SIR – In response to a UKNDA report just published, the Defence Secretary is right to say that military league tables are not a realistic guide to defence capability – but some numbers do matter.

Our £7 billion a year Royal Air Force certainly aims to be in the top flight.

It claims 889 ‘deployable’ aircraft, placing the RAF in the world’s top 10 air forces, but all is not as it seems in cloud cuckoo land.

Included too are the Red Arrows and 258 flying training aircraft, 119 of which are commercially-owned elementary trainers. Another 146 are air cadets’ planes, including 81 gliders. It seems cruel to add that the RAF even claims the 12 vintage aircraft of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight in its ‘In Service Fleet’ of 889 – the venerable Lancaster and Spitfires, indeed. Take those 429 off the total and an air force nearly half the size emerges below the clouds, relegating the RAF to the lower leagues. There has not been an air threat to our country since the end of the Cold War, so a huge land-based air force is not necessary anyway. Never more than 10 per cent of the RAF’s planes and people are deployed overseas, so there’s no need for the RAF’s 231 land-based combat jets and dozens of supporting aircraft.

And that’s good news, because the RAF claims it has 122 Tornado combat jets but fewer than half are actually airworthy. A significant number of the RAF’s ‘In Service Fleet’ is manifestly not in service at all.

In the light of this RAF skulduggery, their airships at Battle of Britain HQ offer others a lesson. Were, Neptune forfend, the Chief of the Air Staff running the Navy, he’d doubtless add HMS Bulwark’s inflatable boats, Sea Cadets’ rowing boats and HMS Victory to his ‘In Service Fleet’ – it’s the air force way of fooling Parliament and ourselves, if not the enemy!

Lester May

London