deployments, and that may not give personnel
enough time ‘at home’. This has led to a
higher-than-planned-for number of early
retirements, and the unplanned loss of many
of the RAF’s most experienced aircrew.
As a result, the RAF is facing what the
National Audit Office (NAO), the UK’s
budgetary watchdog, described as a
gap in “critical skills” – which include
engineering, logistics, intelligence and
communications, as well as pilots.
This is part of a wider personnel shortage
that the NAO has characterised as being “the
largest in a decade”, and which is due to
shortfalls in recruitment as well as problems
in retention. The NAO has revealed that the
percentage of regulars voluntarily leaving
the military increased from 3.8% annually
in March 2010 to 5.6% last December.
Pilot shortages are exacerbated by a
contractorised, privatised training system
that lacks the capacity of the RAF’s former
in-house training pipeline, and that was
explicitly designed for efficiency and whose
contractual arrangements may not easily
allow for extraordinary surges in throughput.
But size and force structure are the most
obvious (and perhaps the most insoluble)
symptoms of the problems facing the RAF.
The fast jet element today consists of five
frontline Typhoon squadrons, two squadrons
of Tornado GR4s (due to disband next
March), and a newly formed and not-yet-
operational F-35B Lightning squadron.
Eight squadrons – representing a
force that is about half the size of the
‘broken’ 2007 RAF’s fast jet element.
And that 2007 force was not an artificially
enlarged one, still sized to meet Cold
War requirements. The 1990 Options for
Change defence review had provided the
opportunity to restructure the British military
for the post-Cold War world and to take
advantage of the so-called Peace Dividend.
But successive defence reviews in 1994,
1998, 2003, 2010 and 2015 progressively
imposed further cuts in force structure.
As a result, the fast jet fleet was itself
considerably smaller in 2007 than it had
been in the 1990s, and it was scaled against
relatively modest ‘planning assumptions’.
Change of posture
The 1998 Strategic Defence Review laid down
that Britain’s armed forces should be able to
mount a military effort and combat operations
of a similar scale and duration to Operation
Granby (the 1991 Gulf War), or to undertake
a more extended overseas deployment on a
lesser scale (as in Bosnia). Meanwhile, they
were to retain the ability to mount a second
substantial deployment if this were made
necessary by another crisis (as in Operation
Veritas in Afghanistan). It would not, however,
expect both deployments to involve warfighting
or to maintain them simultaneously for longer
than six months. It said the military should
retain the ability, at much longer notice, to
rebuild a bigger (pre-Options for Change)
force as part of NATO’s collective defence
should a major strategic threat re-emerge.
The 2003 review (Delivering Security in
a Changing World) laid out more modest
requirements, including the ability to
deploy forces in a large-scale campaign(like Operations Telic in Iraq or Herrick in
Afghanistan) while running a concurrent small-
scale effort. Alternatively, the UK military
was expected to be able to support three
simultaneous small-to-medium scale scenarios
(Operations Palliser in Sierra Leone to Veritas
in Afghanistan), including at least one enduring
peacekeeping mission (like Kosovo), and to
act as lead nation in any coalition operations.
Subsequent defence reviews have not
always publicly set out the expected scope
of operations with quite such clarity or in
such detail, making it much harder to assess
whether the armed forces could achieve
what the government expects of them.
Instead there has been a vague expectation
that the UK’s military will ‘do its duty’ and
that it will ‘punch above its weight’, while its
political masters continue to impose cuts.
The result is that the RAF could no
longer mount the kind of operations
that were envisaged in 1998 and 2003,
and nor is it expected to do so.Right: A Tornado GR4 powers down the runway
at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus last year. It was fl ying
as part of 903 Expeditionary Air Wing in support
of Operation Shader. While recent defence
procurement has focused on the demands of the
mainly counter-insurgency campaigns fought in
Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Joint Force
2025 initiative is now shifting attention towards
larger-scale expeditionary efforts.
70 // AUGUST 2018 #365 http://www.airforcesmonthly.comRAF 100
The way it was, part two. A
November 2007 formation
of No 1(F) Squadron Harrier
GR9, No II(AC) Squadron
Tornado GR4, No 3(F)
Squadron Typhoon F2 and No
IV(AC) Squadron Harrier GR9,
the latter in the squadron’s
95th anniversary colours. As
of 2007, the RAF included 15
frontline fast jet squadrons.