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The functional definition of light/medium/heavy bombers since the 1950s (i.e. when a one-tonne bomb load was all you needed any more) has had more to do with range than to do with payload. That's even truer today; with precision-guided munitions, there's very rarely a need to carry huge weapons loads. I can't remember where the line was drawn between 'medium' and 'heavy' - I have a feeling it was a combat radius of either 2,500 nautical miles or 4,000 nautical miles. The light/medium line was 1,000 nautical miles... which you may recall as being the design figure for (amongst others) the TSR.2.I don't necessarily disagree, but defence spending isn't a vote winner in the UK. That means that retaining any long-range aircraft has to come at the expense of something else. And the UK has been cutting defence capabilities to preserve others since at least the 1950s.Oddly enough, the one capability which is almost sacrosanct is the light infantry regiment. It's operationally very limited, but the UK has loads of them - in large part because the Army has done a very good job of arguing it needs to keep lots of regiments on the books as cheaply as possible (i.e. light infantry), rather than a smaller number of fully mechanised units. When you look at proposals for the future of the British Army, there's usually a section that amounts to 'and these units will stand around guarding stuff or something'.
The functional definition of light/medium/heavy bombers since the 1950s (i.e. when a one-tonne bomb load was all you needed any more) has had more to do with range than to do with payload. That's even truer today; with precision-guided munitions, there's very rarely a need to carry huge weapons loads. I can't remember where the line was drawn between 'medium' and 'heavy' - I have a feeling it was a combat radius of either 2,500 nautical miles or 4,000 nautical miles. The light/medium line was 1,000 nautical miles... which you may recall as being the design figure for (amongst others) the TSR.2.
I don't necessarily disagree, but defence spending isn't a vote winner in the UK. That means that retaining any long-range aircraft has to come at the expense of something else. And the UK has been cutting defence capabilities to preserve others since at least the 1950s.
Oddly enough, the one capability which is almost sacrosanct is the light infantry regiment. It's operationally very limited, but the UK has loads of them - in large part because the Army has done a very good job of arguing it needs to keep lots of regiments on the books as cheaply as possible (i.e. light infantry), rather than a smaller number of fully mechanised units. When you look at proposals for the future of the British Army, there's usually a section that amounts to 'and these units will stand around guarding stuff or something'.
