Double-think alert
I can't help but feel that there is a certain amount of double-think going on in this article. For example, Cameron is stupid for keeping Tornado because if we want some deep bombing doing you might a well send a cruise missile. But then we're stupid to not have aircraft to fly on the new carriers because we need to be able to mount bombing strikes from them... But we just established that you might as well do that using cruise missiles or UAVs.... Um... Yeah, ok, but the carriers still need air defence. But they only need air defence because they exist (by your reckoning the other day we'd be stupid not to have them, at which point they only exist for the purposes of defending themselves), and apparently we're definitely not going to be taking on any serious nation states any time soon (the kind that might launch credible air attacks against our carriers) which is why we're stupid not to completely ditch tornado...
Also, you say we definitely shouldn't buy F35s now because it'll be expensive to buy during the early production run, but it's stupid not to order lots of them now... Surely, if the UK gov announced now that they're going to order lots and lots of F35Cs in the near future it won't really give them much of a position to negotiate a good price from!
An interesting read, but a bit holey for me, and the really "heart felt" condemnation of the government's "betrayal" of our boys in Afghanistan by cutting the order of helicopters that will arrive after all the fighting is due to be over is frankly more worthy of a hack's tabloid column.