Frozen Hell
New Member
Late, over-budget and out of date: now the number of combat aircraft is to be reduced and the savings used to buy new weapons. Sean Rayment reports
Source
The government is to abandon plans to buy more Eurofighter warplanes in an attempt to control Britain's spiralling defence budget.
Defence chiefs have accepted that the aircraft, which was intended to be the cornerstone of the country's air defence strategy, will be outdated by the time it enters military service in 2006.
The decision to cut the Eurofighter programme, which is already £5.4 billion over budget, follows heavy pressure from the Treasury and will be made public in a defence White Paper to be published next month. It means that the number of aircraft the RAF will receive, originally set at 232, will by reduced by a third to 143.
As well as easing the financial pressure on the Ministry of Defence's annual £31 billion budget, the cuts have also been prompted by the emergence of new, unmanned aircraft, which are seen as the future of aerial warfare. One such warplane, the Predator, was used by the US Air Force to considerable effect in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
All three service chiefs are said to have agreed to the cuts in the Eurofighter - which is now known as the Typhoon - after being assured that the savings will be used to develop future weapon systems. These include unmanned aircraft and "smart missiles", which can be directed by computer on to targets hundreds of miles away with pinpoint accuracy.
A senior Ministry of Defence official said: "Eurofighter is a dead duck. Unfortunately we are stuck with it, but there is no way this Government is going to buy any more. It's expensive and obsolete."
A close ally of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, also disclosed that the third tranche of Eurofighters, due to be ordered in 2007, would now be shelved. "Undoubtedly the third phase will be cancelled. It is too expensive and we don't need them any more," he said.
Mick McGinty, the editor of World Defence Systems, and a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the Eurofighter was a "legacy" aircraft that was already obsolete. "It will be operational 10 years behind schedule and therefore will be 10 years out of date," he said.
The decision to scale back the Eurofighter programme is the latest blow in the aircraft's troubled history. It was originally conceived in the 1970s, although it did not go into production until the mid-1980s. Five countries - Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain and France - were initially involved, but France broke away in the belief that a ground attack aircraft rather than a fighter was more suited to its needs. The British government, by contrast, backed the Eurofighter rather than opting to buy an alternative from the US, as some advocated.
The aircraft was designed to attack the massed formations of Soviet bombers that Cold War tacticians believed would be the prelude to a rapid invasion of western Europe. But with the demise of the Warsaw Pact, however, this threat disappeared and the needs of modern air forces changed radically.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there was no enemy air force to fight and the only British and US aircraft that saw any action were the ground attack jets used to support troops, not to fight aerial battles.
Embarrassingly for the Government, however, the first tranche of 55 Eurofighters, which were delivered earlier this year, six years late, are equipped for an air defence role. Only the second tranche of 89 will be capable of undertaking a ground attack role.
There have also been severe delays in the production of the aircraft, which was originally due to come into service in 1998. Some of the hold-ups were caused by political in-fighting, including a threat by the Germans to pull out of the project, while others were caused by the complexity of co-ordinating the work of the large number of British and foreign companies involved in the project.
There have also been further problems with engine failures. All Eurofighters are currently grounded because of faults in the braking system.
Even Adml Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, appeared sceptical of the need for more Eurofighters. Shortly before he retired in April this year, the Admiral said: "Do we need to have 232 fighters in the modern context?" It is now generally accepted by the air industry that unmanned combat jets will begin to replace manned aircraft within 20 years, only a few years after the final batch of Eurofighters are due to enter service.
As well as the cuts to the Eurofighter programme, government funding for several of the military's most expensive procurement projects will also be cancelled or scaled back in the defence White Paper, in what will be one of the biggest overhauls of spending in recent years.
New warships, aircraft carriers and the joint strike fighter programme will be scaled back to direct funding towards new equipment programmes and to help pay for the war in Iraq.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence insisted that the Eurofighter was an effective aircraft but declined to comment on future spending announcements. "We are still committed to Eurofighter," he said.
Source
The government is to abandon plans to buy more Eurofighter warplanes in an attempt to control Britain's spiralling defence budget.
Defence chiefs have accepted that the aircraft, which was intended to be the cornerstone of the country's air defence strategy, will be outdated by the time it enters military service in 2006.
The decision to cut the Eurofighter programme, which is already £5.4 billion over budget, follows heavy pressure from the Treasury and will be made public in a defence White Paper to be published next month. It means that the number of aircraft the RAF will receive, originally set at 232, will by reduced by a third to 143.
As well as easing the financial pressure on the Ministry of Defence's annual £31 billion budget, the cuts have also been prompted by the emergence of new, unmanned aircraft, which are seen as the future of aerial warfare. One such warplane, the Predator, was used by the US Air Force to considerable effect in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
All three service chiefs are said to have agreed to the cuts in the Eurofighter - which is now known as the Typhoon - after being assured that the savings will be used to develop future weapon systems. These include unmanned aircraft and "smart missiles", which can be directed by computer on to targets hundreds of miles away with pinpoint accuracy.
A senior Ministry of Defence official said: "Eurofighter is a dead duck. Unfortunately we are stuck with it, but there is no way this Government is going to buy any more. It's expensive and obsolete."
A close ally of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, also disclosed that the third tranche of Eurofighters, due to be ordered in 2007, would now be shelved. "Undoubtedly the third phase will be cancelled. It is too expensive and we don't need them any more," he said.
Mick McGinty, the editor of World Defence Systems, and a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the Eurofighter was a "legacy" aircraft that was already obsolete. "It will be operational 10 years behind schedule and therefore will be 10 years out of date," he said.
The decision to scale back the Eurofighter programme is the latest blow in the aircraft's troubled history. It was originally conceived in the 1970s, although it did not go into production until the mid-1980s. Five countries - Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain and France - were initially involved, but France broke away in the belief that a ground attack aircraft rather than a fighter was more suited to its needs. The British government, by contrast, backed the Eurofighter rather than opting to buy an alternative from the US, as some advocated.
The aircraft was designed to attack the massed formations of Soviet bombers that Cold War tacticians believed would be the prelude to a rapid invasion of western Europe. But with the demise of the Warsaw Pact, however, this threat disappeared and the needs of modern air forces changed radically.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there was no enemy air force to fight and the only British and US aircraft that saw any action were the ground attack jets used to support troops, not to fight aerial battles.
Embarrassingly for the Government, however, the first tranche of 55 Eurofighters, which were delivered earlier this year, six years late, are equipped for an air defence role. Only the second tranche of 89 will be capable of undertaking a ground attack role.
There have also been severe delays in the production of the aircraft, which was originally due to come into service in 1998. Some of the hold-ups were caused by political in-fighting, including a threat by the Germans to pull out of the project, while others were caused by the complexity of co-ordinating the work of the large number of British and foreign companies involved in the project.
There have also been further problems with engine failures. All Eurofighters are currently grounded because of faults in the braking system.
Even Adml Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, appeared sceptical of the need for more Eurofighters. Shortly before he retired in April this year, the Admiral said: "Do we need to have 232 fighters in the modern context?" It is now generally accepted by the air industry that unmanned combat jets will begin to replace manned aircraft within 20 years, only a few years after the final batch of Eurofighters are due to enter service.
As well as the cuts to the Eurofighter programme, government funding for several of the military's most expensive procurement projects will also be cancelled or scaled back in the defence White Paper, in what will be one of the biggest overhauls of spending in recent years.
New warships, aircraft carriers and the joint strike fighter programme will be scaled back to direct funding towards new equipment programmes and to help pay for the war in Iraq.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence insisted that the Eurofighter was an effective aircraft but declined to comment on future spending announcements. "We are still committed to Eurofighter," he said.
