House of Commons Defence Select Committee THE STRATEGIC DEFENCE AND SECURITY REVIEW AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY Written Evidence This is a volume of submissions, relevant to the inquiry into The Strategic Defence and Security Review and the National Security Strategy, which have been reported to the House but not yet approved for publication in final form. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that it is not yet an approved final record of the written evidence received by the Committee. List of written evidence 1 Roger Bunbury 2 John Farley 3 Unite the Union 4 Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and Prospect 5 Andrew Dow 6 Edward Featherstone 7 Nigel Hall 8 David Hobbs MBE 9 DefenceSynergia 10 David Faddy 11 Church of England 12 Raytheon UK 13 Professor Malcolm Chalmers 14 Admiral Sir John Woodward and colleagues 15 Derek M Long 16 Dr Sue Robertson 17 Chamber of Shipping 18 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 19 Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and Professor Gwyn Prins 20 Royal Aeronautical Society 21 Dr Robert Crowcroft, University of Leeds 22 Prospect 23 Project Management Institute 24 Dr Duncan Redford, Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, University of Exeter 25 James H. Longworth 26 Scottish National Party 27 Brian. K. Sargeant and Mr Frank James 28 Fleet Air Arm Officers’ Association 29 McAfee 30 Campaign Against Arms Trade 31 Ministry of Defence 32 Greenpeace 33 The Trades Union Corporate Steering Group at BAE Systems 34 Saferworld 35 World Vision UK 36 Oxford Research Group 37 Defence Police Federation 38 Medact Written evidence from Roger Bunbury 1. The decision to scrap the Harriers shows that we have forgotten the lessons of history. Once more we seem destined to repeat the failures of the interwar years which led to the Fleet Air Arm being ill-prepared for war in 1939. 2. The Royal Navy pioneered the use of aircraft at sea and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) played an important role in the First World War. However on 1st April 1918 the RNAS was amalgamated with the Royal Flying Corps of the Army to form the Royal Air Force. At the time of the merger, the Navy's air service had 2,949 aircraft and 55,066 personnel. Many of the navy's flying personnel transferred to the RAF and until shortly before World War 2 the air power of the Royal Navy was provided by the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the RAF. 3. Between the wars the combination of ships operated by the Royal Navy with aircraft provided and part manned by the RAF was recognised as unsatisfactory and by the end of the inter-war period British naval aviation which had been in the forefront of the world's navies was markedly inferior to that of the United States and Japanese navies, both in equipment and in capability. 4. Debate about control of the FAA came to a head in the late 1930s when a committee was convened at the level of the Chiefs of Staff to consider the matter: In the interests of impartiality the committee was chaired by a lawyer: Sir Thomas Inskip. 5. "The Admiralty based their case chiefly on the specialised nature of airwork over the sea, particularly from carriers.............while the Air Ministry pressed the somewhat abstract concept of 'the indivisibility of air power' ". Because no agreed recommendations emerged Sir Thomas Inskip wrote his own report. 6. Inskip's principal conclusion, still pertinent today, was "that when so much that concerns the air units depends upon the Naval element in the ship and in the Fleet, the Admiralty should be responsible for selecting and training the personnel, and generally for the organisation of the Fleet Air Arm.'' As a result of the Inskip Report administrative control of the FAA was transferred to the Board of Admiralty on 24th May 1939. 7. By the end of World War 2, by acquiring modern aircraft, principally from the US Navy, and with recruitment and training under Admiralty control, naval aviation was a major component of the Royal Navy's capability, commanding slightly over half the naval budget, and once more matching the most advanced practice in naval aviation. 8. Innovations by the Royal Navy in the post-war years , including the angled-deck, the deck landing sight, and the steam catapult, (all of which were adopted by the US Navy) made possible the operation of fast jets from the decks of aircraft carriers, and naval aircraft which had hitherto been accepted as inevitably inferior to their land-based counterparts now ranked among the best. 9. From the Korean War onwards naval air was a key component in the British response to any crisis overseas and when one arose it is said that the first question of the Prime Minister of the day was "Where are the Carriers?" 10. The decision to scrap the Harrier means that the fixed wing component of the Fleet Air Arm has now once more fallen under the effective control of the RAF. A suggestion that as an economy measure the RAF should disband all its fast jet squadrons and resurrect them again after 10 years would rightly be treated with derision but this is exactly the position in which the Royal Navy has been placed with the removal of all of its fixed wing aircraft for the next 10 years. After this gap who will rebuild the infrastructure and the operational experience, maintain the aircraft, and fly them? Naval Aviation requires a wide range of skills and experience extending well beyond the aircrew, and if the aircrew are provided by the RAF there will still be, both in the air and in the ships, a lack of the naval training, knowledge and operational experience which are essential to providing an effective naval air arm. 11. The decision to scrap the Harrier needs to be reviewed as a matter of urgency if we are to avoid naval aviation being reduced to an even worse state of unpreparedness than it found itself in the late 1930s. Because of its defective administrative structure the FAA had many shortcomings at the outbreak of World War 2 but the skills and experience essential to the operation of aircraft from carriers had been maintained. This will no longer be the case. January 2011 Written evidence from John Farley 1 The Prime Minister and others have said that our troops deserve the best while they are on operations. According to my information this is not happening in Afghanistan where our soldiers are less well supported by the Tornado than they were by the Harrier. This is not surprising as the Tornado was not designed to operate in the close air support role nor the ‘hot and high’ conditions of Afghanistan. I understand that one aircraft has been lost and another very badly damaged because of the difficulty of operating the Tornado from the one available runway. 2 Because it was not designed for this task, the Tornado necessarily takes longer to get airborne and on task from alert, a time often exacerbated by the need to flight refuel after takeoff due to weight restrictions in the local conditions. It also has experienced poor mission reliability, with many planned missions cancelled every month (45 in November I believe). This has resulted in other forces having to step in to ensure that our troops get urgent support. 3 This is in contrast with the record of the Harrier which spent nearly five years in Afghanistan and never failed to get a pair airborne (with serviceable mission equipment) following an unscheduled request for air support. All this was achieved with far fewer aircrew and engineers than the Tornado requires. The Harrier GR9 was designed for close support of ground forces operating from austere bases and it is arguably world class for that mission. 4 Perhaps the time has come to face the realities that a specialist aircraft is needed in such difficult and limited circumstances and to redeploy the Harriers while UK forces remain in Afghanistan. At a time when we aim to minimise costs deploying a single crew, single engine aircraft needing less man hours per flying hour must surely be better than using a two crew, two engine aircraft not purpose designed for the task. 5 May I respectfully suggest that you ask for the full comparative statistics behind my points above and take these into consideration during your review of the SDSR. January 2011 Written evidence from Unite the Union Unite welcomes the opportunity to respond to the committee inquiry and intends in this letter to address the part of the inquiry which has an impact on Unite members. The question Unite is responding to is: ‘what capability gaps will emerge due to the SDSR, including how these were assessed as part of the development of the strategies and what impact this may have on the UK’s defence planning assumptions and the ability to adapt to changing threats or unforeseen occurrences’. Unite has submitted written evidence previously and on a number of occasions regarding serious concerns about capability gaps, and the linkage between government’s focus on cutting defence budgets as a short term measure to try to reduce public spending and the impact this has on defence sector jobs, skills, investment in R&D, innovation and income from exports of defence products and services. Harrier Unite believes the decision to decommission the Harrier fleet and not to buy JSF Stoval means the UK has lost the capability, skills, knowledge and experience forever. The UK will never be in a position to build, upgrade, repair or use this type of combat aircraft.