The Right Stuff - Thoughts on Retirement of the Tornado and Closure of Welbeck

On Thursday 14 March the last ever operational Tornado flight occurred at RAF Marham as the aircraft finally left active RAF service after 39 years of near continuous operations. To consider how long it has been in service, it is the equivalent of the RAF retiring an aircraft in 1979 that first flew in 1939.

Originally emerging in the early 1970s as a ‘Multi Role Combat Aircraft’ (or as wags often put it ‘Must Replace Canberra Again’) the Tornado has provided sterling service across the globe since entering RAF service. Nearly 400 aircraft were built in two main types – the bomber configuration, and the interceptor (the F2/F3 variant).

Initially intended to provide conventional and nuclear strike capability against the Warsaw Pact, it later evolved to become a maritime strike aircraft (replacing Buccaneer), an ISTAR platform (with the RAPTOR pod proving itself a worthy successor to Canberra PR9) and a strategic cruise missile attack platform with Storm Shadow.

Since its first flight in 1974, and first production aircraft RAF flight in 1979, the Tornado has been central to RAF capability Used initially as a deterrence force, it served in practically every conflict that the RAF has deployed in since 1990, and until the last few weeks of its life was deployed on combat operations in the Middle East.

40th Anniversary paint scheme- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There has been considerable attention paid to the forces demise in recent weeks, with key milestones marked (such as the return from operations), and social media has been awash with many fantastic images of the aircraft airborne around the world from Afghanistan to the ‘Mach loop’.

While much attention is rightly paid to the skill of aircrew who flew the aircraft, often into great danger and at high risk to themselves (some of whom were shot down), it is worth remembering that this has only been possible due to the very hard work and efforts of the ground crews who made it happen.

The story of the Tornado is as much a story of the incredible success provided by the armed forces, the MOD civil service and the defence industry as it is about the men and women who flew them.

Operationally the work of all trades in the RAF from ground crew to engineers, to caterers and the RAF Regiment played a critical role in ensuring that the aircraft was able to fly safely, and that its crew were protected from harm on the ground. The constant deployments that the wider Tornado force undertook to places like Kuwait, Kandahar, and Akrotiri over the last 15-20 years has been a major undertaking.

This was underpinned too by other parts of the Service, such as the air transport and tanker fleets that provided long range reach to sustain the aircraft on station, and the ISTAR fleets that ensured it would have the best possible information. This was a team effort built around using multiple different aircraft types to ensure the Tornado would deliver.

Thousands of people have spent long periods of time away from home, often living and working in austere and difficult conditions that did not attract much glamour or interest, but without which the aircraft could not have safely flown.

There were many MOD civil servants who did all manner of work ranging from the procurement side to manage updates through the aircrafts life, through to the people who worked for ‘Defence Munitions’ ensuring that the considerable range of payloads that the aircraft could carry were serviceable and worked as planned. The role of the ‘rocket scientists’ in places like the Atomic Weapons Establishment also played a major role in ensuring that the Tornado could deliver its ultimate weapon – the WE177 – one of the most complex weapons ever introduced into service.

Finally the British defence and aerospace industry played a vital role in ensuring the Tornado remained relevant for nearly four decades – the work played by major companies like BAE Systems at Warton, along with an enormous supply chain of contractors meant that the UK could rely on Tornado to deliver when required.  Tornado was a success because of the work of so many different organisations and people to come together effectively.

While the Tornado is retiring, its replacement (the F35) will still need to rely on the same mix of skills and training and overall capability to deploy effectively overseas. It is perhaps timely then to consider what recent announcements about the closure of a key part of the MOD engineering training capability means for this.

It was announced this week that the MOD plans to close Welbeck, the 6^th form college for students to train in STEM subjects ahead of joining the armed forces after university. Instead funding will be allocated to persuading graduates to join from university into technical roles within the military.

This announcement has received mixed reactions online, with some regarding it as overdue and a reality measure that reflected declining numbers of applicants. Others felt that it made sense because of the inability to bring many of the students through into long term careers in the military (who were reportedly often tempted by offers from industry instead to poach them during the graduate milk round).

But at the same time there is clearly a need to grow future engineers for the armed forces, and do so in a manner which ensures enough people are available in the right timescales. The shortage of STEM skills is a well-known challenge facing much of the UK industry and public sector, who are keen to attract talented individuals to work for them. Welbeck, and associated University units provided a valuable way of trying to coax people into the system to help ensure there are enough academically qualified STEM graduates were available.

Looking forward then, the challenge for MOD is to work out how best to attract graduates who are in high demand by employers to want to join the military. Its not just the initial offer, or the cash bonus for signing on, but what are the long-term prospects for someone interested in a STEM career to actually work in this discipline and use their skills?

The challenge for the MOD is they have to push a career structure where past a certain point, it is not actually feasible to do much of the hands on engineering work that some people want to do – you are instead forced into a cycle of wider staff and ‘broadening’ appointments that may be professionally good, but may not be the work you wanted to do when joining. At the same time industry is offering good money to do a variety of jobs that involve ‘hands on’ STEM work that may appeal to many graduates.

There is no easy answer to solving this problem – while there will always be people who want to join the military to do the very practical work a career in STEM subjects opens access to, the MOD also has to appeal to a much wider group of people who may not naturally consider the armed forces as a career. The advantage of Welbeck in theory was that it ‘captured’ people at a younger age and helped ensure a through flow of students into University and beyond who would in turn become Officers.

Trying to fix this will probably involve a variety of options including bigger up front bursaries, innovative inducements to serve and perhaps even looking again at the career model. If the military is short of engineering officers, perhaps the time has come to consider direct entry into certain officer roles for professionally qualified individuals? Much like it is possible to enter the Army Legal Service or Defence Medical Services as a mid-seniority officer, perhaps the time has come to open up entry in the same way. Not just focus on junior entrants, but seek to capture individuals who are ‘second jobbers’ who want a variety in their career that can be offered by the military, but also induce them in at a level and payband commensurate with their real world experience.

Alternatively, perhaps it is time to review the career structure and step away from the traditional concept of people doing one or two engineering jobs then going ashore or into HQ roles, and instead develop a career model where people agree to stay on in front line ‘hands on’ posts and limit career promotion prospects in return for increased salary. Much like you can be a career aircrew in the RAF and not go down the staff route, perhaps the time is here for individuals to be ‘career engineering officers’ and not managers?

The reality is that individuals with STEM qualifications are going to be in high demand across society. The offer made by the military has to be compelling enough to make people want to take on the unique lifestyle and challenges offered by the military and turn down high pay and career opportunities outside. Innovative thinking is required here, capturing people not just as junior students, but opening recruitment up to people at a much broader range of entry points into the system.

Radical thinking is required here because the world is changing fast while military equipment is being operated for ever longer periods of time. This year marks the 67^th anniversary of the first flight of the B52, an aircraft that is likely to continue in service for decades to come.  The first RAF Tornado flew before the current Chief of the Air Staff (Air Chief Marshall Hillier) joined the RAF. The sort of world that the last maintainers of the F35 will experience will be utterly different to the one the current users understand – it is vital then that to be ready for this, the MOD continues to be able to attract the right people in the right numbers to show that they’ve got the right stuff.