Time for courage

 

The British Army is expected to reveal more details about its future plans sometime “in the autumn”, which in theory means sometime soon. The internal work to define the way forward is known as Project EMBANKMENT and is meant to put meat on the bones of the Future Soldier announcement that came together with the Defence Command Paper.

The Army’s Future Soldier position at the time was articulated as follows:

 

•       An additional £3bn will be invested in new Army equipment over the next ten years on top of the £20bn already planned.

[NOTE: we have to assume it is part of this money that has been used to announce the GMLRS upgrade and new munitions, at 250 million, and the Mobile Fires Platform, replacement for AS90 and part of the L118s, at “over” 800 million. Both these projects already existed before, but clearly they didn’t have any funding line before the Review. The 120 million investment in the RANGER regiment, the planned 2023 purchases of new mini UAVs to replace Desert Hawk III and of new C-UAS weapons; plus plans for CAMM ER to beef up ground based air defence are probably all funded from this pot. “Over” 200 million have also been promised to beef up Electronic Warfare capabilities.]

 

•       By 2025 the Army will be 72,500 regular and 30,100 reserve personnel.

•       There will be no loss of cap badges and no redundancies of Regular soldiers.

•       The Army will continue to recruit in large numbers the diverse talent that it needs to maintain a competitive advantage now and in the future.  

•       1 MERCIAN and 2 MERCIAN will be merged.  In time they will form one of the new Boxer-mounted battalions in the new structure.

[NOTE: 1 MERCIAN was earlier planned to be a WARRIOR-mounted battalion. With WARRIOR going out of service and a lot of garage and barracks space, sometimes literally newly built, becoming available in Tidworth and Bulford, we have to assume earlier plans for BOXER battalions will be completely torn apart. There is little to no sense in putting BOXER in Catterick, as once planned, when Salisbury Plain is now “empty”.)

 

•       A new Army Special Operations Brigade based around a new Ranger Regiment able to operate in high threat environments to train, advise and accompany partners.  This will be initially seeded from the current Specialised Infantry Battalions: 1 SCOTS, 2 PWRR, 2 LANCS and 4 RIFLES.

 

•       A new Security Force Assistance Brigade to complement the Army Special Operations Brigade, operating in lower threat environments, routinely deployed across the globe to develop the capacity of partners and allies.

[NOTE: effectively this means turning another 4 battalions into Specialised Infantry. One of them will probably be 3 GURKHA RIFLES, which was being built up as 5^th of the Specialised units when the new Army plan appeared]

 

•       2 YORKS will become a new prototype warfighting and experimentation battalion. [This has now happened, with 2 YORKS, while based in Cyprus, busy testing new equipments including Dismounted Situational Awareness tablets; Robotic Platoon Vehicles and the new Assault Rifle In-line Low Light Sight, ARILLS]

Clipped on in front of the Day sight, the ARILLS "fuses" thermal imagery and image intensification for maximum performance at night and in all low light conditions. 

•       The Infantry will be reorganised into four Divisions of Infantry with a more balanced number of battalions and offering a wider range of infantry roles. 

[Each infantry division will be aligned to one of the RANGER battalions and, presumably, one of the Specialised battalions as well. Each infantry division will probably get 1 mechanised battalion as well, so each division can offer a wide range of opportunities to new recruits]

 

•       The Army will reorganise into Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), including permanently assigned supporting elements like artillery, engineers, electronic warfare, cyber and UAS.  

 

Plans to upgrade GMLRS, reactivate some of the ones in reserve (44 launchers will be upgraded, compared to 35 now in use) and acquire new, long range and more advanced munitions is extremely welcome, but much of this was supposed to be funded already before the Review. 

•       A very-high-readiness Global Response Force of 16 Air Assault Brigade and the newly formed 1^st Aviation Brigade, which will be ready to respond from humanitarian relief through to crisis response and warfighting.

[The British armed forces have a formidable array of capabilities needed to build and sustain an excellent air mobile brigade: 8 C-17, 22 A-400M, 60 Chinook, 50 Apache helicopters, a new Medium Lift Helicopter to come, plus Wildcat. It’s a shame it took years to notice. The formation of the Aviation brigade was a much welcome step and further refinement of the combined capabilities of the two brigades would deliver a truly excellent tool. On the other hand, the loss of C-130J is regrettable, as it reduces the airlift capability. It’s very much contradictory to cut cargo aircraft while expanding the role of the air mobile force, but coherence in UK defence planning has never been a factor...]

 

•       The Land Industrial Strategy will strengthen our partnerships with industry to unlock and rapidly exploit the potential of innovation and spiral development, delivering the kit we need when we need it, as part of the Army’s contribution to UK prosperity.

 

In terms of timelines, the Future Soldier briefing noted:

 

•       The Army will use spring and early summer 2021 to refine and test the designs, capabilities and structure below BCT-level. It will plan carefully to maximise the potential of limited resources, particularly key equipment.

•        This work will be presented to the Army Board in late June 21.

•       The MOD Reserve Forces 30 review will be published in May 21. 

•       Detailed programming and balanced decisions about the optimum resourcing and sequencing of this institutional change will follow, enabling CGS to issue orders to the Army in early autumn.

In terms of Force Structure, the Future Soldier plan as published at the time of the Defence Command Paper was as unimaginative as they come. The "new" Army linearly fell from a planned 4 mechanized brigades (2 armoured, 2 STRIKE) to just 2 mechanized Brigade Combat Teams, ugly and inevitable hybrids pieced together with the surviving pieces of Armoured Bdes (Challenger 3) and STRIKE (AJAX, which was originally meant for Armour anyway; and BOXER).

1 Cavalry regiment with AJAX, 1 tank regiment, 2 infantry battalions on BOXER. If this plan will be confirmed, it couldn’t possibly be any more foregone than it already is. You lose WARRIOR, you end up here. That's literally it. I was writing about it back in February. 

The only "innovation" at the time was the attempt to turn 1st Artillery Brigade into a 3rd manoeuvre bde by putting the 2 "orphaned" AJAX regiments into it, alongside GMLRS but without infantry. The Army calls this formation Deep Recce Strike Brigade Combat Team. This is not new per se, but it's new to see it as an organic, permanent formation: the Deep Strike Recce BCT is, really, the comfortable choice that lets the British Army hang on a couple of Cavalry regiments otherwise at risk, while adopting a familiar, reassuring mix that was used in Op GRANBY in 1991, grouping 16/5 Lancers with 32 and 39 Heavy regts RA as Divisional Artillery Group. What is old is new again.

The other 2 manoeuvre brigades were inevitably downgraded to Light BCTs, with the assumption that one would be Lightly Mechanized thanks to the use of FOXHOUND. Apparently, even in the middle of this disaster, the Army remains uninterested in hanging on to MASTIFF and RIDGEBACK, and we really should ask ourselves why, especially since these vehicles have received a quick, painless, cheap but important mobility upgrade and have been sent to Mali where they have an important role.

 

At a macro level, the new organization is purely born out of despair and can’t have taken more than 5 minutes to design. Literally.

Where innovation is supposed to happen is at lower level, and we have to hope that the Army will be bold enough to truly change its ways, and go back to the drawing board in regard to the organization of the brigades. 

The british BCT is described as a formation which

 

“will be structured to integrate capabilities at the lowest appropriate level with supporting capabilities routinely assigned including artillery, Un-crewed Aerial Systems, cyber, air defence, engineers, signals and logistic support. This will create more self-sufficient tactical units with the capacity to work with partners across government, allies and industry.”

 

The internal brief insists: “A Land force structured to integrate capabilities at the lowest appropriate level creating more self-sufficient points of presence”.

 

 

This is perfectly in tune with assumptions about the future that have been in Army thinking for several years now. The Integrated Operating Concept 2025 has notoriously listed the necessary attributes of the future force as:

 

Have smaller and faster capabilities to avoid detection

Trade reduced physical protection for increased mobility

Rely more heavily on low-observable and stealth technologies

Depend increasingly on electronic warfare and passive deception measures to gain and maintain information advantage

Include a mix of crewed, uncrewed and autonomous platforms

Be integrated into ever more sophisticated networks of systems through a combat cloud that makes best use of data

Have an open systems architecture that enables the rapid incorporation of new capability

Be markedly less dependent on fossil fuels

Employ non-line-of-sight fires to exploit the advantages we gain from information advantage

Emphasize the non-lethal disabling of enemy capabilities, thereby increasing the range of political and strategic options

 

The Army’s own Conceptual Force 2035 doubles down on the same kind of design drivers. This study imagined an army of 3 smaller but capable divisions made of lighter, faster, more deployable, largely independent battlegroups, with dispersion being the norm. Conceptual Force 2035 specifies that the disaggregated fighting requires Combined Arms capabilities to be organic at lower level, to ensure the dispersed Battlegroups do not have to wait for a superior echelon to make supports available. This includes having more organic Indirect Fire capability and employing it alongside greater ATGW capability to offset the capability currently delivered by MBTs through “lighter” vehicles.

The BGs will be expected to carry out, and I quote, deeper, more risky and aggressive manoeuvre. Robotic, sacrificial systems will be used to press on reconnaissance, and I quote again, to the point of destruction, in order to enable the BG to use frenetic op-tempo to make up for the lack of mass.

The resulting BGs would be around 500-strong but are supposed to match the current mission set of a 1250-strong armoured BG though the use of robotics and higher op-tempo. The Conceptual Force imagined that, from the then objective force of around 82.000 regulars, the British Army would be able to form some 48 such Combined Arms battlegroups. The organization would work to the Rule of 4, with an Assault Force, Covering Force, Echelon Force and Reserve Force. These BGs would be grouped in Brigades with enough CS and CSS elements to fight, again, largely independently from the Division level.

 

Conceptual Force 2035's key points

We can agree or disagree with the assumptions above, but there is no denying that, at a conceptual and doctrinal level, the scenario has been set. This is the future force that the Army thinks is needed in the future.

Now the real question is whether the Army has any appetite to reorganize its Force Structure accordingly, and let go of some old, deeply ingrained tribalism that has been allowed to put up all sorts of avoidable problems.

The examples that could be made when referring to that “tribalism” are many, at all levels, but my favourites  are always the same because they perfectly illustrate the avoidable stupidity that permeates the British Army’s structure.

First example: when “battlegrouping”, Cavalry / Tank squadrons or demi-squadrons are mixed with companies of infantry. A battlegroup based on an Infantry Battalion comes with the very significant advantage of having a Fire Support Company with mortars, snipers and anti-tank platoons. A BG based on a tank formation does not get a Fire Support Coy, because Tank regiments don’t have them. The AJAX regiments organized as “Medium Armour” formations, mirroring Tank regiments, would also not have had one. The cavalry regiments have anti-tank capability in their Guided Weapons Troop, but normally have no mortars. One of the “innovations” that the Household Cavalry Regiment was (is?) pursuing as part of STRIKE and of its transition to AJAX, is the creation of a mortar troop.

This, for me, is tribalism. That in this age of warfare we are still looking at these baby steps is insanity.

The use of UAVs is also very stovepiped, with 32 Regiment Royal Artillery holding the Mini-UAS capability and parcelling it out upon battlegrouping. This frankly won’t do in the future. Capability must spread out across formations and go down the ladder of formation size; combined arms must be the norm, not the on-deployment mixing of today.

 

If the Army is to move in any way closer to its own Concept Force 2035 ambition, it needs to find the courage to gut its current, increasingly nonsensical structure, mix Infantry & Cavalry and redistribute capabilities with no deference to capbadges and outdated Corps separations, creating Permanent Combined Arms Battlegroups.

 

Such a radical reform is no longer avoidable, since the Army is trying to modernize in the context of a regular manpower cap moving down from a theoretical, never-achieved 82,000 to 72,500 by 2025.

The regular Army is going to be smaller, and positions will be lost, and units will need to change. In particular, the Infantry is bound to take a hit, simply because Combat Support and Combat Service Support formations have already been cut back so much that most of the Army’s brigades are make-believe formations comprising only infantry, with no artillery, communications, engineering or logistics.

1st Division's brigades, with the exception of one which gets some supports on rotation, are next to useless paper bags containing infantry battalions to parcel out in the never ending quest to rob Peter so that Paul can be outfitted in a decent way for deployment.

This has to change. The Army will continue to drown in its own chaos otherwise.

 

While BOXER is an excellent base vehicle, it is not a complete, coherent capability unless the right mix of variants is achieved, and the equipment fit is decent. At the moment, the British Army's equipment fit plans are dismal, with, for example, the mortar carrier being literally just an APC carrying a L16 81mm mortar that will only be able to fire once dismounted. Same for the Observation Post Vehicle, which at the moment is not planned to be equipped with its own sensors and target marker to enable target designation from under armour. Key variants are missing entirely; others could now be a duplication (Engineer Section Vehicle and the ARGUS vehicle of the Ajax family seem to be in open conflict now that only 2 brigades remain), the number of infantry carriers is ridiculously small, firepower on the vehicles is absysmal. Change is urgently needed. 

As the reveal date for Embankment draws nearer, the leaks to the press have begun, with the Daily Mail writing about incoming reductions to the Infantry, which is said to be destined to shrink from 16,500 to 11,000. Apparently, the Rifles regiment didn’t take well to the news and promptly leaked the internal memo to the press. Either the leaker or, more likely, the Daily Mail itself, have also immediately felt the need to point out that the plan will be “overseen by the new Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. The evil Royal Navy is already out to get the Army’s scalp, seems to be the narrative that we will be force-fed over the coming months.

The fact that the Admiral is not yet in post, and that Embankment is the Army’s own plan formulated over the last several months is, naturally, a detail of no importance: never let facts get in the way of a good tale!

 

The reduction in the Infantry numbers is not and cannot possibly be a surprise to anyone who read the Defence Command Paper and Future Soldier brochure. Where did people think that the manpower reduction would hit? On the last few enablers left to ensure that the Army can scrape together 4 brigades somewhat deployable?

It was inevitably going to come to this.

And if the Army was to finally pursue its own imagined Future Combat Team, around 500 strong, it would again be inevitable that Infantry numbers would be further affected.

It was all always under our eyes.

 

The impact on the Infantry’s effectiveness is the only thing that isn’t yet clear. Some reductions will be pretty much automatic since mechanized battalions are larger than Light Role formations. As WARRIOR disappears and only 4 Mechanized battalions remain, a few hundred posts will disappear naturally. Several hundred more will vanish as 4 (or rather 3, assuming 3 GURKHA RIFLES carries on) battalions are cut down from 500/600 to 250-or so to form the new Security Force Assistance Brigade.

2 MERCIAN effectively disappears with the merging into 1 MERCIAN, accounting for several hundred more. And the rest will have to be shaved off with some other change to the structure of the remaining Battalions. 

Unfortunately the Army has once more tied its hands up by insisting that no capbadge will be lost and that no other battalions will disband, so this inexorably means every remaining battalion will get smaller.

How, and with what “capability compensation”, is the only question that remains on the table.

 

Army 2020, in 2011, attempted to absorb the manpower cut by removing a Platoon from every Rifle Company in every Light Role battalion. This proved unworkable, so a whole Company was removed instead, with the assumption that the hole would be filled by a formed company of reservists from the paired Reserve battalion.

This arrangement on paper makes a lot of sense in what is supposed to be a fully integrated force of Regulars and Reservists, but unfortunately proved unworkable because the availability of reservists is, understandably, not very good and not very predictable. 

The number of times the Reserve has been able to deploy a formed Company probably fits on the fingers of one hand. I can think of 4 PARA deploying one to the Falklands, and a case in Cyprus. 

Day to day efficiency of the regular battalions was badly impaired, as was their ability to train. It became normal to put together companies of two battalions to make one, which obviously defeats the point of keeping so many tiny battalions in the first place. 

Eventually, in 2015, the missing companies were rebuilt, redistributing the manpower obtained by inventing the Specialised Infantry battalions and downsizing them to just around 250 personnel.

But this time, manpower cannot just move around. It will be shed for good.

And there are just two ways in which this can happen:

-       The Stupid, Capbadge-driven way: insist in holding on to Infantry battalions more or less as they are, and go back to the (failed) Army 2020 model. This is unfortunately highly likely to happen, if recent Army history is any indication.

-       The Conceptual Force 2035 way: remove the artificial separations between Infantry, Cavalry, Armour, etcetera, and build up permanent, Combined Arms Battlegroups which will probably have the equivalent of just 2 Infantry companies, again, but will at least be designed from the ground up to include armour-support, UAVs, Robotic vehicles when they eventually happen, and beefed-up organic Fires. 

 

The most common counter-argument deployed against Permanent battlegrouping is that, supposedly, maintaining the separation of roles enables each component to pursue excellence in its field, and battlegrouping only for deployment safeguards “flexibility”.

Personally, I think this is an extraordinarily weak argument. It could be countered in all sorts of ways, but i once again will go back to the example made earlier: keeping the specialties separated results in incomplete battlegroups simply because, to make one example, the Cavalry absurdly does not have mortars.

The separation only enables and sometimes mandates the proliferation of capability gaps that require ever more “robbing Peter to pay Paul”: a stupefying number  of separate formations sending bits and pieces to one another to build something that actually works.

 

I don’t see a single genuinely good reason why we should continue to keep separate formations that will never deploy on operations without being broken apart and reassembled in combined arms battlegroups.

All too often, when looking back to operations, the post-action analysis contains the passage “the units in the battlegroup had only been together for a short time and didn’t know each other enough”, or similar remarks. Lieutenant M. Dewis, on TANK 2020 (volume 102, No 801) makes a series of recommendations to try and save the Regimental system while enabling the creation of effective Combined Arms Teams.

He stops short of advocating for permanent overarching formations, but he underlines the need for broader, more stable affiliations and more cross-training. At the same time he can’t help but note that Battlegroup level training is expensive and an increasingly rare commodity at a time in which it is more desperately needed than ever. It’s all good to insist on social networking and “forming and storming” by “intruding” in each other’s low level training events as much as possible, and simulation and tabletop wargames obviously help, but I don’t think half-measures are adequate. Certainly not in the context of a further shrinking Army.

The Army’s Conceptual Force 2035 is clear in its working assumption that the future is the combined arms Future Combat Team. It is time for the Army to move in that direction in a serious way, if it believes its own innovative thinking. There is absolutely no rational reason to claim that more self-sufficient formations wouldn’t be flexible and able to cooperate and re-ORBAT as necessary.

 

The Army insists that “the future battlefield will be different. It will be harder to hide and weapons will destroy with greater accuracy, range and precision. People will retain their centrality in the battle of wills, while robots and UAVs will increasingly reduce the number of people engaged in the front line. Legacy capabilities are becoming obsolete ever more rapidly”. 

To counter that, the Army says it needs faster, agile, well integrated, combined arms formations able to aggregate and disaggregate across a vast battlefield.

If this is the assumption, act on it.

 

The attributes of the Future Combat Team are the key to the whole concept: if you want to fight dispersed and be lighter but still capable, you must pack a serious punch and have far more capability pushed down the levels of command. This is something that in STRIKE was never done in any meaningful way. Firepower has been dead last in the list of priorities so far, and that made the whole thing not credible.

In fact, what is most striking about the Conceptual Force 2035 is that it is so entirely alien to what the British Army actually looks like today, in structure, “culture” and programmes. Permanent Combined Arms Battlegroups are anathema in today’s British Army and among the purists of capbadges and specialty separations. CS and CSS are a scarce resource completely out of balance with the number of infantry battalions. Indirect Fires and ATGWs are weaknesses, not strengths. The Rule of 4 is nowhere to be seen, and indeed resources in multiple areas are spread so thin than even the Rule of 3 is dubious, with infantry battalions that could literally shed a rifle company soon.

 

British Army armour leaving BATUS. The end of an era, happening largely behind curtains of shame-induced silence. 

Embankment is an opportunity for change. The reduction to regular manpower margins will be painful, there is no way to deny it will be. Trying to absorb the reduction while hanging on to 31 battalions will only make the pain worse and result in 31 ever more unusable formations.

It is time to be courageous, and end the tribalism and the excuses.

 

Change is desperately and urgently needed in equipment plans as well: AJAX and BOXER purchases as currently planned, in consequence of the disappearance of WARRIOR, no longer integrate each other. BOXER variants mix and equipment fit must change to lessen the devastating impact of losing WARRIOR. For a wider discussion about this aspect, see: http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-boxer-purchase.html

and

http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.com/2021/05/combined-arms-regiments-on-way-to.html

 

In the Global Response Force, investment is needed to ensure 16 Air Assault acquires organic vehicle mobility to complement the helicopter mobility. Light, Chinook-portable vehicles would enable the PARAs to manoeuvre quickly out of a landing zone, allowing the helicopter to drop troops off further away from a target and thus hopefully away from enemy air defences.

In terms of organisation, there is obvious scope for a greater integration of the all-important Chinook force into the Aviation Brigade. Since the Chinook is RAF-owned and operated, it is currently not an integral part of the brigade and, moreover, the Squadrons are not equipped with the same wealth of organic life support on the ground. At the moment, APACHE and Wildcat squadrons can operate on the battlefield in a way that Chinook cannot replicate, being more tied to well established airbases. This difference is unhelpful at best, and would need correcting.

There is also obvious scope for rationalising the current separated bits and pieces of ground support units: the current 7 REME, 132 Sqn Royal Logistic Corps, Tactical Supply Wing and Joint Helicopter Support Squadron could and should be re-organized to cut down duplication and maximize the number of complete task lines covering everything from ammunitioning, fueling, equipment maintenance and Landing Zone management.

It seems also obvious that 244 Signal Squadron, the one unit tasked with providing communications to the Joint Helicopter Command, really belongs organically into the Aviation Brigade.

They are not big changes, and in several cases they would probably generate efficiencies and savings, but they will require the cancellation of some redundant HQs and the removal of barriers between Army and RAF and between RLC, REME and Royal Signals.

 

The barrier between Royal Logistic Corps and REME might indeed be brought down more or less completely. There have been suggestions that the Army might be headed towards integrated Close Support Regiments, possibly including also the medical capability.

Defence already has one such integrated regiment, the Commando Logistic Regiment of 3 Commando Brigade, although this is admittedly a somewhat special case as the Royal Marines have the intimate support of ship-borne assets and stores. 

However, the STRIKE Brigades were also going to have a CSS battalion obtained by merging a RLC formation with a REME one. There’s a possibility that this integration will now become a target army-wide. There are resistances, but such integration is the norm in multiple allied armies, including the US, and it’s increasingly difficult to claim the British Army cannot adapt.

 

Change will also be needed in wider strategy and purpose as Forward Basing is finally embraced beyond the persistent presence of Specialised Infantry Companies.

Lieutenant General Chris Tickell, Deputy CGS, revealed at DSEI what the Army is doing to increase its responsiveness in key regions of the world. The BATUS training area in Canada has been quietly “robbed” of its large, permanent fleet of armoured vehicles, which have been brought back from February this year. Some 112 vehicles between Challenger tanks, AS90 guns, Warriors and “T2” (Titan bridgelayers and Trojan AVRE of the Royal Engineers) have been moved out and are heading towards Sennelager, in Germany, which will act both as the de-facto main training area for the mechanized force, and a Forward Base which will be better able to project heavy forces towards Eastern Europe.

The Omani-British Joint Training Area near Duqm, which we have been promised will be “tripled in size” with additional investment, will become the other main training ground for british mechanized forces. Units will deploy to Oman for “Khanjer Oman” exercises and will remain for a few months, rather than just for the duration of the exercise. In so doing, they will become a Forward Based force to complement the afloat Littoral Response Group (South) that the Royal Navy and Marines will base at Duqm from 2023.

The BATUK training area in Kenya, similarly, will see light / air assault battlegroups spending 2-3 months at a time in the area, rather than weeks as currently happen for the “Askari Storm” exercises.

BATUS, de facto, is no more. Although it is not closing down entirely, its era appears to have ended, and it would have deserved a more dignified goodbye, but the Army, MOD and Government presumably don’t like admitting that there just aren’t enough armoured vehicles left to sustain a training fleet based in Canada.

Training fleets in Sennelager and Oman can be realistically “double-hatted” as rapidly deployable, forward based forces. An armoured battlegroup stuck in the Canadian prairie cannot. At the end of the day, this is the one explanation for the move.

 

BATUS was notable for its absence in the graphics about Forward Presence. There was a reason for it, as has since become apparent. 

But given the premises, it is the right move, for once. I encourage the Army to insist on this path, and invest on it, and work closely together with the Royal Marines so that the Oman-based contingent is closely integrated with the LRG(S) and with its ships, that are the key element to enable the forward based force to move quickly across a theatre which is dominated by the sea.

 

What is still missing from the picture is an Army formation equipped and trained with the High North in mind. As the UK reinforces its strategic commitment to Norway and the wider Arctic, and makes the Littoral Response Group (North) one of the two main prongs of its international engagement strategy, there is obvious scope for the Army to provide a heavier force to back-up the afloat Royal Marines component.

 

It’s an obvious step to synchronize the Army with the Nation’s strategy.

But it will take courage.

Vertical panic

The thick crowd of hardcore F-35 critics are out in force in the last while regarding supposed "problems" with the F-35B vertical landing, which, according to some well known "no-F-35" commenters, deny the achieving of the expeditionary operations that are at the base of the STOVL requirement.
It has been sad to read articles in which long-time aviation commenters wake up to AM-2 mat with a few long decades of delay; and it is sad to see how they ignore how forward basing operations are actually conduced, in order to lament "issues" with the program.
I don't think most of the above commentators actually ignore the facts: i believe they are deliberately using half-truths to launch new attacks against the programme that they effectively hate. For some well known characters, the F-35 is now an obsession. They launch attacks at each and every chance they get, regardless of facts.

US Marines preparing a strip with AM-2 mat. The AM-2 has been in use for many decades, and in Afghanistan alone, 8 million square feet of mat have been deployed.

The current "storm" has started when it was officialised that the F-35B won't display its vertical landing capability at the RIAT and Farnborough air shows in July, because the runways at the two airports pose safety challenges due to the high temperatures connected with a vertical landing or take off.
The problem, specifically, is that the high temperature exhaust directed on the concrete runway are highly likely to provoke spalling, cracking the superficial layer of concrete and thus potentially creating a FOD issue.
I don't know if in future, following more exhaustive testing, the F-35B will more freely land vertically at air shows, but what i know for sure is that this "issue" was known already a long time ago, but no one really cared because it has no real operational impact at all.
We are not producing F-35Bs for air shows, but for operations on warships, on short and austere runways and on expeditionary airfields. And all of these things can be done, because the F-35B can actually land and take off vertically on ship decks and on AM-2 matting, which are the surfaces from where it should do so. The F-35B has completed well over seven hundred vertical landings, most of which have been made on two landing pads built of AM-2 matting at Patuxent River.
Most importantly, it can make short take offs and short rolling landings on runways and other hard surfaces.

Vertical landing is used mostly just for shipboard operations. Forward basing ashore does not necessarily require vertical landing, and when vertical landing is required, it is tipically done on matting surfaces laid down specifically to create landing pads. This has been the rule for decades, already with the Harrier: it is not something introduced by the F-35.
It is true, the F-35B generates more heat and twice as much thrust as the Harrier, so the need for matting is even more marked than with the old AV-8B. But this is the price that we have to pay for a STOVL jet that has to be supersonic and able to land vertically with a very substantial bring back weight.
Vertical bring back has been another capability of the F-35B that has been widely attacked in the past, but it is actually one of the most impressive features of the aircraft. At 5000 lbs, it is just 1000 lbs less than the aircraft carrier bring back weight for the F/A-18 Hornet, and it is well above the bring back of the Harrier itself. Before the latest variant of the Pegasus engine was rolled out, the Harrier's bring back weight margin was truly minimum. When the british Harrier GR7 flew over Sierra Leone in 2000, the bring back was limited to one 540 lbs bomb plus fuel margin, and that was when flying without external fuel tanks. The bring back weight margins in hot weather were, in other words, incredibly tight.
Sea Harrier and Harrier operations in the Persian Gulf on the Invincible class carriers in the late 90s was subject to limitations, and were assessed as being doable only between November and April, as the high ambient temperatures limited engine take off and landing performance.
Even with the latest Pegasus engine variants, the bring back weight of the Harrier remains very limited, and at least 2000 lbs short of the F-35B's margin.

Weight requires thrust, and thrust means heat. It is actually quite brilliant how the F-35B does not need re-heat for VTOL, and the lift fan, despite its drawbacks, is actually a very smart solution as it generates cold air lift. Without these two features, if all the lift force had to come from high temperature jet exhaust, the F-35B would probably really melt the deck.

Returning to the focus of the article: is there a VTOL problem negating forward basing or at least requiring a dramatic change from Harrier procedures honed over decades of operations?
The answer is no, because the key ability for forward basing ashore is short take off and landing, not so much the vertical. Where vertical landing is expected, there will be landing pads built with matting. It has always been so, already with the Harrier. A few examples:

RAF Germany during the Cold War. The Harriers, initially based at the vast Wildenrath air base, then
moved to Gutersloh, were operated according to the WARLOC concept. WARLOC stands for War Locations, and it was a plan to advance packages of Harrier aircraft onto six forward, pre-surveyed locations within the 1(BR) Corps area of responsibility.
Six more flying sites were earmarked as step-ups, and two logistic parks held the supplies needed to make the pre-surveyed sites operational.
At the start of the conflict, the HQ RAFG would have ordered to stand up the six forward bases (two for each Harrier squadron in the force) and the convoys of personnel and supplies would have rushed forwards to these locations. The Harriers in the meanwhile would have taken off from their Main Base (Wildenrath first, Gutersloh after 1976) for their first attack missions, before landing at the forward sites, completing the dispersion plan.

The forward sites would  have been requisitioned under emergency legislation. The Harrier would have used country and urban roads built to schnellweg standard, meaning that they had integral cycle tracks on the shoulders of the carriageways, making them perfectly sized to act as short runways.
Main roads and autobahns (motorways) were not considered for Harrier basing, as they would be needed for land convoy movements and for much larger emergency airfields for non-STOVL aircraft.
The Harrier was meant to fly CAS sorties from the forward sites, without external fuel tanks to maximize the load of weapons (tipically BL755 cluster bombs and/or SNEB 68mm rockets). No 4 Sqn also had a tactical recce role, and had a five-cameras pod in its arsenal.

We have to make one thing clear here: the famous airstrips in the woods that we see in photos of the Harrier force in Germany were training sites with a possible but unlikely war role. They were not the actual War Locations. Wartime operations would have happened exploiting stretches of secondary roads in countryside villages and towns, so to have paved surfaces from which to make short take offs and landings.
The use of locations carefully selected within villages  offered the added benefit of buildings to exploit for the accommodation of supplies, personnel and communications. Supermarkets and other suitable large buildings would be exploited for parking the aircraft away from sight.
It is obvious that the Harrier force could not train for this exact scenario: some exercises were made flying from stretches of suburban roads temporarily closed by german authorities for that purpose, but the training was actually made in the famous woodland camps.
Here, the personnel lived in tents and on vehicles when lucky, and the aircraft operated most of the time from grass strips, something which made the sight of bogged-down Harriers quite common, giving much work to air support Royal Engineers. Temporary matting and metal planking was used as possible to help the aircraft move around without sinking in mud. Each of these woodland forward bases had a vertical landing pad built typically with MEXE (the british Military Experimental Establishment mat), and sized 75 feet x 75 feet. The Harriers would land vertically on the pad tucked away in a clearing in the forest, and from there they would be towed by Unimog 4x4 vehicles onto the well camouflaged parking areas.

Thankfully, a number of representative training areas was obtained during the 70s using stratches of paved roads in the Sennelager training area. The actual intended War Locations, however, were secrets well kept. The Harrier Plans office would send out teams in civilian clothes to carry out discreet surveys of promising locations identified by air reconnaissance. The main requirement of the forward sites was a stretch of paved road measuring at least 500 x 10 meters, with suitable access from "operational areas". These would tipically be light industrial estates or supermarkets: in other words, any kind of building accessible from the road and suitable for hiding aircraft and site infrastructure.
Note the desired size of the to-be landing strip: short take offs with considerable weapon loads and short landings were the key, not vertical landing. Harrier could have probably landed vertically on parking lots and other paved surfaces, yes, but this was not indispensable. Even repeated Harrier vertical landings, although less stressful than F-35B's VLs, would have a damaging effect on such surfaces, so that the lay down of a pad of matting might have been needed eventually.

An F-35B comes in to land on one of two AM-2 mat pads in Patuxent River. Much of the testing has been done here: the pads have seen hundreds of vertical landings, and several vertical take offs.

Belize 1975 and afterwards. Belize's single airport, despite the ambitious "international" title, only had a single, relatively short runway (considering the rigours of the climate) which was unsuitable for any combat aircraft of the RAF other than the Harrier. Six No 1 Sqn Harriers were deployed to Belize in a hurry with Victor air tanker support in response to very real threat of invasion coming from Guatemala. An earlier Belize emergency had been tackled in 1972 by rushing the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal across the Atlantic to deliver a show of force with its Buccaneers, but in 1975 Guatemala visibly prepared for a new aggression, and this time Ark Royal was too busy to move, as she was part of NATO' Northern Flank defence plan, and was engaged in exercise Ocean Safari off the north norwegian coast.
The Harrier deployed forwards to the small, inadequate airport, and operated there for four months. Operation NUCHA, as the deployment was known, eventually ended when Guatemala was rattled by a fearsome earthquake on 4 february 1976, which put the country in such distress than it ceased to be a threat.

Guatemala again mobilised its army already in 1977, however, and in July that year the UK again sent the Harriers, as Ark Royal was once more unavailable. The mighty Ark was about to reach the end of her operational life, and the UK no longer had assured availability of aircraft carrier power as her sisters had been sacrificed to budget cuts. In its absence, the Harrier detachment in Belize became permanent. It remained in place for sixteen years. Once more, the key aspect of forward basing capability was the ability to take off and land on short strips, not the ability to land fully vertically.


Falklands and the Atlantic Conveyor. In the Falklands the Harrier was used in innovative ways on hastily refited ships such as Atlantic Conveyor and on land, where it made use of a really barebone forward base established ashore after the amphibious landing in San Carlos.
The Atlantic Conveyor, a mixed RoRo and container cargo ship, was given a large deck by steel-plating the openings of the container holds, and on the bow, a vertical landing pad was assembled, using matting treated with anti-skid material. The pad can be easily seen in the photos of the vessel going south. The pad allowed the Harrier to fly on board from Ascension, and it was then used to allow the aircraft to take off from the vessel to fly the short hop to the aircraft carriers, when the Conveyor reached the area of operations.
Loaded back in the UK or flown in from Ascension, the Atlantic Conveyor eventually transported eight Sea Harriers, six Harrier GR3s, six Wessex helicopters and four Chinooks.
During the 10-days transit from Ascension to the area of operations, one Sea Harrier was kept ready on the pad, to be launched to intercept any shadowing argentine aircraft that might come spying the movements of the british vessels. The Harrier GR3s were bagged up to protect them from the salty marine environment.

The Vertical pad on the bow of Atlantic Conveyor

The constant here is the landing pad: it might be a logistic complication, but it is necessary from well before the F-35B appeared. Its installation, however, allowed the VTOL aircraft to fly in and away from the hastily converted merchant ship. Although no QRA Interception was launched from the Conveyor as no shadowing aircraft was detected, being able to even mount a QRA on the vessel is an example of the flexibility that the Harrier, and in future the F-35B, offer.

Sea Harrier and Atlantic Conveyor launch pad

The Atlantic Conveyor also transported all the equipment to build an Harrier Forward Air Base ashore, which was to include vertical landing pads and a 400 meters runway, plus fuel infrastructure and command and control sufficient to base and operate a squadron of 12 aircraft.
Unfortunately, the sinking of the Conveyor dealt a very vicious blow to the plan, as much of the precious equipment needed for establishing the FOB sunk with her. Nonetheless, enough planking and matting equipment of all sorts was recovered to put together a 260 meters strip, a vertical landing area and space for parking and servicing 4 Harriers. The FOB, although far more austere and barebone than intended, gave the Harrier GR3s a place were to mount Ground Alerts from which they could quickly move out to deliver air support. The Sea Harriers coming from the carriers far out at sea, away from argentine attacks, had the chance to use the FOB to refuel and extend the duration of their vital CAP patrols up-threat.
As barebone as it was, the FOB would support peaks of 120 air movements per day, delivering tens of thousands of litres of fuel every day.
The landing strip offered the bare minimun facilities needed to land and refuel, and its limits were shown in some occasions: one Harrier GR3 was lost when it overshot the end of the strip after a FOD incident. The thrown-together pieces of matting of different sorts could not lock together as well as they should, and the downwash of the famous Chinook Bravo November caused some of the planking to shot out of place.


In that occasion, while the FOB was hastily repaired, two Sea Harriers which urgently needed fuel were to accomplish another famous feat, being diverted to away from the FOB to land vertically on the flight deck of the LPDs HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid instead.
The F-35B would be able to replicate these feats, operating from strips of matting (the test fleet makes regular use of a short expeditionary strip of AM-2 matting at Patuxent River) and also making non-standard vertical landings and take offs (with light load) on ships such as LPDs.
The heat of their exhaust would impose greater wear and tear on such flights decks, but it would be possible. Actually, in the case of the USMC, the F-35B would likely encounter little to no problems on amphibious and support shipping decks, as these are set to receive modifications (including most likely Thermion coating where necessary) to deal with the heat and stress generated by the MV-22 Osprey, which is being cleared to land on or at least to vertically replenish most ship types in the US fleet.

Vertical heat panic reporting actually began with the MV-22 Osprey. But the USN is working to clear the MV-22 for landing on many platforms, and for vertically replenishing many others. Many of these decks would probably be fine for emergency landings.

In the Falklands war, after the ceasefire, an air base was urgently stood up in Port Stanley, and Sea Harriers and Harrier GR3s mounted guard from both the runway ashore and from the carriers, with HMS Illustrious relieving Hermes and Invincible.
Even when the runway was repaired and extended to allow the arrival of the Phantoms of the Royal Air Force, the Harrier GR3s maintained a presence on the islands, to be ready to operate in case a surprise attack or problem of any sort were to deny the runway. They only left in May 1985, when the completely new Mount Pleasant air base was opened, ensuring a solid basing arrangement for conventional fighters.



Desert Storm. USMC AV-8B Harriers exploited the STOVL capability of the aircraft to deploy on the beat up landing strip at King Abdul Aziz, a naval base on the North Eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, immediately behind the positions of the 1 MEF force of marines holding the defensive line at the border. The runway was long but not well kept, and there was a near complete lack of support infrastructure, and the USMC and Seabees were hard at work to assemble a vertical landing pad of 150 x 150 feet, plus a 72 feet wide taxiway parallel to the strip, again made with AM-2 matting, and parking spaces for Harriers also made with AM-2. Fuel bladders were emplaced, and other  infrastructure, including five expeditionary hangars was stood up. The derelict airstrip was transformed in a large expeditionary forward base for well over 60 Harriers, plus helicopters.

The Harriers could flow from the strip to deliver CAS against an iraqi attack in literally minutes.

Other forward sites and re-arming points were established. The Seabees took possession of another derelict landing strip at Tanajib, just 35 miles from the Iraqi border, and used AM-2 matting to expand the facilities and prepare a turnaround point for the Harriers. The strip used to be employed by helicopters.

The use of facilities built completely anew or adapted from beat up strips inadequate for other aircraft types enabled quick generation of a great number of CAS sorties, without clogging up the precious airbases needed by conventional aircraft. The use of forward refueling and rearming points kept the Harrier effective without needing to resort to air refuelling, which was already high in demand.


Again in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. In Enduring Freedom, most of the USMC Harrier fought from onboard ships. 60 of the 76 Harriers employed where seabased, coming in particular from USS Bataan and USS Bonhomme Richard, with both amphibious vessels operating as Harrier carriers. The other AV-8Bs operated from USS Nassau and USS Tarawa, with the balance flying from Kuwait. Forward basing capability was however nonetheless exploited, as many AV-8s made some use of a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) established by advancing ground forces at An Numaniyah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The Harriers going into the FARP were the first coalition aircraft touching iraqi soil. The use of the FARP was precious particularly because it eased the strain on the ever-request air tankers.

In Afghanistan, the main contribution of Harriers to the opening phases of the war in 2001 were delivered by three LHD groups of six AV-8s each. Italian Harriers from the aircraft carrier Garibaldi also participated.

The STOVL nature of the Harrier proved invaluable for the british contingent when air support was brought forward. The Harrier GR7 (then GR9) was the only combat aircraft that could operate from the badly damaged airfield of Kandahar until the runway was extended and fully refurbished.
Extending the runway and getting it in suitable shape to accommodate the needs of the Tornado GR4 took time. In 2009, after five years in theatre, the Harrier force had to hastily add one last four-month squadron deployment while the extension to the runway was finally completed. From October 2004 to the end of its presence in Afghanistan, the british Harriers flew more than 22.000 hours in over 8500 sorties, expending almost 5000 CVR-7 rockets, 94 Enhanced Paveway II+s,  179 Enhanced Paveway IIs, 25 Paveway II and several Paveway IVs.

USMC Harriers have exploited their capability in other ways. The most impressive Afghan example is the building of the Camp Dwyer expeditionary airfield, built anew in the Garmsir District, Helmand river valley, just 20 miles away from Marjah, in preparation for major ground operations that the Harrier was then able to support closely. The expeditionary airfield started out as a FOB for Harrier, but over time had its AM-2 runway extended, and the whole base became a permament camp. The base has become so important that it s the last battalion-level base of the USMC in Southern Helmand during the drawdown of forces. This outpost has been critical in dominating one of the most dangerous areas of the whole Afghanistan. The camp is named in memory of British Lance Bombardier James Dwyer, 29 Commando Royal Artillery. It had been known earlier simply as FOB Garmsir.  



After decades of regular, intensive use in support of STOVL operations with the Harrier (as well as for bomb damage repair, expansion of various airfield surfaces etcetera) it is impossible to think that serious defence reporters ignore the nature and use of matting material, be it american AM-2 or british MEXE or anything in between.
The use of VTOL pads on operations and even for training is nothing new, and is not something that the F-35B brought along. Matting and Harrier have been comrades for years. The expeditionary, forward base operations have always included the use of pads and matting.

The US Marines actually maintain pre-positioned stocks of AM-2 matting and other equipment for the construction, from pretty much nothing but flat ground, of Expeditionary Airfields that in their complete form can include a 3850 ft runway with portable arresting gear set, parallel taxiway and parking space for 75 tactical combat aircraft and 3 C-130. The full-set EAF 2000 can allow even carrier borne combat aircraft to operate ashore, thanks to the arrestor wires. But such an installation, however, requires over 240 TEU containers worth of material that has to disembark, reach the intended area and be assembled there.

A full USMC expeditionary airfield set takes up the equivalent of more than 240 containers, but if you use every piece you get an airfield for 75 STOVL or carrierborne combat aircraft, from what was just a flat terrain. Preparing an austere base for STOVL aircraft only requires just a fraction of the equipment, time and logistic weight.

One such load is to be found on the ships of each squadron of the Marine Prepositioning Force.

The Forward Basing advantage of the STOVL component of USMC airpower is that it can use a base generated using a fraction of that equipment, as the british Harriers proved with the barebone strip at San Carlos. The F-35B will be able to take off with a short run, carrying much greater weapon load and far better sensors, and land on the forward base with a short vertical rolling landing. Or it will land vertically on an AM-2 pad. Yes, a pad will be required. Then again, it has always been so with the Harrier, as well.
It is true that AM-2 takes time to be installed (then again, teams of just an handful of men and a couple of forklift alone can actually put down an amazing amount of panels in a few hours) and has a considerable logistic footprint. But this has been known for years, and can hardly be solved from the aircraft side of the equation. The USMC is looking at what will come after AM-2, the AM-X, which will have greater heat resistance, will be more durable and, who knows, perhaps will come in more rapidly deployed packages.
There have been studies already in the past that evaluated, for example, the opportunity of developing a trackway-like solution for the creation of runways; something that can be rolled up and then distended quickly onto the ground like a carpet. 


Bill Sweetman, probably realizing that the story about the F-35B not landing vertically at RIAT had actually zero impact on operational capabilities, sneaked in a much more serious accusation: that the F-35B would also not be capable to make short rolling landings. Unfortunately for him, the F-35B already routinely makes vertical rolling landings on land, on AM-2 matting and on concrete runways, and has already displayed them at air shows as well. Sweetman could have watched them happen with just a quick search on YouTube. In this video alone, you can see two rolling vertical landings, one ending in a bolter with the aircraft taking off again (minute 4:30 onwards), the other with the F-35B getting to a full stop (minute 6:30 onwards). And more can be found in other videos.


And he is almost certainly going to see short rolling landings displayed at the air shows in the UK in July as well. The british government has also made clear in parliamentary written answers that the F-35B will routinely land vertically only on three purposefully built landing pads at RAF Marham, but will be able to make short landings on all other runways in the UK.

The landing pads to be built in Marham are hardly a surprise. Harrier bases have always had their own pads for the practice of vertical landings: Gutersloh had two pads, Wittering had MEXE pads, Cottersmore also had them, and USMC bases have purposefully built concrete pads.
It was always to be expected that pads would be built for the F-35B as well. The use of high-performance concrete, resistant to the heat, will make them safe and durable, allowing training to go on regularly.

British Harrier making a vertical landing on a MEXE pad at Wittering

So, is there a Vertical problem?  No, not really.
No one should actually be scared by this new and particularly weak attempt to deliberately attack the F-35B.

Personally, my F-35 worries are all on software development, reliability and maintainability, on properly fixing the weaknesses of the airframe's bulkheads to achieve the desired service life, and on integrating weaponry, including british specific weapons, as quickly and efficiently as possible. These are the important areas, and those where there are still too many question marks that i want to see solved one by one.
The rest is useless noise thrown up by people who have decided that they want this program dead, in a way or another, regardless of actual facts.




I've not gone into the details in this report, only tracing a history of expeditionary Harrier ops, to show how they have worked, and how they will work with the F-35B. For more details and images of the San Carlos FOB, you should visit this 2012 article by Think Defence.

Invaluable document on the story of the Harrier in RAF service, contained much of the information employed in this article: download