Even Fewer than the Few? The size of the RAF Fast Jet Force

The RAF has plunged to its lowest level in history, with fewer fast jets than ever before available to keep the nation safe. Despite MOD protestations to the contrary, it is clear that a plane cannot be in two places at once, and defence cuts have put the nation at risk. This seems to be a fairly quick summary of an article from the Daily Mail today which is looking at the number of aircraft available to the RAF right now.

Its an interesting article to read, and it was good to see the Mail managed to get all the captions right and not put a picture of a Russian fighter jet in by mistake. That’s better than some Government Departments have managed recently…  But, in all seriousness, is this an issue the public should be concerned about, or is it merely a stating of numbers which bears little resemblance to the reality of the situation?

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The big challenge with ‘like for like’ aircraft numbers comparisons is that they very rarely take account of two factors – firstly, what was the aircraft bought to do, and secondly, how good was availability and maintenance at the time?

The first point matters because you could easily argue that compared to WW2 the RAF of today is a pale shadow of its former self compared to that of 1945. Yet the RAF of 1945 was built and designed to fight a global existential struggle, and many of its aircraft were built for very short lifespans before being discarded and replaced or short down. It was a force constantly regenerating itself to bring the ability to deliver airpower to influence the outcome of the war.

But, when you look at what the goal was, often the accuracy of the aircraft meant it was difficult to get precision hits on a target (or even anywhere near the target), so mass was needed to be certain of hitting something. You only need to read accounts of Bomber Command in WW2 and its Berlin campaign to realise that many raids fell far short of their intended target, with the destruction landing elsewhere – often outside of urban areas.

This is not to in anyway criticise the astoundingly brave men of Bomber Command, but is a recognition that bombing in the dark, under heavy fire and with very limited target finding capabilities was a difficult and dangerous act.

By contrast modern aircraft can deploy significantly more precision in their efforts, and modern equipment like the Brimstone missile literally enables a missile to be fired through the window of a Toyota pickup truck without impacting the surrounding area.

The article focuses particularly heavily on the Cold War force, particularly its size as the Berlin Wall came down, and notes how much smaller the modern force is. The difficulty here is that the Cold War force was built to do three very different missions, of which only one really survives.

Cold War RAF Aircraft

The first thing to remember is that a large chunk of the late Cold War RAF was intended to carry out the nuclear strike roles. This meant that a significant proportion of aircraft and aircrew had to be trained and optimised to do the nuclear strike mission, which was declared to support NATO in the event of WW3 beginning.

Therefore, more airframes were needed to cover this role, and they were not immediately, or easily available for other jobs. Therefore, outside of a general war, this force would have been extremely difficult to use for other jobs due to the importance of its nuclear role.

Similarly, a substantial number of the fast jet force was designed to support UK and NATO troops in the fight against the Warsaw Pact. This called for a large number of conventional strike and reconnaissance aircraft dedicated to this task. This again meant that while on paper large forces existed, they were also dedicated to doing one specific set of roles, which reduced the ability to use them elsewhere.

Also these aircraft were equipped with less accurate weapon systems (necessitating more airframes to be bought to be certain of delivering the right firepower at the right time) and, sadly, they had a propensity to crash a lot more often (more below on this).

The last key role done was that of air defence – in the Cold War the RAF was responsible for the Air Defence of both the UK and parts of Germany, meaning a complex force was needed to stop both bombers and recce aircraft coming from over the north Atlantic, and also to stop fighters and bombers coming from Eastern Europe.

Again this mission required a larger number of aircraft to handle a very different set of threats with a less overall capable set of munitions too. In other words you needed more aircraft to handle a very large complex Warsaw Pact threat, but these were also predominantly tied to the UK and Germany for air defence. This was not a force you could despatch on expeditionary operations at whim.

Today two of these three missions have vanished, meaning the need to provide support to NATO in the same way is vastly reduced, while more accurate munitions means the need for large forces carrying bombs to be certain of getting a single hit is significantly reduced. Can you imagine the uproar though if the RAF had kept large numbers of aircraft still, even after the Cold War ended, optimised for missions that no longer existed against an enemy who had vanished?

There were significant numbers of RAF aircraft lost during this period – for example in 1984 over 30 military aircraft were crashed or written off. These figures remained high throughout the decade, but low by comparison to the 1960s or 70s (full site link here). Therefore you needed to purchase more aircraft to be certain that as the fleet went through its life, you had sufficient attrition reserve just to ensure it could remain operational (at least one RN Cold War fighter type – the Scimitar had 50% losses of the total built due to attrition).  

By contrast if you look at the UK military aircraft crash data for the last few years, the loss rate has dropped to 1 or 2 aircraft per year. Therefore as aircraft safety has improved, the need to buy larger fleet has diminished, in part because you need less airframes in total to guarantee the same overall level of capability.

More widely serviceability of aircraft types has improved immeasurably. A lot of early jet aircraft required significant amounts of attention and maintenance to get a single flying hour in the air (some reports suggest nearly 1000 man hours of maintenance for each flying hour), and they were not always as reliable. This necessitated larger buys to ensure bigger force sizes, but it did not mean that each aircraft was ready to fly immediately.

There is perhaps a danger of looking with rose tinted spectacles at the past – yes the RAF was a lot larger, but it was also a force which had aircraft that did require more maintenance than modern ones, and there was absolutely no way that it could have put them all in the air, or into combat, if required. The danger here is of looking at a number and assuming this represents an absolute level of combat capability which did not exist.

Finally simulator technology has improved immeasurably, reducing the number of aircraft needed for training and conversion purposes. Indeed paradoxically the sheer capability of modern aircraft is such that it is hard to train to use them to full effect outside of the simulator environment. Spending time in the simulator is key to being able to fly an aircraft effectively on operations – but it also means you need less aircraft in the first place to be able to fly.

In a similar vein, while the modern RAF may be smaller, it is significantly more flexible on how it can deploy and exercise its truly global reach. The RAF of 1990 was heavily tied to being ready to fight at no notice on a potentially nuclear battlefield. The forces were optimised to handle this well, but they had very little flex for global operations, or the necessary logistical reach and equipment to support this as well as NATO work.

The modern RAF has spent nearly 30 years investing in turning itself into a global strike force, able to deploy at will across the globe, effectively supported by a maintenance and logistics infrastructure optimised for expeditionary operations. The RAF of today may be smaller, but it is arguably far better at being able to go where the current threat is than the RAF of 1990.

When we look at numbers then we need to perhaps focus on what it is we want the RAF today to do. A quick glance shows how busy and operationally committed it is, with a far more globally focused footprint than 30 years ago, and the fast jet force is flying live combat operations daily across the Middle East and beyond, while also supporting NATO QRA, South Atlantic QRA and wider exercises and operations.

The force is smaller, but it is leaps and bounds more capable than its predecessor when it comes to technology. The problem is that if you want to look at numbers and go ‘oh but the plane can only be in one place at a time’ then of course it looks like there are less assets to go and deploy – but this was the same problem in 1990 – the planes could only be in one place, that place was overwhelmingly NATO, and the ability to send the force globally on other multiple operations simply didn’t exist in the same way as it does now.

Comparing a late Cold War RAF to an early 21^st century RAF in terms of numbers alone doesn’t really help here. The aircraft are different, the munitions are different and you need less modern aircraft to have the same effect that multiple ones would have been needed to deliver in 1990. This makes it hard to do a proper like for like comparison as they are so utterly different.

The question is ‘does the state of the RAF mean the nation is at risk’? It is a reasonable question to ask as there are fewer aircraft than before, and there are other challenges too. Humphreys personal view is that the answer is no, but to maintain this answer, funding needs to be maintained in critical areas.

The number of aircraft is a bit of a red herring in many ways – what matters far more than the cab is the pilots and maintainers who can ensure it flies safely and effectively, and the underpinning logistics and other infrastructure to ensure it can deploy globally effectively.

Right now ensuring there are enough pilots in the pipeline to operate the aircraft we have is an issue that is perhaps more important than discussing how many F35s there are. The current flying training system has been the subject of considerable scrutiny in recent months, with suggestions by some that it may not be delivering as planned, with it taking over 7 years to get a pilot onto the front line.

Ensuring a steady flow through of pilots, and upping the numbers to reflect the growth in the Typhoon force and the generation of the F35 force will be key. If this falters, then it will cause long term challenges.

Similarly, ensuring the right mixture of ground crew are recruited and are retained for the long haul (often against tempting civilian offers) is essential. There is no point having the worlds best fighter aircraft to hand if you cannot put it into the air and operate it effectively due to a lack of maintenance. People, not planes are what matters most here.

From a wider perspective we have to ask whether numbers or quality matters more? For the UK, the decision was taken to go for a highly advanced force, capable of operating with the US as a peer ‘day one’ partner and able to go into extremely challenging environments and survive.

For example, much as the widely trailed and covered  earlier this year (at least in some parts of the press) news that the UK and Israel would be conducting joint exercises with their F35 force is a good reminder of the UK ability to operate at the high intensity conflict end of the spectrum.

But, while these aircraft are incredibly capable, there is an argument to be made that they have not been tested against a truly modern IADS (Integrated Air Defence) network. One of the reason for the larger numbers of airframes purchased in the Cold War was to build a buffer for combat attrition – it is not clear if such thinking is still applied to modern purchases, or if the assumption is for a very low loss rate.

Operating as a high end partner costs a lot of money, and does reduce the number of affordable airframes for any country. While the idea of having three or four hundred F35s sounds appealing on paper, it is perhaps not remotely affordable. But, being able to offer a smaller but highly capable force to the US, particularly if it comes with supporting assets like tankers, strategic airlift and ISTAR platforms makes the UK a credible partner.

The alternative is to step back and purchase older airframe types, for example go to the F18 which is more affordable and could potentially allow a longer term force expansion in terms of basic numbers. Such a move though would have devastating consequences for the long term UK aerospace industry (one of the largest in the world). It would reduce the ability to participate in the beginning of an operation, reducing UK influence in the planning and lobbying phase, and also increases the risk to aircrew as well, who may be at greater risk of being shot down as a result.

The wider challenge too is that building up a cadre of F18 (or equiv) qualified personnel would take many years and cost a huge amount of money – while the force may eventually grow in size, by the time it reached full capacity, it would be close to obsolete, and similar hard choices would be faced again.

The growth of drone aircraft like the Predator help increase capability in some ways – for example the RAF REAPER force is doing sterling work that previously would have been done by crewed aircraft – reducing risk and airframe hours while still delivering the same effect. Making the best use of this sort of technology will be key, particularly if a mixed force is desired in the long term – although again the cost of the truly capable RPAS is such that they are likely to be as expensive as a modern manned fighter jet – raising the same ‘mass or capability’ questions as before.

The big challenge for the RAF today is that it is effectively emerging from a period of operating three Fast Jet types (drawing one down while building two up) to just operating two forces (F35 and Typhoon). Both of these are extremely capable, but the F35 force is still growing in size and capability and will take a few years to increase its mass.

The Typhoon force is growing too, with more squadrons being formed to operate it, but the challenge is there are currently fewer jets than before. At the same time the UK is committed to replenishing and strengthening munitions stock holdings and other supplies, which indicates that a period of reinvigoration is due.

It feels that while the numbers are currently lower than in the past, the force and its people remain the most capable and committed that we have seen. But, it will take time to grow it in numbers and striking a balance between operational success, and burning people out and drawing stocks down too far will be difficult – particularly if there is another major crisis.

While the ‘few’ may have become ‘The Fewest’ this does not mean the nation is at risk of attack, or that there is reason for immediate concern. Look ahead and the RAF not only continues to have extremely capable aircraft, but it retains its edge through employing some of the most talented, driven and fantastic people going. The big battle the RAF faces is not a new ‘Battle of Britain’ but a ‘Battle for Britains talent’ as it tries to recruit and retain the next generation of ‘The Few’.