With a defence review on the horizon, the Government will need to make decisions to help us get back to the state of play where fixed wing carrier aviation is routine. A few things occur to me:
1. SDSR10 went on with a commitment to Afghanistan in the background. This time it will not. There are not many other land locked countries. The probability is that actions may take place in a littoral state.
2. The main kinetic activity the UK is currently participating in is operations against ISIL. American and French carriers have played an important role in this fight, and RN warships have supported US and French carrier groups.
3. Recent operations in Sierra Leone have shown the utility and flexibility of basing aircraft aboard ship, without the need for maintenance or logistics ashore.
4. Ongoing operations in the Mediterranean (
Bulwark and Merlins) also show the value of aircraft capable of operating in the maritime environment.
5. HMS
Queen Elizabeth has been named, floated, and is fitting out. The construction of HMS
Prince Of Wales is also proceeding well.
6. The F-35B, despite the ill informed sniping of many, is also making good progress.
7. Recent MOD decision making has been flawed, as discussed
here. The 2010 decision to axe Harrier and move from STOVL to CTOL and resulting debacle can perhaps be summed up as:
I thought it [the original intention to go for F-35B/STOVL] was largely by default, as in the early/mid 90's we were happily operating the Sea Harrier from the CVS. When JSF (I think it was originally called JAST - Joint Advanced Strike Technology) started to appear on the horizon the United States kindly invited the UK to participate.
RAF Harriers also operated from a CVS in the 90's, cementing the idea that operating STOVL aircraft would allow the rapid reinforcement of the carrier in a crisis. I believe there were studies which proved going CTOL would cause the RN all sorts of grief (extra manpower/training) as well as being problematic in terms of a non nuclear/non steam carrier having to supply catapults with steam, and of course the training burden for pilots would make a embarkation of RAF units in a crisis tricky.
Then from 2002 onwards things went awry, we lost Sea Harrier, so there were less jets to embark, the Harrier force was committed to Afghanistan, and so on. Then in 2009 the Harrier force left Afghanistan, and the plan (I heard a briefing by the FAA Command Warrant Officer that the future would involve getting more jets to sea for longer periods) to ramp up the skills needed by the ship's company as well as the squadron.
Then in 2010, the Prime Minister listened to the wrong people, decided that it was necessary to cut RN/RAF capabilities as Army personnel numbers would be too politically sensitive. A decision was made to cut an aircraft type - either Harrier or Tornado. As the smaller force, and the one not committed to Afghanistan, Harrier got the chop. The First Sea Lord and others tried to point out the training and skills issues, but to no avail. An attempt to keep a small number of Harriers was rejected.
As part of the jam tomorrow policy, CVF was switched to F-35C, possibly as it could be presented as a capability increase. I sometimes wonder if the anchor faced old gits on various forums that demanded "CTOL or nothing" helped contribute to this. This ignored the training/skills issue, or the additional manpower needed. Meanwhile somebody decided that practicing V/STOL embarkations would do nothing to prepare for a CTOL future (surely moving a jet on a moving deck, or getting the right wind over the deck is the same?), which was used to help justify the decision and to foil the attempts of the First Sea Lord to resolve the skills issue. The meeting that made these decisions lasted about twenty minutes.
The First Sea Lord, and other SMEs, were ignored. Then in 2012 we went back to F-35B. Despite having claimed that CTOL and V/STOL skill sets are completely different, there are still RN personnel about US carriers doing CTOL stuff. A lot of effort is still going into (other) measures to prepare people for having jets on deck again - some things are not public, and I do not know.
So the real question is why did ANYONE think that ripping up a decade of planning, and opting for a CTOL future after a decade of having no jets at sea, was a good idea?
A number of things come to my simple mind - which apply to more poor decision making in Defence:
a. Refusal to listen to SMEs. The First Sea Lord was a former CVS Captain, other experts existed in NCHQ, MOD, and DSTL. Were there views sought?
b. Refusal to learn lessons from elsewhere. Were other carrier operating Navies asked an opinion regarding the skills issue?
c. No System thinking. When a number of interconnected parts interact with each other and rely on each other, major changes to any single part has wide ranging effects.
d. Fast decision making - complex decisions cannot be made fast, as they are driven my emotion and not reason.
e. No peer review - if say a paper proposing a move to CTOL after a jet less decade had been circulated to a number of people who had been Cdr(Air) aboard a CVS, the issue of skill loss would have been made plain, as would things like whole ship aspects.
f. No PDCA. If before an announcement, the proposal was investigated from a "what are the implications?" viewpoint then decision making would be better.
8. We are where we are - so what decisions can/should the Government make to help us regenerate the carrier capability? Im am thinking in particular about developing aviation awareness and whole ship (aviation related) skills, and core maritime skills amongst FAA personnel now needing to be reacquainted with the shipboard environment?