The decision was made to retire the Harriers in favor of keeping  the Tornados. I saw someplace that the Brits were just howling mad over this because of the capabilities that the Harriers have over the apparently older Tornado airframes.

The other thing is that the GWOT is using up the life span of all our aircraft. The ground units have been calling for air support all the time. Luckily, we have the ability to provide it at a moments notice, thus saving lots of our lives, and dispensing with theirs.

It seems that a lot of folks seem to forget what is going on over here. I see a lot of it on the nightly news when I watch it. I'm only a few hundred klicks away from it, so it is much more local to me. It's interesting having Iraq to the north, Iran to the northeast, and Yemen to the south. Someone is always mad at another clan for something that happened so long ago that no one remembers why they are fighting.