abc123
Banned
I didn't phrase that last paragraph well what I should have said is military owned aircraft. When an airliner is retired for economic reasons the aircraft itself may have many more years life left the military not having to make a profit can exploit those extra years where an airline cannot.
What aircraft would I select? You're right I would chose one of the long range Airbuses I would prefer the A340 aircraft for the extra redundancy of four engines but that is likely to be too expensive so I would go for the A330. (This is what the RAF has on order for the VC10-Tristar replacement Airbus is building a dedicated aircraft for the Tanker/Transport role).
Why hang cruise missiles of the aircraft? Responce time. A long range jet aircraft can circumnavigate the world in a day giving the ability to get within cruise range of a target within hours of a crises. A ship may take weeks to come into range of a target giving them time to prepare. That time delay may well cost British lives.
So, if I'm not wrong, you want a fleet of at least 30 tanker-transport aircrafts ( like A330 ) that can also fire few cruise missiles from missile pilons under wings?
And about responce time, when was the last war where Britain had 24 hours or 2-3 days to respond?
And target will prepare for war against UK, that's for sure, but in absence of very capable and strong opponent, they can't harm Arsenal Ship ( 1000 miles away, even if they can find his location, and because it can be allmost communications passive ship finding such ship is damn hard thing to do ) while spotting/intercepting large high flying ( if we want large range of missiles ) aircraft is much easier.