BRITISH AIR POWER IN THE 1980s, THE ROYAL AIR FORCE

Air Commodore R.A.Mason, Ian Allen 1984.

In the mid 1980s the RAF was well advanced on a re-equipment programme which was purported to increase it’s front line by 15% and allow it to project British air power with a strength and quality unsurpassed in four decades. In a world where a strong defence, based squarely on the strategy of deterrence, remains the best guarantor of peace and security, the importance to the United Kingdom of a highly competent, well-equipped Royal Air Force is self evident.

What is the extent of the re-equipment programme? What are it’s implications for British Defence policy and, specifically, the British contribution to the North Atlantic Alliance? What was air power’s contribution to the war in the South Atlantic, and how have lessons from that conflict been incorporated in the RAF’s weapon procurement and operational policies?

All these and other important questions were raised in this book. It would be illuminating indeed to compare expectations with reality, two decades on.

 Apart from some minor shelf wear, both the book and the dust jacket are in good condition