Its a coincidence that I was writing about the folly of the F35, with too few aircraft and not enough pilot training due to the astronomic costs, and we have articles by the government that we might need a volunteer army to deter Russia….
We currently have about 150 fighter aircraft, just over 100 Eurofighter Typhoons, the rest F35’s.
Russia has 1500. Trump gets in, takes America out of NATO, and suddenly we won’t have that number including all the other European countries in NATO. Probably around half that.
So who wants to be a soldier, if they have no air cover because our planes will be knocked out by sheer weight of numbers early in any war? We need another 500 affordable, capable aircraft, with trained pilots, right now and most likely more to deter Russia. They might have been impressed by Desert Storm, but they will know the numbers, and capability of what we have now, and its very worrisome. I don’t like the idea of war, but its not being ready for it that leads to it, if we are strong we deter aggressors. Just look at Ukraine.
More information:-
F35/Terrifying World War 3 Scenario – Food for Thinking (foodforthinkingblog.com)
NATO aircraft strength by country 2023 | Statista Note this says a lot more than 100 for the UK but this is the total number of aircraft in the RAF including transports etc., not the fighter aircraft. We can probably assume the same for other countries.