DASS are really the only things that are going to save you these days as you can’t guarantee terrain masking with high-end MANPADS anymore or good look down-shoot down PD radars supporting high-end staring array IR missiles or active radar seeker heads. So, flares, LIRCM, jamming pods, smart DRFM dispensables like BriteCloud and Towed Radar Decoys are the choice of champions. Also, if you have them, give yourself a bit of room to manoeuvre rather than bouncing off the the sea/ground like one of these chaps!
Sadly a couple of Middle East scuffles where the enemy were equipped with sharpened mangoes has left us barely equipped much better than the end of the Cold War some 30 years ago. Admittedly some things have moved on as some of those of the Cold War generation have kept pressing for the capabilities, but this recent war means that we need to rethink and stop taking so-called ‘capability holidays’. You need to be ready for high end war fighting as we head into this century that will become more apparent as the world scraps over natural resources and the final bits of territory that lay unclaimed. The so-called “peace dividend” is over and our capabilities will need to be able to operate and survive in the kind of environment we are seeing in Ukraine - for some of us then this type of war-fighting is still very much alive in our minds, for those in the Services from the past 20-25 years then it isn’t.
It also won’t be a quick fix - it takes time to train people, to build aircraft and to modify them. So really the Integrated Review needs to be cancelled and started again. The Herc J needs saving until A400M is ready and in sufficient numbers, the Wedgetail order needs to go back to 5 aircraft and those undergoing build need hastening, the Tranche 1 Typhoons need to stay to do UK/FI QRA and the FGR4s saved for NATO ops whilst either more Typhoons are procured or F35s (A models now make a lot of sense!). We need to get the Voyagers modified for boom tanking. We need to buy the >20 Protectors promised in SDSR15 and not the reduced numbers in the IR. The Puma has been saved, but the Griffin is slated to go. The NMH solution needs sorting out and as demonstrated above it needs to come with a proper high-end DASS from day one.