Yesterday evening, I attended the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Sopwith Lecture (virtually of course!). This year’s lecture was delivered by Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus Defence & Space, the title was “European defence and security in a post-Brexit and post-Covid-19 world”.
Broadly the lecture went through several topics. First, it covered the potential for reduced defence spending in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis using the 2008 financial crisis as a template. Interestingly, whilst there had been cuts by European countries including the UK in the wake of 2008 – by far the biggest changes shown were in US defence spending – which went from 5% of national budget to 3% in around 2014 and has stayed at that reduced level ever since.
There was also some coverage of the potential ten year impact on defence imports and exports of various forms of Brexit – unsurprisingly, a no deal scenario trading on WTO terms was particularly adverse.
There was a section devoted to how Airbus – and in particular Defence & Space – had actively supported relief efforts through the pandemic.
Then, there was some discussion around the future for defence and space in Europe and the continuing need for co-operation. Several specific areas were covered – but in particular, Dirk Hoke’s belief is that developing both the FCAS and Tempest programmes in competition will ultimately be detrimental to the European (including UK) market and that ultimately there will need to be some type of consolidation or combination of the two. In particular, he talked about learning the lessons of the past – where the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen were all competing for similar markets.
Defence procurement and development is a difficult arena. During the Cold War – the decision was effectively made for a lot of countries. If you supported the West, you bought US aircraft, if you were communist or an enemy of the US, you bought Soviet aircraft. There were of course, countries who worked hard to try and maintain domestic military aircraft production – sometimes enduring a lot of pain when innovative products were cancelled due to spiralling development costs and political pressure. The Canadian Avro Arrow and the British TSR2 both were ahead of their time and ultimately failed to get beyond initial prototypes. The Harrier was more successful – the Sea variant used by the Royal Navy proved itself in the Falklands War and the MkII version has been used by the US Marine Corps for decades.
In France, Dassault has arguably punched above its weight, owing predominantly to support by the French Air Force but also having successfully exported to a range of other air forces.
For different missions, there were different aircraft – a visit to the RAF Museum at Hendon includes giant V-bombers for carrying the nuclear deterrent prior to the switch to SSBN class submarines, sleek interceptors like the Lightning and weird and wonderful early jet fighters like the Vampire.
However, an additional theme that Dirk Hoke referred to repeatedly was that of value for money. The enormous development costs of innovative combat aircraft have become prohibitive for individual countries to bear and joint programmes have become commonplace. There are inevitably difficulties with this approach. Each country’s armed forces will have it’s own requirements which lead to a plethora of different aircraft versions and add cost and complexity to certification. In addition, joint programmes usually include conditions about percentage of workshare aligning to number of aircraft purchased – which can lead to uneasy partnerships between different parts of the supply chain.
Having always worked on commercial aircraft – I admire the impressive handling qualities and severe beauty of combat aircraft – and I enjoy watching them perform at airshows. Yet I’m struck by the fact that value for money is a difficult metric to assess for combat aircraft.
Ultimately, it could be judged by their longevity in service – the Tornado entered service with the RAF in the late 1970s and has only been retired recently, its final missions carrying out airstrikes to combat ISIS using Paveway IV bombs in 2018, having operated in the first Gulf War 1990-1991, Afghanistan in the 2000s and the Iraq War of 2003.
The F-16 was similarly developed in the 1970s and is the most successful combat aircraft, with more than 3000 still in operation in 25 countries. That may be due to the USA’s power in procurement negotiations and influence – but also indicates the versatility of the aircraft.
The question might be how much of a need there will be for combat aircraft with human pilots in the future. Drones are increasingly used for airstrikes and are far cheaper to replace and operate. An aircraft without a human pilot can also open up areas of the flight envelope that can’t be covered today in terms of manoeuvrability and handling qualities. The conflicts of the last thirty years have not tended to be the dogfights of the Second World War or the potential dogfights of the Cold War between largely evenly matched forces. Instead, they’ve been dominated by peacekeeping missions (the former Yugoslavia, Somalia), limiting the power of dangerous but militarily inferior aggressors (the first Gulf War) or prolonged operations against enemies whose armament consists mainly of AK-47s, Toyota Land Cruisers, the occasional rocket propelled grenade launcher and some expertise in IEDs. These missions have been effectively served by a combination of older aircraft to carry heavy armament or provide aerial support to ground troops and drones to perform many other activities.
Inevitably, there is a need to continue innovating and to develop new aircraft – both to keep developing the skills of the existing workforce and in the knowledge that the current technology will become obsolete. However, value for money may be about making decisions that give you an aircraft suitable for changing roles over time without excessive customisation.