Whatever the answer is (and however much I love the Ten) the VC10 is not the answer!

Helix was aimed at the Nimrod airframe, because before the loss of XV230 over Afghanistan we were looking at keeping the R1s past 2025.

If you were starting from scratch, then the Nimrod’s too small. There’s only one toilet (and it’s a tiny trooping toilet), a tiny galley (a soup heater, basically), and no crew rest area. There is little space for supernumerary crew (one spare seat next to the nav, and another on console 1) and no room for extra positions or extra kit.

There is no scope at all for migrating further crew onto the aircraft.

If you were starting from scratch, you would want to be able to carry plenty of supernumerary crew, and to provide sufficient rest area. You might leave space for a big LOROP sensor (imagine detecting radar emissions, listening to the operators as they talk to the enemy fighters and photographing the antenna, too!), together with operators and techs.

You certainly might select an airframe with a great big freight door to make installing and removing kit easier.

You might select an airliner type for lower ‘conspicuity’.

You might select an airliner with bigger dimensions to allow your antennas to be dispersed more widely to allow more accurate triangulation…..

You might well conclude that the A340 would be the best possible choice, or that an A310 would do very nicely.

But if forced to make the RC-135/Nimrod choice you have a proven solution with a 28-man crew (including ten Elint and 13 Comint positions) versus an unproven (for the RAF) type with just three Elint positions, an unfamiliar and inferior automated Elint system, and 16 Comint operators.

Anything that allows 51 to continue to do the job it does now (Elint and Comint) is better than a stock (Comint-biased) Rivet Joint – and especially than an RJ based on any of the KC-135Rs now sitting in the boneyard, which are knackered.

But the Nimrod R1 is too small today, and the R5 will not improve that situation.

But it does seem as though a Nimrod based solution is gathering impetus.

Defeated in terms of timing, perhaps.

Not, however, in terms of looks…….

(I wouldn’t want to be ungallant, but shall we just say that the new lady Patrouille member is no Carla Bruni, Rachida Dati, or Christine Kelly…? (Sarkozy does pick some gorgeous cabinet colleagues!)

Purely in the interests of political clarification – here are Mme Bruni, Dati et Kelly….

And before this descends into another opportunity for some of our French chums to display their inferiority complex when it comes to anything to do with the Brits, let’s remember that the Yanks have had lady pilots in their fast jet display teams for ages.

If it did, and if the Omani aircraft were not then replaced, you could see the RAF having fewer than 160 aircraft (144+40-24), which would not be enough to sustain five squadrons, the OCU, the OEU and the Falklands through to the OSD.

You know that to sustain the original planned force of seven squadrons, we needed 232 aircraft –

Let’s remember for a moment the original justification for 232 jets.

Total RAF FAF: 137 aircraft
Squadrons: 105 aircraft (seven squadrons with 15 each)
OCU: 24 aircraft
OEU: 4 aircraft
Falklands: 4 aircraft

In-use reserves: 9 aircraft
(one per squadron and two with the OCU)

The remaining 84 would have been rotated in and out of service to balance flying hours across the whole fleet and thus enable the aircraft to meet its scheduled out-of-service date. They would also have covered attrition losses.

Giving a total of 232 aircraft.

With five squadrons you’d need:

Total RAF FAF: 101-107 aircraft
Squadrons: 75 aircraft (seven squadrons with 15 each)
OCU: 18 aircraft (actually, you might still need 24, since though the force is smaller, the training requirement AT ANY ONE TIME might be the same).
OEU: 4 aircraft
Falklands: 4 aircraft

In-use reserves: seven aircraft
(one per squadron and two with the OCU)

and rather than 84 for attrition and ‘hours-spreading’ (a 1.63 ratio with the FAF), you’d need 62 or 66, meaning a total fleet of 163-173 aircraft.

This means that for the five squadrons currently planned, the RAF actually needs all of the 40 Tranche 3A jets now on order.

I’m also amused by the notion that export customers like Oman (whose need is relatively urgent, but who might not need all of the ‘bells and whistles’) would necessarily need Tranche 3 aircraft, and that nothing else would do. If I were the Omanis I’d be more than happy with Tranche 1 aircraft with the austere A-G package, though for the time being, if I was the UK Chief of the Air Staff, those jets would not be on the table, as they’re the most useful Typhoons I’d have….

No USS Novice, it wasn’t. The original JOUST trials (not the specific Meteor trials) saw everything using the AIM-120. The developed Su-27 used as the opponent was not the Su-27M, but an Su-27M that was assumed to have had years of continuous development, and parity was assumed in terms of radar range and scan angles, missile reach, pilot quality etc.

Seven frontline squadrons was the plan, and no-one has officially confirmed that there will be a reduction, but once Leeming dropped off the plot, so too did all mention of squadrons six and seven.