Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2004
AIR CHIEF
MARSHAL SIR
JOCK STIRRUP
KCB AFC ADC
Q140 Chairman: May I largely endorse
what my colleague has said. With your budget severely constrained
we cannot expect you to bear the burden of industrial and economic
policy in Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland or anywhere, but
does your appraisal include the consequences of closure for the
economy as a whole? We hear a lot about joined-up government,
will there be joined-up government with this airfield review where
what might be great for the Royal Air Force or Ministry of Defence
budget might be pretty damning, indeed catastrophic, for a community
which appears to be largely dependent upon the Ministry of Defence?
Are you being joined-up in your approach, Air Chief Marshal?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Our business cases always take account of the wider issues: social,
economic, industrial impacts.
Q141 Mr Roy: Disproportionate impacts?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
That is something which the business case would have to judge.
Q142 Chairman: Will that business
case be published eventually or is it internal to the Ministry
of Defence?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I am not sure of the rules on that, Chairman, I will have to get
back to you.
Q143 Mr Roy: Please do not tell me
that for ten minutes you have been doing all this equally and
everything will be clear and then you fling in a one liner at
the very end that you may not publish it because if you say that
you have just null and voided the last ten minutes of what you
have been saying because no-one will believe you or the MoD unless
they see the evidence of how you came to the decision to close.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Fortunately that is not what I said. What I said was I do not
know what the regulations are.
Chairman: I think you have made the point.
Read the Glasgow Herald tomorrow.
Q144 Mr Viggers: My questions are
about the total aircraft numbers. In the document Future Capabilities,
page 18, there is a table of overall force levels and some of
them are very specific: for instance, 36 infantry battalions,
25 destroyers and frigates, even 83 transport and tanker aircraft,
so those are specific statements of numbers. The figure for offensive
aircraft is the number of "deployable force elements"
and for air defence aircraft "deployable aircraft and the
aircraft held at readiness for the QRA air defence of the UK".
We know that the MoD has committed publicly to purchasing 232
Typhoons and 150 Joint Strike Fighters. In evidence to the Committee's
2001-02 report on Major Procurement Projects the MoD went into
some detail on Eurofighter and it said an active fleet of Typhoons
would be 137 aircraft and then it went into detail about the number
of squadrons and so on. Why, uniquely, does Future Capabilities
list only the number of deployable fast jets rather than the total
fleet?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I cannot answer for how that particular paper was constructed
but what I can do is try to explain the difference between listing
force elements and listing total fleet size. In considering our
operational capability we have to think not just of the aircraft
but of the people, the crews, because highly trained, highly skilled
crews are just as important at delivering the operational capability
as the aircraft and systems themselves are. That means that those
crews have to be trained and that requires flying hours. If you
look at the number of force elements that you will apply as a
maximum on an operation that will tell you what sort of size of
air crew force you need to sustain. It will depend upon the crew
ratio that you deploy on the operation, typically 2:1 for the
Royal Air Force; it will depend upon how many additional combat
ready crews you have to leave back in the United Kingdom, for
example for QRA, but also to continue the training of the new
crews coming through; it will depend upon what percentage of your
squadrons at any one time are not combat ready because they are
still working up. That will give you your total frontline crew
size. That will also tell you the size of the operational conversion
units you need to train people to feed that frontline. You will
also have to add in things like the operation evaluation units
which are developing doctrine and tactics. That will give you
your total air crew size for a given aircraft type and that in
turn will generate an annual requirement for a certain number
of flying hours. Aircraft, in a sense, are commodities, they wear
out, you use up their fatigue life over time and, unfortunately,
despite our best efforts you occasionally lose some through accidents.
Given an annual requirement for flying hours across a 25/30/35
year life of an aircraft type you can work out from that how many
platforms you are going to need over that very long period to
generate that number of flying hours. That gives you your total
fleet size and—I stress—your total fleet size over
the entire life of the aircraft which can stretch out, as we know,
to a quarter or a third of a century or more. Ideally, of course,
we would only buy those aircraft when we needed them, when the
ones we had in the frontline were worn out through attrition or
fatigue life but, of course, industrial production does not work
like that and you have to have a sustainable production line of
a particular aircraft type. That is what generates the requirement
for your total fleet. There is a distinct difference between the
size of force you are going to employ on an operation and the
total fleet size you will need over a very long period of years
to generate the flying hours to train the crews.
Q145 Mr Viggers: Yes, because the
Secretary of State has told us that we can manage requirements
with a smaller number of fast jets. That was his explanation for
the disbandment of a Tornado 3 squadron and three Jaguar squadrons.
We are interested to know how these decisions affect the numbers
of Typhoons in the active fleet.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
As I said in response to an earlier question, at the moment we
are focused very much on developing the capabilities in tranche
1 and tranche 2 for which we hope we will have a contract some
time in the near future. The total fleet requirement is something
that will need to be addressed when we look at tranche 3 in due
course.
Q146 Mike Gapes: Can I ask you about
the Joint Strike Fighter and the reported difficulties there are
with the short takeoff vertical landing version of that aircraft
and the serious weight problems there are. It has been reported
that the solution to this is a significant reduction in the capacity
of the weapon bay. What are the implications of that? What impact
will that have on the operational capability of the Joint Strike
Fighter?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
It has no direct implications for the United Kingdom. The reduction
in the size of the weapon bay means that it will not be able to
house the 2,000lb class of weapon internally in the weapon bay
but it could, of course, still carry it externally.
Carriage of a 2,000 lb class weapon is not one
of our key user requirements for the joint strike fighter. I would
also just say that in terms of weapon development for the future,
the trend is very much towards a smaller class of weapons, towards
a more tailored effect which minimises collateral damage, for
example—just one example—the small diameter bomb programme
which the United States is pursuing at the moment. So as far as
our operational requirements are concerned, that does not have
any impact.
Q147 Mike Gapes: What about if you
were carrying a weapon on the exterior of the aircraft, bearing
in mind this is supposed to be a stealth aircraft? Is that not
a problem? Does that not have an impact?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Yes, but we have other aircraft which can carry the 2,000 lb class
weapon. The 2,000 lb class weapon is of course for a particular
type of target and increasingly in the future we are going to
be looking at smaller classes of weapons. So I could not sit here
today and say, "We will never want to carry a 2,000 lb class
of weapon on JSF", but what I can say is that given the trend
of weapon development and given the capabilities we have in other
parts of our inventory, such as on Tornado GR4, such as on Typhoon
in due course to deliver 2,000 lb weapons, this would not be a
serious constraint for us with regard to JSF.
Q148 Mike Gapes: But you would confirm
that if you did carry it, it would have to be outside rather than
inside and therefore it would reduce the stealth capability?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Yes, it would.
Q149 Mike Gapes: The JSF is over
budget and late. Figures have been given of 1.4 billion over the
UK budget. When can we now expect it to enter service for the
RAF?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
We are still working on a date of around 2012 for the first aircraft
appearing, but we will have to see what the implications are of
the restructuring of the programme which the prime contractor
has made over the last few years, not least to address the weight
problem. We do not know at the moment what the implications are
because there are efforts to recover some of the lost time in
other parts of the programme.
Q150 Mike Gapes: When will the in-service
date be set formally? You said "around 2012", I understood
it was originally earlier than that, and around 2011 had been
mentioned.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
No, 2012 has been the date up to now. Again without wishing to
seem to duck the question, it is not possible to have that degree
of precision at this stage of the programme. We have to understand
that we are talking about development programmes at the cutting
edge of technology which will run into problems. It is unthinkable
that they would not run into problems. So whether there will be
an impact on the in-service date and, if so, what that impact
will be, are things which are impossible to forecast at the moment.
Q151 Mike Gapes: Can I move on to
some questions relating to the number of aircraft, the maximum
number of offensive and air defence aircraft available for deployment?
The Future Capabilities document states that we will be
able to deploy up to 84 fast jets. Within what sort of timescale
would such a deployment on that scale be possible?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I think it said up to 80 fast jets, up to 64 offensive fast jets.
Q152 Mike Gapes: Okay, we can check
that.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I think I am right. How long will it take to deploy 80 fast jets?
Again, it depends. If we were deploying just 80 fast jets, it
would take a certain period of time, but almost inevitably we
will not, we will be trying to deploy a lot of other things as
well—land forces, various other elements of our force structure—so
the priority we give to each bit of that force structure will
depend on the environment and the operational circumstances at
the time. All I would say is that in Op Telic last year we deployed
roughly the same amount of materiel, the same number of people
as we did for the Gulf War in 1991, and did it in half the time.
That included 70 fast jets. We are working to improve our deployment
capability all the time, so I would expect that figure if anything
to come down.
Q153 Mike Gapes: The table actually
has got 20 air defence aircraft and 64 offensive support aircraft,
which does add up to 84. I do not know whether within your 64
or your 20 there is a variation. Is this to do with the QRA?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I would have to look at the table and the detailed numbers, but
what I can say is that in terms of expeditionary deployment the
plan is to deploy up to 80 fast jet aircraft.
Q154 Mike Gapes: Is that for a large
scale operation?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
For a large scale operation.
Q155 Mike Gapes: And in high readiness?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Yes.
Q156 Mike Gapes: So it would not
necessarily need a significant period in order to prepare those
aircraft?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
It depends what you mean by "significant period", they
would not all be able to deploy within 48 hours, but then they
are not all required to be deployed within 48 hours. They would
all be able to meet the readiness states at which they sit. Within
that force structure, and I do not want to go into detail in this
forum, we would have so many aircraft of one type at a certain
readiness state and then so many at a slightly lower readiness,
but all within the high readiness bracket, and they would all
be able to deploy within those timescales, and usually when we
are called upon to do it quicker, we can.
Q157 Mike Gapes: Perhaps you can
send us a note with more information, if you cannot give it verbally?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I would be delighted, yes.
Q158 Mike Gapes: What are the main
constraints which have meant that we are talking about 80 or 84?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
The main constraints on the total number?
Q159 Mike Gapes: Yes.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
It is a matter of judgment in terms of overall capability. It
would be nice to have more aircraft deployed, but to have more
aircraft deployed would mean less resource available to spend
on other things which we believe are more important for overall
effect, overall capability, so inevitably it is a question of
balancing numbers against all the other parts of your force structure
which go together to create that total effect. What one is seeking
to do is maximise the effect created for any given level of resource.
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