90 years of the RAF

David Lindsay

Will there be a hundredth birthday? Not if the neocons have anything to do with it: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=482

New parties now. What are we waiting for? What are you waiting for?

Raptus regaliter.

The way New Labour has whittled away our armed forces (of which the RAF have taken the brunt) it kind of gives a whole meaning to the words "owing so much to so few".

Steve the Student

What a pity they couldn't strafe the Labour HQ at Millbank on the way

Per Ardua ad Astrid

Shame we can't afford them anymore.

Dirk Blade

Scrapping the RAF is hardly a 'neocon' initiative: these arguments have been around for decades.

But Tim Collins makes an inadvertently good point: if we want to maintain the RAF, we need to pay for it. And that means paying for it to do the jobs largely sub-let to civilian contractors or the US Air Force. It's all very well preparing for future contingencies, such as a resurgent Russia or China, but not at the expense of our current priorities. Like it or not, the RAF's performance in Afghanitan and Iraq has had mixed reviews where it has not been almost entirely irrelevant:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/23/wafg23.xml

Alfred of Wessex

If those nine Red Arrows and four Eurofighters are all that can be spared to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the formation of the RAF, it is a graphic illustration of just how underfunded our Armed Forces now are after two decades of defence cuts under both Tory and Labour.

Dowding and Harris must be spinning in their graves.

Nicholas

Tim Collins should stick to soldiering rather than writing and keep his mischievous thoughts about the Royal Air Force to himself.

When I look at this country now I have to wonder if that grim battle over England in the summer of 1940 was in vain.

kelly

can you please tell me more on the RAF and aircraft engineering.?