LONDON — British lawmakers say the Royal Air Force now lacks capabilities across combat, air transport and early warning aircraft.
A Ministry of Defence command paper in 2021 ordered cuts to aircraft numbers which might be making a combat air shortfall in jet numbers that can persist into the 2030s, the Parliamentary defence committee said in a report on aviation procurement released Sept. 10.
The committee said the British combat jet fleet now only provides a boutique capability and lacks numerical depth and an inadequate attrition reserve.
“Combat aircraft numbers are already low. The defence command paper cuts will create a combat air capability gap which, on current plans, will persist well into the 2030s. That is unacceptable. The [Ministry of Defence] and RAF must consider as a matter of urgency how they’ll increase combat air mass within the short term,” said the report.
Figures within the report show Britain having the smallest variety of jets among the many 4 major European military powers with a fleet of 169 aircraft made up of Typhoons and F-35s.
The subsequent smallest is Italy with 199 jets, while Germany and France each have over 200 combat aircraft.
“Because the end of the Cold War, the RAF’s fleet has taken a nosedive in numbers, all the way down to only a third of its previous size. Our report found that budget cuts — including those within the last defence command paper — have led to gaps in air capability that can persist into the subsequent decade,” said committee chair Tobias Ellwood.
“The RAF has prioritized quality on the expense of quantity, leaving us with a fleet of combat aircraft which might be high-spec and expensive yet alarmingly low in number. Our current fleet fails to succeed in the mass vital to survive the attrition of an all-out war with a peer adversary. Fixing it is a matter of urgency,” he said.
The MoD updated the 2021 command paper earlier this yr in light of the modified security situation in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but left aircraft deletions untouched.
The committee saved much of its criticism for the MoD’s decision to cut back an order for airborne early warning aircraft and the axing of a complete fleet of Hercules C-130s sooner than planned.
An order for five Boeing Wedgetail E-7 was cut from five aircraft to a few to lower your expenses.
Reducing the fleet size to a few was labeled by the Parliamentarians because the “most perverse” decision within the command paper.
The 40% reduction in Wedgetail fleet size resulted in a value saving of just 12%, said the report.
The committee, which has influence but no actual teeth, said the cut must be reversed with a brand new commitment to a minimum of five of the airborne early warning and control jets .
Shrinking the fleet will leave Britain unable to fulfill its NATO commitments and its own sovereign needs, said the Parliamentarians.
“The MoD has committed almost £2 billion [$2.5 billion] for a fleet of aircraft that, resulting from its reduced size, will probably be unable to fulfill the fundamental capability requirement,” said the lawmakers.
Perhaps essentially the most controversial decision of the 2021 command paper was the move to face down the RAF’s C-130J Hercules fleet some seven years before its planned out-of-service date.
Witnesses giving evidence to the committee were almost unanimously critical of this decision, which significantly reduced the general capability of the air mobility fleet and created a capability gap that would hamper special forces who widely use the aircraft, said the report.
The fleet of aircraft were finally withdrawn earlier this summer and at the moment are up on the market.
“The RAF has been left scrambling to migrate essential capabilities onto the A400M Atlas and will probably be reliant on this aircraft which, nevertheless capable it could be on paper, has a poor track record of reliability,” said the Parliamentarians.
Andrew Chuter is the UK correspondent for Defense News.