Against a backdrop of tightening budgets and limited resources, considerable planning has gone into the British combat air equation to ensure capability well into this century. Key facets include the transition to the Project ‘Centurion’-standard Typhoon and the stealthy F-35B Lightning, and the rebirth of the carrier air arm, as Thomas Newdick explains.
The RAF – the spearhead of the UK’s combat air component – marked its centenary last year. As the air arm turned 100, one senior officer remarked: “I don’t think – relative to the size of the air force – we’ve ever operated at the tempo and scale that we have over the last three-and-a-bit years.” The UK’s fast jet force was hit especially hard in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) of 2010, which wiped out the joint RAF/Royal Navy Harrier Force and hastened the decommissioning of the navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in a bid to reduce the ‘black hole’ in the Ministry of Defence finances. Since then, Operation Herrick in Afghanistan has wound down, but new missions have emerged for an increasingly stretched frontline force, first Ellamy in Libya in 2011, then the ongoing Operation Shader tackling so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
