Re: UCAVs?
If you think several £Billion and 148 aircraft is a token effort .....
For a nation the size of the UK, which wants to have a credible defensive capability for the British Isles, and have international "force projection" capability, that is a token effort. A third of the aircraft will be unserviceable or in maintenance at any one time, so we're down to barely a hundred aircraft. Buying any SVTOL aircraft guarantees a high accidental attrition rate, so perhaps one or two airframe losses per year.
Now divide the less than 100 airframes between the RAF in the UK, RAF overseas, and the carriers, and fairly quickly you're down to perhaps twenty or so operationally available for UK homeland defence. If you assume nobody wants to or would attack the mainland UK, that's fine - but then why bother with any military forces?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
