I'm x RAF and I'm still in contact with a few serving Airmen,they are also very worried and they see no future even some unconfirmed rumours of more or less disbanding the RAF altogether and just having the Fleet Air Arm and the Army Air Corp.
Yes, discussions about dissolving the RAF rear their head every twenty or so years but this time it's possibly going to be a serious option, and soon.
While it's always comforting to think we can provide an aluminium overcast with roundals on the wings to protect any deployed ground troops, it's likely that the F35 will be the last manned fixed wing combat aircraft procured by the MOD.
But it's so expensive and has such little payload it might prove a liability against any serious opposition, rather like battleship fleets became anachronisms, egg shells largely kept in a box for fear they would get smashed.
The future will undoubtedly be unmanned attack drones and as to who operates them, that's more than likely some kind of joint or merged service.
Something will have to go if only to avoid command duplication and top heavyness.
Manned airlift capability will still be needed though supply delivery could go unmanned, and area defense, certainly for the UK, could become just land based missile or even railguns that are
coming along very well indeed. (Just think, they could be stuck in a submarine too, almost like a return to big gun battlehips.)
But it's more the effect these reductions will have on Industry here in the UK that we should be planning for.
While we would all like to see a world turn its swords into ploughshares, it's just not that easy, and the reduction in what's left in the Aerospace high tech industries will be comparable to what has happened to UK shipbuilding capability over the last 50 years, pretty devastating. And once it's gone it will be incredibly difficult to get it back. Bright scientists will be forced to emigrate in even greater numbers and skills that would give our economy a chance will wither.
We need a serious national technology project that can inspire R&D innovation, inspire kids, and generate real economic and technology benefits.
Rather than spend all that money we seem to be planning to do on a high speed rail link for people to get between Manchester and London 30 minutes faster and make people like Richard Branson sitting on his Necker Island even richer, I'd much rather see it all spent on
this.
I've got my Dan Dare outfit ready...you can be my Digby.
