R.A.F. needs a crystal ball to decide new fighters for 1990s

Press, 27 January 1979, Page 16

R.A.F. needs a crystal ball to decide new fighters for 1990s

Down one of the many drab corridors that make up the Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall is a department whose task it is to decide what sort of aircraft voung R.A.F. pilots should Ee flying in the 1990 s and the early years of the ne.'t century. What makes it a difficult job is that the answers have to be available almost immediately if the aircraft are to be designed and developed for squadron service in time. In particular, Ministers want to know before the summer ends what they should be doing to replace the Jaguar fighter bomber and vertical take-off Harriers that make up a large part Of our front line air forces in Germany. That would be a complex question even if it only involved one source of supply, in the British aircraft 'industry, and a single customer, the R.A.F. In political reality it is an almost impossible puzzle that has both European and transatlantic dimensions. Some of the solutions being proposed also loox a bit unlikely. But there is

one apparently so implausible it deserves to be taken seriously, because in so many of these big international programmes the military planners end up by taking away the number they first thought of. The R.A.F. should start its replacement programme for the Jaguar and the Harrier, according to this American-inspired solution, by cancelling a major programme that is already under way to construct an air defence variant of the Tornado multirole combat aircraft British Aerospace is building with German and Italian partners. Considering that Britain is supposed to be facing the danger of an "air defence gap,” precisely because we do not yet have the Tornado air defence variant, or A.D.V. to replace our ageing Lightn i n g s and Phantoms, cancelling the thing as this stage looks like simple madness. But there is an obscure logic about this idea — at least from the American industry’s point of view — if you first assemble the other

By

DAVID FAIRHALL

of the “Guardian”

bits of the puzzle. The British planners have started work on the basis of something called A.S.T. 403 — that is Air Staff Target No. 403. This is the R.A.F.’s concept of an aircraft to replace the Jaguars and Harriers from the late 1980 s onwards. So their first decision is whether to go for a conventional aircraft like the Jaguar, or for one with vertical take-off ability like the Harrier. The Chief of the Defence Staff (Sir Neil Cameron) is a firm believer in vertical takeoff; partly because as an airman he knows the value of being able to work from bombed runways and dirt strips that are useless to conventional aircraft, and partly because the Rhine Army has been so delighted with the close support and fast repsonse they get from the Harrier squadrons in Germany. The trouble is that the Germans who would have to fight alongside the Rhine Army do not share the R.A.F.’s enthusiasm

for the Harrier. Their own concept of a new tactical fighter for the 1990 s — known by its German initials as the N.K.F. — has no call for vertical takeoff technology. It is essentially a high performance air superiority fighter, a dog fighting machine whose secondary role would be to support the ground forces. Not that this would in itself displease the R.A.F. pilots. They are certainly looking for something far more powerful and agile than the basic Jaguar. But to assemble these disparate elements into a single multi-role project that could succeed the Tornado we are building with the Germans clearly involves a great deal of compromise — and the Luftwaffe, relishing the invitation to write a totally independent requirement for the N.K.F. for the first time since the Second World War, is much less inclined to compromise that it was on the Tornado. This ,is where the

Americans come in, because they have just produced their own rather unexpected U.S.A.F. requirement for an “enhanced tactical fighter” which exactly fits the basic European Tornado — that is the interdiction and strike (1.D.5.) version as opposed to the R.A.F.’s special A.D.V. Why not cancel your A.D.V. they suggest and let us fill your air defence gap with a United States fighter, carrying your British radar, and then trade this package along the transatlantic two-way street for at least four squadrons of the Tornado LD.S. With such an obvious vested interest at stake, the idea will rightly be treated with great scepticism. But if the much forecast gap really does appear, stretching into four or five years, and the Germans say no to vertical take-off, it may begin to look unexpectedly attractive. Stranger things have certainly happened in the international aircraft business.