The Future of the RAF 02 – Tasks and Trends

18 thoughts on “The Future of the RAF 02 – Tasks and Trends”

1. Tubby December 27, 2010 at 10:06 am

   I might be being a bit thick TD but where does SAR fit in. Are you assuming that the future PFI contract will cover this important role, and if so is there any scope to discuss it as a core role? The reason I mention it, is that it disturbs the hell out of me that if I was flying from the US and the jet I was on ditched mid-Atlantic near the edge of UK responsibility we do not have a MPA capable of over flying and providing command and control to vector in the other SAR assets to try to rescue any survivors.
2. x December 27, 2010 at 10:55 am

   TD said “Air stuff is all the RAF do, with the other services its ‘something else’ they do.”

   This smacks of air power being an end itself.

   The question should be for the Army why it needs to do air power? Why do assets that spend the vast majority of their time moving Army personnel, stores, etc. belong to somebody else?

   Are we just going to match kit to present tasks and grumble about budgets then just move on to do the same for the Army?
3. IXION December 27, 2010 at 10:55 am

   TD

   This is going to be a long comment as I seek to explain and justify my ravings.

   It seems the sacredness of sacred cows is a given.

   ‘I think the answer is actually pretty clear, air power can deliver strategic effects independently of the other services and the nature of the tasks and equipment needs a fully focussed organisation to deliver those affects. Air stuff is all the RAF do, with the other services its ‘something else’ they do’.

   For the first time You have posted something I actually disagree with at first principle, (and with a simple paragraph waive away a complex argument), rather than, say implimentation or equipment.

   I expect to get flack for this and maybe even shot down in flames (can you see what I did there), but enjoying creative disputaion, (with the accent on the creative). I would like you and others to get involved in the dog fight(ditto).

   ‘Air power can deliver strategic effects independant of the other services;. Obviously it can. But I ask my first simple questions.

   1)What does our current fleet of aircraft offer in the way of strategic (to stick to the strategic element) bombing capability that a slew of current cruise missiles do, many available in containeried form?

   2) Why could not a division of the Army Air Corp be as focused as the Raf on that job?

   Given that

   1)The strategic use of independant air power is controversial as to it’s actual effectiveness ( a VERY long history of overclaiming it’s effectiveness exists(I won’t rehearse it), as do protestations that this time the technolgy is right, and now it realy will work).
   2) we don’t have enough aircraft for a proper independant strategic campaign

   I think you initial premise is flawed.

   CORE REQUIREMENTS

   Protect UK Territories.

   See earlier post, virtualy any air attack n the Uk or it’s territories must come over the sea, therefore a unified command control structure for that must include RN, so why not let them do it? I know this sounds simplistic but if i expand on T45 capabilities in this field US Japanese ABM experements etc, the comment will get impossibly long

   STRIKE AIR DEFENCE ETC ETC

   This is all completely tied in with suporting Army requirement, again divisions of Army Air corp could do this.

   ISTAR

   Ditto (indeed current deplyments seem to suggest from the uS point of view this activity should be Army lead.

   Building reagional security and special forces support.

   You have already proposed RN Forward basing for this, again why not FAA for this task (Or given it’s expanded capabilities the return of the RNAS.

   Why would we want to do this, why get rid of RAF?

   Advantages

   We have 3 organisations doing ‘Air’ 2 small AAC, and FAA. and one ‘large’ RAF.

   Both AAC and FAA, have a reputaion for doing more with less, (in particular manpower). If the Raf was abolished 3 become 2.

   OF course the technical logistic support would remain; most of the RAF up to wing commander would exchange light blue for Dark, and cammo.

   But we would loose a whole tranche of upper echelon PONTi’s and a the opportunities for savings on infrastructure cost would be huge.

   Further the 2 forces (I venture to suggest) would be more focused on the realities of the modern world. Costs, and threats. RN Fighter cover is more likely to be arround when the RN Needs it. AAC Likewise. Transport aircraft more likely to be available to to transport Army arround. Capabilities could actually improve for any given budget.

   I Realise this would in effect create 2 competing sepperate forces with capability overlap, but that is not necessarily a bad thing (indded we allready have 3 way capability overlap with helicopters to some degree, and the armu mess about with small boats. The competition is likeley to be healthier than at the moment keeping them on their toes and encoraging innovation.

   Please note I am not anti airpower, and this post has made little mention of equipment. (which i would like to see expanded in numbers and capability no matter who flies it). I am trying to free up funds for more capability.

   This 2nd part of TD’s post is about principles, and I have tried to stick to that part.

   What do you say TD (and others).

   Or does the sacred cow live to Moo another day.

   I do not underestimate the idiots of the treaury treating this as oppourtunity to cut. But lets ignor realpolitic for a moment and consider this from purely strategic review position.
4. x December 27, 2010 at 10:58 am

   And I thought the RAF ran a few joint schools? And isn’t there that NCB regiment thingy?

   (No need I think to mention the Reg. )

   Lastly I said in my first comment in the other post, all this talk of air defence but I can’t see the RAF’s anti-missile strategy…………
5. Phil Darley December 27, 2010 at 11:48 am

   IXION, good post… Your are right in that we don’t need an independent RAF. The FAA could (if properly equipped) perform all the fast air roles currently performed by the RAF. You could argue, that with the T45 they can do a much better job at the anti-balsitic missile threat, something the RAf seems to have completely ignored.

   Tge AAC should have control of the Chinooks and be given a Puma replacement (be that Merlin, Blackhawk or AW149). The FAA needs to retain its Merlin and Lynx/Wildcat (ideally replaced by AW149) and the Apache and Chinook fleets should be available for both land a sea operation (folding blade Chinook.. long overdue).

   I would suggest that ISTAR should be shared between the two but as a joint capability, Tankering FAA. As for Transport, well that could be outsourced to DHL or UPS!!!! (half joking)

   That leaves CAS, again this could be shared between the two. I would suggest that if we go down the route of using less sophisticated aircraft / turboprops (if they are really viable) then the AAC should operate these along side the Apache as VCAS (Very Close Air support) and the FAA can provide the fasr air using F35C / Rafale (or whatever they inherit from the RAF. I would suggest that if the RAF was abolished you could provide the FAA with a mainly carrier capable aircraft that can be operated from land or sea as the situation dictates.
6. x December 27, 2010 at 12:30 pm

   Given the CEP of most precision guided artillery why is CAS still needed? How many Excalibur rounds could be bought for a year’s running costs of one jet, let alone purchasing the air frame, pilot and support crew training, development costs etc.

   Similar could be said about ATACMS, MLRS GPS, etc. Heck even Javelin looks cheap.

   This remind me of the RN and TLAM. Only bought in penny packets because of expense. Yet the RAF is supposedly getting 900 Storm Shadow with the paltry range of 250miles. In defence budget context you would be considered mad to suggest Daring was stretched to accommodate an aft VLS silo to carry 60 TLAM with a range of 1500m. But 900 missiles that will have to be launched off a £100m fast jet that would need tanker support etc. is seen as perfectly reasonable.

   Missile technology is now at the point where Sandy’s white paper said it was back in 1957.
7. Michael (Civ.) December 27, 2010 at 1:33 pm

   X

   I always thought the big advantage with Aircraft compared to Artillery was that Aircraft can be a 100 miles away in 10 minutes time dropping bombs in support of someone else.

   I agree with your second bit. I think that these days the RAF is basically a Tactical Air Force pretending to be a Strategic Air Force. How is buying a 250nmi range missile over a 1500nmi range missile in any way strategic power projection?

   Could the real reason why they are buying such weapons be due to the ever improving Mr SAM?

   Is the RAF also risk averse?

   Or is it just due to that decision cycle thing again, where someone looked into a crystal ball lo those many years ago & got it wrong, again, so to make up for it we are going to spend £681,381.42 per missile on 900 of the things.

   Could it be that we should just dump the whole Typhoon idea right now & just ask the American’s if we can pretty please buy 150 Raptors, that way at least we could drop lots of inexpensive bombs from close range, instead of shooting very expensive missiles from hundreds of miles away!

   If you think we can’t afford it, i would point out that UK HMG has about $447 billion in US TREASURY SECURITIES.

   Or is that little lot just another part of the great PONZI scheme that is the US Financial System?
8. ArmChairCivvy December 27, 2010 at 2:15 pm

   Hi Phil Darley,

   A very good term you coined there: “if we go down the route of using less sophisticated aircraft / turboprops (if they are really viable) then the AAC should operate these along side the Apache as VCAS (Very Close Air support)”
   - a pity I posted about it onto the previous thread, suggesting not quite turboprops ( a fully kitted out Super Tucano is amazingly expensive), but something cheap & simple = can be operated from roads rather than prepared bases, and can be field maintained
9. ArmChairCivvy December 27, 2010 at 2:22 pm

   Hi Michael (Civ),

   Thanks for keeping “him” in the picture as there seems to be a degree of dismissal of progress made sine the single figures still covered all the designations
   “Could the real reason why they are buying such weapons be due to the ever improving Mr SAM?”

   Just take the ones that Russia DID NOT, in the end, sell to Iran. They are plentiful in China, and just to illustrate, cover planes taking off anywhere on Taiwan (except the extreme NE tip of the island)
   - geographics in the Gulf, or Bab el Mandeb are of similar distances; who knows where the next trouble brews up?
10. Mark December 27, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    Somewhere between TD and IXION outline is where I think the RAF should sit in the future. I RAF should return to a strategic force that is where it should while CAS is important the army has lots of artillery and attack helicopters and if its only deployed on brigade scale then its area of operation will not be so huge that it can’t cover itself so Fast jet assignment can be smaller perhaps. Where I disagree with TD is where he says “but the likelihood of air defence and strike missions will decrease” on the contrary I think the air defence mission will increase. There has been huge proliferation of Russian fighter aircraft in the last decade to all the areas the UK is likely to see operations. A UK medium scale operation against a state will 32 su-27s may not be an unrealistic scenario. As such the typhoon is vital as it provides the dual mission of uk air defence and that of a deployed force which also has the ability to provide CAS. The Type 45 can only provide proper air defence when we go to a shooting war. You can’t do anything with a missile other than shoot something down. So the Manned fighter is here to stay.

    The area of Strategic Transport, AWAC, SIGINT, Maritime Patrol and AAR is where the Europeans have proven time and time again to be extremely weak with the UK now joining the list. This is where the UK should be investing more not less as it will be the most useful in a coalition. AAR and Transport will improve with the introduction of new types shortly but I fear the transport capacity will be too few to support the many demands on it and needs to increase.

    My perhaps most controversial point in the new strategic airforce is the reintroduction of a strategic bomber aircraft of sorts. A long range manned aircraft that can deliver a variety of weapons but also conduct the SIGINT and MP remit therefore being useful in more than one field. Nimrod would for me have been this aircraft. US heavy bombers have shown there capability time and again. Using the same airframe for SIGINT and MP gives them vital additional roles as well. This would end the RAFs role in F35 to leave it a typhoon only force.

    I have always wondered why the army also moans about not having the Chinook. Have the RAF provided such a bad service over the years that it needs moved to the army. In my mind it’s more empire building than anything else. We would be spending a large amount of money to move it for little gain. The UCAV debate is a stranger one it’s being sold as a cheap alternative to manned aircraft. They are not and never can be outside the basic recon version. The UK should not go down this route much beyond tactical recon drones for the army.
11. Jed December 27, 2010 at 4:09 pm

    mmmm’ my problem with this is, same as the RN posts, a lack of strategy.

    Now TD’s “tasking” order for the RAF seems reasonable given the lack of any actual strategy in the SDSR, but unfortunately that lack of strategy is what allows us to wander all over the place, in discussing whether we could have no seperate air force at all, to labeling the one we have (correctly IMHO) as a tactical air force, go the fixation on the current ops and the suggestion of AAC operated turbo-prop “CAS” aircraft (they would not really be CAS, but COIN …. ???)

    Only if we had a proper grand strategy, and an SDSR that could back up its semi-strategic rhetoric with actual funding could we really discuss what the focus on tasking should be.

    Having said all that, the only one of TD’s task list I really, really disagree with is the “Building Regional Security Capability” bit – which appears to be a direct cut and paste from U.S. strategy / policy, and one that even they have not yet fully embraced. In this area, we already train foreign nationals, both pilot training and staff courses. We have Mi17′s in the UK being used to train pilots and ground crews. Why do we need more ? I see even less scope for Value for Money (or Return On Investment) in this field of endeavor for the RAF than I did for the “forward presence squadrons” idea for the RN.
12. Think Defence December 27, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    Jed, we have all bemoaned a lack of strategic focus which can drive out sensible force mixtures and tasks etc but should we just hang up our keyboards?

    The strategy the UK has adapted is that of ‘adaptable Britain’ which as we all know is code for ‘lets carry on avoiding decisions’ but whilst we can laugh at that for the nonsense it is, the forces still have to do the best they can with what they have and plan for what they think will happen.

    If there is a strategy it is a reduction in commitments and yet more austerity.

    The TD strategy is therefore to explore ways of making do with less and adapting what we have to this reality. One of these is investing more intellectual and monetary capital in non warfighting means of ensuring our security, this results in a moving of the funding slider more to defence diplomacy, training, mentoring and building regional security capacity that will form an intelligence and operational bridge to expeditionary forces we can still deploy.
13. ArmChairCivvy December 27, 2010 at 5:24 pm

    Hi Jed,

    Even though I buy your arguments, each in isolation, let’s remember that today there is only one strategic airforce, so “tactical” is not such a downer as it sounds.

    Hi TD,

    RE ” moving of the funding slider more to…” the figures below relate foreign military aid/ assistance (the latter figure, in bn) to GDP (the former) for each year.

    So, a tenth of a per cent to a quarter is already being spent; how much more, or all of it back, and theoretically cover the operating costs for 205 of the Bay class?
    2003 1139.75 1.27 a
    2004 1202.96 1.28 a
    2005 1254.06 0.90 a
    2006 1325.8 1.16 a
    2007 1398.88 1.69 a
    2008 1448.39 2.70 a
    2009 1395.87 3.60 a
    2010 1474 4.10 b
    2011 1539 4.14
14. Jed December 27, 2010 at 9:25 pm

    TD said: “If there is a strategy it is a reduction in commitments and yet more austerity.”

    But that is the problem, it’s not a reduction in commitments is it ? It’s a reduction in assets, without as far as I can see in the SDSR any reduction in commitments. There is a reduction in the assets available for, or to be allocated to a specific commitment, fair enough. However always following the “must do more with less” mantra is not really the same as making intelligent choices and the related investments.

    So for all your threads, I will always chip in that gutless politico’s in charge are the problem, because they are responsible for both the lack of strategy, and the lack of appropriate funding. As such, while I would be happy for the RN to become a “coast guard” I would be happy for the RAF to become the “Royal Air Defence Force” with enough Typhoons, tankers and AEW to do the job, as long as HMG dropped all the BS and called a pig a pig
15. Think Defence December 27, 2010 at 9:35 pm

    I agree Jed, I think we should lead a campaign to ban the phrase ‘punch above our weight’ on pain of death
16. Jed December 27, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    Wow look at these factoids from David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizens Defence Watch blog – he is quoting from the “Human Security Report” – this is why the UK armed forces should have been funded better !

    “France, the UK, the US, Russia/USSR, and India (in that order) were the world’s most war-prone countries between 1946 and 2008 in that they have been involved in most the state-based armed conflicts.”

    So, probably largely due to places such as Yemen, Oman and Malaysia during the fifties, we are second only to France for “getting involved” !

    Also:

    “If we rank countries by the number of years of conflict they have experienced since 1946, Burma comes first with an astonishing 246 conflict years––an average of four conflicts a year for the entire period. It is followed by India, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and the UK (in that order).”

    What a bunch of war mongering governments we appear to have had, as we come in 5th place – behind a bunch of so called “third world” countries that have each had multiple insurgencies or civil wars (I guess Northern Ireland might have skewed that ?)

    Davids article is at: http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/defencewatch/archive/2010/12/24/report-gives-overview-of-the-state-of-the-world-s-security.aspx

    The Human Security Report Project is at: http://hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/20092010/overview.aspx

    Is this why our politicians are so addicted to the ability to “punch above our weight” ? Because they can’t bare not to be involved ???
17. Phil Darley December 28, 2010 at 10:29 am

    Jed, I agree with your post 100% but the fact that the Mod wastes so much of the money they do have is the bigger problem. It has been stated many times that we are the 3rd/4th/5th spender on Defence, we just don’t get very much for it!!!

    I’m all for scrapping the Foreign aid budget and the funding of lazy scumbags etc. but how do we ensure thast the spend the money correctly????

    I have no idea
18. Gareth Jones January 3, 2011 at 1:32 am

    An article describing the roles and use of airpower from an American perspective (although the author is English).

    http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/airpower.html