"RAF asked to consider suicide flights"

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

RAF pilots asked to consider suicide flights
United Kingdom - The Daily Telegraph

 
A SENIOR British air force officer has asked his fighter pilots if they
would fly suicide missions as a last resort to stop terrorists.

Air Vice-Marshal David Walker put forward the last-ditch scenario at a
conference for air crews, the Ministry of Defence said, according to the Sun
newspaper.

According to tabloid, he said: "Would you think it unreasonable if I ordered
you to fly your aircraft into the ground in order to destroy a vehicle
carrying a Taliban or al-Qaeda commander?" 

A ministry spokesman said Air Vice-Marshal Walker did not say he would order
his crews on suicide missions. 

"As part of a training exercise, he wanted them to think about how they, and
their commanders, would react, faced with a life and death decision of the
most extreme sort - for example terrorists trying to fly an aircraft into a
British city being followed by an RAF fighter which suffers weapons
failure," the spokesman said.

"These are decisions which, however unlikely and dreadful, service people
may have to make and it is one of many reasons why the British people hold
them in such high esteem."

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