out in the middle of the North Sea, but he still can’t prove it.