[dingaling]

We've had a couple of incidents in the UK recently that demonstrated the 'lag' in interception of non-communicative aircraft.

In April 2016 a German-registered Challenger business jet flew east-west across the UK and was just about to enter Irish airspace when the RAF Typhoons reached it.

Then in October the same happened with a Volaris A320 that managed to fly most of the south-north extent of the UK before being intercepted, again just before leaving UK airspace.

In both cases if there had been any malicious intent then it could easily have been executed over major cities. In fact I watched that A320 fly over my town... The problem in the UK is that the main fighter bases are on the east coast, to combat the Soviet hordes that never arrived. So basically everything is a supersonic tail-chase for the interceptors unless it's coming from the Benelux countries. The RAF really needs to redispose its units for dealing with the new 'threat' but there's simply no money to do so.