A Pyrrhic Victory 19 October 2010 (Updated to 26 October) 
How HMS Prince of Wales might look in ten years time The results of the UK's Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) were announced by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on Tuesday 19 October 2010. As expected,
the review had nothing to do with national strategy and security - and everything do with cost cutting. My last editorial was entitled "SDSR: Expect the Worst and Hope for Slightly Better". I got quite a few things right,
but overall I was wrong - it was worst than feared.The UK defence budget will be £33.8bn in 2011-12, £34.4bn in 2012-13, £34.1bn in 2013-14 and £33.5bn in 2014-15. This represents an eight per cent reduction in real terms - less than the 10% being demanded by the Treasury right up to the last minute, but more than the 6% that senior military officers allegedly told the PM was the maximum they could accept. Unfortunately the 8% budget cost will translate very roughly in to an actual 15% cut in UK frontline military strength - biased heavily towards reductions in the RN and RAF, rather than the British Army. This is because the easiest and quickest way of achieving savings is to decommission warships, disband aircraft squadrons and scrap tanks. The aim of reducing administrative costs and non-front activities is of course stated in SDSR, but the reductions are rarely as great as hoped (£4.3 billion over four years), not helped by avoiding politically difficult decisions such as closing Devonport Naval Base and air fields such as RAF Kinloss.
The SDSR 'horse-trading' went on to the last minute, with the RAF apparently achieving a major coup on Saturday 16 October when a final determined lobbying of its proposal to cut the entire RN/RAF Harrier Force was successful. The money saved will be used to reprieve some of the Tornado squadrons that are also facing the axe - the hasty nature of SDSR showing through in that the details of this are still to be decided.
The Royal Navy always faced heavy cuts,
with the Prime Minister strongly favouring cancellation of the future aircraft carrier project. The fact that wasn't done is only because the contracts signed with BAE Systems in 2008 and 2009 were found to be so robust that no savings would actually be achieved. As I currently understand (many details are still lacking, but I've supplemented from other sources where possible), the main SDSR related decisions that affect the Royal Navy are as follows:
Good or Neutral News •One of the two new aircraft carriers - almost certainly HMS Prince of Wales - will be completed with catapults and arresting gear and operate the F-35C carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), aka the Future Combat Aircraft (JCA) in UK terminology
•Confirmation that all seven of the planned Astute-class submarine's will be built (although actually nine were expected in 2002, and eight in 2005)
•All six of the ordered Type 45 destroyers will be completed (the implication being that this was in some doubt)
•The recently announced Type 26 class of frigates will still be built
•An Ice Patrol Vessel is still required, i.e. the current HMS Endurance will probably be replaced
•The mine counter-measures force will remain at 14 Hunt and Sandown-class vessels
•The AW159 Lynx Wildcat helicopter has not been cancelled, the RN to get 28
Bad News•The flagship of the Royal Navy,
and its only operational fixed-wing aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, will decommission immediately - four years earlier than previously planned •HMS Illustrious or HMS Ocean will decommission after a short study as to which is the better helicopter platform• Joint Force Harrier, including Naval Air Squadron 800, will disband in 2011 •One of the four Bay-class auxiliary landing ship docks
will be disposed of, probably Largs Bay•The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will probably enter service as actually an helicopter carrier in 2016 (four year later than originally planned), and will go in to extended reserve (or be sold) when Prince of Wales completes
•The entry in to UK service of the JSF will be delayed from about 2017 to 2020 (it was originally 2012), and the size of the buy will be much smaller than previous official UK statements of 'up to 150' aircraft (or 138 according to official US sources and Lockhed Martin's program of record).
•HMS Prince of Wales will not enter service until 2019 - i.e. after a further year delay, and in total five years later than originally planned
•HMS Prince of Wales will normally operate just one squadron of 12 F-35C's - she has been designed to carry 36•The four Type 22 Batch 3 frigates will decommission without replacement between 2015 and 2018 - leaving just 19 escorts (6 Type 45 destroyers and 13 Type 23 frigates)
•The Type 26 frigate will now be solely a Type 23 replacement and the first of class will enter service sometime after 2020 (2023 based on Type 23 decommissioning dates)
•The trained manpower of the RN will be reduced by 5,000 to about 30,000
•The Nimrod MR.4 programme has been cancelled, i.e.
the UK will no longer operate a specialist maritime surveillance aircraft •The 'Successor' class of Trident submarines will be delayed by two years, with the Main Gate moving from 2014 to 2016 - i.e. after the next general election
•No news on the future strength of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary service was provided in SDSR
, but it subsequently emerged that one tanker (probably RFA Bayleaf) and one supply ship (probably Fort George) will be 'cut'.
No News
•Devonport - the largest naval base in Western Europe -- will apparently remain open and continue to be the home port for a small and declining flotilla of submarines and warships
•The Royal Marines and 3 Commando Brigade will remain (nominally) as part of the Royal Navy
•No news on the planned new replenishment ships for the RFA
•No news on the future of the Royal Naval Reserve.
Since 1998 the Royal Navy has made extraordinary sacrifices to ensure (just) the survival of the Future Aircraft Carrier Project (CVF). It now seems certain that they will indeed be built, but this has been a victory achieved at a terrible cost to the rest of Royal Navy. I've long been concerned about the logic of building large and expensive aircraft carriers without a clear provision and funding for their air group, and SDSR is a hugely disappointing vindication of this. The RAF managed to kill the RN's Sea Harrier force and it has now succeeded in disbanding Joint Force Harrier - leaving no fixed wing aircraft able to operate from RN carriers, hence the loss of Ark Royal and probably Illustrious.
The RAF's change of preference from the sort take off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B version of the Joint Strike Fighter to the cheaper and longer range (but incidentally still carrier capable) F-35C is totally dictated by its realisation that the later is the most plausible and politically acceptable replacement for the Tornado GR-4 aircraft in the manned strike role.
Whilst final number to be bought remains to be decided, it seems likely that 50 F-35C's is the new planning number - equipping at best two front-line squadrons with 12 aircraft each, plus a training and conversion squadron.Another very serious problem is that HMS Ark Royal will decommission "immediately", but it will be at least nine years before HMS Prince of Wales conducts her first deck landing of a F-35C.
The capability 'holiday gap' is enormous - effectively a generation of RN sailors - and will mean the relearning of carrier operations by the RN. There is also the fundamental question that as the UK can apparently live without a carrier strike capability for nine years, does it really need it at all? I suspect that this question will be very high on the agenda when the next comprehensive spending review is due in five years time, one of whose key decisions will be to decide how many UK F-35C's to order at a potential cost of many billions of pounds.
It may be all to easy by then to decide to save money by abandoning the intention to operate some of these from Prince of Wales.Readers with very long memories may recall that when it was announced that American made Phantom fighters would be ordered for the RAF in 1965, the Defence White Paper stated that the RAF Phantom squadron's would be 'swing-role', operating from both land bases and Royal Navy aircraft carriers. However the RAF intended to avoid this by requiring the manufacturer - McDonnell Douglas - to remove some essential carrier compatibility features in order to supposedly reduce maintenance costs. Another worrying possibility - which I suggest will be increasingly mentioned in the coming years - is for the UK to buy the JSF F-35A variant. Whilst this is land based only, it still has a longer range than the F-35B and will be cheaper than both the the F-35B and even the F-35C. For the RAF, it seems likely to be a quite acceptable final position for its next generation of manned strike aircraft; whilst leaving the Royal Navy totally 'high and dry' as to the provision of aircraft for its new carriers . Will we ever again see an aircraft carrier proudly flying the White Ensign whilst operating fixed wing manned jet aircraft? - I'm not sure.
I expect that a sales brochure for the Queen Elizabeth-class is already being prepared in the hope that an ambitious foreign country might buy one of them 'off the stocks' at a heavily discounted price; for example if fitted with arresting gear she would be an excellent fit for the Indian Navy. As for Prince of Wales, it will be another ten years before she may just possibly enter service in a 'cat and trap' configuration. Just provide a context of how much things may have changed by then -
ten years ago the RN had three aircraft carriers (to be replaced two large new carriers in 2012 and 2015), three squadron's of Sea Harriers (to be replaced by four much larger RAF and RN JSF equipped squadrons from 2012), 12 SSN's (ten to be replaced by Astute's and a new class of SSN's) and 32 frigates and destroyers (12 of which would be replaced by Type 45 destroyers, and the other 20 by advanced multi-hull future surface combatants)A final point is that even in the best case scenario, there will be a lengthy loss of a major national military capability (i.e. aircraft carriers) by a permanent member of the UN Security Council. I'm sure that want-to-be members India and Brazil will be quietly pointing out behind closed doors that they have aircraft carriers with aircraft. I know that China doesn't currently have an operational aircraft carrier, but they are working hard on remedying that.
Update 26/10/2010I've actually already made several corrections to the above editorial, but can't resist commenting on some items that I've seen on blogs:
1. There seems to be a hope that some or maybe even all of the F-35C's will have "Royal Navy" painted on the fuselage and be operated by the Fleet Air Arm.
Unfortunately that is almost certainly fantasy - I'm convinced that the FAA is now definitively out of the fixed-wing fast jet business. All UK F-35's will be 'owned' by the RAF, flown by RAF pilots (baring a few seconded officers) and maintained by RAF personnel. And their appearance on the deck of HMS Prince of Wales will probably be as rare as UK operated Harrier's have been on the decks of HMS Illustrious and Ark Royal in recent years.
2. The SDSR document lacks any detail about the revised carrier plans and there is speculation that HMS Queen Elizabeth rather than Prince of Wales will be completed with catapults and arresting gear. Sadly this is almost certainly incorrect for many reasons:
•It would front-load rather than rear-load expenditure on the new carriers by several hundred million pounds
•The UK will have no carrier capable aircraft until 2020 - whilst no doubt the Americans and French would be happy to allow Queen Elizabeth to occasionally train with their aircraft between 2016 and 2020, this approach seems to be an unlikely luxury
•Catapults (particularly of the brand new EMALS type, which won't enter USN service until 2015) and arresting gear are long lead items. Even if ordered today their availability would probably delay the entry in to service of Queen Elizabeth until at least 2017.
•A further delay to Queen Elizabeth would also delay Prince of Wales. Whilst the MOD has previously actively sought such delays in order to avoid short term expenditure, this may not be acceptable to the new government as the result will be a further considerable increase in the cost of the CVF project under Treasury 'Green Book' guidelines and Net Present Value calculations.
Logicamente, habla tambien del Gap de una década que se van a tirar sin aviacion embarcada. Se destaca, en esa linea del peso de la RAF en la cuestión, que es realmente la RAF la que más ha tenido que ver en el paso a la aviación convencional, porque ve al Charlie como sustituto de sus Tornados en misiones de ataque, algo a lo que el Bravo no se adapta bien en absoluto.
Si mi buen amigo Roberto tomaba esa conjuntez como ejemplo a seguir, ha mostrado claramente su inoperatividad....Y ese panorama para 50 aviones, no te quiero decir como será para una docenita y media...¿2 aviones embarcados en nuestro carrier mini para lanzar caramelos? 
