Just To Put A Price Tag On Our Involment In Iraq.

[anotheoldgit]

Flying the six RAF GR4 Tornados costs £35,000 per hour

One Storm Shadow Cruise missile costs £800,000

and the Brimsone missiles costs £148,000 each

/// Cameron, in Friday's debate aimed at convincing parliament to approve airstrikes, said Britain has "unique assets" no other coalition ally can
contribute. ///

What are these "unique assets" he talks of, could it be an unlimited pot of money to spend abroad?

[anotheoldgit]

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/26/business/uk-iraq-airstrikes-cost/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fedition_business+%28RSS%3A+Business%29

[sandyRoe]

Need you really ask, AOG? It's our stiff upper lip and the iron resolve to see democracy brought to uninlightned peoples across the world.

[Svejk]

^and the English language. ;o)

[Slapshot]

Unique assets..... that'll be the guys flying the Tornado's best fighter crews on the planet.....

[Gromit]

// Flying the six RAF GR4 Tornados costs £35,000 per hour

One Storm Shadow Cruise missile costs £800,000

and the Brimsone missiles costs £148,000 each //

Are you advocating disarmament? Are you saying the RAF should not have planes, or just that they shouldn't fly them. Surely, when we bought these aircraft and missiles, it was for situations such as the one we are now in.

[sandyRoe]

And the Bible, Svejk. Don't forget the Bible.

[Zacs-Master]

In line with Gromit's post, I'd rather see Tornadoes being flown in active service at £35k an hour than frightening the National Park tourists (yes, yes, I know they have to practise somewhere).

[trt]

Probably the same unique asset pot AOG, that's used to send India Millions of ££££ so they can send rockets to Mars, Bleed-ing joke!

[anotheoldgit]

Slapshot

/// Unique assets..... that'll be the guys flying the Tornado's best fighter crews on the planet..... ///

And 'Dolls' apparently.

And before all our female ABers jump up shouting about my rather disrespectful description of our brave female fighter crews, may I now say it was in the 'Guys & Dolls' meaning.

[Slapshot]

Could be, without an orbat I don't know but I know a few of our lady aircrews.. very bright, very smart, very brave and they know their jobs.... maybe the BBC will have a list of the aircrews that have gone to Cyprus!!

[lindapalmara]

There's always an emergency contingency pot of money to use although I doubt this posturing by us will be little more than a drop in the ocean

[bhg481]

Remember that the bean counters work out the cost per hour of flying a Tornado by taking the total cost of owning it (purchase price + Maintenance + fuel etc) and dividing by the number of hours flown. If you halve the number of hours flown you double the cost per hour of flying it, so you could say that flying the sorties is reducing the cost per hour of flying them.

[ChillDoubt]

Let's look at it this way:

We give India £280 million pounds a year in foreign aid and last week they fired one big costly rocket.

We clearly must have enough to be able to afford several to prosecute an offensive against radical Islam.

[New Judge]

"Surely, when we bought these aircraft and missiles, it was for situations such as the one we are now in."

Er..no. We are not in "a situation". The people of Iraq (and one or two other places) are involved in civil wars. These are eternal and will not end whilst there are Muslims involved because people of that wretched religion simply cannot live with each other's differing views.

Bomb this lot with our Tornados and another lot will step in to take their place and yet another lot will emerge to try to overthrow them. And so it goes on. This is the third time in two decades we have become involved in the affairs of that awful place and it will be the third time that huge expense and probably loss of UK lives will be for nought. Just how mad do you have to be to keep doing the same thing, getting the same result but hoping that if you do it enough times the result will be different?

Money should not be spent trying to stabilise Middle East nations. Let those nations try that amongst themselves (and good luck to them with that). The cash should be spent instead on bolstering UK security - securing our borders, keeping out undesireables and chucking out those already here. You'd get a lot of that for a few hours Tornado flying time.

[Graham-W]

[i] "One Storm Shadow Cruise missile costs £800,000
and the Brimstone missiles costs £148,000 each" [i]

Perhaps they have a "use before" date.

[anneasquith]

have to say the ' cost ' is staggering:(