Royal Air Force (RAF-UK) Discussions and Updates

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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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
Musashi_kenshin

Musashi_kenshin

Well-Known Member
Yes, Feanor has kindly merged the threads, so we have just one thread now.

Back on topic, there's no news as to when the meteor integration will complete, except that it and Spear 3 will be integrated by 2030.
 
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