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2018-08-02

Ambitious Visions for UK Air Combat

As the Royal Air Force (RAF) enters its second century, it is important to recall the importance of the UK, a pioneer in air power. Britain’s national prowess in air invention and innovation resulted in the first purpose-built air-to-air combat aircraft, the first ground-based integrated radar defence system, the turbojet engine and the first vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

As Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson launches a new capability acquisition programme to replace Typhoon, we will mark this announcement of an exciting first step into a new century with an examination of the UK’s combat air strategy and capabilities.

Combat Air Strength
The demands placed on combat air never cease to evolve and with the adversarial counters of both state and non-state actors becoming ever more complex, high capability threat systems continue to proliferate widely, as they have done over the last 20 years. Upgrades to legacy systems and the increasing availability of off-the-shelf options means that potential adversaries are more versatile, affordable, and adaptable in exploiting software-enabled systems.

The 2018 National Security Capability Review has highlighted how the world has become more uncertain and volatile since 2015. For two decades now, the UK and allies have focused attention on counter-insurgency operations due to the technological advantage of Western air forces being reduced by adversaries whose highly capable systems can achieve and maintain air control.

In 2017, the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre produced a Future Force Concept report, concluding that future air domains will continue to feature highly-capable integrated air-defence systems and an increasingly complex electro-magnetic environment. Moreover, combat-air systems will need to be agile and adaptable to address and harness technological change in the space and cyber domains as they become increasingly important to armies seeking an information advantage.

With the UK’s long and proud history of working with international partners to deliver world-class combat-air systems, combat air strategy is a crucial pillar of the government’s ‘Modernising Defence’ Programme. The ability to deter and defeat potential combat air adversaries at a time and place of choosing are prerequisites to the UK’s delivery of its defence, foreign policy, and economic objectives, ensuring that successful air control and attack functions enable Britain to act free from intervention by other states or entities.

The UK government’s Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative involves an investment of nearly £2bn over ten years to develop the technologies of the future, while upgrading existing capabilities such as Typhoon and F-35 to keep them cutting-edge. Following the retirement of Tornado in 2019, the UK is committed to ensuring Typhoon’s operational effectiveness, enabling the aircraft to operate with the RAF until at least 2040.

World-class Industrial Base
As the increasing technological complexity of combat air systems drives up costs, to counter threats effectively governments are forced to trade between capability and platform numbers, driving existing platforms to remain in service longer. Longer service life and greater time between project initiation and delivery creates a greater risk of early obsolescence, underlining both the challenge of maintaining world-leading industrial skills to field systems, which remain relevant in rapidly evolving environments.

For a decade, the UK has enjoyed significant success exporting combat air capabilities, including platforms, sub-systems, training and support solutions for Tornado, Typhoon, Hawk and F-35 and accounting for over 80 per cent of the UK’s annual defence export orders of around £6bn, with Typhoon exports being particularly important in reducing MoD costs for key weapons capabilities. Meanwhile, UK intellectual property (IP) has been critical in securing the UK’s enhanced industrial position in the F-35 programme, where early design and development phases have allowed the UK to compete successfully for key elements of the F-35 Global Support Solution.

UK-wide industrial challenge
The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review sought to upgrade the Typhoon’s sensors and weapons, extending its service to remain operationally effective and commercially competitive for decades, but risking a widened gap between major air system design phases. Despite Typhoon exports and F-35 enhancements providing enough revenue to sustain Typhoon manufacturing into the 2020s, the lack of clear future UK requirements has not stimulated the R&D investment necessary to refresh national IP and placed key engineering skills at significant risk.

In response, £2bn of joint government and industry investment has sought to sustain and enhance key skills and capacity into the 2020s, providing investment in key UK design engineering skills as a means of generating UK IP and ensuring a major role for UK industry in delivering the systems that succeed Typhoon.

New Partnership Opportunities
Having worked alongside the U.S. to deliver the world-class F-35, the UK continues to enjoy highly successful partnerships across Europe, building on successful relationships with international partners in the export market and now diversifying to provide technical consultancy for key partner nations.

Hence, when the fourth-generation is retired from service in the late 2030s, Typhoon platform and system upgrades will ensure it remains operationally competitive well beyond this point, while providing a significant market for a successor to these capabilities over the period 2040-2060.

Delivering future capability
Successive combat-air systems cost more and take longer to develop, but technological and process developments from the wider industry offers the opportunity for change with some approaches already successfully implemented to drive down the significant systems support costs. Nonetheless, the UK industry will need to deliver ever-increasing levels of productivity, efficiency, and sustainability throughout the supply chain, requiring greater innovation and diversification at the prime contractor level to reduce reliance on platform-driven acquisitions.

While bespoke investment is needed for systems integration, propulsion, sensors and weapons, the other essential skills required are common to a range of wider industry, high technology, manufacturing and aerospace sectors, entailing that the MoD can work with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop the means to incentivise greater involvement of the wider UK skills base. Combat air will increasingly be defined by the battle to collect, process, share, exploit and protect data, but the wider UK industrial base has the potential to provide full integration of industrial solutions and the air combat industry needs to respond imaginatively and inclusively to this opportunity.

Meeting Future Requirements
UK companies need to be able to work together to deliver affordable next generation technology that meets national objectives. To become sustainable, UK industry must focus on delivering success in an increasingly competitive global market and secure its world-leading position in this field through profitable international partnerships.

The UK government is hence looking to the industry to embrace this challenge by increasing self-funded investment in research and development, including technology demonstrations, de-risking key technologies prior to full acquisition programmes and seizing the opportunity to fail fast and learn from the experience. It will also be necessary to address the trend of evermore expensive and complex combat-air systems and the associated time needed to bring them into service by developing and exploiting new technologies, techniques and processes (such as synthetic design, model-based engineering and rapid prototyping).

The UK government is also looking to build on the expertise derived from Typhoon and F-35 support solutions to develop innovative plans for driving down the through-life costs of programmes. A culture must be fostered of continuous improvement and efficiency to ensure the costs of development and manufacturing reduce over the course of the future acquisition programme.

The overall objective is to deliver assured capability by leveraging the best processes and technologies throughout the global supply chain within the constraints of operational advantage and freedom of action. This strategy includes the exploitation of UK high-value manufacturing catapults, small and medium-sized enterprises, international partners’ capabilities, and civil sector investment to maximise value for money.

Finally, the UK government would like the industry to develop a transparent methodology that links requirements to cost, risk, and time to deliver. Such an approach to combat air will enable the government, the supply chain, potential partners and respective industries to make informed decisions through new, collaborative ways of working which align incentives, minimise transactional costs and ensure all sides are held to account for performance.

Team Tempest’s Future
Team Tempest is a pilot project to deliver the MoD’s Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative by 2020. The strategy identifies and sets a framework and roadmap for future decisions, challenging government and industry to cooperate in adapting the UK approach to the sector and driving pace and affordability.

Team Tempest is thus intended to give international partners a clear signal of UK’s intent in proposing rapid and evolved engagement. The MoD’s role is to develop a detailed implementation plan with partners to deliver key strategic objectives and prepare the groundwork for the UK’s future acquisition decisions.

Reference Text: www. Defenceiq.com, www.gov.uk

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