In its ongoing campaign to irritate St Crispin’s Day, the RAF is now reported to want to take over the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and assume control of all Army helicopters. The justification is that it would shave £1 billion from the defence budget.

Apparently the Royal Navy clashed with the RAF at a meeting of senior officers and civil servants last week. Admirals are furious about the campaign – conducted under their slogan “One Nation, One Air Force” which would mean the Fleet Air Arm scrapped in 2013. That’s just a few months before its centenary.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, Chief of the Air Staff, is proposing to scrap all 75 Harrier jump jets shared between the RN and the RAF faster than previously scheduled.

Helicopters operated by the Army Air Corps, formed in 1957, would also come under RAF control. The include Apache gunships which support troops on the front line, although transports such as the Chinook are already flown by the RAF.

The changes would leave the Royal Navy with no planes for its new carriers if they ever turn up until the Joint Strike Fighter is introduced, which won’t happen until at least 2017. The RAF want their pilots to fly the new aircraft from the carriers. Senior naval sources say Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the first sea lord, has threatened to resign over the plans, although the Ministry of Defence said the claim misrepresented his views.

John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, told forces chiefs to come up with a plan to make up a £2 billion shortfall in their budget at last week’s meeting of the defence board. A drop in the number of helicopters across the forces from the current 580 to 320 would also mean the axeing of bases and hundreds of posts.

The Army Air Corps and Fleet Air Arm are vulnerable because, under plans announced earlier this month, their 300 Lynx and Gazelle helicopters will be replaced by just 62 Future Lynx craft. Army sources said the cut in helicopter numbers mean that two Army Air Corps frontline regiments would have to be disbanded by 2014, resulting in the loss of more than a third of the organisation’s 3,000 personnel.

The Royal Naval Air Service was set up in 1914 and pioneered the use of aircraft carriers. In 1945, the successor Fleet Air Arm, had 3,700 planes flying from the navy’s 59 carriers.

TheEye is irrationally sentimental about these things and deplored the recent butchery of the old Regiments with no regards for tradition or history. This idea is also very stupid. Here we go again.