Tenth Report - Aviation Procurement: Winging it?

With the prospect of UK involvement in a major war on the European continent closer than it has been for decades, there are serious questions as to whether the UK’s reduced combat air fleet still provides a sufficient deterrent and whether its limited numbers of admittedly highly capable aircraft could overcome a peer adversary in a warfighting context. These questions arise not only in the context of the UK’s sovereign capability, but also in relation to its contribution to any wider alliance.

The RAF’s combat aircraft fleet now provides a boutique high capability: it lacks numerical depth and has an inadequate attrition reserve. Exquisite capability has its place, but in a peer-on-peer conflict such as a shooting war with Russia, every airframe will count. 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. This is unacceptable. The MoD and RAF must consider as a matter of urgency how they can increase combat air mass in the short term.

Increasing the UK’s F-35 fleet beyond the 74 aircraft already planned would be one way to address the combat air capability gap, and this was an approach supported by several of our witnesses. However, although acquisition costs for the aircraft may have reduced, sustainment costs remain unacceptably high. The fleet’s slow force growth rate is a continued concern: the RAF’s failure to correctly calculate the number of maintainers required to service the aircraft is simply inexcusable. At present there are too many unresolved questions about the development and operational deployment of the fleet.

The MoD must be transparent and realistic about the eventual size of the F-35 fleet, recognising that the planned deferral of this decision to the middle of this decade will damage the ability of UK industry to maintain an ongoing production capacity for combat air, and should also make clear whether it is attributed to the Royal Navy or the RAF. When deciding whether to purchase further F-35s, the MoD should carefully consider the advantages that would be offered by a mixed fleet of F-35A and B variant aircraft. The MoD should also clarify whether its intention is that the fleet will routinely be deployed alongside US Marine Corps F-35Bs on UK carriers.

Planned sensor and weapons upgrades to the Typhoon fleet must be delivered at pace. In light of the RAF’s lack of any operational reserve, the MoD should seriously consider mothballing the Tranche 1 Typhoons which are due to be retired in 2025 rather than disposing of them.

Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) offer a cost-effective means of increasing combat mass. As we identified in our 2021 report “We’re Going to Need a Bigger Navy”, the role of UAS within the force mix on the UK’s aircraft carriers remains unresolved. This may have implications for decisions around the eventual size of the F-35 fleet. The MoD must rapidly progress its work to develop and deploy UAS alongside the Aviation Procurement: Winging it? 41 UK’s existing combat air fleet. Publication of the Autonomous Collaborative Platform strategy should be accompanied by clear (and ambitious) timescales and an adequate funding commitment for a UAS capability programme. (Paragraph 47) Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C)

With only a limited number of (comparatively vulnerable) fixed and mobile land- based radars on UK soil, all of which would be primary targets for our opponents were the current Ukraine conflict to escalate, the capability gap in Airborne Early Warning & Control coverage created by the retirement of the E-3 Sentry and compounded by the delays to the E-7 Wedgetail and Crowsnest programmes presents a serious threat to the UK’s warfighting ability.

Of all of the Defence Command Paper’s cuts, the decision to reduce the UK’s Wedgetail E-7 fleet from five to three aircraft stands out as the most perverse, with the fleet cut by 40% for an acquisition saving of just 12%. Moreover, our witnesses told us that three aircraft will simply not be sufficient to meet the UK’s commitment to NATO and our own sovereign needs. The MoD has committed almost £2 billion for a fleet of aircraft that, due to its reduced size, will be unable to meet the basic capability requirement. The MoD should set out in its response to this report what discussions it has had with NATO regarding the UK’s Airborne Early Warning & Control obligations to the Alliance. The decision to reduce the Wedgetail fleet must be revisited at the earliest possible opportunity with a renewed commitment to a fleet of at least five aircraft.

Whilst the E-7 is undoubtedly a capable aircraft, its procurement has been a woeful but depressingly familiar story of MoD failings and contractor underperformance combining to deliver a programme over time and over budget. Our recent report on defence procurement made a series of recommendations to tackle the systemic procurement issues which persist at the MoD: these must be implemented without delay.

The Ukraine war has underlined the importance of a thriving and resilient domestic defence industry. The Government must ensure that where it buys equipment off- the-shelf, it demands meaningful and sustainable investment in the UK from contractors in return, and holds them rigorously to account for fulfilling their pledges. (Paragraph 63) Air mobility

One of the most significant cuts in the Defence Command paper was the early retirement of the C-130J Hercules fleet some seven years before its planned out-of- service date. Our witnesses were almost unanimously critical of this decision, which has significantly reduced the overall capacity of the air mobility fleet, undermined the Integrated Review’s “Global Britain” objective, and created a capability gap which could hamper Special Forces. We find it deeply unsatisfactory that the Government has sought to hide behind the cloak of secrecy which covers Special Forces to limit meaningful scrutiny of the capability decisions which will affect their operations. (Paragraph 84) 42 Aviation Procurement: Winging it?

The RAF has been left scrambling to migrate essential capabilities onto the A400M Atlas and will be reliant on this aircraft which, however capable it may be on paper, has a poor track record of reliability. We intend to closely scrutinise the performance of the A400M. In its response to this report the MoD should commit to providing this Committee with six-monthly updates on the availability of the A400M fleet. (Paragraph 85) Flying Training

Flying training is undoubtedly complex. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton observed that “if you take your eye off it for a moment, it can get out of the tolerances that you set” and it is clear to us that for too long, the senior leadership of the RAF has been looking in the wrong direction. The result of this complacency is simple: a reduction in the MoD’s ability to produce combat-ready aircrew within expected timescales, with serious implications for the effectiveness of our armed forces and for pilot morale. The delays and backlogs of recent years have been completely unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue.

The former Chief of the Air Staff told us that current delays will be resolved by mid-2024, and we will hold the MoD and the RAF’s senior leadership accountable for delivering on that promise. In its response to this report, and then on a quarterly basis to the end of 2024, the MoD should provide this Committee with updates on the number of pilots holding between courses at each stage of the flying training pipeline as well as the average time taken for a pilot to pass through each stage.

Changes to the number of frontline seats are a routine feature of Defence reviews. Whilst they will unavoidably have some impact on the training pipeline, this must be managed so that any consequential backlogs are minimal. A flying training model which cannot adapt to changed crewing requirements without introducing years of delay for pilots is clearly not fit for purpose. The MoD should set out in its response to this report how it will ensure that the flying training pipeline is sufficiently flexible to adapt to future changes in requirement whilst still representing value for money for the taxpayer.

Fast-jet training in particular has suffered a significant reduction in capacity due to a lack of aircraft availability. As a result, the MoD will spend over £55 million sending pilots overseas for training whilst the contractors responsible will face no financial penalty, a farcical situation which only underlines the requirement for the MoD to better resource its legal and commercial teams, as we identified in our recent report on defence procurement. We recommend that the MoD carry out a full review of contractual arrangements and processes across the flying training model, identifying areas where contracts can be streamlined and processes simplified, and ensuring that contractors are liable for costs incurred by their failures.

Synthetic training offers many benefits, but live flying cannot be replaced, and we are concerned that the RAF’s stated intention for 80% of flying training to be synthetic by 2040 will be sub-optimal for both pilots and ground crew. The MoD should review the planned 80/20 mix of synthetic and live flying training, with particular regard to the implications for ground crew and engineers, and the increased need for Aviation Procurement: Winging it? 43 warfighting readiness in view of the European security situation. The MoD should also ensure that the proposed mix is broadly in alignment with the approach taken across NATO. (Paragraph 111)

The far-reaching cuts to aircraft numbers set out in the 2021 Defence Command Paper weakened the UK’s air power capability at a time when the armed forces were already over-stretched. The scale of this gamble became clear less than a year later, when Europe faced its most serious security crisis in decades as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The MoD’s acceptance of capability gaps and its cuts to combat mass across the fleet have left the UK dangerously exposed at a time of increasing threat to national security and risk diminishing our role within NATO.

Although these risks were acknowledged in the Defence Command Paper Refresh (DCPR), the actions taken to address them are totally inadequate to the scale of the challenge. The DCPR stands as a missed opportunity to reverse the deeply damaging cuts of 2021: the Royal Air Force, as with all our Armed Forces, must be afforded the funding and equipment it needs to properly carry out its critical role in protecting our nation. (Paragraph 126) 44 Aviation Procurement: Winging it?