Royal Air Force [RAF] discussions and updates

A

A4scooter

New Member
UK scraps additional A400M buy as ‘unaffordable' (janes.com)
Not only are the C130s still being withdrawn, but the government have also decided no additional A400 aircraft will be purchased.
Regardless of the argument about C130 v A400, it doesn't matter how good an aircraft is, they can't be in 2 x places at once.
is there any point in having defence reviews? the UK was going to keep the C130 in service until 2035, 232? x Typhoons, 138 x F35 were to be purchased & there are rumours the NMH order will be reduced & the same thing will probably happen when the Tempest is ordered.
The UK has more commitments than most countries & without the support from the treasury (which is unlikely) the military will continue to have to do more with less.
 
Last edited:
S

swerve

Super Moderator
The armed forces would be a lot better equipped if they'd stop cocking up procurement. Much of it's political, but a lot of the incompetence in specifying & buying stuff seems to come from the armed forces wanting everything to be bespoke, frequently changing their minds, & the way they manage projects.
 
John Fedup

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
swerve said:
The armed forces would be a lot better equipped if they'd stop cocking up procurement. Much of it's political, but a lot of the incompetence in specifying & buying stuff seems to come from the armed forces wanting everything to be bespoke, frequently changing their minds, & the way they manage projects.
Click to expand...
Agree and the CAF is a prime example.
 
Musashi_kenshin

Musashi_kenshin

Well-Known Member
A4scooter said:
The UK has more commitments than most countries & without the support from the treasury (which is unlikely) the military will continue to have to do more with less.
Click to expand...
Yep, basically that's right. The Royal Navy is getting more priority after being the Cinderella of the armed forces branches for years (to the extent the government was planning to not have any ship-launched AShMs for up to a decade). The RAF's only jam on the horizon is the prospect of Tempest. The Army isn't doing much better with only having a modest number of tanks upgraded to Challenger 3 - then again they should be glad Ajax hasn't had the plug pulled yet.

Cuts to the numbers of transport aircraft will be annoying for the Army and RAF, but it's one of those things that will just have to be sucked up for now. Aircraft are the quickest things to redeploy after all.
 
Last edited:
S

south

Well-Known Member
For those that think there is Trauma unique to the RAN in acquisition strategy, it is clear there are distinct parallels within the UK acquisition system. This report highlights the travails facing the RAF providing effective capability across the entire AirPower domajn; there are similar reports (and issues) facing the RN and British Army.


summary:
2021’s Defence Command Paper, Defence in a Competitive Age, made significant cuts to the UK’s air power capabilities, with some aircraft to be retired early and plans to purchase replacements scaled back. Less than one year later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine brought the implications of these cuts into sharp focus. The UK’s diminished air capability has left it dangerously exposed in the face of what the MoD has described as “the greatest threat to the open international order in decades”.1 Despite this, July’s Defence Command Paper Refresh did not reverse any of the 2021 cuts.
There are serious questions as to whether the UK’s diminished combat air fleet can successfully deter and defend against enemy aggression. Whilst made up of highly capable aircraft, it is just too small to withstand the levels of attrition that would occur in a peer-on-peer war. The imminent retirement of the Tranche 1 Typhoon and continued slow force growth of the F-35 fleet will only exacerbate these shortcomings: the MoD and RAF must urgently address this lack of combat mass.

The retirement of the E-3D Sentry has left the UK without a land-based fixed-wing Airborne Early Warning & Control capability. This capability gap has already been extended as the in-service date for the Sentry’s replacement, the E-7A Wedgetail, has slipped by a year. Moreover, when the Wedgetail does eventually enter service, it will be as a reduced fleet of just three aircraft rather than the five originally ordered. The cost savings which the MoD cited to justify this cut are disproportionate to the significant reduction in capability which it will entail, and the Department must reverse this irrational decision at the earliest possible opportunity.

The MoD’s decision to retire the C-130J Hercules some seven years before its planned out-of-service date will severely reduce the overall capacity of the RAF’s air mobility fleet, which provides critical support to operations across Defence as well as fulfilling a humanitarian role, and will have a particular impact on our Special Forces.

Persistent and unacceptable delays in the flying training pipeline mean that pilots are waiting years to qualify, with serious implications for morale and for the effectiveness of our armed forces. We will hold the MoD and the RAF’s senior leadership accountable for bringing these delays within acceptable limits by mid-2024. They must ensure that the system has sufficient flexibility and resilience to adapt to future changes in aircrew requirements without introducing further delay, and should review and streamline contractual arrangements to improve transparency and accountability.
 
S

swerve

Super Moderator
Absolutely.

The little I know about the internal workings of military procurement in the UK is depressing. I hear of personnel with no technical knowledge to speak of deciding to do things on cost grounds which are untested, & often either take a long time to get working or fail completely, causing at best delays & unbudgeted costs, & at worst, money thrown away with nothing bought. See, for example, the special forces Chinook fiasco, where a unique hybrid system was ordered over the protests of technical staff & never worked. Supposedly, project managers routinely move on after a couple of years, so there is a lack of continuity, accountability, & expertise in the particular product being procured. Seeing successes elsewhere & in the past where a dedicated team worked to bring everything together for the duration of the project doesn't seem to change this.

And so on . . . .

We've closed down factories making X & laid off the skilled work force, then paid someone to build a new factory to make X, with a largely new work force who it takes time & money to bring up to the necessary skill level. We spend fortunes on assessment, then make a political choice. See Boxer, where we eventually got what the army wanted, but spent hundreds of millions on pulling out of the project, reinstating the requirement & assessing competing products with it being widely rumoured that the main selection criterion was "anything but Boxer", then cancelled that, & eventually went back to the start & bought Boxer. Doh!

And it's impossible to upgrade Tranche 1 Typhoons, despite Spain doing it & BAE saying they can do it. Instead, they'll be scrapped & the tasks they could do assigned to newer aircraft which will then pile up airframe hours, bringing forward their retirement. They've been scheduled for retirement by a few years ago, planned to be upgraded to keep some in service until after 2030, scheduled for retirement soon . . . . Bloody ridiculous.
 
S

StobieWan

Super Moderator
Staff member
It is depressing when you add up how much that wasted money could have bought. Between the Boxer fiasco, the aborted WCSP program, which ground on for a decade and delivered not one working example, the Chinook SF buy..honestly...frustrating. As for the training pipeline - that's ridiculous. Utterly embarrassing.
 
John Fedup

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
Military procurement C-Fs are a function of pollies, consultants, some senior sirs, and contractor performance. IMHO, the first two are prime.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top