Air Chief Marshal warns paymasters that RAF's 'core capabilities remain essential for all types of warfare'
The armed forces will on Monday once again remind their personnel that their country needs them. Not, in this case, for bombing raids in Libya or for fighting in Afghanistan, but for something rather more prosaic: volunteering for redundancy.
The navy and army will set out the packages on offer in the hope that thousands of people will leave the services, reducing the number of compulsory job losses that almost certainly will be required if the forces are to shed the 17,000 posts demanded in last year's strategic defence and security review.
The RAF outlined its programme last month, sparing the service the discomfort of having to do so when its aircrew are playing a significant role in the campaign against Colonel Gaddafi.
It was also the RAF's 93rd birthday last Friday, not an overly significant milestone, but Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton will seize any opportunity to try to boost morale and promise his staff that he is fighting their corner in Whitehall, even if he is careful not to do it in public. Not until now, anyway. "Many people may think that we have not been loud enough in making the case for air power," he says. "I think the opposite. I think what we have done is quietly maintain the arguments that demonstrate air power is essential for almost all types of operations and warfare, and in some cases, as in the last 10 days, it might be the only type of warfare that actually achieves operational aims … without ever having to put a footprint on the ground."
Dalton, a former Jaguar and Tornado pilot, accepts the need for reform, and knows the RAF cannot be spared the budget squeeze. Sympathy in Whitehall for all three services has been in short supply, due in part to a number of procurement disasters that have added billions of pounds to the cost of new equipment. Helicopters, fast jets, reconnaissance planes – none have come in on budget, and some, like the £4bn Nimrod spy planes, were scrapped before reaching the runway.
But Dalton is worried about the cuts leaving the service unable to rebuild itself. And he has an implicit warning for his paymasters, whose expectations appear not to change even when the budget does. "Governments are there in a democratic society to say where the priorities lie … and how much they want to spend on defence and what capabilities they want. Those things have to be kept under review because the world is changing. What is difficult sometimes to explain to people [is that] maintaining the key, core, capabilities allows you to do things in the future. If you get rid of those core capabilities it's much more difficult to regenerate."
He refers to "good old" Lord Trenchard, regarded as the founding father of the modern RAF, who counselled against those who said that the 1914-18 conflict had been the war to end all wars, and that the RAF did not need to keep up its strength during peacetime.
"It would be very nice if anyone could tell me … when the next crisis was going to come around the globe. It would be inconceivable given the nature of the country's position within the UN, and its global interests, that any government is going to turn around and say we do not want to have [a global capability]."
He bristles at critics who say the RAF is too expensive, and almost achieves lift-off at the suggestion, mooted by some last year in the run-up to the strategic defence and security review, that the air force should be subsumed into the army and navy.
"You say expensive? I would say it's relative. It all depends on what the consequences are of not doing it. When we simply look at the price tag on the shelf … the costs are often hidden and don't become apparent until much, much, later. So I do not, I'm afraid, subscribe to the view that air power is necessarily an expensive thing to do around the globe.
"Despite all the feverish discussion in letters and papers, the issue of an independent RAF did not – never came up in debate – around this building … There is no question in my mind that this country will need to have an independent RAF that can deliver air power for the country." Dalton believes the government has made a commitment to spending on defence being increased by the time the next defence review comes round, so that by the time of the RAF's centenary, in 2018, these lean years will be well behind them.
On top of the cuts in the review, the MoD is also scrambling to find an extra £1bn in savings – there was an overspend in last year's budget caused by the rush to cut costs.
Will the RAF be walloped again when further belt-tightening measures are announced? "No is the answer to that one. Am I confident that there won't be some adjustments? No, of course I am not. There will be some adjustments; there have got to be, inevitably, to live within a budget you are given. What we are seeking to do is make sure that the adjustments are recoverable [and do] the least long-term damage."
The immediate priority is Libya, he says, an operation that "is sustainable, at the moment, without jeopardising British efforts elsewhere". He adds: "In general terms [we] are now planning on the basis of at least six months, and we'll see where we go from there."