Use them and lose them

The trouble with aircraft is that they wear out. Each airframe has a design life, measured in flying hours and, when reached, the aircraft has to be towed away and scrapped or given fantastically expensive "life extension" upgrades to keep them in the air. The new Eurofighters, for instance, have a design life of about 6,000 hours.

However, high performance combat aircraft are so expensive that they are also expected to last a long time and, as replacements are taking ever longer to come into service, their chronological lives are extending into decades. The Eurofighter will be expected to last about 35 years, allowing an average of about 14 hours a month flying time throughout their careers.

To get maximum chronological life, therefore, it makes sense to fly the aircraft only for the minimum number of hours possible, just sufficient to maintain pilot proficiency and no more. Even then, much of the practice and training can be done on increasingly sophisticated simulators, cutting air time down even further.

That leaves the aircraft available for what they were designed for – an insurance policy in the event of hostile action, when they can be used to ward off or destroy an enemy. A military aircraft may go through its whole career without ever seeing action, its sole purpose having been to provide that all-important insurance.

Unfortunately, contemporary politicians – imbued with the doctrine of "liberal intervention" – are finding ever more reasons for using their inventories of aircraft, often for purposes for which they were not intended.

The RAF Tornado bombers are a good example. Designed for long-range interdiction against Warsaw Pact forces in northern Europe, they are now providing close air support in the gruelling conditions of Afghanistan, having already served in the Gulf War, Kosovo, the Invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation.

The first models were delivered to the RAF in 1979 and production ended in 1998 yet the ground attack version is expected to remain in service until 2025 – the type in service just short of 50 years, with the youngest of the aircraft around 30 years old.

However, so enthusiastic have our politicians been that the current GR4/4A fleet is wearing out too fast, forcing the MoD to devise a mid-life fatigue programme in a bid to see it through to its planned out-of-service date in 2025.

One aircraft will be modified on a trial basis, taking about three years to complete, at a cost of £28 million. If this is successful, work will proceed to the next phase and, if that works, modifications could be made to 40 aircraft at a cost of about £207m - £5 million per airframe.

Needless to say, this problem is not confined to the RAF. Recently, the USAF had to ground part of its F-15 fleet after structural failure caused one machine to break up in mid air. These aircraft, with an extended design life of 8,000 hours, are piling on the hours in Afghanistan and many of these are running out of "life".

Now stung by the massive costs of the replacement F-22s, at about $350 million each, even the United States is beginning to look seriously at cost-saving measures which will reduce the load on the high value inventory and keep them flying for longer.

And so advanced is the thinking that even the popular magazine Time is reporting that the USAF is seeking "a cheaper way to fly and fight". The magazine has picked up on recent reports on what is now called the Light Attack Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft, with the Hawker Beechcraft T-6 (pictured) and Brazil's Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano under consideration.

Its main champion is defense secretary Robert Gates and the magazine cites General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff saying that this low-tech approach "is really consistent with Secretary Gates' thinking" in favour of simple weapons that can be bought quickly and perform more than one mission.

A rugged and simple warplane that can be flown against insurgents by US pilots who also train foreign pilots in their own language "is a very attractive way to approach this problem," he says.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley concurs. He believes that such an aircraft "will help build up the security capabilities of partners facing counterterrorist operations, counterinsurgency operations." Nations like Afghanistan and Iraq "are not going to be able to — and do not have a need to — operate at that higher end of the conflict spectrum," he adds. And nor can they afford to. The $350 million used to buy each of the 187 F-22s on the US inventory would pay for a fleet of about 50 of these aircraft.

No one is going to pretend, however, that such aircraft can replace the full spectrum of capabilities of fast jets such as the Tornado. But if their use can reduce utilisation of the more expensive jets by even ten percent, then their initial cost is a worthwhile investment, with huge savings accruing through reduced operational costs.

As so often though, while there is now a vibrant public debate on this issue in the US, even vast expenditure by the MoD on life-extension programmes goes unremarked and, despite extensive public and media concern about defence budget shortfalls, there is no media discussion about this promising development.

Short on detail and long on rhetoric, it seems our media – and indeed our politicians and military – would rather complain about shortfalls than do something constructive about them.

COMMENT THREAD

A common enemy

David Hughes, The Daily Telegraph's chief leader writer, is waxing outraged about Quentin Davies, complaining that he is blaming defence procurement delays and cost overruns on a government of which he was actually a member.

Thus, in what Hughes calls "a shameless piece of sophistry", he has Davies identifying "the real problem" in as the last Conservative Government which had made such a mess "that we are still living with the consequences."

Hughes really cannot get to grips with this as, in order to dismiss Davies's point, he splutters: "The last Tory government shuffled off into the wilderness more than 12 years ago. That's the equivalent of the Second World War, twice over. And it's still to blame?"

People like Hughes or, of course, far too grand to read blogs – other than their own - but he would have benefited greatly from reading one of our pieces written on 20 July 2006 where we noted that a then-emerging defence "funding gap" raised ...

... important questions about the very nature of our democracy, arising from the lengthening period between ordering military hardware and taking delivery. We are getting to the situation where typical procurement cycles are longer than the length of several parliaments, so that one government can make huge spending commitments which may have to be met by a completely different government.

That effectively the point to which Davies was alluding and, while he placed it in a party political context, it is a good one. Any number of projects with which the Labour administration have had to deal with (and fund) were originated during the tenure of the last Conservative government. These include the Eurofighter, the Merlin helicopter, the Type 45 project, the Nimrod MR4, the medium armoured vehicle project(s) and even the A-400M, to say nothing of the failure of the UAV project, with the purchase of the Phoenix.

Cited in particular by Davies was the Chinook debacle, about which Hughes is so dismissive, yet this was indeed a Tory failure. Strangely, while we have discussed this in previous posts, we have never set down an analysis of what precisely went wrong, but it is only from this knowledge that one can see the full extent of the Tory culpability.

Revisiting the issue therefore, we can recall that the problems go right back to July 1995. Then, the MoD, under Michael Portillo, decided that eight of 14 Chinook HC Mk2 helicopters on order from Boeing should be delivered to an enhanced (HC Mk3) standard, to meet the emerging requirement for a dedicated Special Forces support helicopter.

The point at this stage was that, instead of the standard troop-carrying version, the MoD could have bought the special Chinook MH-47Es, which had been designed specifically by the US for special forces operations. But these were considered too expensive so, as a cost-cutting measure, Portillo agreed that eight airframes should be converted – to a lower standard, incidentally, which would not match the MH-47E and would not even meet known special forces requirements.

Therefore, right from the very start, the project was dictated by cost-cutting, with a "bastardised hybrid solution" devised to give the new helicopters a basic capability at minimum extra cost.

Thus, while the new aircraft were to have improved range and navigation capability, and be fitted with night vision sensors and a new weather radar, the MoD decided to shoehorn new, state-of-the-art digital systems into the existing, old-technology analogue cockpit.

With a projected cost of £259 million for the eight aircraft, the "In-Service Date" (defined as delivery of the first six aircraft) was set for November 1998, with the contract for the avionics upgrade agreed in early 1997, one of the last acts of the dying Major government. In the hot seat then as procurement minister was James Arbuthnot, now chairman of the defence committee.

Unfortunately, only when the conversion work was actually in progress was it discovered that the displays for the weather radar and other systems would not fit inside the existing cockpit, requiring extensive re-working.

This, then was the situation that the Labour administration inherited in May 1997, with the new defence secretary, then George Robertson, having no option but to agree a redefined In-Service Date for a programme which was now slipping badly. Thus, in March 1998, only eight months before the helicopters were due in service, a new ISD was set for January 2002.

Seven of the eight aircraft were actually delivered between July 2001 and May 2002, but then the real problems began to emerge. The aircraft had to be certified for safety before they could be used on operations and it had been assumed that since the systems and displays in the HC Mk 3 cockpit were based upon those fitted to the Royal Netherlands Air Force's advanced CH-47D Chinooks, there could be a "read-across" on the basis of similarity with the Dutch avionics.

Therein lay the real disaster. So many changes had been made that the new hybrid digital/analogue cockpit was now unique. This meant that the software used to make it function had to be fully tested, as of new, in order to the prevailing defence safety standards.

And no one had thought to specify in the contract (agreed in 1997 by the Tories) that software documentation and code for avionics systems should be analysed in accordance with UK defence standards in order to demonstrate software integrity. As a result it was not possible to demonstrate that the helicopter's flight instruments meet the required United Kingdom Defence standards.

Much is then made of the fact that, initially, the manufacturers, Boeing, were reluctant to allow access to the source codes that would allow the systems to be analysed, but they did eventually relent. But that could not resolve the problem.

The process of proving that the software met UK standards was itself time-consuming and extremely expensive. Moreover, because the legacy software in the hybrid cockpit was not amenable to the techniques required to confirm the robustness of new software design there was no guarantee of a successful outcome.

Consequently, the Chinook HC Mk3 was restricted to day/night flying above 500 feet, clear of cloud, and in circumstances that ensured that the pilot could fly the aircraft solely using external reference points and without relying on the flight displays. These restrictions meant that the helicopters could not be used except for the most limited flight trials.

This left the Labour government with an extremely difficult situation, the only option then to do exactly what is now being done - to strip out the new work and restore the helicopters to their original condition, at a cost originally estimated at about £127 million, over and above the £259 million originally estimated.

With that, the helicopters could have entered service in mid-2007 - nine years later than the original In-Service Date, and five years after the revised date. But even then, with dithering in the ranks of the MoD while all possible alternatives were explored – including scrapping the aircraft and using them for spares - it was not until last year that Des Browne bit the bullet and ordered them to be refitted.

Technically, therefore, the bulk of the blame for the problem – and certainly the extra costs – lies with Tory ministers. In fact, though, no lay minister could possibly be expected to second-guess a highly technical contract, and spot the missing details. They were – as are their successors – totally reliant on their expert technical advisors.

However, had not the Tories decided to cut costs and taken the safer route of buying off-the shelf, none of this would have happened. To that extent, political blame does rest with Tory ministers. But as to the technical decisions made subsequently, these are not party political issues. The system failed, as it has done before and since, and will continue to fail until it is reformed.

To that extent, Labour and Conservatives have a problem in common – the MoD. It is, in effect, the common enemy, something that David Hughes, if he had any sense, would recognise.

COMMENT THREAD

Burning our money

We will probably never know quite the degree of wheeler dealing went on, but the much unloved and hideously expensive Eurofighter has met its match – called financial reality.

According to The Times, a final deal has been done on the Tranche 3 purchase, with the RAF set to lose more than 70 of the planned fleet, the total order cut back from the original 232 to a mere 160.

This was bedded in today at a contract ceremony in Munich, when Britain signed up for the third and final tranche, agreeing to buy 40 more, instead of the planned 88. Of these, 24 will be sold to the Saudi Arabians, leaving just 16 for the RAF, says The Times, which like many others seems to have been confused by the original statements.

However, the MoD is saying that the RAF is actually to get 40 new aircraft, the 24 referred to being replacements for the Saudi batch already taken out of stocks intended for the RAF.

Nevertheless, it is clear that production is to be slowed down so that the delivery period will be stretched. The last of the tranche-three aircraft will come into service between 2015 and 2020, just as the first batch of Typhoons - in service today - would be coming to the end of their life.

On that basis, it is anticipated that the RAF at any one time will operate a fleet of no more than 120 aircraft at any one time – with a smaller number actually operation.

This is perhaps just as well. In answer to a recent written question from Nick Harvey, procurement minister Quentin Davies revealed that the operating cost per hour of a Eurofighter is £90,000, compared with the air defence version of the Tornado, the F3, at a "modest" £45,000.

Davies hopes that, as the Eurofighter fleet expands, unit costs will drop. But, with this latest announcement, it looks as if this will not be very substantial. Thus, as Heseltine's folly roars through the skies at airshows, delighting the crowds, we can reflect that it is actually costing us £25 per second. It would be difficult to burn money that fast. As for using the aircraft against the Taleban, it would be cheaper to buy them off.

And once again, we have the ultimate irony. Having delayed Tranche 3 for as long as humanly possible, the former Labour government - deposed by the Tories, as is confidently expected in 2010 - will have the quiet satisfaction of seeing a Conservative government having to pay for it.

COMMENT THREAD

Another review - The Ministry of Defeat

Colonel Blimp, you're still fighting the wrong war.

by Philip Jacobson

The Daily Mail, 24 July 2009

Although Richard North sets out to make the "case for the prosecution" of the British military and the political establishment for comprehensively bungling their conduct during the Iraq War, it is events in Afghanistan that make the book so timely and thought provoking.

The parallels between the two conflicts are inescapable, from the failure to learn from tactical mistakes to the desperate need for more helicopters.

Where North accuses the Ministry of Defence of an Orwellian attempt to spin an ultimately disastrous campaign in Iraq into a resounding triumph, an unspoken question hangs it the air: is history repeating itself in the wilds of Helmand Province?

The launch pad for North's withering assault on the MoD is the emblematic story of the Snatch Land Rovers, lightly armoured vehicles originally developed for riot control in Northern Ireland and pressed into service in the British zone of operations in Southern Iraq with the approval of General Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the army.

Under fierce attack by the well-armed militias, the snatches rapidly acquired the grim reputation as "four-wheeled coffins". North was one of the first military analysts to highlight their extreme vulnerability to the enemy's roadside bombs, known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

In North's view, shared by other knowledgeable observers, the initial success of the allied invasion was squandered by the MoD's inability – some would say pig-headed refusal – to grasp the true nature of the Shi'a insurgency that followed and adapt tactics accordingly.

Equally damaging, he argues, was the failure of the procurement system – the unglamorous but crucial business of ensuring that British soldiers had the best weapons and equipment for the kind of war they were being asked to fight.

While the Snatch vehicles were going up in flames and commanders pleaded for more troop-carrying helicopters, billions of pounds were being lavished on high-profile projects designed, in North's words, to fight imaginary wars of the future". The admirals were determined to have their giant new aircraft carriers, the air marshals their Eurofighters; meanwhile the army "was getting palmed off with wholly unsuitable, second-hand equipment".

In stark contrast, when IEDs began killing large numbers of US soldiers in Iraq, the Americans rushed into service hundreds of lumbering armoured troop-carriers specifically designed to withstand roadside bombs.

The result was a swift and substantial reduction in the body count. A US Marine officer who survived a massive blast told me reverently: "We just love those big ugly mother f*****s."

The MoD's tactical fallibility was rooted in the fateful assumption that the undoubted expertise acquired by the Army in Northern Ireland could be applied more or less wholesale to the radically different circumstances of Iraq. North cites the toe-curling meeting at which the senior British officer in Basra was dispensing lofty advice to US commanders on how to defeat the militias at the very moment they were forcing his troops into a humiliating withdrawal from the city.

"It's insufferable, for Christ's sake," raged one of the Americans present. "He comes in and lectures everyone in the room about how to do counter-insurgency. The guys were just rolling their eyebrows [as] the notorious Northern Ireland came up again."

Littered with military acronyms with obscure technical data, North's prose rarely rises above the utilitarian, while the crop of footnotes on practically every page reflects his heavy reliance on published sources (it appears he did not interview any of the senior military and political players, British or American).

He might also have examined more closely whether the strategic, tactical and organisational failures he identifies in Iraq are being perpetrated in Afghanistan.

It is hardly reassuring when an acute shortage of helicopters obliges the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, to borrow and American Black Hawk for a visit to his increasingly hard-pressed "grunts" on the ground.

For years, the default response of the MoD to criticism from civilians, however well-informed, has been to rubbish them as "armchair generals" pontificating from the comfort of the living room.

North will probably get the same treatment but, as he mischievously points out, only a couple of years ago some £2.3 billion was spent on upgrading the MoD headquarters in Whitehall – money that could have paid for two dozen of the troop-carrying Chinook helicopters so desperately needed in Afghanistan today.

And what that show up on the final bill but the purchase at £1,000 each, of more than 3,000 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, advertised as "the most comfortable in the world".

COMMENT THREAD

Another review

The odd thing about the American defeat – if such a word can be used – in Vietnam is that it came about through internal problems, not military defeat. The Viet Cong were beaten. The North Vietnamese Army was beaten. The bombing of North Vietnam was shockingly effective (although this was not appreciated at the time.) The US effectively won the war. It was defeated by the home front and an astonishingly effective propaganda campaign. Not for the first time, the communists probably didn’t believe their own success.

The odd thing about the British "victory" in Southern Iraq is … well, it was a defeat. Worse, it was a defeat that came about because of flawed political and military decisions, taken not by the men on the spot, but men in Whitehall. The scale of the disaster was never understood by the home front – even I didn't know the half of it, and I am as well-informed as any civilian could reasonably hope to be – due to a compliant media and a sheer lack of comprehension. The British government preferred to believe its own "spin" rather than the truth. In doing so, they betrayed the British soldiers who went to war without the right equipment and no clear plan, and the country itself. Charges of treason would not be inappropriate.

That is the conclusion, one I strongly endorse, of this remarkable book. There are actually relatively few British writings on the subject of Iraq, although Sniper One and Eight Lives Down provide some insight into the lives of the soldiers there. It should be noted that Sniper One paints a picture of Basra – and Iraq – that was at variance with the official government-promoted version of events. Ministry of Defeat provides an overall history of the occupation – something that has been sorely lacking – and details, in a very "take no prisoners" attitude, just went wrong in Iraq.

The core of the matter, North writes, is that the British Government refused to recognise that it had a serious problem on its hands. As the militias gained power in Basra, the government preferred to believe that it wasn't a serious issue – little more than a public order issue – and convinced itself that Britain's expertise from Northern Ireland gave it an advantage over the US. That might have been true if the expertise had actually been used (it wasn't) … but in any case, Basra was not Northern Ireland. This little piece of self-delusion cost lives, Mr Blair! The troops in Ireland had far better intelligence and much higher troop levels. Much has been made of the shortage of American troops after the Fall of Baghdad, but the British had the same problem and, unlike the US, the MOD learned fuck-all from the experience.

If that wasn't bad enough, the equipment procurement process was badly screwed up. When the RAF was being allowed to spend billions on the Eurofighter, the Army had to make do with the Snatch Land Rover – which Northern Ireland experience had shown was badly under-armoured – which caused the deaths of many British soldiers. The issue was not that the British Army was under-funded – although soldiers were being underpaid for their role – but that the money was being spent on long-term programs that would not provide useful equipment (if that) in time to be useful.

It is quite typical, as Donald Rumsfield pointed out years ago, that countries go to war with an army that is unprepared for the task. It is rather less typical that a country would go to war, find itself in serious shit … and then continue blithely developing technology that was effectively useless, prepared for the wrong war. Instead of fighting the last war, the UK was looking towards a hypothetical European RRF, one of Tony Blair's pet projects. Billions have been spent – for nothing. Common sense would tell someone of Blair's intelligence – surely – that a European force wasn't on the cards. When has the EU ever agreed on an enemy?

The British media also comes in for bashing. Not, it should be noted, for the largely American left-wing media army bashing, but for being the dog that didn't bark. The MOD generally tried to spoon-feed propaganda to the British TV, which largely ate it up and came back and begged for more. Early signs of trouble were ignored, or taken out of context, and even when the media did pick up on signs of trouble, they never understood the underlying factors behind the war. The media did pick up on problems with the Snatch vehicles, but took the "under-funded military" line rather than realising the truth. Reporters who questioned the Army line, such as Christina Lamb in Afghanistan, found themselves blacklisted.

The core reason for British "success" in Iraq, North notes, was that the UK never really had control over Basra. The Shia inhabitants of the area, after the events of 1991, preferred to organise themselves rather than trust the coalition. Iran was seen as a better ally by some, a deadly threat by others, but always as a far more significant player than the coalition. Under constant attack, the British forces were slowly withdrawn from the area, conceding control to the militias, who started to loot, rape and slaughter at will. The inglorious end to the story – the retaking of Basra by Iraqi forces with American support in 2008 – was barely a footnote in the British media.

The contrast between Iraq and the Falklands is staggering. The Falklands were another "come as you are" war, one fought by a far more determined PM for limited goals … and one that Britain came closer to losing than anyone would like to admit. After that war, the lessons were learned and incorporated into new developments. Iraq seems, instead, to be the forgotten war. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the mistakes are already being repeated in Afghanistan.

This is an angry book, written by an angry man. It isn't pleasant reading for anyone with a British heritage, but it is necessary reading. God help us.

Lifted from Crucis Court. Thank you.

COMMENT THREAD

Let battle commence

Recalling the recent defence debate in the Commons, when, at one time there were only twelve MPs in the chamber of which only one was a Labour backbencher, it is encouraging to note that the much-needed debate on our defence capabilities is nevertheless under way.

In this respect, The Daily Telegraph is to be applauded for leading the way, with a long feature by Thomas Harding, responding to the speech by General Sir David Richards at RUSI this week.

With defence affairs on the cusp, and the campaign in Afghanistan very much in the balance, a wide-ranging debate is both timely and necessary, rendering the contribution of the incoming CGS of considerable importance. It is of some significance, therefore, that The Telegraph remains the only newspaper of substance to take on board and develop his views. And, taking the political blogs at their own estimation of their value, their silence on this intensely political issue should not escape attention.

That is not to say that the media as a whole is silent on defence issues, with The Times also offering a lengthy opinion piece today. Unfortunately, this paper has chosen for its author Patrick Mercer, former infantry officer and currently Conservative MP for Newark & Retford.

In writing on defence issues, Mercer tends to be a one-trick horse, beating the drum for more resources and more "boots on the ground". His arguments tend to be one-dimensional, lacking the depth of strategic thinking that we see, for instance, in Richards' recent speech. It is a measure of the poverty of the general debate, therefore, that The Times believes his views are worth publishing.

Similarly, The Guardian has an offering, this one by Simon Jenkins , one of such unremitting negativity that it encompasses just one idea – that the US and British forces should quit Afghanistan.

In the real world, however, we are committed to Afghanistan and will remain so for the foreseeable future. And since the best outcome is to succeed in creating a stable, prosperous nation, capable of governing itself without external intervention, then the task at hand is to determine how we can achieve this, with minimum cost and bloodshed, all within the constraints of our own budgetary limitations and broader defence requirements. The debate, therefore, should be on how to win – an issue neither Mercer nor Jenkins address.

It is here that Harding, in his Telegraph piece is actually different and welcome. Whatever its limitations – and nothing short of a lengthy book could ever do justice to the topic – the theme is that the nature of modern conflict means our Armed Forces urgently need a major overhaul.

Harding thus "anticipates a battle in which the Army must triumph." There is a campaign that needs to be fought, he writes, not against the Taliban, but between the dinosaurs and Young Turks in the military. The outcome will determine whether the Armed Forces are left burnt out in the wadis of Helmand or evolve into a sharpened and highly effective tool to fight the wars of the future.

As a healthy antidote to the leaden mantras of "overstretch" and “under-resourcing" that have so far dominated the defence debate, the piece starts with a recognition of the reality: "It is becoming clear that there is simply not enough money available to fulfill the separate aspirations of all three Services." This relies on the views of Gen Richards, who articulates that reality, paraphrased as "we can do many things inadequately or a few things well, but to try both will end in failure."

Thus has Richards "adroitly opened the debate on the future of our Armed Forces", this occurring at a time when both major political parties appear bankrupt of defence policies. And, in getting to this point, he has gathered around him some of the most dynamic military thinkers (and not just from the Army) to thrash out the immediate future of defence. They know that its experience in Iraq has left the Army shattered in body and mind and that Afghanistan could prove more burdensome still.

It is no exaggeration to suggest that we are, in dealing with the counter-insurgency battles of the kind being fought in Afghanistan, facing that "horse and tank moment, where it is clearly evident that existing structures, strategy, tactics and equipment are not working. We need a revolution in our thinking, the seeds of which, writes Harding, first appeared in the US earlier this year.

This was the famous episode when US defence secretary Robert Gates announced that the modernisation of non-nuclear forces "should be tied to the capabilities of known future adversaries – not by what might be technologically feasible for a potential adversary, given unlimited time and resources".

The message to the Pentagon was clear: fight today's war, not one against some imaginary enemy of the future and, if the speech was poorly reported over here, it has nonetheless lodged heavily in the thoughts of some strategic thinkers, Richards amongst them.

This, of course, opens up the tri-service debate, where each of the Services have their own views of what is necessary for the defence of the realm, a taste of which is to be found in the letters column of The Daily Telegraph, and in particular from Major-General Julian Thompson, victor of the Falklands. He writes:

Britain is an island, reliant on importing goods by sea. With fewer warships (report, June 25), our trade would be vulnerable to the type of attacks being mounted by pirates in the Indian Ocean. The war in Afghanistan is important, but the bottom line is that after only a few weeks without imported oil supplies and food, we would starve.

Richards, in fact, addresses that issue noting that any future operations of any significance are going to be conducted as part of an alliance – not least in dealing with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where we have operated as part of a combined Nato force and (unfortunately) within an EU detachment.

Here we confront that other reality. The UK is no longer a global power and the Royal Navy does not rule the seas. In the Far East, where the Navy once maintained a powerful fleet, the US Navy roams free while Australia and India are important regional powers, developing substantial navies of their own. We protect our interests now not by flying the White Ensign but by diplomacy and forging alliances, as partners rather than rulers. Thus, while opinions vary – and there are strongly-held views on such matters – inconvenient questions must be asked and honest answers given.

But, writes Harding, where does this new mindset leave the three Services in Britain? Unfortunately, with a limited pool of cash the laws of survival apply, and the Services have reverted to unhelpful tribalism. The RAF will not give up its attachment to strategic bombing and the Royal Navy ardently clings to its aircraft carriers, advanced destroyers and fighter wing. There are many unglamorous parts of the Air Force that quietly go about achieving a great deal – from air transport to helicopters and surveillance. But those leading the RAF are fighter pilots who are loath to yield to the realities in front of them.

Then we address some of the detail. It's a big ask, adds Harding, but the idea of putting fighter pilots in a single engine, turbo-prop aircraft such as the Super Tucano has to be contemplated. Aircraft like the Tucano are cheap, low-tech and highly effective, as many South American drug barons have discovered. They provide surveillance, along with an armament of bombs and machine guns and an ability to loiter overhead for a long time, and they are also easy to maintain.

It will take courage for someone in the RAF hierarchy to advocate using the Tucano (cost £6 million) over the Eurofighter Typhoon (cost £65 million) but it is the type of thinking now required. The problem today is the RAF's attachment to fast jets. Either it goes for the Typhoon or for the US-made Joint Strike Fighter, but the defence budget cannot sustain both.

Harding raises many other such issues – very many of them having been discussed on this blog - and while neither he nor I could pretend to have explored them fully, much less come up with definitive answers, the very fact that they are being discussed is an advance on the previous sterility of the defence debate.

The ultimate problem though, which Harding identifies, is the "bed blockers" at the top of the MoD and in the military establishment, who do not seem to recognise the need for change. Perhaps more optimistically than we would allow for, Harding concludes that, "once they are removed and once a new government is persuaded that the Ministry of Defence is aiming to fight the wars of today, we are likely to see major changes in the configuration of our Armed Forces."

We hope that is the case. The current paradigm cannot continue and now is the time to face reality and decide honestly, clearly and with candour, what it is we want our Armed Forces to do, and then to make the changes necessary to ensure that they can succeed in what we ask of them.

COMMENT THREAD

Cut and be damned

Public spending should be cut by £30 billion says the think tank, Reform, as retailed by The Daily Telegraph. Both main political parties, it goes on to say, should stop the "conspiracy of silence" which is ensuring state spending remains high.

The detail is in its report and, with good cause, one of its targets for cuts is defence procurement. "Inappropriate" defence projects, says the think tank, should be ended, these including the future carriers, Eurofighter Tranche 3, A400M and Nimrod MRA4. They, we are gravely informed, "do not contribute to the UK's modern defence requirements."

Notionally, this would save £2.7 billion in 2010-2011 and the savings thus gained would act as an effective platform for further reform of defence procurement. Says Reform, if necessary, some of these programmes could be replaced with relevant off-the-shelf purchases at a lower cost. This would come at a cost to the Exchequer which would reduce the savings identified

However, while one cannot begin to disagree with the general thrust of the Reform thesis, their offering does little more than illustrate the huge difficulty in making sensible decisions on the purchase of military equipment.

Taking the list from the top, it is strongly arguable whether the carriers could be regarded as not contributing to the UK's "modern defence requirements," but it is not an issue I would care to argue and be confident of winning either way. Of course, the savings would be substantial, but the greater saving would be in not buying the Joint Strike Fighter to equip the carriers. Yet, Reform has nothing to say on this.

But, if the saving, to say the very least, is controversial, the Eurofighter Tranche 3 is equally so. This saga is one of long-standing and such is the nature of the contractual arrangements that, to cut the order now would possibly cost as much in compensation as would buying the aircraft. There is, though, something of an end in sight.

The idea is that we should split the tranche of 88 and commit to just 40 aircraft immediately, then allowing the 24 sold to the Saudis to be included in that number. That would leave 16 aircraft to be paid for but, with each airframe at £88 million, that still leaves us £1.4 billion to find. Like it or not, this is probably the best deal we can hope for. Reform's idea of savings here are probably illusory.

Turning to the A400M, there are no savings there to be made at all. With or without – and preferably without – this aircraft, we still need the airlift capacity. Thus, if the aircraft is cancelled, the same amount of money will have to be spent on C-17s or C-130Js, or a combination of the two.

The Nimrod MR4, however, is another matter. It is probably fair to say that if the clock was wound back, this aircraft would not have been ordered. But, with such a huge investment already made, should it now be cancelled the loss would be enormous. And there would remain a need for a high performance maritime surveillance platform, which could hardly be cheap, and could hardly be off-the-shelf.

Looking at the Reform proposals in the round, therefore, it is very hard to see how their ideas could yield their projected – or any – savings. The bigger point, though, is that waving a magic wand, making arbitrary cuts, is not the way to contain defence costs.

Equipment requirements, as we have so often observed, should stem from strategic requirements and then the doctrines that emerge from them. We then look for best value amongst the equipment needed to fulfil the needs. It is not an exercise for bean counters and for Reform to enter the fray is unwise.

COMMENT THREAD

Waddington 2008

The Vulcan winding up its engines prior to take off.


The Patrulla Aguila - Spanish Air Force Display Team – flying the CASA C-101EB Aviojet.


Hawker Hurricane Mk II from the Battle of Britain Memorial Team.


An ex-RAF De Haviland Vampire T-11 in one of the many static parks.


An Army Air Corps Apache strutting its stuff.


Just to upstage the Vulcan, the Yanks turned up with a B-52 - although it didn't fly


The BBM Lancaster doing its solo run - it later flew with the Vulcan.


An Army Air Corps Auster AOP9 - now sadly an historic exhibit.


Lynx Mk 3 and 8 from the Royal Navy "Black Cats" display team.


An RAF E3D Sentry AWACS - one for MM.


An ex-RAF WWII Harvard trainer - in post war colours.


CASA C-101EB Aviojet from the Patrulla Aguila.


A French Air Force Mirage 2000 "resting" after a barnstorming display.


The BBMF trio - Lancaster, Hurricane MkII and Spitfire MkXIX.


A Eurofighter touches down after its display, to close the show.

COMMENT THREAD

It's the balance, stoopid!

Yesterday morning, without fanfare, Lady Winterton brought "Next-War-itis" to the House of Commons.

This was the theme of the recent speech by US defence secretary Robert Gates in which he called for the US military to focus "more on winning in Iraq and preparing to fight other insurgencies and less on possible big wars with other countries".

And, if much of the US defence establishment was obsessed with future conflicts, neglecting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so too was the British establishment – or so it was charged.

Of course, the MoD claims it has had the vaccination against this dreaded disease, telling us recently that, "We are determined to do more to support our people here and on the front line…", pledging then to "better prioritise our spending plans".

But Anne Winterton was not convinced. We do not know in which direction the military is looking, she said. But we get some clue from this month's Soldier magazine. There, Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt purrs about his new toys, telling us that the Piranha V heralds the "start of a new era" for the Army.

This said Dannatt, "maintains the progress of the FRES programme, which is my highest priority after support to operations." It will, he adds, form the backbone of the Army’s future armoured vehicle requirements. Mastiffs are all very well, but this beast will allow the Army "to conduct a wider range of operations in an uncertain and changing world."

To Ann, this was the proverbial red rag to the bull. Let us have it spelled out exactly what sort of operations we are expecting in the future, she demanded - or is this a case of next-war-itis?

There lies the problem. FRES is not designed for counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – the subject of this debate in Westminster Hall. But the brass are saying that the FRES vehicle, for which Piranha V has been provisionally chosen, has a dual role. It can be used for high-intensity warfare and counter-insurgency.

Ladies of Ann Winterton's breeding do not say "b*****ks!" But, well she might.

As to supporting our people in the front line, in Afghanistan – the insurgents as she predicted – have resorted to "various explosive devices". To counter them, the MoD has 282 Mastiffs in use or ordered. Some 157 Ridgebacks and 24 Bushmasters are also on order. Thus, we have 463 mine/IED proofed vehicles, specifically designed for counter-insurgency warfare.

Against that, we have 169 Pinzgauer Vectors - not designed to protect soldiers from mines or IEDs. There are 180 M-WMIKs (otherwise known as Jackals) and the Army wants 2,000 Piranha Vs – as yet still a paper vehicle, not off the drawing board – another vehicle which is not well protected against mines and IEDs.

"With the best will in the world," she says, "one could hardly say that that is a very balanced mixture, bearing it in mind that the whole future Army structure is geared to the latter type." This was not, she added pointedly, "making present operations the top priority".

As we are likely to be in Afghanistan for the long term, that could realistically be at least 20 years down the road. How many more conflicts of that nature will the UK be engaged in or have been engaged in by then, with 2,349 vehicles that are not particularly suited to purpose, compared with 463 vehicles that have a proven track record in counter-insurgency operations?

At this point, Conservative MP, Philip Hollobone, intervened to remind us that the "percentage of fatalities of UK service personnel resulting from IEDs or mines is 27 percent in Afghanistan and 28 percent in Iraq." Kevan Jones from the dark side (Labour) then also intervened to say that, the last time he had been in Basra, he had seen a Mastiff vehicle that had driven over an IED. The crew had survived. The Mastiff, he said, was good news and had clearly led to a reduction in casualties from IEDs.

This is where it started getting messy. The minister for the Armed Forces (Bob Ainsworth) then got stuck in, saying that Anne had put only three vehicles "on the right side of the line" and all the rest on the wrong side. "We cannot conduct effective operations in Afghanistan with only those three vehicles. No commander can do that," he protested.

It was a question of balance, Ann countered: 463 vehicles designed specifically for blast protection, with their V-shaped hulls, against 2,349 which were not. And, when it came to the Piranha V, there were all sorts of problems with this machine, not least that it was "incredibly expensive". Being designed to fulfil the original concept of FRES – a network-enabled system of vehicles that would engage the enemy at a distance – it is not best suited for the kind of warfare that our troops are encountering now. The enemy is not at a distance and is often indistinguishable from the local population. The danger is all around them.

Thus, she contend that UK troops need considerably more of the type of vehicles of which we have 463, and perhaps considerably fewer of the others, if they are to be successful in future with minimum loss of life. Why are the vehicles of which we are to have 2,349 are so numerous, when others are more suited to present day warfare?

Intervention from Kevan Jones there came again, with a charge that commanders needed "a range of vehicles, including lightly armoured vehicles". Yes, I know that said Winterton – or words to that effect – it's the balance stoopid … 463 against 2,349. The insurgents aim to send as many troops home in body bags as possible – we need more vehicles designed to keep them alive.

Thus batted down – although Jones was to rise again, the stake not yet driven through his heart – Ann switched tack.

In order to defeat any insurgency, she said, it is necessary to train the host country's own military forces so that they can deal with the problem and protect their own people. That is happening successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan; their armies are doing a great job and allowing our forces gradually to be withdrawn.

However, it was also important to have a certain amount of parity between our equipment and that of the host country – seen in Iraq where the Army has the same or better vehicles than ours. But, when we come to the Royal Air Force, the contrast is extreme. The situation is nothing less than an unmitigated disaster.

For Afghanistan to succeed after the withdrawal of UK and other troops (in fact, in order to allow us to withdraw), it must have sufficient air power. Yet could the Afghan air force ever use the Eurofighter? We need turbo-prop aircraft, which the host country's pilots can be trained to use alongside our own pilots, the famous Tucano option – with all the added advantage that we get from that type of machine.

Equally, she said, reconnaissance operations should have their own aircraft, such as the Pilatus Porter PC-6, which can operate with the patrol being able to land and take off within very short distances indeed, acting as an evacuation carrier and a general supply vehicle. These aircraft should be operated by other ranks within the Army, and we should learn the lessons from other successful counter-insurgency forces such as the Rhodesians.

Then Anne turned to the economics. There is a constant shortage of helicopters, yet the Merlin is a very good, if extremely expensive, helicopter. The RAF's Mk 3 Merlins cost £19 million each. The six Danish ones cost £29.3 million each and £34,000 an hour to run. She had to repeat that figure to Patrick Mercer, who seemed stunned by the figure,

The attitude in the UK seems to be that the we need the best to cover every eventuality, Ann continued, and therefore the nation will cough up the funds for that. But the military are not living in the real world if they believe that they can have anything at any price. That is one of the reasons why the UK is short of what it actually needs. Rather, we need simple, robust platforms that will last in the long term. They must also carry the latest technology, but at the same time they must be as simple as possible to maintain.

So it came to finish off the speech. Her closing themes were "finance and the benefit to the nation of a sound defence policy."

Whichever party wins the next general election, she warned, some very large financial commitments have been made by this Government that will come into effect during the period from 2010 to 2015. If the military believe that they will get more money out of a Conservative government, I think that they are deluding themselves. That extra money is not likely to be forthcoming, bearing it in mind that the country will probably be broke by then.

Thus she said: "The mantra that our armed forces are underfunded is often repeated—indeed, there is some truth in it - but how the money for our forces is spent also needs to be challenged and I believe that it is a pertinent issue. I have pointed out in previous debates that the wastage in the defence budget has been enormous, mainly due to unclear or ulterior motives and objectives."

If we are funding "next war-itis", present operations will either be starved of cash or denied the most suitable platforms in sufficient quantities at the time when they are most needed. The MOD, she added, is doing its best to learn from recent hard lessons, but it has not been much helped by certain factions within the military.

We rely on our armed services for the defence of the nation but it is highly unlikely that any force will directly attack our shores. Instead, the threat to us now is far more subtle and difficult to counter. The enemy is within and around us, and we cannot always differentiate between friend and foe. Terrorism is the greatest evil and we have to be better prepared to defeat it, not least because the United Kingdom needs a stable world for trade, which is the lifeblood of our economic survival.

So, said Ann, I share the belief of Robert Gates that the top military and political priority should be the success of COIN operations, to ensure that the breeding grounds of instability in the world, which are the greatest danger to our people, are neutralised. It is within that sector that British forces could excel and, indeed, are excelling against the odds. It is up to the military to explain where their priorities will lie in future, from a basis of the Government of the day giving clear directional leadership.

The United Kingdom is no longer a global power and, unlike the Americans, we cannot afford two armies — one for counter-insurgency and the other for conventional warfare involving large-scale manoeuvres. I believe that we should concentrate on undertaking counter-insurgency and similar operations exceptionally well, rather than diluting our efforts and resources. We should face facts and recognise that the United Kingdom can no longer fulfil all its aspirations as far as defence is concerned. Stretched resources and manpower will limit what we can achieve in the future.

In Part II of this post, I will deal with the response to this speech.

COMMENT THREAD

Ceci n'est pas une revue

If The Sun has got it right – and it looks like it might – the MoD has managed to extract some more money out of the Treasury. And, if that is the case, the £200 million which the paper headlined yesterday – to be allocated over two years - will be genuinely "new" money, and not simply a recycled announcement.

The rest of the paper's story need not detain us. Just about all of it is either wrong, or self-serving – although the claim that it is an "exclusive" has some merit – it was the first paper to break the "£200 million" news.

The Financial Times, however, has the substantive story, and had it first. Its line is that Gordon Brown has agreed to let the MoD "free up hundreds of millions of pounds" by breaking one of its main accounting rules.

These are somewhat arcane changes, but of great importance which will have an immediate practical implications. Firstly, the ministry will be allowed to move some funds between the three years of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Secondly, it can use money allocated for annual capital spending for resource spending.

This "freedom", says the FT will allow officials more easily to delay, cancel or reconfigure commitments – giving the MoD a much needed flexibility which hitherto has been denied to it. But – and it is a huge, 24-carat, diamond-studded "but" – there are strings attached. In return the MoD has been "forced" to order a no-holds-barred "examination" of the defence equipment programme.

This – note the terminology – is not a "review", much less a strategic review, but an "examination". Furthermore, it will be a "short and sharp" process. Crucially, the aim is to "prioritise frontline needs and squeeze savings from industry".

In other words, in the ongoing internal battle in the defence establishment between the "future war" advocates and the "current operations" supporters, the latter have taken a significant step forward.

This is very much in line with what Ann Winterton asked of Des Browne earlier this month, when she did not get an answer. Now, it looks as if she has.

In this context, it looks as if the (relatively) small amount of new money on offer is – to use that indelicate word - a "bribe" which, together with the leverage afforded by the new budgetary flexibility, has pushed the military to focus more on winning the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than investing in still more shiny new toys.

Needless to say, the "non-review" will be expected to deliver results, the FT telling us that the Treasury is insisting the MoD use the process to address the estimated £2 billion budget shortfall.

That means that some of the treasured "big-ticket" defence contracts are due for the chop. Amongst this slated for the treatment is the "Future Lynx" programme, as well as orders for more Astute submarines and Type 45 destroyers - and the tranche 3 Eurofighter, if the "colleagues" will play ball on cancellation costs.

What is then expected is that, and surplus generated, over and above that needed to clear the budget deficit, will be used to "rebalance" the procurement portfolio, giving it very a different shape. The clue here comes from an MoD spokesman, who says the ministry is determined to prioritise spending plans "to do more to support our people here and on the frontline".

One survivor, however, looks to be the carrier programme. This is effectively confirmed in a second piece in the Financial Times which asserts that the contract – although not publicly announced – was approved last Wednesday. The formal announcement is expected in the next ten days.

It says something of the FT though that they do not seem to understand the full significance of their own story, its heading declaring: Defence review looks to shorter term”. Interestingly, it could not keep up the legend on the "examination" so the "non-review" gets its real title.

The agenda is most certainly there, the paper telling us in this second article that:

Driving the move is a recognition within the department that it "needs to take stock" and reprioritise. It has to move away from purchasing equipment for the long term – equipment that could already be out of date by the time it comes into service – and concentrate on supporting its troops in the near to medium term.

Historically, the MoD has planned its equipment procurement programme over 10 to 20 years but the continued strain on Britain's troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has focused ministerial minds on more immediate needs.

The MoD is then cited in more detail, saying:

We are determined to do more to support our people here and on the front line. To do that, we need to better prioritise our spending plans. The examination of the equipment programme will focus on two issues above all: bearing down on cost increases to the equipment programmes; and rebalancing the equipment programme to better support the front line.

But, as you might expect, the paper concentrates on the implications for defence contractors, the body text reverting to describing the word "examination", suggesting that it "will raise fears among executives that they may face further delays and cuts to big procurement schemes".

For industry, the FT says, the potential impact cannot be underestimated. Defence sources insist that overall, the MoD will not be spending any less on equipment. It will simply be spending it differently. Instead of buying more Eurofighters, a programme that was first begun more than 20 years ago, for example, it may decide to spend its money buying more armoured vehicles.

Despite this, we can expect some ritual squawking from the lobbyists, the former defence chiefs – where there is a difference – and, possibly, the Conservative Party. The announcement of the carrier programme, however, will do much to mute the protests and, given the lacklustre coverage of serious defence issues by the media, there should be little that is politically damaging.

Strangely, though, despite the depth of the FT story, it gets very little coverage elsewhere. The Daily Telegraph does a "cut and paste" job, synthesising the main points of the FT and The Sun stories, without adding anything.

For political reaction, we get an Associated Press report which gets the central details wrong, claiming a "move to free up £200 million of defence spending to help secure two new aircraft carriers and equipment for troops".

This is then dubbed a "panic" measure by shadow defence secretary Dr Liam Fox. He is cited as saying: "This announcement is not driven by any rational examination of military equipment needs but by the gaping hole in the Treasury left by Gordon Brown's economic mismanagement." He adds:

Long term planning has been abandoned in a panic attempt to plug the gaping hole in the defence budget. This effectively signals the end of the Defence Industrial Strategy and will add further uncertainty to the defence industry at a time when unemployment is already rising.

This, of course, is moonshine. Having closely read the runes for a prolonged period, the one thing that is self-evident is that yesterday's announcement is the result of months of finely-drawn negotiation and that the outcome is one which has been carefully and deliberately crafted.

Fox's response, therefore, leads one to the inevitable conclusion that, either he does not have the first idea of what is going on, or he is making political mischief – or both. No one, with any political acumen, who understood the dynamics behind what has been announced could even begin to think in terms of "panic", and nor would it be advantageous – other than in the very short-term – to project that idea.

As a measure of the fundamental superficiality of the media, however, the AP report has proliferated like a virus and has been copied out in (at last count) some ninety media outlets, the wording in each identical (see illustration). Repetition, though, does not make it accurate but, as long as so much of the media has not even spotted the fact that fundamental changes are afoot, the MoD will not even have to resort to the classic denial: "Ceci n'est pas une revue".

COMMENT THREAD

Lovely new aircraft carrier, sir...

"Money is squandered on equipment that is useless in either Iraq or Afghanistan - or in any foreseeable theatre," writes Simon Jenkins in The Sunday Times today, under the heading, "Lovely new aircraft carrier, sir, but we're fighting in the desert".

For such heresy, he gets a good kicking on the unofficial army forum, not least as some of the posters are able to pick him up on points of detail which dilute the effect of his comments.

For instance, they say, in the early days of the Afghan conflict when the infrastructure to support large numbers of land-base combat aircraft did not exist, troops relied for their close air support on US carriers out in the Indian Ocean. Even today, US Navy and Marine carrier-based airpower continue to provide support in Afghanistan, with a little help from the USAF which suppliers the air tankers.

Where all these critics go wrong, however, is that, in picking on the details, they miss the main point of Jenkins's piece – that money is indeed being squandered. Here, Jenkins has a certain amount of insider information, which he shares with us. He writes:

What is clear is that this government made a colossal error on coming to power in 1997-8. In the Strategic Defence Review (on whose lay committee I served), George Robertson, the then defence secretary, and John Reid and John Gilbert, his junior ministers, flatly refused an open discussion. Having been told to "think the unthinkable", the review's authors were told that the three biggest and most contentious procurement items inherited from the Tories were sacred.

They were the Eurofighter project (£15-£20 billion), the new aircraft carriers (£4 billion) and their frigate escorts, and a replacement for the Trident missile and its submarines (£20 billion). These pet projects of the Royal Navy and RAF were protected so new Labour would not appear soft on defence. There was no consideration given to the equipment needs of Tony Blair's more interventionist foreign policy. The government decided, in effect, to pretend that it was still fighting the Russians (and possibly the Germans).

Those decisions locked the procurement budget for more than a decade. Above all they shut out the army, on which British defence activity has depended ever since. The army’s unglamorous but urgent need for battlefield helicopters and armoured personnel carriers was ignored. So, too, were supplies of such things as grenade launchers, field radios, body armour and night-vision equipment. This year the Eurofighter, carrier and Trident projects all came on stream at £5 billion annually between them and the defence budget has hit the predictable wall.

This historical perspective raises interesting questions, as to whether in 1997 the newly appointed Labour government had really thought about defence, other than in terms of avoiding criticism from entrenched lobbies and side-stepping a protected political fight.

However, Jenkins does rather seem to neglect the effect of the St. Malo agreement in December 1998, when Blair – amongst other things committed to ensuring that, between them, the French and British governments would have one battle-ready aircraft carrier group at sea at all times.

With the parallel commitment to the ERRF, primarily dedicated to expeditionary warfare, this – as much as anything – set in stone many of the expensive procurement projects which are currently dragging down the defence budget.

Although Jenkins avers: "There was no consideration given to the equipment needs of Tony Blair's more interventionist foreign policy," at that early stage there is no sign that Blair had then formulated what was to become the defining policy of his tenure. In fact, it was his "European" policy, as well as the carry-over of Conservative-initiated policies, that is creating many of the current problems.

Whatever their genesis, however, Jenkins is undoubtedly right when he states that, whenever "cuts" are in prospect, "The first to howl are the chiefs of staff." Thus, he tells us:

It is customary at such times for them to stand as one, arms linked like Roman legions in a square. Yet they will never adjudicate on priorities. An admiral will not doubt (in public) the RAF's need for more jet fighters. A general will never question the need for carriers. An air marshal will cast no aspersions on Trident. All they will do is sing in unison, "No defence cuts".

For some time now, it has been apparent that the equipment plans for the armed forces were unsustainable. Now that the forces are committed to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of what is on order or is coming though is indeed "useless" for either theatre.

There were, therefore, two options to bring the procurement budget back into balance. One was to make deep cuts, cancelling one of more of the major projects, thus eliminating the overspend and making money available for operations. The other was to make cuts across the board, downsizing all or most of the projects and/or delaying their timetables in order to spread the financial burden over more years.

Although the first option would have been preferable, Jenkins indicates (as does his colleague in the business section) that ministers have taken the second route. "Every cut is across the board," Jenkins writes, adding:

Gordon Brown has let it be known that there must be no talk of cancellations, only postponements. Carriers may be delayed, Astute-class submarines may be reduced from eight to four and Type 45 destroyers from 12 to six. The number of Eurofighter Typhoons on order may be slashed. Strategy can go to the wall but not politics…

From there, Jenkins addresses much detail. Some of his assertions are questionable and others debatable, but his net conclusion is on the right tracks: "Money is squandered on equipment that is useless in either theatre - or in any foreseeable one. For want of that money, equipment vital to victory is forgone."

"In a sane world," he argues, "this might be cause for a revision of priorities within the defence establishment. Instead, the brass hats continue to squabble to protect their precious toys and politicians lack the guts to bang their heads together."

Thus, without any serious or intelligent debate, dominated by demands for "no cuts" and "more money", it seems the worst of all possible decisions has either been made, or is in the process of being made – effectively a determination to spread the misery equally, to avoid major confrontations.

That would mean that the defence budget continues to be saddled with useless projects, while there will be no pool of the cash that is needed to re-equip and restructure operational forces to meet the very special needs of counter-insurgency operations.

This is the worst of all possible worlds.

COMMENT THREAD

Billions more down the drain?

Already one of the most expensive procurement projects in British history, the Eurofighter, we are told, is set to cost hard-pressed taxpayers even more.

According to a report in the German magazine Focus, the bill in about to increase by €10 billion. For the countries involved in developing the Eurofighter, Britain will have to spend an additional €5.8 billion (£4.3 billion), Italy €2.16 billion (£1.62 billion), Germany €1.97 billion (£1.5 billion) and Spain €820 million (£615 million).

Focus cites as its source a letter from Eurofighter-GmbH, the German branch of the consortium, addressed to Germany's defence ministry stating that the cost of developing the military jet had increased due to certain "systems" and other modernisation.

Quite what that means is anyone's guess but, with several nations already itching to cancel tranche 3 - which will cost the MoD £5 billion if it goes ahead – the future of this aircraft must again be under careful scrutiny.

COMMENT THREAD

Per ardua ad exitum

A report carried by Defence Talk tells us that the Afghan army air corps is going through rapid growth, but it will take eight years for the force to be self-sustaining and independent.

This is from Brig Gen Jay H Lindell, commander of the Combined Air Power Transition Force in Kabul, who told reporters via video-teleconference that the air corps has doubled its capability since October and that he expects it to double again in the next six months.

He has 133 US military personnel helping the Afghan National Army establish the air corps. Ultimately, he says, the force will have 112 aircraft and 7,400 members. It now has 1,950 members, about 180 of them pilots.

This is the good news, but the bad news is that the priority is being given to building the “air mobility aspect” of the air corps, concentrating on acquiring and integrating Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters (strangely because these are "Hind" attack helicopters), Antonov transports and C-27A Spartan transport aircraft. There is no mention and apparently no intention of developing an offensive capability, such as the provision of aircraft capable of close air support for ground operations, which is currently the domain of coalition forces.

In a recent paper produced from a seminar held by the (US) Air Force University, however (frustratingly, we can no longer find the link), the role of "host nations" in counter-insurgency was explored. The conclusion was that the quickest way for the USAF (and the United States in general) to extract itself from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan was to build up host nation air power, so that indigenous air forces could take the load from the foreign powers.

Recognising that the high-tech fast jets currently used by developed nations for CAS were too complex for host nation air forces to operate, the authors went on to suggest that the USAF should operate low-tech (relatively) CAS squadrons for use in COIN. These could encourage the host nations to acquire a similar capability, they would provide a reservoir of expertise in the USAF which could be passed on, and would provide a training resource into which the host nations could tap.

This line of reasoning makes such eminent sense that we can only wonder why it has not been articulated before (redolent as it is of the US "Vietnamisation" policy during the VietNam conflict). It is also the best possible argument for coalition air forces acquiring fixed wing aircraft such as the Super Tucano, which are already on order for the Iraqi Air Force.

Putting this in the national perspective, although the Harrier squadron in Afghanistan is undoubtedly doing sterling work – soon to be augmented by a Eurofighter detachment – the RAF offensive effort is doing very little to develop the Afghan national capabilities, unlike the Army which is not only providing mentors for ANA forces but also integrating its formations into their own.

It does add "legs" to the argument for Super Tucanos, therefore, if it is suggested that the RAF should operate a squadron of these machines, into which Afghan pilots could be integrated, thus acquiring experience under controlled conditions, before moving over to form their own independent squadrons which could gradually take the load off the coalition forces.

If it is going to take eight years for the Afghan army air corps just to develop its "air mobility" capability, and the USAF thinkers are right that we will never be able to leave until the Afghanis have developed their own offensive forces, then we are going to be there an awful long time unless we do start thinking how to speed up the process. Per ardua ad exitum, as they say.

COMMENT THREAD

The Saturday "toy"

A pair of Eurofighters - which the MoD insists on calling "Typhoons" - the one in the foreground a Tranche II on its way to conduct the first of the successful bombing trials. Love the aircraft or hate it, the pic is still rather good! I guess we will be seing rather a lot of these shots, as the aircraft is prepared for deployment in Afghanistan.

Click the pic to enlarge.

A lack of imagination

The day after our post pointing out the extraordinary cost of Apache attack helicopters, it is rather ironic that Bernard Jenkin should publish a report on defence policy arguing for the Army to be equipped with more Apache helicopters.

Thus writes Jenkin:

The mountainous terrain of Afghanistan discouraged the deployment of Challenger 2s, and the Army have been much more dependent upon the Apache attack helicopter. When first ordered, many questioned the possible utility of Apache. Despite some teething problems, and their expense, the Apache has proved its worth in Helmand in the fight against the Taliban but there simply have not been enough of them. There is good reason to think that a larger number than the sixty-seven we presently have should be provided to the Army Air Corps although support helicopters are a much more urgent priority.

Now, it is possible to make too much of this, as this is one short paragraph in a 60-page publication, but sometimes small things can betray a mindset, an evaluation of which can permit drawing general conclusions.

With that in mind, if we explore the Apache issue, there is no dispute that this is an extraordinarily expensive machine to buy. With a total acquisition cost, including the training package, in the order of £4.1 billion, this works out in excess of £60 million per machine, almost equivalent in price to the Eurofighter (depending on which estimate you use). Interestingly, it is also similar in price to the AC-130 Hercules gunship, which has proved such a potent weapon.

Another thing about which there is no dispute is that the Apache is primarily an anti-tank weapon, designed for operations in Northern Europe against the massed forces of the Warsaw Pact, where its ability to fly low and slow, using the abundant cover in the region, is an essential part of the survival package.

In using this machine in Afghanistan, therefore, one has to recognise that it is not being used for its original purpose, and that many of the conditions which make it suitable for Europe do not apply in Afghanistan. Given the expense (to say nothing of the extremely high maintenance burden it imposes), there is thus an arguable case for exploring cheaper alternatives that could achieve the same or better effect.

There are, of course, arguments on both sides of the debate – although this blog tends to take the view that a light, fixed-wing turbo-prop attack aircraft could provide a better and far cheaper alternative. In fact, there are good arguments that suggest that light, fixed-wing aircraft will always provide a better alternative to attack helicopters, the latter owing its existence more to inter-service politics than operational imperatives.

This stems from the US Key West agreement (with a similar agreement in the UK), whereby the Army was prohibited from operating fixed-wing attack aircraft and therefore invested in attack helicopters as a way of circumventing what would otherwise be an air force monopoly in providing air support.

The relative merits of different types of aircraft, however, is not a debate that is going to be resolved here, in this post. But the essential point is that there should be a debate, that the different arguments should be rehearsed fully and that, eventually – the sooner the better – an informed decision should be made, on the basis of the issues brought out by the debate.

In Mr Jenkin's paper, however, there is no sign of that debate – no recognition even that there is a debate, or any acknowledgement that there might be substantially cheaper and better ways of doing things. Instead, Jenkin opts for the orthodoxy of pouring more money into a system.

Interestingly, the thrust of his argument is that defence spending needs to be increased by £3 billion a year for the next five years but, if part of Mr Jenkin's strategy is to furnish the Army with more attack helicopters at over £60 million each, even that amount of money will have little impact – on top of all the other things which he wants to acquire.

Something else Mr Jenkin presumably wants is the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) which, rather alarmingly for someone who is on the defence committee, he calls the Forward Rapid Effects System. He complains that the service date "is slipping back and back" and is "rapidly getting heavier in response to threats encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan."

This leads Jenkin to conclude that "FRES is a bad advertisement for the present system of procurement" because, he avers, "it took so long to formalise a clear procurement strategy for the programme." He then suggests that the FRES programme "may become a victim of the squeeze resulting from the 2007 CSR (Comprehensive Spending Review.)"

Again this post is not the place to rehearse all the issues surrounding the FRES project. Suffice to say that there is an intense debate raging as to whether the original (or any) such concept is valid or even achievable, especially in view of the Army's determination to procure a multi-purpose vehicle which is suitable both for high intensity warfare and counter-insurgency operations.

Again this blog has a view, the essence being that the counter-insurgency roles would be better served by specialist – and far cheaper - vehicles such as the Mastiff, while high-intensity warfare (if we ever find ourselves fighting such a war) could be served by using upgraded Warriors, introducing net-centric capabilities incrementally, as the technology matures.

Here, Jenkin has some useful observations about the nature of future operations, writing:

Internationally, most recent crises, whether in the Balkans or the Middle East, have left the UK’s Armed Forces seeking to suppress an insurgency. Moreover, the main purpose of operations in Afghanistan is to counter al-Qaeda. Although we should never lose sight of the fact that the geo-political climate can change very quickly, the likelihood is that we will see a continued movement away from the kind of major war fought in World War II and planned for during the Cold War. As far as we can tell, the wars of the twenty-first century are likely to be "Fourth Generation" wars against smaller states or non-state actors. Our enemies lack the technology and resources to engage on an equal footing and so resort to "asymmetric" warfare, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus he concedes that we are most likely to be committed in the future to "Fourth Generation" wars, for which FRES is likely to be unsuitable and overly expensive.

Once more, this is not a debate that is going to be resolved here, in this post. But, exactly as we wrote above, the essential point is that there should be a debate, that the different arguments should be rehearsed fully and that, eventually – the sooner the better – an informed decision should be made, on the basis of the issues brought out by the debate.

Yet again, in Mr Jenkin's paper, there is no sign of that debate – no recognition even that there is a debate, or any acknowledgement that there might be substantially cheaper and better ways of doing things.

The penalty of such a superficial approach, however, is substantial. Given that FRES is expected to cost – at the very least - £16 billion, and Mr Jenkin is looking for £15 billion over the next five years, the answer to his problem is staring him in the face. Make a case for cancelling FRES and he has all the money he needs without increasing the defence budget.

One more point we have to raise – before this post gets too long – is Mr Jenkin's call for more support helicopters. Apart from the fact that the six Merlins and eight Chinooks are on their way, he also takes no note of the arguments for meeting urgent requirements with civilian contractors. It is not that he dismisses the arguments. He does not even – as before – seem to be aware that there is even a debate going on.

So it is that we draw our overall impression of the paper – tired, staid, unimaginative and conventional, drawing the same wearily predictable conclusions that the answer to all problems in our Armed Forces is simply to pump more money into them. Yet, as a Conservative – and supposedly a right-winger – Jenkin of all people should know, with the experience of the flood of money pumped into the health service and education, throwing money at public services does not necessarily yield proportional (or even any) improvement.

Somehow though – like so many of his colleagues – he seems unable to make that leap of imagination and conclude that the same dictum might apply to the Armed Forces which, despite its special role, is still a public service. And there, in a nutshell, is the central malaise in the Conservative Party and, in my view, the main reason why it has not (and will not) capture the imagination of the voting public.

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