ADDRESSING 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES
21 ST CENTURY PARTNERSHIPS AIR POWER 2017 37
The Royal Air Force (RAF) Rapid Capabilities Office has been set up to
ensure that the RAF remains at the forefront of air power evolution.
Air Vice-Marshal Simon ‘Rocky’ Rochelle explains how
FUTURE
GENERATION –
EXPLORE,
EXPEDITE, EXPLOIT
I
was recently asked to consider an interesting
doctrinal challenge suggesting that the most
visionary Royal Air Force (RAF) leaders of the
past, Lord Trenchard (the Father of the RAF)
and Sir John Slessor (the RAF’s foremost air
power strategist), would instantly recognise the
key components of today’s RAF and the way it
currently exercises air power. The somewhat
uncomfortable proposition was that these great
RAF innovators would all too readily recognise
their own eras in the modern RAF – the damning
implication being that the things that we do now
would still be so familiar to them that it might
appear that we had somehow failed to evolve.
The key insinuation to be taken from this
theoretical challenge is that the RAF still looks the
same, that we have lost our innovative edge and
perhaps, too, that our competitive edge is diminishing.
Is this correct? Have we really lost our way? Would
these great men really recognise what they saw? If so,
what would be the same, what would be different and
would there really be nothing that amazed them?
In thinking through these questions, it
occurred to me that the challenge was not
without substance. After all, do all of our new
aircraft operate at hypersonic speeds, and have we
genuinely revolutionised what we are doing?
What is for certain is that the RAF is now able to
achieve things that would be completely beyond the
scope of Trenchard’s and Slessor’s thinking; indeed, the
advances we have made in precision and intelligence
are beyond what even I could have imagined as I
embarked on my career 30 years ago. It would be
unfair, I think, to expect that these great proponents
of technological advance could have comprehended
the sheer breathtaking level of situational awareness
that an individual F-35 pilot has, or what that means
to the whole joint or coalition effort. The pilot alone
has an unprecedented level of situational awareness
born of the vast constellation of information available
at any one time – certainly an understanding that
is of several orders of magnitude better than was
available to the massed formations of fighters or
bombers in the Second World War when Sir John
Slessor was planning his combat operations.
BEYOND THE TECHNOLOGY
Perhaps a more salient point to draw from the
proposition is that it isn’t about technology per se,
but the ability to develop our capabilities and
concepts fast enough to keep up with the threat
technologies that seek to deny us freedom of action.
In terms of technology, we are clearly moving
forward – space planes have just been commissioned
The RAF is coupling
the use of emerging
technology with the
best and brightest
people to secure its
competitive edge
(PHOTO: PO PHOTO
OWEN COOBAN/
© CROWN COPYRIGHT)
