A very last-minute media facility was held at RAF Waddington on Wednesday 29th January 2020. According to the Op Note, the press event aimed to “provide an insight into the Rivet Joint programme, a unique US/UK cooperative programme.” The main emphasis, however, seems to have been on No.51 Squadron's newly delivered state-of-the-art cockpit simulator, and on a new standard in terms cockpit and mission systems. A UK release to service of the new standard aircraft was then reportedly expected in mid-March.
The facility did also include an opening brief from a panel of personnel involved in the Rivet Joint programme, including a Q&A, as well as a tour of the Rivet Joint simulator.
Unfortunately, the event was very poorly ‘advertised’ (many journos never received the note) and it clashed with a press jolly to Finland for the Eurofighter Typhoon’s participation in the Finnish ‘HX Challenge’, so relatively few journalists were able to attend. However, Dino Carrara, the editor of
Aviation News, did attend, and he wrote a three-page piece in that magazine’s April 2020 issue.
Carrara quoted Air Vice-Marshal Harvey Smyth, Air Officer Commanding No.1 Group as saying:
"There are two main elements. It has a new glass cockpit, which is known as Baseline C and the upgrade in the rear of the aircraft is called Baseline 12.2 and is a generational step forward for some of the mission systems. We've done a lot of work to look at everything from exploiting open source big data right through to the most top secret highly classified capabilities. We are bringing new technology to bear like machine learning and artificial intelligence et cetera to provide quicker and higher fidelity analysis of the data collected, all of which is to help people like me [in senior positions] make more informed decisions on an operation."
Smyth was also quoted as saying that:
"There are 20 RJs in the fleet and we have three of them which we operate hand-in-glove with our US colleagues. What we get from this co-operative programme is far bigger than our 15% financial contribution. We greatly exceed that in terms of what we learn and the capability development we have already seen from day one of our involvement in the programme. Our first jet was delivered in November 2013 and while the capability is phenomenal, it is the ability to do co-manning, the co-operation and co-operative learning, which have been the real win. It's not just the aircrew [that benefit], and in many ways more importantly, it's the sharing that goes on among the analysts that receive the data but don't fly in the aircraft and how they manipulate it to deliver a joint product for decision-makers and commanders. You will see our aircraft at places like Mildenhall and Offutt and we are very much one team both in terms of force generation and the training side, but also when we're on operations. It's not uncommon to us to co-man across each other's platforms to help out to deliver operational effect."
He also said that:
“In today's world it's about who can get the information quickest, assimilate it, make a decision and get out in front of the bad guy….. Our aspiration in the near future is to join all of our assets up in a networked way and Rivet Joint will be a major player in that. I could see a scenario where there is a Rivet Joint 'doing collect, an aircraft carrier with F-35s in the North Atlantic, Typhoons out of Lossiemouth all working in the High North area sharing data and perhaps a submarine and Type 45 also feeding in and all coalesced as a common operating picture. Rivet Joint would play an enormous role in that. We definitely see it as one of the central nodes in that network. You can collect a lot of data, but if you can't analyse and share it, so that it's decision-quality information, it is just a great big bunch of data that doesn't contribute — it actually hinders.”
Carrara also quoted Don Miceli, Rivet Joint Co-operative Program Manager, who he said gave some insights into what lies ahead for the Rivet Joint fleet:
"Advanced battle management systems (ABMS) and advanced sensing grids are the sensors we are trying to employ on the Rivet Joint programme in the future to help us prosecute the high-end fight a little bit better than we do now — putting more artificial intelligence and machine learning on the jet so we can free up operators in the back to be thinking of the problem set and have the computers produce the information they need to disseminate."
It sounds as though there is a much greater emphasis on immediacy and on the tactical application of the information gathered from SIGINT with the Rivet Joint than there was in Cold War Nimrod days, probably with a greater emphasis on COMINT, and with less stress on precise measurement and analysis? The references to machine learning and artificial intelligence seem to imply a degree of automation that runs counter to the traditional ’51’ way of doing things with its emphasis on the very high skill and experience levels of operators allowing manual tuning etc. to a very high degree of accuracy? It seems as though the shift towards an increased concentration on COMINT was already underway in the latter days of the Nimrod, too? I wonder how different things might have been if the R1 had been replaced by a SIGINT version of the MRA4, rather than by the RC-135.
Smyth said that:
"We in the UK talk a lot about the UK-US special relationship and if ever there was an exemplar of that it is this Rivet Joint programme,” and praised "the co-operation in terms of the technical and through-life development of the aircraft. We are a co-operative programme partner (CPP) and have an equal voice and that in itself is worth its weight in gold."
Susan Thornton, Director for Information Dominance Programs from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the (US) Air Force, backed Smyth up, saying that:
"This co-operative US-UK programme is completely shared; there is nothing specific to either nation. We have worked together on this programme since 2010. We intend to take this capability well into the 2030s. Our guiding principle is that it has to be relevant today and for the future. It's also based on the ability to have bilateral exchange of intelligence expertise and best practices, including key partners across our respective governments.”
No-one seems to have asked whether purely national tasking is still practised/possible, or whether No.51 still lives up to its former nickname as “GCHQ’s secret Squadron.” Nor did anyone ask whether the ‘take’ goes straight to UK agencies or whether it goes via the US, not that answers would necessarily have been forthcoming.
