Re: Defending the Nimrod
MOA,
Thanks for your input! It is very clear that the Nimrod has an important role to play in SAR (and perhaps, local fisheries protection). But £2.8 billion for an upgrade? We could do the same task for less than half the price by buying and using new civil aircraft.
Deployment? A nineteen hour day, I believe – but who needs 3 hours preparation for a standard operating task? And 5 hours on task – forgive me but waiting to see if you arrive is not good enough against a submarine threat – we already have an ASW helo screening procedure that works well (60 nm is not so far!).
My mention of Nimrod as a possible candidate for cost saving would indeed mean replacing it with a cheaper alternative for tasks such as SAR. But we never see you guys around the Fleet when we are deployed – en route to or at a trouble spot – so much for the ease of deployability (which in any case is not within the spirit or the word of DP 2001).
My basic criticism comes from an occasion in the mid-eighties. Let me quote from a particular paper (notal):
“NIMROD MARITIME RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT (MRA) TO REPLACE
ROYAL NAVY ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE (ASW) FRIGATES AND HELICOPTERS
An Air Staff claim was being put forward in the late Seventies and early Eighties that the Nimrod MRA could and should replace the Fleet’s Anti Submarine Warfare frigates and helicopters in defending the Fleet from submarine attack. It was claimed that the Nimrod was at least as effective as the organic Fleet Units (ASW warships & helicopters) in detecting, prosecuting and destroying submarines.
The Air Staff was again conveniently ignoring the laws of physics and aerodynamics. Although the small UK Nimrod force could indeed fly in the sky above Fleet Units when they were close to the UK and maintain a reasonable presence, longer support distances were not possible.
When the Task Force sailed South to the Falklands in 1982, the Nimrod MRA was conspicuous by its absence in spite of the very real submarine threat. Even at Ascension Island, there were no Nimrods available to sanitize the sea areas until well after the Task Force had proceeded South. When they did arrive, they carried out missions around Ascension but on only two occasions did they venture up to 600 nms South of the Island. That was well short of the 4,000 nms to the Falklands Exclusion Zone.
Post the Falklands, some fictitious reports were circulated under the auspices of MOD(UK)Air claiming that the Nimrod MRA had regularly patrolled the coast of Argentina within 60 nms of the shore looking for enemy submarines. How strange that the RAF wouldn’t allow Vulcans to fly close to the outer limits of the Falkland Islands without Sea Harrier protection and without a Task Force “Weapons Tight” policy but it would send off Nimrods without any protection into the jaws of the Argentine Air Force.
The true facts concerning the Nimrod MRA’s ability to find and destroy submarines became clear in the early eighties. Statistics showed that when patrolling over the Fleet during Exercises and when submarines were definitely present as a threat to that Fleet, the Nimrod had autonomously achieved only one “possible submarine contact” for every 5,000 hours flown – and it had never carried out a successful autonomous prosecution and kill of a submarine on exercise. Discussions between a UK Naval Staff Desk Officer and Nimrod crews attending an Exercise debrief at Rosyth revealed further alarming facts:
a. Nimrod Crews were sworn to secrecy by their Administrative Authority concerning the track record of the Nimrod in its primary ASW role (because the record was so bad);
b. During exercises against a known submarine threat, the Nimrod would inevitably be unable to autonomously locate or detect the “orange” submarine. So it would signal to the submarine to launch a green grenade – the smoke from which would then be visible on the surface above the submarine. Using this smoke beacon as a datum, the Nimrod crew would carry out set procedures for locating and prosecuting the submarine. Even with this help from the target, the Nimrod was invariably unable to detect, much less prosecute the submarine. Nonetheless, the Nimrod crew would then file a post exercise report detailing the patterns flown over and the sono buoys dropped in the target area. It would go down on the exercise report as a successful prosecution.
c. This falsely reported prosecution would then go to the UK Ministry of Defence for use by the Air Staff in proclaiming the operational effectiveness of the Nimrod to Ministers.
By hiding the true lack of effectiveness of the Nimrod ASW and promoting it as a viable ASW defence for the Fleet at Sea, the Air Staff were:
a. At best, concerned with empire building;
b. At worst, showing complete disregard for the defence of the Fleet and the lives of the sailors onboard Fleet units.
The saddest thing about it all is that this major UK Air Staff subterfuge continues. Central Committees and Ministers obviously remain ignorant of the true merit of Nimrod as an ASW vehicle. Why else would they have agreed a $3 billion upgrade programme for the Nimrod in 1996?
The UK Ministry line seems to be, “Tornado doesn’t work! Upgrade it at any cost! The Nimrod doesn’t work! Upgrade it at any cost!”"
Can we afford to wait and check if this upgrade works? And if it does, does the perceived threat balanced by the inherent lack of deployability of the Nimrod make it worth the huge investment?
I don't think so!