The Truth About Wedgetail - No, It Isn't a Security Risk to Buy Second Hand.

The RAF has been accused of potentially putting national security at risk by its plans to introduce an aircraft into service that was, in a former role, used by a Chinese airline. Does this plan, intended to deliver the new ‘Wedgetail’ AWACS capability on time, really count as a risk, and is UK national security in peril as a result?

It is important to note that the story, marked in the Sunday Telegraph as an ‘exclusive’ is anything but. It follows the time honoured pattern of stories floating around in the specialist press, before being picked up. In this case, the story seemed to have emerged on 2 January on twitter, before being picked up by ‘The Drive’ on 4 Jan. Its taken the Telegraph another two weeks before picking the story up and falsely claiming it as an exclusive.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The Wedgetail programme is the plan to provide 3-5 aircraft based on the Boeing 737 airframe to replace the existing Sentry aircraft. The role will be to monitor airspace, identify aircraft movements and help contribute to the compilation of the ‘air picture’ – essentially the image of what the battlespace looks like.

This role is of increasing importance – without a clear understanding of the airspace situation, and where friends and foes are, it will be extremely difficult to maintain air superiority, or understand where the next threat is coming from. As the Royal Navy found in 1982, a lack of airborne early warning could, in some circumstances, have a very damaging effect and cause the loss of ships and life as a result.

The UK AEW programme has since the early 1990s been built around the Sentry, and before that, the Shackleton – an aircraft which was of Second World War design vintage, and resembled thousands of rivets flying together in close formation.

An effort to develop a homegrown alternative to replace Shackleton, based on the Nimrod can best be described as an exercise in how to write off a large number of perfectly viable airframes in the most expensive manner possible.

The Sentry has had a challenging few years, and not seen the investment the force needed in it for many years. With planned upgrades deferred or cancelled as a result of savings measures, and a reliance instead on either fixed infrastructure sites overseas (particularly in the Middle East), or using allies aircraft, the force was ageing and not as capable as it could have been.

The decision was taken to replace the Sentry with the Wedgetail, a 737 airframe fitted out with new radars and mission systems, and which is already in service with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

To speed up delivery time, the current plan is that the first two airframes will not be newbuild aircraft, but instead converted former commercial airliners, stripped down and rebuilt, practically from scratch and emerging as good as new for their role.

Part of the challenge when buying aircraft is the delay between ordering and eventual delivery. Even after the difficult times of COVID, there is always a long lead in between parts being ordered, and the aircrafts first flight. Anyone who has been to the Boeing production line, near Seattle (as Humphrey has done), will be familiar with the site of dozens of aircraft being assembled over a period of months and years from scratch, slowly taking shape as they move through an enormous production hall.

If the RAF had chosen to receive all 5 airframes as new builds, there would have been a longer wait for them to arrive, and the cost of the project would have increased significantly to reflect this. Instead, a balance is being struck by buying some new, and some old to help speed up arrival – this means the aircraft will enter service between 2023 and 2026 – by which point the Sentry force (or what is left of it) will be approaching its 35^th birthday.

The ‘scandal’ in the eyes of some is that the two aircraft will, it turns out, be aircraft formerly used by Chinese airlines as business jets. Is this an issue, or is it something that can be managed as a risk?

From a practical perspective, to assume that there is a risk here requires a level of foresight that is hard to credit any nation state with possessing. It essentially means suggesting that the Chinese government was content to buy foreign built 737 aircraft (built in the USA) and then send them to China, where it would fit an unknown intelligence capability to them, on the off-chance that some of the jets may then be sold back to Boeing and in turn returned to the USA and then converted into military jets for the UK.

Trying to work out the likelihood of this happening is extremely difficult because the chances are so infinitesimally small of it occurring. It essentially requires the installation of a collection capability that is undetectable to Boeing engineers, who will be essentially stripping the aircraft down almost to bare metal, and removing all the airline equipment from it.

It then requires the capability to go undetected, but somehow able to tap into an entirely new set of systems, networks and capabilities – all without human intervention, and then be able to monitor this and report it back to China. And, this capability needs to be installed on every jet that may be mothballed or sold in order to maximise the chances of one being sent to the RAF.

In other words, we’re so deeply into ‘what if’ territory here that its hard to work out how anyone could see this as an even vaguely credible risk. It would be one thing if the UK had committed to using Chinese sourced jets, where China retained the status as the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and then insisted on the jets returning to China for servicing. Or if it had committed to buying multiple jets, over many years from China, all for conversion.

But the chances of two random 737 jets somehow posing a national security threat is about as likely as China suddenly becoming a global leader for its unwavering commitment to human rights and protection of intellectual property.

There is always a balancing act to be struck when purchasing equipment for Defence. Can it be done cheaper, is it safe, is there a more cost effective way of doing this etc? Buying 5 new aircraft, particularly now when the MOD faces significant in year budgetary shortfalls was never going to make sense – so why not save money and minimise the risk by taking existing aircraft and refitting them?

The RAF has got form for the use of second hand aircraft – much of its tanker and transport fleet used to be former civilian airliner airframes, sold on second hand and converted. Likewise there is a healthy trade in second hand military jets – some of the former Tristar fleet is reportedly now commercially owned and looking for business as a commercial air tanker arrangement.

The US Air Force similarly is using two jets built for the Russians to now form the basis of the next Air Force One, which suggests they are fairly confident of spotting any concerns.

There is no doubt that the radar and battlespace management software fitted on the Wedgetail will be extremely advanced and highly sensitive. It is also unlikely that China would feature on the manufacturers ‘markets we want to sell into list’, due to fears of what would happen. But, taking a former private airliner, stripping it practically back to bare metal in the UK and then turning it into a modern RAF jet is not of itself a security risk.

China represents a clear and present threat to civilised society in many ways. Its appalling human rights record, and treatment of minorities that can best be described as genocide. An attitude towards aggressive imperialistic territorial expansion based on laughable concepts, such as the idea that an underwater mountain hundreds of miles from the mainland is somehow ‘Chinese’ and a willingness to brazenly steal secrets, information and intellectual property in a way that is utterly shameless.

Without doubt China is rapidly becoming a genuine threat to civilised nations and their way of life. But, that does not mean that this country is omnipotent – there are finite limits to its capability, and way of working. We should be wary of according it a level of capability that does not exist except in febrile journalistic fantasies.

The good news is that the RAF is on the verge of acquiring an extremely capable platform that will help reinvigorate the ISTAR force. As the Wedgetail enters service, it will help form part of a much larger pool of 737 aircraft in RAF service, based at RAF Lossiemouth – yet another visible sign of the huge commitment made by MOD and HMG to fund and support the defence presence in Scotland, and the thousands of jobs it supports are but one tangible benefit of being part of the Union.

Over the next few years RAF ISTAR and maritime patrol capability will undergo a renaissance, with new and highly capable aircraft entering service and providing a qualitative edge to our contribution to international operations. It is by investment in platforms like Wedgetail that the RAF continues to be a partner in demand by allies, because it brings a suite of capabilities that few nations possess, and helps make running complicated operations in crowded airspace much easier.

There is a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the direction of travel for the RAF over the next 10 -15 years. New jets, new support aircraft and an investment in infrastructure too. While the Astra programme has, in the eyes of some, become little more than a cult which has failed to deliver tangible improvements like hot showers in creaking infrastructure, there is still a lot of reasons to be optimistic about how the RAF is being set up to operate on its eleventyfirst birthday in 2028.

The idea that national security is at risk from the use of former Chinese 737s is little short of laughable nonsense. To imagine the set of circumstances required to make that threat credible, particularly given both the refit work to the jet, and the fact that both Boeing and the RAF will have strong interests in ensuring that this risk is not realised, is at the outer limits of credibility to put it mildly.