By 2025
The Falklands will be well defended by Typhoons+
Queen Elizabeth embarked F-35Bs

By 2015 QE will be still in dock pending sale, the 35’s wont have been delivered and out of the remaining 17 serviceable Typhoons there will be no deployment as the Air Tanker aircraft will be with Thompson using them on the route to Florida. The Army will be made up of reservists which cannot leave there jobs and the government of the day will give the islands to the first person that shouts “Boo” and will then cry over there Gin and try and justify why they have castrated the British Military since the 90s.

I don’t want to be paying £1000+ ( i am after all a lowly corporal inthe RAMC lol) but then i don’t want to get one and people thinking it looks like cheap imitation rubbish. I shall continue searching, cheers all.

Look around they come up for sale quite a lot, I bought an aviation leathercraft one and people took the p*** so I hung it up for a couple of years and put it on ebay last year. A couple of times a year I see genuine ones come up in a local auction and they don’t usually go for much.

The BO105, Gaz combination with HOT and the Lynx with TOW filled a gap, they were relatively cheap, quick, agile and with the Lynx could move a MILAN team around quickly but they were all expendable and faced with an armored attack would in reality have more problems from either a ZSU 23-4 or the 125mm from a Main Battle Tank than the air and it wouldn’t matter how much Armour you had even a Cobra, Hind or Apache would only be going one place after being hit by a SABOT round or a couple of hundred 23MM.

Politics, Costs and the Will.
I loved the Gazelle 30 years ago and nothings changed. The US still use the mil versions of the 206 and 500 in the same role so why get rid? Twin engined is ok but doesn’t matter when you get a few 20mm HE rounds around the engine of anything apart from the Apache and a couple of well placed 5.56mm rounds will take out most helicopters. When we got the Lynx at first there was a problem and that was the RAF ( Now don’t jump up and stamp your feet ) If I remember correctly the Army wasn’t allowed to own or operate helicopters over an 8000 lb weight limit. The rules were relaxed or changed to allow the Lynx to come into service so when the Lynx was there and subsequently Apache the Army would do anything in it’s power to keep them. The money pot is only so big and it’s easier to justify having the AAC when you’ve got Apache and Lynx/Hellcat being operated than not being able to afford them and keeping the Gazelles.

You also have to remember post Afgan there will be so many Chinooks around that everybody will be able to have one for any task which is what the Gazelle did.

There’s 7 Blackhawks in formation heading towards Leeming from the west, making quite a sound.

How do we square these two?

If your looking at the Firearms Act you have to take into account this as well

4)This section applies to any ammunition for a firearm, except the following articles, namely:—

(a)cartridges containing five or more shot, none of which exceeds ·36 inch in diameter;

(b)ammunition for an air gun, air rifle or air pistol; and

(c)blank cartridges not more than one inch in diameter measured immediately in front of the rim or cannelure of the base of the cartridge

At this point it is illegal for a non-firearms certificate holder to have in their possession viable ammunition, even shotshells.

Close, Shotgun cartridges can be possessed even if you haven’t got a certificate but you cannot buy them without one and they don’t need to be locked up. An interesting complication comes with quantity, in that if you have a lot and it’s a variable by manufacturer and type whether you have a certificate or not the weight of the propellent in them exceeds a certain weight you require an explosives certificate.

Amongst the everyday policemen there is some notable lack of knowledge on firearms and you were wrongly informed at the time.

Your right there, most of them haven’t got a clue.