Britain's Carrier Strike Force

Ready for What Exactly?

Ministry of Defence photo

Britain has just declared that its F-35 Lightnings have achieved full operating capability from the Royal Navy’s carriers – the timing fits neatly with the imminent deployment of two dozen of the jets on board the carrier Prince of Wales.

But let’s look at that with a hard eye. It’s 13 years since the UK took delivery of its first F-35 and it’s only just achieved full operating capability (at sea, that happened five years ago for land operations). But what is this ‘full capability’? While it can fly and defend the fleet from air attack, it will be another four or five years before Britain’s F-35s are armed with the missile the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) calls its “principal strike weapon”.

To its enthusiasts in the world’s air forces, the Lightning is a seductive package of ambition and technological attainment. It is ‘stealthy’ with a radar picture reportedly as small as an eagle’s.

Yet it is hard to think of a project which better sums up the craziness of modern defence procurement. And that’s quite a problem when countries in Europe are looking both to ramp up their military capabilities quickly – when nothing happens fast with something as complex as an F-35 – and have committed billions to buying more of them at a time when they’re not feeling too sure about America’s commitment.

Since this is not going to be a long blog, I won’t recount the tortuous history of the F-35’s development and the Pentagon’s decision to start introducing it before it was ready for battle. There are plenty F-35 haters out there but that’s not my point: the issue is that it symbolises the problems with how western countries buy weapons, with the timescales and costs leaving them unable to respond to changing strategic realities.

Britain originally said it wanted 138 of them, but now that so many years have passed and cost pressures mounted, the MoD sets its ambition at 60-80 F-35s. Even more problematically, cost pressures caused the UK to go slow on integrating the kind of weapons onto the jet that would allow it to make a real difference.

For those unfamiliar with the defence world, ‘integration’ is key here, it’s about getting the bombs or missiles to interact seamlessly with the aircraft’s sensors and other systems. It is often a lengthy and costly process.

The Meteor air-to-air missile, is an advanced weapon that the RAF is keen to get its hands on ASAP. There are two American-made missiles that it can already use in this role, but Meteor is better. The Swedish air force has had them on its fighters for the past eight years but apparently it will be another couple before it’s integrated onto British F-35s.

Some air experts tell you that if a major war started tomorrow, Meteor would appear on those jets much faster. But issues of technology and budget have slowed it down, and that’s even more pertinent to weapons Lightning would use against ground targets.

So, back when decisions were being made a MoD the emphasis was on getting something on board that could be dropped, fancier ordnance would have to wait. Britain’s Lightnings can therefore drop a laser-guided bomb (Paveway IV it’s called), which is the type of weapon they were using against insurgents or non-state groups at the time these calls were made.

But if you’re now thinking about having to face another state, a developed one like Russia or China, getting close enough to drop one of those is in many circumstances way too risky – unlike insurgents they have a whole suite of anti-aircraft weapons that might shoot you down before you can do that.

There’s a missile in the pipeline, SPEAR-3, that will let aircraft strike ground targets over 70 miles away, allowing the pilots to deliver the attack at less risk to themselves. But that’s still years off coming into service, something that limits the effectiveness not just of the F-35 but of the whole multi-billion pound UK investment in its aircraft carriers.

Even bombing the Houthis in Yemen, something the aircraft on this latest deployment may well be called upon to do as they head down the Red Sea, is not without risk if all you’ve got is a Paveway IV laser-guided bomb – it can be lobbed a few miles from its target but essentially it just drops. That insurgent group has shot down several US Predator drones recently and had been trying to down a crewed aircraft.

If SPEAR-3 is ready for battle in 2030, it will be 18 years after the first British F-35 was delivered, 12 after the first group of them flew to RAF Marham. Let’s not even get into the total cost.

Another time, perhaps, I will write about the vulnerability of big ships like the Prince of Wales against a foe with capabilities like the Chinese, Russians, or even Iranians.

The F-35 has ‘short legs’, it can’t go very far without air-to-air refuelling, and bringing these big ships in close to their targets to launch air attacks is very risky if the enemy has long range anti-ship missiles. It’s another reason why F-35 urgently needs a way of attacking targets far way – to stretch the gap between their enemy and the ship that they’re operating from. Add the threat of surface to air missiles being fired against the planes themselves and the need for SPEAR-3, and indeed a whole family of so-called stand-off weapons, looks like a critical requirement for a credible force.

But what was announced today – ‘full operating capability’ from the carriers, was what was needed 15 years ago, the ability to bomb enemies without advanced anti-ship or anti-air defences ie insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan, not what’s required if Britain got into a war against another state.