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With the assaination of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid 80's all hopes of an end to the cold war ended and with it east-west tension was at an all time high. Realising this fact the UK's MOD found that the RAF's Air Defence fleet were becoming increasingly stretched with taskings that included mantaining 2 Sqn's for NATO air policing in West Germany, a flight detached to the Falkland Islands and ofcourse QRA to mantain in it's own air space, which was becoming an increasingly busy task. Often with several Soviet aircraft a day that needed to be intercepted and escorted away from UK airspace. With the iniment retirement of the Lightning and the Phantom's not too far away, its replacement Eurofighter (EAP) still in the early stages of development the MOD sought the find an aircraft to fill the gap. The RAF were ofcourse already operating an Ad-Hoc strengthened Air defence fleet in the form of the MMF (Mixed Fighter Force) consisting of the Tornado and the Hawk T.1A working side by side. This was by no means an answer to the problem more of a last resort. Several options were considered including extending the life of the venerable Phantom fleet, this was quickly dismissed as bringing the aircraft up to date would be cost prohibitive, also the airframes were running out of hours. Equiping the Sepecat Jaguar with a Radar was another idea but was discarded because this would leave the RAF's Strike force short, the F-16 was also considered but was quickly dropped due to cost considerations. The most obvious option was to buy more Tornado's but again this was dropped due to costs and production times. The MOD looked towards BAe which at the time was developing its highly successful Hawk aircraft into a Radar equipped single seat light strike-fighter for the export market. Finally an agreement with BAe was reached for the purchase of 60 Hawk 200 aircraft, the RAF was no stranger to the Hawk so intergrating it into its inventory was going to be an easier and cheaper option that buying an all new aircraft. So in 1989 after a few teething problems the first of the RAF's BAe Hawk FGR.2 rolled off the production line, by late 1992 the 60th had been delivered and the RAF's Hawk wing at Leeming was complete with 3 front line squadron's and an small OCU. For this GB I'll be using the Airfix 1/48 Hawk 100 and Neomega's Hawk 200 conversion set, plus a few other goodies, I'm still waiting for a few bits and bobs to arrive, I'll post some piccies once I've got the whole shebang.