Aircraft

The UK Royal Air Force is so heavily committed to activities in Afghanistan that it would be unable to launch a campaign such as its Operation Telic effort staged during the second Gulf war, one of the service's highest ranking officers has revealed.

"Our ability to do Telic tomorrow just isn't there any more," says assistant chief of the air staff Air Vice Marshal Tim Anderson. "All our high-end systems are out fighting the Taliban."

Anderson has also voiced fears over the threat of possible equipment cuts as a result of a new Strategic Defence Review expected to be launched next year. "Everything that we have we need," he notes.

With the RAF expecting the review process to have "a very financial focus", Anderson says there will be "some really rather painful decisions in terms of the way in which we deliver defence in the future".

He says: "There's a danger of a perception that we have the equivalent of hundreds of main battle tanks sitting in hangars," attributing such suggestions to statements "bordering on disingenuous" being made by people "not confined to those who are naïve or ignorant".

He adds: "We can't just lay up a couple of squadrons. There is no extra there that we can dispense with. You pay a premium for 20 years of operations, and a couple of reviews have already forced us to cut our cloth."

With pressure on the defence budget expected to become yet more acute, Anderson says the RAF will look at its force structure on the other side of the review process. "There's nothing that we won't look at," he says. "If there are capabilities which are not relevant or necessary for today's operations then we're not going to spend scarce pounds on sustaining them."

It is unclear where cuts could be made to the current RAF inventory, but an accelerated retirement of its remaining Panavia Tornado F3 fighters could be one option.

© Flt Lt Sarah Carmichel/Crown Copyright
RAF Typhoons have already replaced the Tornado F3 in defending the Falkland Islands

However, such a decision would place added pressure on the service's young fleet of around 60 Eurofighter Typhoons, which would have to deliver all quick reaction alert cover for the UK while also attempting to introduce multirole capabilities. Four Typhoons arrived in the Falkland Islands in late September to assume similar air defence duties from the F3 force.