Harriers versus Tornadoes

The debate on jet fighters on Radio 4 this morning was interesting. It may be heard from here.

My grandfather transferred from the Royal Navy flying seaplanes over the Channel during the Great War, to become an early officer in the newly formed RAF so I have taken more than a passing interest in the long ongoing debate on the question of naval air power and the need for carrier borne fighter aircraft.

In this post colonial age it appears to me the Falkland Islands would be the only remaining British dependency economically worthwhile defending with carrier borne aircraft, yet the huge investment to construct the RAF Mount Pleasant airfield was surely justified against the costs of constant aircraft carrier patrols in the South Atlantic.

Recent drilling off the Falklands should now allow more detailed cost/risk analysis to be compared with potential hydrocarbon rewards, but given the history the arguments put forward by Lord West seem less than sound, could we really have sent a two carrier force to the South Atlantic during the past decade?

Yet the arguments put forward by the Lib/Dem Arms Minister during the broadcast seem equally shaky. Nato will be defeated in Afghanistan because you cannot tell an Afghani tribesman from a member of the Taliban and in the end the Afghanis always win at Home. To base our entire air defence policy on the fact that the Tornadoes are more practicable in Afghanistan when the PM has already hinted at a British run down there next year seems absurd.

On balance therefore I must come down against the direction of the career move made by my Grandfather and support the Ark Royal/Harrier argument, such a view being strengthened by the report in the Telegraph this morning that the catapault system for the new carriers will only come at horrendous cost, declaring Force Majeure or malintent on those contracts seems the most sensible course.