F-35
Will the new Review provide an actual plan for
the UK's F-35 purchase?
It is very much time to decide, because UK
purchases are only planned out up to the 48th airplane.
Specifically, the UK is acquiring:
3 jets in LRIP 12 (Fiscal Year 2018; delivery
this year)
6 in LRIP 13 (2019; delivery 2021)
8 in LRIP 14 (2020; delivery 2022)
7 in LRIP 15 (2021; delivery was to be in 2023
but got slowed down. Just 2 deliveries expected in 2023 now)
6 in LRIP 16 (2022; delivery was to be in 2024
but got slowed down. Just 4 now expected in 2024. A total of 7 jets will thus
now only be delivered in 2025)
The delay to deliveries was reported by the
National Audit Office: basically, the MOD decided to delay delivery to spread
out the expenditure across more financial years.
Note that Lot 15 and 16 are expected to be part
of a 3-lots Block Buy (15, 16 and 17). The final production contract for this
Block Buy, which will be as always concluded by the US Department of Defense on
behalf also of the international partners, has not yet been concluded but will
be in the near future.
The UK currently has no known plan for what to
do with Lot 17: will it contain any UK aircraft? Will it be a complete gap
year?
In practice, beginning in 2023, the UK F-35
purchase is all up in the air.
The "138" number is probably entirely
unfeasible. Many observers have been aware of this for years now, and I’ve
written and tweeted about it many times over. Lately, with reports in the
Press, it has emerged that this awareness is becoming very much “official” with
the Integrated Review discussion reportedly focusing on having 70 accepted as
the “minimum credible fleet size” to be pursued.
To me, and to several other observers, this is
no surprise and no shock. Arguably, it is merely a measure of realism.
For several years now, the number 138 has
arguably had zero actual relevance in regard to what the operational fleet can
aspire to be.
The infamous key phrase to hang on to the number
138 was “the aircraft will be purchased over the life of the programme”, means
the numbers would be spread over many years. Thanks to the MOD’s usual
vagueness and deliberate murkyness, nobody even knows how many years.
The annual Major Projects Report has the F-35
programme end date as 31 March 2035, but how this should be interpreted is open
to debate. Would 2035 see the last delivery? If so, the last order would have
to be placed 2 years earlier, in 2033. Or would 2035 see the last order placed?
According to other interpretations, “over the
life of the programme” should be read as “out to the aircraft’s Out of Service
Date”, which is tentatively scheduled for 2048 as of these days (with the
understanding that this will move to the right by potentially decades, as
always happens).
Clearly it would be spectacularly dumb to be
purchasing jets just before removing the fleet from service, and there cannot
be absolute certainty that the F-35 production line would still be open at all
by then. There are fair chances that F-35s will still be in production, but
it’s just an assumption.
Not knowing on how many years the purchases are
going to be spread out obviously makes it impossible to gauge the relevance of
the total number. If purchases are spread out over decades, the actual
available fleet will never grow beyond a fraction of the total.
Purchases very late on in the life of the
programme might well be replacement airframes to make up for operational
losses, or new-build machines purchased instead of replacing early production
lot aircraft on value-for-money considerations.
In short: 138 was never going to be the
F-35’s in-service fleet size.
138 F-35 would suffice for 6 or 7 squadrons,
maybe more, but there is no manpower and no infrastructure for that to happen.
That's why the number is meaningless and has been for years.
We have only ever been told there would be 4
F-35 squadrons.
And it would be very difficult indeed to create
more.
The RAF currently has 7 frontline TYPHOON
Squadrons and has repeatedly made clear that they want to try and squeeze an 8th
one out, from a fleet of 140 machines (160 have been procured in total, but 1
was written off after a belly landing at China Lake in 2008; 3 were
instrumented production aircraft for development and the Tranche 1 two-seaters
have been withdrawn and dismantled for harvesting spares).
If you had 4 F-35B Squadrons, the total is 11 to
12 frontline Fast Jet units. The RAF hasn’t had this many from before 2010.
And, notoriously, in 2010 the RAF shrunk down by 5,000 posts.
There clearly does not seem to be any manpower
margin to create more Squadrons, even if there was the money to procure the
airframes.
The fact that 70 F-35s are being described as
the bare minimum requirement offers hope that the number of squadrons to be
formed is still 4. A fleet of 70 to 80 jets should be enough to deliver that
kind of force structure.
But again, there are too many things we do not know. One being the number of years in which the force will be built up. If 70 merely replaces 138 as a “through life” objective, we might well never see that many in service at the same time, and thus the number of squadrons would have to reduce.
If purchases are slow, the last 2 Squadrons
might form only very late on, perhaps even beyond 2030. That would be very,
very late indeed.
“70”, “138”, or whatever other number of
airframes is individually almost meaningless.
If the
Review finally gives us a realistic plan for the formation of the last 2
planned Squadrons by 2030, I invite everyone to leap with joy. 617 Squadron is operational, 809 will only
stand up in 2023. What we need to see mapped out is the road that brings us to
a third and a fourth frontline squadron.
The exact number of airframes is entirely
secondary. Obviously, the more are purchased the easier it will be to form and
sustain the fleet in the long term, but adjustements can be made. Less
“attrition” aircraft purchased might be balanced by a greater investment in
spare parts. Eventual losses should be faced with an eventual, occasional
future purchase from a hot production line rather than by acquiring spare
airframes early on, which will be difficult and expensive to keep up to date as
the aircraft evolves.
I will be happy, quite literally, if people stop
pestering us with a meaningless 138 number without dates attached to it in
favor of an actual plan to get to 80 in 4 squadrons in an acceptable timeframe.
In fact, the UK should not commit to a fixed number of F-35s, and especially not
such a high number. There will be time to make future purchases from a hot
production line (for example if TEMPEST encounters delays, which is, let’s be
honest, almost certainly going to happen; it always does) without having to
unnecessarily constrain the Equipment Budget right at this time.
My chief worry is that cutting back on the
distant, long-term total number is in itself going to generate zero savings in
the short term, were the financial problem sits. What needs to be settled
satisfactorily is the timeframe 2023 – 2030 (2035 at the very latest).
This is especially true because the closer we
get to 2030, the more F-35 will have to contend with TEMPEST for the same slice
of budget. If you want TEMPEST by 2035 it means expenditure ramps up very
quickly indeed. The UK has pinned on TEMPEST the future of its Aerospace
industry and of its international credibility as a country able to lead a
programme of this complexity. As a consequence, TEMPEST is an absolute priority
and F-35 will inexorably tend to get crushed under its growing burden.
The real
question is: can the UK afford another circa 40 F-35B by 2030? It would require the purchase of 5 jets per
year beginning in 2023. This should not be unfeasible (the UK has ordered 6 or
more jets in every year from 2019 to 2022) and is less aircraft per year than
several other F-35 countries regularly order, but we know that the Combat Air
budget is not looking very roomy in the next years and the RAF will have
TYPHOON upgrades to fund; TEMPEST to develop and, hopefully, the LANCA unmanned
loyal wingman to acquire. The same, small share of money will have to be cut up
among these main programmes.
The situation is thorny enough that, I will repeat
it again, 70 jets should make us all rejoice, provided that they are acquired
over a reasonably short timeframe.
The real nightmare scenario we face is the
impossibility to even do that.
Late 2020s and early 2030s will see TEMPEST
expenditure ramping up more and more. As a consequence, I feel that the bulk of
F-35 procurement will be over by 2030, by lack of money if not by design. Every
effort, in my opinion, should be directed on getting those other 2 Sqns of
F-35Bs by that date. And it is not going to be easy. It is in no way a given.
It is to be hoped that getting to 4 F-35B
Squadrons will still happen, and that it will happen in a reasonable timeframe.
The RAF will be severely short of Stealth capability until that happens, and
the aircraft carriers will have a very hard time embarking a meaningful air
wing. It would be a very embarrassing situation, as well as a dangerous one.
One welcome side effect of this much needed
injection of realism is the fact that, if the RAF is at all sane, this will be
the end of the ridiculous “Split Buy” idea. The fleet needs to be made up of
one type, the B, which can work from the carriers as well as from land.
The F-35A is individually less expensive, yes.
Has a slightly longer unrefueled range, yes. And can carry larger weapons in
its internal bays, yes.
While these justifications are all true, the
numbers (money, manpower and thus number of Squadrons, number of airframes)
were never sufficient to truly justify a split buy and
were never going to be unless there was to be no TEMPEST. Splitting the fleet
would result in tiny, operationally-ineffective fleets and in near-empty
aircraft carrier decks.
The F-35A’s “advantages” would be totally
illusory as well: the aircraft would be cheap, but there would be new costs
associated to running two separate sub-fleets. Despite much commonality, F-35A
and F-35B are not and will never be the same thing and there would be a
constant fratricide struggle for securing a slice of the budget for covering
the respective “unique” needs.
Moreover, the RAF does not own or plan a single
payload which would fit the F-35A’s larger weapon bays but not the B’s ones.
The large payloads are too large for both; the others fit the B just fine. So
that is, and has always been, a moot point. Looks good on paper but never meant
a thing in the UK’s context.
Hopefully, with the formation of the next two
Squadrons now officially in jeopardy (unofficially, they have been uncertain
for years to all who could look at the facts with the necessary realism) and
the total number of airframes being revised downwards by 50% or even more,
everyone will realize how utterly demented the idea of a split is.
The last time there was a 2-Squadrons small
fleet, said fleet was offered up for the ritual slaughter because it was “too
small to be sustainable and to support any sort of enduring operation, at sea
or on land”. And honestly, it was. 2 Squadrons are too few to rotate in and out
of task in a sustainable way. 4, ideally 5, is the number you are looking for.
That ‘s why the reduction of the number of
squadrons in 2009 sealed the fate of that fleet, well before the 2010 SDSR even
started.
That fleet was the HARRIER GR9 fleet. The number
of airframes, ironically enough, was still 72 when the cut was decided. The
number of crews and frontline squadrons operational on the type determined the
cut, not the number of airframes.
Whoever suggested that splitting the F-35
purchase in two to create not one but 2 barely-sustainable small fleets, both
too small to meet their requirements, was being very unwise when 138 jets were
still the assumption.
Whoever was to still insist on a split buy now would
be, and I will unapologetically say this no matter how many might feel
offended, an idiot. There really isn’t a kind way to say it.
CHALLENGER 2
Life Extension Programme
The scheduled baseline project end date at Q2 1920 (30th September 2019) is 31/07/28, has lengthened by 791 days since last year's Q2 1819 date of 01/06/26, due primarily to the following factors;
- In this period the programme's scope was expanded from obsolescence only to include enhancements to its lethality and survivability. The expanded scope has also lengthened the time to complete the work and increased cost over the assessment, demonstration and manufacture phases. These dates are currently subject to negotiation and will be confirmed when the full business case has been approved.
The baseline Whole Life Cost at Q2 1920 (30th September 2019) is £1,304.19 m, due primarily to the following factors;
- This reflects the financial position following the capability uplift endorsed by HMT. This sees a capability uplift and extension to the Main Battle Tank out to 2035.
I think the requirement is now pretty clear, and that is one of the reasons why Challenger 2 is taking a long time. It is because there was this realisation that the programme was not ambitious enough. It needed a smoothbore gun. It needed the ability to put a missile down that barrel to overmatch Armata, as you rightly describe. It needed its protection levels to be significantly enhanced. So the requirement has evolved. I think the Army now has a very clear idea of what it needs. The trick now is to find the resources to get behind whatit needs.
Carter's words do not reflect positively on him and on the Army as a whole. If they couldn't see the need for upgrade before 2019 they were not doing their job properly.
The Army, of course, knew perfectly well that the gun needed to change: it
I've long suspected the existence of a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Army planning between Tracks proponents and Wheels supporters. The dramatic change of priorities in 2015, just after the massive AJAX contract was signed, will always have me wondering.
The prospect of the Army losing its MBTs and
IFVs is one that is very hard to stomach. The destructive effect of such a
decision would ripple farther across the force structure than most realize. It
would be a life-changing injury for the Army. In the graphic below, I tried to
evidence some of the less immediately-evident ramifications of such a scenario.
 |
| This graphic shows some (not all) of the implications of doing away with the tank. |
What is most infuriating about the tracked heavy
armour situation is that the Army has laid its head into the guillotine all by
itself. As we wait to see if the blade descends or not, we might contemplate the
fact that in late 2019 the MOD signed into a 2.8 billion pounds contract for
523 BOXERs, as part of a Mechanized Infantry Vehicle contract which has an
overall budget for procurement and first few operational years that is given as
4.6 billions in the latest Major Projects spreadsheet.
It is a fact that the Army put itself into this
thorny corner by making BOXER its absolute number 1 priority, despite knowing
that these 523 vehicles are a mere start, insufficient in numbers and variants
to cover the need of the 2 STRIKE brigades.
In an alternate universe, the British Army has
not strayed away from the 3 armoured brigades
of Army2020; has not yet bought a Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (MIV) and is
making do with MASTIFF in its place but has but those billions into continuing
the job it had started on Armour, getting CHALLENGER 2 LEP and WARRIOR CSP under
contract and is, as a result, riding out the Integrated Review with a lighter
heart.
This is a fact, and no hindsight is required.
I’ve been shouting warnings for 5 years about the STRIKE adventure, as you will
know if you have been following me for a while. I’ve collected hate from
multiple corners, but I’m sadly, once again, proven right.
Believe me, I would very much like to be proven
wrong in these cases, but it does not happen.
In pursuit of a concept that remains
uncomfortably vague, the Army has put its core capabilities into a guillotine.
The MBT – IFV combo is the heart of any modern
army. As the graphic hopefully helps understand, the ramifications extend
across multiple formations and roles. All of that would have to be re-imagined
and re-built around new concepts and new vehicles. This would be very
expensive… and thus would likely not happen. Not anywhere near the scale that
would be required.
Doing away with MBTs would require a very honest
and very significant downgrade to national ambitions; a complete re-write of
how the Army fights and against what kind of enemy it can go; and the
rebuilding of the force structure around new and different vehicles and sources
of firepower.
The problem is the UK would probably do none of
the 3. Multiple governments have shown not to possess the necessary coherence
and honesty to admit that having less capability only ever means doing less,
not more. And the expenditure required to rebuild the army would be monstrous.
If the tanks are cut for lack of money, you cannot possibly expect big amounts
of money to be available right away, if ever, to launch a complete
reconstruction of the force.
The Army would be left with BOXERs for some 4
infantry battalions, and plans for 4 regiments on AJAX. And that would be it.
Half of 3rd Division would virtually cease to exist in one go, and
since 1st Division is mostly only an empty shell containing multiple
Light Role infantry battalions, there would be very, very little left to work
with.
This is not the time to lose the MBT. Such a
decision would also shut Britain pretty much out of any attempt to secure an
industrial role in future MBT programmes. One popular option that gets
mentioned a lot is “joining the franco-german Maing Ground Combat System”.
There are multiple issues with this: France and Germany are not really looking
for partners to treat with any equality. Industrial opportunities for other
countries will be extremely limited. The UK would be welcomed as customer, not
as partner.
And even if this was to change, the UK will have
very little chance to secure any important industrial role simply because the
relevant capabilities in this sector will have gone.
Rheinmetall BAE Land Systems is offering an
incredibly fascinating option for a deep modernization of CHALLENGER 2: a whole
new turret. This solves the ammunition problem of the CR2, which is the only
NATO tank that uses 2-piece ammunition, which prevents the armor-piercing rod
to be lengthened, thus hard-capping lethality. The CR2 ammunition is
increasingly obsolete and is an oddity that offers zero commonality to NATO
stocks and developments. No path to greater armor-piercing capability
(important in the light of new Russian developments) and no chance to adopt
modern programmable explosive rounds either. The new turret has been tested on
a CHALLENGER 2 hull armed with the NATO standard 120 mm smoothbore and the very
latest ammunition.
The new turret also comes fully digitalized and
with modern systems, including new optics shared with AJAX, offering logistical
commonality.
 |
| The first LEP demonstrator by Rheinmetall (now RBLS) focused on a "conservative" approach by going with the standard 120/55 smoothbore. |
 |
| The second demonstrator, publicly unveiled only last July, is more radically new as it comes with the 130/51 smoothbore. The turret is the same, but fitted with extra armour on the front and sides, possibly also as a form of counterweight for the cannon. Rheinmetall is betting big on this turret and this cannon; for them the CHALLENGER 2 LEP is an exciting opportunity, but the turret is very clearly aimed at future developments (MGCS) and at the LEOPARD 2 upgrade market. The first CHALLENGER 2 demonstrator was showcased at the NEDS show in the Netherlands in 2019, along with the 130 mm shell. It was a hint of what was coming, and a clear sign of the turret being meant for far more than just CHALLENGER. In the Netherlands, nobody cares about CHALLENGER. LEOPARD 2, on the other hand... |
But more than that, the new turret is a product
that Rheinmetall is using to develop next-generation solutions that could find
a vast market in the future as LEOPARD 2 customers around the world take an
interest.
In July it was revealed that the new turret,
mounted on a CHALLENGER 2 hull (presumably the 2nd of the tanks
given originally to Rheinmetall to become demonstrators for LEP proposals) has
been trialed with the new 130/51 gun, which offers an estimated 50% lethality
boost.
This new cannon is not yet a given for the
franco-german MGCS, but is expected to eventually be officially picked, and it
is assumed it will become a NATO standard in time as a consequence.
Clearly there is a risk that, in the end, the
new gun won’t be so widely adopted. Or perhaps it will only be adopted over
many years.
Then again, every risk comes with an
opportunity. There is a more than real possibility that this new gun will only
grow in relevance in the future, and that it might pick up big export orders.
If the UK became the launch customer and got
RBLS to launch production of the turret, gun and ammunition in the country, the
heavy armour industrial capability of the country would go from moribund back
to very healthy. It would be much easier to secure a role into a future tank
programme too. Perhaps even have a leadership position into an alternative
programme to the franco-german one, with countries like Italy and Poland not at
all thrilled by the virtually inexistent role for their industries if they were
to buy into the MGCS.
Rheinmetall is likely to be sympathetic with a
UK base for the new turret and gun because London is less likely to impose bans
that prevent the company from bagging massive and lucrative middle east
contracts. The german parliament has killed off several opportunities that
Rheinmentall would have loved to pursue.
There is a huge opportunity within reach. In
order to make CHALLENGER 2 fit for the next 2 decades, the new turret is a
must. And whether it is armed with the 120 mm or the new 130 mm, new ammunition
will have to be part of the expenditure. Arguably, this is exactly the time to
be bold and adopt the new gun.
MIV and
WARRIOR
MIV is a huge part of why the Army’s budget is
in trouble, but BOXER is a good vehicle, and there are understandable reasons
for wanting wheeled armour. Ideally, there should be both fully tracked and
fully wheeled brigades, but the British Army does not have the resources to
make it happen anytime soon, and so a different approach is required.
As I’ve written multiple times, I think the best
compromise that can be pursued from where the Army currently stands is the
French one. This means giving up tracked IFVs in favor of wheeled ones.
WARRIOR CSP is not yet under production
contract, and since the base hull, even after the upgrade, shows all the
limitations of age and of a powerpack that is not being replaced with a more
modern and powerful one, it might be wiser to just abandon the project and the
whole fleet.
The money (more than 800 million are earmarked
for the WCSP production), the 40mm gun and the turrets should instead be put
into BOXER.
Integration of the turret into a BOXER module
should not be overly complex. Lockheed Martin fit one onto a BOXER and carried
out some early trials, including weapon firings, as far back as 2015. While
these industry-led demonstrations involve integrations that are far less mature
than one might think, there should be no reason for the turret not fitting on a
troop-carrying module.
The turreted BOXERs would then be mixed with the
APCs already on order with the aim of eventually forming 8 battalions: 2 for each
Armoured and Medium brigade. There are many reasons for me to formulate this
recommendation, but they all more or less stem from the following main
considerations: the Warrior hull is old and tired and the CSP does not quite
solve that, nor does replace the old powerpack; an all MIV fleet helps
standardization; having the infantry on wheels helps the Army be more
self-deployable and means the precious few Heavy and Light Equipment Transports
(89 and 77 respectively) are free to focus on moving the MBTs and other tracked
platforms, such as AJAX and TERRIER; having at least a portion of the BOXERs
well armed with a 40mm gun means that, apart from being able to get to the
fight, they will also be able to fight. The current MIV, armed like a
SAXON, can get there but can’t get into a fight, only drop its infantry a safe
distance back.
 |
| With thanks to Jon Hawkes (@JonHawkes275) who dug up these old slides and posted them on his Twitter. He is a must-follow in the field of Armour. |
Finally, plans for a new tracked support vehicle
to replace FV432 seem to have died entirely, and it would border on ridiculous
to field a 28 tons tracked Warrior supported by wheeled 8x8s weighting close to
40.
Boxer is a modern and well protected hull, and
if the Army cannot afford a proper split of tracks and wheels, on balance of
merits and defects, wheels should probably take precedence. This is what France
has done with the VBCI replacing the last tracked IFVs of the Armee de
Terre.
It is a compromise, since there a tracked IFV
will always have a greater ability to run down obstacles and dug-in positions
and will always have greater all-terrain mobility than a wheeled platform, but I
feel it would be a good compromise all the same.
Again, a priority for me would also be to
re-evaluate the variants of MIV to be procured, reducing to the bare minimum
the number of ambulances and command posts in favor of pursuing instead a 120mm
mortar and an ATGW variants as well as, potentially, more APCs / IFVs to
increase, if at all possible, the number of mechanized battalions in the Army.
With over 500 vehicles already on order, it should be feasible. I’ve written
about this in greater detail in a previous article.
The Ambulance role and, wherever possible, the
C2 role would be instead “offloaded” onto much cheaper Multi Role Vehicle
Protected variants. Regarding MRV-P, I’d personally urge the Army to finally
proceed with the programme with the aim of rationalizing the current dog’s
breakfast of multiple “mini” fleets, getting rid progressively of Husky,
Panther, DURO, Pinzgauer and part of the Land Rovers.
My favorite for Group 2 would be the Thales
Bushmaster, to be assembled in their Glasgow plant as promised by the company
and by the Australian government.
I do realize, however, that a quiet, unspoken
further delay to the whole of MRV-P is likely, as it defers expenditure into a
vague, undetermined future.
Further pre-Integrated Review reading material:
- Amphibious without ships - There is no amphibious capability without adequate ships and ship to shore connectors. A look at the USMC reforms and the question mark over the Future Commando Force
- A different angle to "difficult choices" - If the UK really doesn't want to spend money to maintain its capabilities, it needs to at least be wise on what it invests on. Building on strengths is more cost-effective than trying to reinforce weakness.
- The many weaknesses of STRIKE - 5 years on, there is still not a consensun on what STRIKE is actually good for. And it is becoming painfully clear just how much it might cost the Army to pursue this plan.
- Towards the SDSR 2020 - This was written in December 2019, before the COVID spending generated the current psychosis around public expenditure. While we wait to understand if HMG chooses to obsess about Debt reduction and launches a new Austerity drive (hopefully not), the overview of the main issues remains valid.