The RAF are the experts in high altitude air drops, capable of accurately dropping packages to within a 10 meter radius. This is ideal for dropping aid into the besieged and flattened towns across Syria.

Working out of Cyprus, the coalition could mount a massive humanitarian aid air drop programme – which might make the difference between the success and failure of the current peace process.

If the Chilcot report is ever published, hopefully it will suggest that one of the shortfalls of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that there was no coordinated humanitarian plan to flood aid into areas devastated by the Saddam Hussein era and to disenfranchised Sunnis. This failure to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people goes a long way to explaining the desperate situation today in Iraq and fuelled the rise of Isil.