Somehow, this is preferable to using airframes that we already own, for which we have a supply chain in place.

I get the gist of what you’re saying, but I can’t help feeling we’ll get a better deal with RJ and Sentry support from the States than we would being ripped off by BAES on a limited run, unique airframe.

Any such contraption may have severe limitations on such an aircraft’s performance.

Can’t see the point myself. After all, we don’t want to make the Apaches redundant.

This also doesn’t even begin to cover what will be required in terms of upper leadership for the squadrons to be formed. Many of the upper leadership in the RN (& RAF) will likely be long gone by 2018, meaning you’ll have a gap where you lack a cadre of experienced fliers (and maintainers, etc.) I agree that exchange tours can help with some of this, but how is the RN planning to do this? Are they going to keep fixed-wing pilots in their ranks and just have them spend the next 8 years doing exchange tours with the USMC and/or USN?

You can’t send everyone on an 8 year TDY to the States (or other places) for exchange tours. A lot of folks will likely be reassigned to other duties or perhaps retire themselves.

When you look at that, it does, at first glance, appear to be a problem. However, if you think of the initial “senior leadership”, in 6-8 years time (6 perhaps being the lower limit, as of course there’ll be a lot of work before any aeroplanes actually appear in operational service), those guys are probably the junior Lt Cdrs and late first tour/second tourist Lts. If you were to consider the career structure for the next few years for a prospective boss, assuming he’s a new promoted Lt Cdr now, then he could expect a staff job and flying tour (USN, or “exchange”/loan with RAF or other foreign force), followed by promotion to Cdr, and potentially a staff job before assuming a Sqn command in 2017-18. I suspect the suitable candidates have already been identified and earmarked (and the manning people are hoping they don’t all decide to leave in the meantime!).

You can see that way, they’re actually following quite a normal career path, and end up in the right place at the right time for the F-35. The issue is possibly the middling Lts (current first tourists perhaps), who are at risk of losing flying and possibly hindering their careers.

IIRC it’s ‘150 (coincidentally the youngest VC10 at 40 this year). ‘808 should be the last C1K (having just come through a major), potentially Cosford bound.:)

It has a comments section with Sharkey posting. He isn’t happy that the Harrier is being scrapped in UK service!

Teej, you’ve won the prize for least surprising news of the year!:D Maybe if he hadn’t been so partisan in the past people may listen.

I could find them £6 billion from the aid budget

So could I ppp, so could I. I know exactly where you’re coming from.:)

Cameron also claimed Typhoon to be currently serving in A’stan, this is a minor error for him!

I think in fairness that in front of quite a lot of subject matter experts, he, as a non subject matter expert just made a slip of the tongue. A rather embarrassing one, but not one that needs to be dwelt upon as much as some people are doing.:)

What also strikes me is that you are losing the Harriers ability to operate from relatively unprepared bases whilst the Typhoon needs a nice smooth airfield runway or am I still living in the Cold War ?

Nowadays I think there’s plenty of concrete around the world, and nothing that a road-sweeper couldn’t sort out in an hour or so.