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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0305.PDF
f LIGHT, 10 March 1961 311 Attack and Defence — IN THE COMMONS: MINISTERS AND MEMBERS DEBATE THE WHITE PAPER 1HERE was little love for the 1961 Defence White Paperin the two-day Commons debate last week. From behind the Treasury Bench as well as from the Opposition ranksbefore it, there came a steady stream of doubt and criticism. In his opening speech the Minister of Defence elaborated arioint which was well made by Sir George Edwards in an inter- view in this journal three weeks ago. Sir George asked for moreconsistency of purpose and planning: let us think a little longer about a project (he said) but, having decided upon it, let us carryit through. The White Paper itself talks of making a forward estimate for the next five financial years. The Minister saidthat it was quite illogical to have a year-by-year budgetary pro- cess when we were dealing with projects for which a five- orseven-year time-scale was normal. He rightly said that it pre- sented industry and research with an impossible task if de-cisions were taken on a yearly basis. But as one listened to the quite serious challenge to some ofthe basic assumptions of present policy the prospect of keeping to a course laid down five years ahead seemed doubtful indeed.Just what scope there is for change is exposed in Paragraph 8 of the White Paper: "The primary purpose of our defence policyis, therefore, that it should protect us, our allies and our friends, against the whole spectrum of possible aggression and militarythreats, from the small local action which might be the beginning of larger and more dangerous adventures through 'nuclear black-mail' to nuclear war." Mr Watkinson, at the outset, endeavoured to meet this anxietywhen he acknowledged that the task of keeping up with two in- dustrial giants meant that we had to be selective in our effort.This, he said, we were doing successfully. In the Navy our special contribution was in relation to anti-submarine warfareand in the operation and control of aircraft carriers. In the Army we were producing, and continuing to develop, the best familyof tank guns and tanks in the world. In the RAF, "We are clearly right to make contribution by means of aircraft; we have alreadycontributed much, and by aircraft I also mean aero-engines. In the TSR.2, for example, we have a project which at present isahead of anything else in the world." It was a former Conservative Minister of Supply, Mr AubreyJones, who from his place above and behind his former Ministerial colleagues made the most telling criticism. He claimed that theMinister of Defence and his colleagues had not yet understood the full implications of what had happened since the famousWhite Paper of 1957. The 1957 policy was an attempt to cover the whole gamut of weapons appropriate to an independent State,whilst dropping prematurely because we couldn't afford it, the manned aircraft in favour of the rocket. "We are witnessing,"said the ex-Minister, "the visible collapse of that aspiration after independence, and what worries me is that as yet I see no cleardiscernment of what we are to put in the place of collapsing independence." His reasoning was that we were now re-substi-tuting the manned aircraft for the rocket; that apart from the free-falling bomb, the only British missile to be fitted to theseaircraft would be Blue Steel, which certainly could not take us forward for ten years. Skybolt would not give us completeindependence and, in any case, was under suspicion. Skybolt "Abortive Expenditure" Mr Jones construed earlier remarks of the Minister to meanthat we were considering yet another British weapon as an in- surance against the possible failure of Skybolt. "I cannotimagine," he went on to say, "a greater folly than to cancel a weapon which is reasonably one's own after an abortive expendi-ture of £100 millions and to rely on a weapon from elsewhere, and then to take out an insurance policy against the possiblefailure of that weapon. This, to my mind, would be sheer mad- ness." He maintained that, despite the increased powers of theMinister of Defence, and despite the existence of the Chief Scientific Adviser, the objective advice on long-term defence plan-ning remained deficient—the crux of our present problem. The move away from the 1957 nuclear philosophy has high-lighted the man-power position, and almost without exception the Conservative critics claimed that, if our conventional forceswere to be adequate, selective conscription was inescapable. Mr Nigel Birch, a former Air Minister, thought it was "rightand wise that we should go for selective service." Viscount Lambton said that because it was almost impossible to managewith the numbers of men at our disposal, we were "running the risk of putting our conventional forces in personal danger." MrHall, who wound up for the Government side after the first day's debate, put as his personal opinion that as all, or nearly all,of our allies, and our potential opponents, had conscription, it was going to be difficult to justify our own refusal to have it. If a force has insufficient men it is, of course, especially im-portant to have them mobile, and the Air Minister, Mr Julian Amery, devoted part of his speech to the growth of TransportCommand. Having gone to the War Office shortly after the Suez operation, he said, he was particularly conscious of the trans-port position then obtaining. Since 1957, with Britannias, the strategic-lift capacity has been doubled. Within the theatre—from the main base to whatever operational base might in future be used—we had doubled the Beverley force, and greatly in-creased the numbers of Hastings in the tactical role. In taotical transport we had brought in about 30 Twin Pioneers, and heli-copters were beginning to arrive in reasonable numbers. More- over, new skills had been acquired and No 38 Group of TransportCommand were specializing in the kind of helicopter and para- chute operation which had been successfully undertaken by theFrench Army in a guerilla and insurrectionary situation. He re- jected suggestions that we could lift men but not equipment. I do not myself recollect a post-war defence debate in whichboth the increasing importance and the inadequate equipment of Transport Command have not been stressed. Though there isthe reserve of our civil air fleet in time of real emergency, it is surely not too much to hope that this one certain requirement,in a whole spectrum of uncertainties, may one day be met. No participant in the debate disagreed with the claim that somethinghad been done for the Command since the time of Suez; but no one said it was enough. Question of Vulnerability The Air Minister also dealt with doubts expressed about theBritish strategic striking force. There was the question of vul- nerability. It was the Conservative Member for Maiden who saidit was unfortunate that, only a few days before the case for the V-bomber was debated, we should have released claims of theLightning fighter's capacity to catch any current bomber. Was is logical to assume, asked Mr Harrison, that the Russians wouldnot have a fighter equally as good in ten years or in ten months? Mr Amery's view was that the threat today was mainly frommanned bombers, and in that time-scale there was plenty of time to take off and to bring the Thor missiles to a state of readiness.As the missile danger grew, the warning times would drop fairly sharply and steps were already being taken to counter it.The Air Minister recollected that at Farnborough the V- bombers scrambled in lmin 20sec, and that, he thought, gavethem more than enough time to get off the ground and away from the area of blast. The V-force, he said, "will be kept onthe basis of plans announced for avoiding destruction on the ground and reaching its target, and it will be an effective nuclearstriking force under our control, for ten years ahead." The announced plans, of course, include the change, as thedecade advances, from the free-falling bomb to a missile system, first Blue Steel and then Skybolt from the air and the sea-basedPolaris. There was much probing from the Opposition about the exact position as regards Skybolt. Mr Amery said that it wasnecessary to get the position quite clear. The weapons would be sold to us outright, and they would be fitted with British nuclearwarheads under our exclusive control. The suggestion that the United States would repudiate agreement would, said theMinister, be treated with the contempt it deserved. When he was interrupted by Mr Brown and asked if there was in factan agremeent covering more than the terms of our participation in development, Mr Amery said he would leave the matter to becleared up by his Rt Hon Friend. Winding up the debate, Mr Watkinson gave his consideredreply. He said we had a clear option on Skybolt, which was "fully compatible with the Mark 2 V-bombers." Further, he hadsigned a memorandum of understanding with the previous US Secretary of Defence, which gave the weapon to us with no strings"only if it is finally developed and fitted to B-52s." After this statement the Defence Minister immediately asked himself therhetorical question "What other options have we?" The reply was "the remarkable new aircraft the TSR.2 ... a weapons systemin which the pilot merely monitors the system ... a strategic and a tactical role . . . two years ahead of any other weaponssystem of its kind in the world." One wonders what is being put into that forward estimate forthe next five years. What is the budgeted allowance for man- power—voluntarily recruited or selectively conscribed? ForSkybolt? For other missile systems? What weight can be given to the possibility of disarmament? What will be the politicalcontrol of NATO? It is an interesting speculation—estimated by one of the best defence debates for a long time. FRANK BESWICK
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