flipflopman RB199/romeo bravo/4mastacker
Thanks for that. Perhaps the spares issue explains the disagreement
here?
Neartheend
Banter - is that all the RN has left?
Anyway, back on topic properly - did HM Government think of the effects on the UK's international influence? Was there a strategy? This evidence given to the Defence Commitee may make you wonder:
THE SDSR AND THE NSS
Vice-Admiral Blackham:...On the matter of the Harrier, I think it is much more complicated. It is important to understand - I fear that some of my naval colleagues have slightly confused this issue - that we are talking about an RAF aeroplane, not a naval one. This is the aircraft procured by the RAF for close air support, now the GR9. Interestingly, the Americans off Libya have used the AV-8B, which is the equivalent aircraft, as the aircraft of choice in preference for the work that they are doing in Libya. They have a ship - the Kearsarge - between 50 and 100 miles off Libya and able, therefore, to generate a sortie rate, as the professor has said, which is vastly in excess of anything that can be generated either from the UK or, indeed, from the airbases ashore in Europe, which are rather further away than that.
By removing that capability, we have removed our ability to get up close and dirty and do things at a high sortie rate, which is a pity. I understand - it is common ground in the Ministry of Defence - that the decision to get rid of the Harrier and retain the Tornado, which was a reversal of a previous position in the early days of the SDSR, costs about £5 billion across 10 years. That by itself is not the only argument for reversing the decision, but it certainly makes your eyes water. I cannot compare the capability of the two aircraft; I am sure that Andrew Brookes can do that much better than I. All I would say is that we need to remember that the Harrier was procured for precisely the purpose of giving close air support to troops on the ground, as the aircraft of choice for that purpose.
More importantly, the loss of the Harrier means that there is now no fixed-wing aviation going off aircraft carriers in the United Kingdom. There will not now be until the Joint Strike Fighter arrives, unless we buy another aircraft. So there is going to be a gap of between 12 and 14 years, when there will be no aviation off decks at sea.
We also need to understand that the CVF - the future carrier - is on a wholly different scale of operation from that conducted by the Invincible class. The last time we did this sort of thing was in 1978, with the previous Ark Royal. Rather than be retained, the range of skills would have to be generated from scratch. The use of steam catapults and all that implies would have to be generated from scratch and all this is with a 10 or 14-year gap, when everybody who knows anything about it will have left the Navy. Indeed, they are leaving now.
If we wish to maintain carrier aviation - there are strong arguments either way and you will not be surprised to hear that, on the whole, I agree with the professor about its value - we are setting about it in a very curious way and making it extremely difficult. It certainly means that it will take longer to do than we currently envisage. I do not follow the logic of that.
If we think that an aircraft carrier is a strategic requirement for the United Kingdom - which is what the SDSR says on page 23 and it then explains what it can do in the world in 2023, which the NSS tells us we cannot possibly predict - how on earth do we not need to maintain the skills now, first to deploy the same sort of capability at a lower level, and secondly to maintain the ability to generate it when the time comes? I think we have given ourselves an enormous problem for a Navy that may well have only 20,000 or 21,000 people by then. Remember that 7,000 or 8,000 of the numbers given are Royal Marines. This is a terrific burden to put on top of a small force at a time when it will have lost the skills. So I think if we really intend to maintain carrier aviation, we are setting about it in a very curious way.
Q499 Mr Havard: Do you think that it was perhaps unwise to get rid of all the Harriers all at once-maybe retain some of them that operate off the amphibious ships to help plug this capability gap in between? Do you think that that is a recoverable thing?
Vice-Admiral Blackham: We have Illustrious, which has just come out of refit this week, I think, and will be able to be in service for quite a long time yet, if we wanted to do that. So it would have been possible to keep a ship that was prepared, ready and able. Temporary detachments to other ships work, but they are not the real thing. It would be very difficult to maintain the skills that way. What I am saying is that we have allowed short-term considerations - because the SDSR is dominated by short-term considerations - to undermine our long-term vision. That seems to me to be anything but strategic.