UK Edition
RAF 'needs more money and people' to combat Russia, air force chief warns on 100th anniversary
The Royal Air Force needs more money and airmen if it is to deal with the challenge from Russia, the head of the service writes today as it prepares to mark its 100th birthday.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier says the RAF is at its busiest for generations and must modernise if it is not to lose its edge over other states.
Writing in the Telegraph today, he says the RAF is “hard-pressed” from constant operations and air superiority which has been taken for granted for decades is under threat.
His comments come as the RAF on Sunday commemorates 100 years since it was formed at the tail end of the First World War by the amalgamation of the The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
Air chiefs have planned a summer of commemorative events, but his intervention also sets out the case for the RAF as the Armed Forces manoeuvre in yet another defence review, with budgets facing a £20bn shortfall over the next decade.
Sir Stephen says that the RAF remains “at the forefront of the defence of our nation, not least in the face of an assertive and aggressive Russian threat to us, our allies and the international rules-based system”.
Typhoons on quick reaction air defence duty have scrambled more than 42 times to intercept potentially hostile aircraft in the past year.
He also echoes comments made earlier in the week that as the RAF moves into its second century, it must increasingly compete in space to protect communications and GPS networks.
The ability to dominate enemies in the air “has been a baseline assumption in our joint military endeavour over the last three decades”, he says.
“But our control of the air is now being challenged, as we have seen with the Russians in Syria and through other state-based threats.
“As others seek rapidly to match or even surpass our current technological edge, we must modernise our capabilities in air, space and cyberspace.
“We need look back no further than the Falklands Conflict to recall what determined air opposition can do to our air, naval and land forces when air superiority is not achieved.”
At the same time, the RAF is stretched by constant deployments, he says and points out that Britain’s Tornado jets have been deployed on live overseas operations for 28 years.
Sir Stephen warns that to tackle these challenges the RAF must grow the air force, fill in gaps left by defence cuts and “give greater resilience and sustainability to a hard-pressed front-line”.
“We need the resources – money and people - to make all this happen, whilst still driving modernisation and efficiency,” he writes.
Under the 2015 defence review, the RAF stands to fly 138 new F-35B stealth jump jets with the Navy, as well as get a new fleet of protector drones and submarine-hunting P-8 patrol planes. But the National Audit Office said earlier this year that the Armed Forces equipment plan is unaffordable from current budgets, leading to RAF fears that aircraft will have to be be delayed.