If you were Sandys or Mcnamara?

[alertken]

path doc: more knocking of Saviour Sandys. Please stop. Sandys at Defence funded TSR.2 and at MoA 2xResearch P.1127, 14/10/59.

 

[pathology_doc]

If those guys had read this book, they would have saved money without irreparably damaging their countries' military industry.

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674660052

If only Duncan Sandys had been able to travel forward in time 66 years to read it!

 

[MadRat]

I believe for that era the RAF was skewed towards active seekers. They could have developed a CWS seeker, but the problem is no aircraft save for F-4s had available front ends to make it plausible. There was no real option for them other than Sparrow on the F-4.

 

[pathology_doc]

They could have developed a CWS seeker, but the problem is no aircraft save for F-4s had available front ends to make it plausible.

This is horsetwaddle. You can't tell me the F-4 was the only SARH missile user.

The reason there was no radar set up to handle a SARH missile was because of the fascination for active homing - or more to the point, for fire-and-forget. If they'd compromised and gone for SARH from the start, the radar interface development would have happened.

 

[Rule of cool]

One thing I could have done if I were McNamara is insisted on realistic testing of weapons like the Sparrow and Sidewinder. Imagine how Vietnam would have gone if US AAMs were 50% more reliable, even if their basic performance was unchanged.

 

[Rule of cool]

That was the problem. Sandys went all-in on the belief that the next war would be an all-out nuclear exchange with nothing for Britain to do but retaliate to the maximum extent possible. He lost, and in losing he dealt a severe blow to the British aerospace industry. It was pure luck that what actually happened led to the ONE aircraft which could successfully have fought the only war Britain has ever single-handedly fought since then against an enemy of similar technical capability.

Thermonuclear war was the biggest threat to Britain, there is no doubt about that; that report that said Britain could be hit by 300 nuclear missiles within 1 minute was pretty much correct by 1962. Everything had to somehow deal with that underlying problem.

 

[MadRat]

This is horsetwaddle. You can't tell me the F-4 was the only SARH missile user.

The reason there was no radar set up to handle a SARH missile was because of the fascination for active homing - or more to the point, for fire-and-forget. If they'd compromised and gone for SARH from the start, the radar interface development would have happened.

I was talking specifically the British of that era. The closest SARH air to air missile they came to self developing was Blue Dolphin. They could build radars. However, the British didn't exactly have experience building the radar director kits for fighters and deploying Blue Dolphin would have required a suitable weapons system to backfit current fighters or build new fighters. Seekers were not the issue, because they built naval SAMs. The British didn't see the need to deploy Blue Dolphin due to the program costs for deployment and logistics, not lack of capacity to do it. They continued to struggle with the ADV radar during Tornado. Maybe you can refresh my memory what fighter radars they built that had a CWS director. You must be referring to some other Air Force or branch.

Look, I liked British fighters. But money was certainly their limitation. From a neutral perspective I respect that they most definitely had set (for themselves) criteria to meet expectations that did not include homegrown SARH air to air missiles. It would have been neat to see Lightning F.6 incorporating Sparrow/Blue Dolphin on the chins and heatseekers on the wing stations. They even skipped Sidewinder D/C for the later G models, perhaps due to little return for the costs. Could it have been different? Yes, but you still have to find the money.

Edit: grammar

 

[Rule of cool]

I don't think the issue was money as much as Sandys robbed the British 'fighter' of critical mass with his dogma, which resulted in a smallish Lightning buy and the smallish Hunter FGA conversion. A small fleet with limited planned service life creates a much different value for money calculation than a large fleet with a full length service life; eg 16 sqns for 15-18 years rather than 9 sqns for 10-12 years. Those extra sqns will need weapons and the extra production allows for reducing unit cost and the introduction of improvements.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Each time I see this thread I'm tempted to write "... I'll throw myself threw a window." Then I realize I already mentionned the cliff option.

Defenestration is overrated. Also, harder to fit out a window with a parachute than off the top of a building or bridge/cliff. A flying leap off a sufficiently-tall building or cliff is a lot better adrenaline rush.

I believe for that era the RAF was skewed towards active seekers. They could have developed a CWS seeker, but the problem is no aircraft save for F-4s had available front ends to make it plausible. There was no real option for them other than Sparrow on the F-4.

What everyone wanted was Fire and Forget, but only IR homing could be made to fit into a missile smaller than 12" diameter. You needed 1500-2000lbs of missile and launcher like Eagle or Phoenix to get radar-guided fire-and-forget. And that's per missile!

So an early Missileer is looking more like an A6 or Buccaneer strike/bomber than a fighter, needing to carry a good 9-12000lbs of missiles not counting the radar and fire control system.

One thing I could have done if I were McNamara is insisted on realistic testing of weapons like the Sparrow and Sidewinder. Imagine how Vietnam would have gone if US AAMs were 50% more reliable, even if their basic performance was unchanged.

I don't think that would have helped. Who would believe that the US would require positive visual ID of intruding aircraft in a combat situation?

And yet that is exactly what happened in Vietnam, where we discovered that Sparrows and Falcons were basically ineffective when used in such a manner. IR Falcons might have worked better if the USAF had AWACS planes more capable than the EC121 Warning Stars, able to guide the Falcon-armed planes into attack positions on NVAF aircraft.

 

[Rule of cool]

Leaving aside all the problems that the RoE and basic design and technology caused there's really little excuse for the Aim9d breaking up on launch or Aim7e2 detonation at 1000' from launch and all the other reliability problems.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Leaving aside all the problems that the RoE and basic design and technology caused there's really little excuse for the Aim9d breaking up on launch or Aim7e2 detonation at 1000' from launch and all the other reliability problems.

I have some suspicions about those, in the shape of cracked solid rockets. Which a heavy testing procedure may or may not have caught, if the missiles never got enough hot/cold cycles in testing, or enough carrier landings, etc.

I mean, the old Mk14 (and 15) torpedoes were so undertested that the USN requires at least 3 successful launches as an exercise torpedo (that gets recovered and reused) before a new Mk48 gets a warhead installed on it as a warshot. But I don't know how you'd do testing that extreme on a missile.

 

[zen]

Red Dean was about to reach launch tests, while Vickers radically redesigned it.
When the axe fell.
In favour of supersonic fighters that needed a radically new missile Red Hebe.

Then the axe fell on the supersonic fighters that justified axing Red Dean.and with them Red Hebe.

Then we ran on the subsonic fighters Red Dean had been developed for....without a radar missile.

Then because we didn't continue with the OR.346 or the P.1154RN we removed the fighters the new missiles were being developed for. Only managing to fly the A5 seeker and continue it for SAMs. None of which were developed.

Then we cut the AFVG, UKVG and with them the domestic missile died again. Along with the FMICW radar.
Then and only then the redesign of a Sparrow III frontend was allowed to progress along with a new FMICW radar.

 

[Rule of cool]

Then because we didn't continue with the OR.346 or the P.1154RN we removed the fighters the new missiles were being developed for. Only managing to fly the A5 seeker and continue it for SAMs. None of which were developed.

What's the potential for a big Lightning fleet to foster complimentary AAM development? It was the reason why the Red Top was developed after all, could the radar Red Top be developed for a fleet that wasn't constantly threatened with being withdrawn? Further, would the Taildog/SRAAM be fully developed?

 

[zen]

What's the potential for a big Lightning fleet to foster complimentary AAM development? It was the reason why the Red Top was developed after all, could the radar Red Top be developed for a fleet that wasn't constantly threatened with being withdrawn? Further, would the Taildog/SRAAM be fully developed?

I think it's a very strong case that could be argued in the corridors of Whitehall.

Essentially the Radar Red Top effort could have yielded fruit and seen the mkII liquid motor funded in the 60's.

Arguably a focus on anything supersonic with a decent radar could have achieved this.
All it takes is not cancelling the fighter, the development of the radar and the missile. Which is what happened repeatedly.

Had Sandys done so in '57, we'd likely see a competition between DH Radar Red Top, Vickers Small Radar Weapon (scaled down Red Hebe much favoured by Camm) and Fairey's design. The winner going forward to equip the fleet of aircraft.

Taildog could have been very interesting....

 

[pathology_doc]

Arguably a focus on anything supersonic with a decent radar could have achieved this.

It's not just the supersonics either. Fine, scrap every supersonic except Lightning, but then you still have Sea Vixen and Javelin to equip in the real world, neither of which suffers from the Lightning's restrictive centre-body and both of which would benefit from a Red Top-sized missile that reaches out to 20km or so.

I can't understand why the AAM developers had so much trouble getting a SARH missile system together while Ferranti and Bristol built a 50's-era SARH SAM so good it lasted with foreign customers into the 1990s (Bloodhound).

My reading of Tony Wilson's English Electric Lightning, Genesis and Projects seems to suggest that the tactical concern was about having so little time to get to altitude and intercept that a distant head-on shot with a SARH missile was pointless. Appears they ran the math and showed that a snap-up shot on a target 10,000 feet above you would always fall within Red Top's forward-quarter parameters.

I may have got that wrong and a second reading is probably required, but my understanding is that they used this to justify not proceeding with SARH capability. And that's fine for the Lightning, but perhaps not so good for the Sea Vixen (which is much slower) and absolutely useless for the Javelin, which only ever carried Firestreaks.

All it takes is not cancelling the fighter, the development of the radar and the missile. Which is what happened repeatedly.

Wilson's book seems to indicate that it was the Air Staff which decided not to proceed with F.155T or further fighter development and that the DWP was simply a reflection of the decision already taken. Again, I may be reading that wrong. That seems to be a particularly pro-Sandys or at least remarkably Sandys-friendly interpretation, but even if you read BSP1 (revised), you find the Air Staff (not the Government) repeatedly trying to change horses in mid-stream or asking for major changes halfway through a development process (e.g. suddenly wanting to hang four Firestreaks off a developed supersonic Hunter).

There's probably a book to be written around the thesis of the post-war RAF being its own worst enemy, or at least that of the manufacturers. The firms might have been fairly accused from time to time of not understanding the Weapon System concept, but I'm not exactly sure the customer grasped the bigger picture either.

 

[pathology_doc]

Red Dean was about to reach launch tests, while Vickers radically redesigned it.
When the axe fell.
In favour of supersonic fighters that needed a radically new missile Red Hebe.

Then the axe fell on the supersonic fighters that justified axing Red Dean.and with them Red Hebe.

Then we ran on the subsonic fighters Red Dean had been developed for....without a radar missile.

Then because we didn't continue with the OR.346 or the P.1154RN we removed the fighters the new missiles were being developed for. Only managing to fly the A5 seeker and continue it for SAMs. None of which were developed.

Then we cut the AFVG, UKVG and with them the domestic missile died again. Along with the FMICW radar.

I sometimes think the history of British fighter development after the war could be summed up as:

"The best was allowed to become the enemy of good enough, until finally the moribund bank balance became the enemy of the best."

 

[Hood]

It feels to me that the whole issue might stem from the fact that air-to-air guided weapons right back to Artemis in 1942 were designed for operation from two-seater night-fighters - what became relabelled "all-weather fighters" in the early 1950s.
The dichotomy between the two-man, radar-equipped, missile-armed all-weather fighter and the single-seat rapid climbing interceptor lasted well into the 1950s (arguably the 1970s with ADV Vs AST.403).
Despite having AI radar - the interceptor was seen as having a radar for terminal search and ranging and thus integrating missiles was seen as a matter of engaging a target within visual range. All-weather fighters had a "blind-firing" modus operandi. It didn't matter that Red Dean was the size of steam loco when it was hunting fast but low-manoeuvrable bomber targets. The RN buying the Phantom reinforced this - its a classic "all-weather" fighter of the British mould. The RAF was rather wasting its talents as a surrogate TSR/F-111K until the Jaguar came along and they replaced/augmented the Lightnings in air defence.
Even in the 70s Skyflash was an ADV weapon against big Tupolevs, Taildog was for dogfighting fighters over the FEBA. The first British aircraft to really get with the times was the Sea Harrier FA.2 - using AMRAAM gave it long-range punch.

So I think that the two competing mindsets were making a roadblock, no matter how fancy the AI.23 fitted to Lightning might be - its weapons would only ever be point-defence missiles to swat down targets nearby. There just wasn't the urge to think "hey we could long-range AAMs onto this fighter". Camm tried with P.1121 and the RAF said he just didn't "dig it" when it came to weapon systems....

 

[zen]

And remember Fireflash, based on a automatic search and lock-on without the pilot having to use a display.

 

[Rule of cool]

Sandys could have done something as simple as order Lightning F2s during his tenure. The 50 F1 & F1A were ordered in November 1956, 30 T4 in June 1958, 50 F2 in December 1959 (after Sandys left MoD) and 47 F3 in June 1960. Instead his tenure was spent arguing the size of Fighter Command down from the initial DWP number of 20 sqns to 12. This lack of an order is why this thread is talking about the AAMs on the Javelin, when the Javelin shouldn't have lasted until 1966.

For a bit of perspective the French bought 420 Mirage IIIB/C/E/R (+ 50 embargoed Israeli Vs they took over) compared to the RAF buying 258 Lightnings and 162 Hunter FGA/FR conversions.

 

[Scott Kenny]

What's the potential for a big Lightning fleet to foster complimentary AAM development? It was the reason why the Red Top was developed after all, could the radar Red Top be developed for a fleet that wasn't constantly threatened with being withdrawn?

It would certainly be easier to develop a radar Red Top for planes you were planning on keeping around. Note how long the US kept those few fighters designed around AIM4s flying and with some updates to the missiles in the 1970s.

Further, would the Taildog/SRAAM be fully developed?

That is the one missile that I wish had been developed. It arguably would have been able to replace guns for interceptors and fighter bombers. Or at least replace part of the guns, for those planes armed with multiple guns.

I sometimes think the history of British fighter development after the war could be summed up as:

"The best was allowed to become the enemy of good enough, until finally the moribund bank balance became the enemy of the best."

I would certainly agree with that description.

 

[red admiral]

@Hood
To me then Lightning comes across as basically a piloted SAM. You've got ground based radar providing the early warning and then mid course updates via CGI to get the aircraft into the endgame intercept position; the pilot then takes over for final acquisition and then engagement with short range weapons (guns, rockets, missiles). It was effectively replaced by Bloodhound Mk II in the mid 60s as the primary defence approach but remained in service.

It's very different from the all weather fighter approach of finding, targeting, engaging by itself.

A lot of it comes from language e.g. Fighter = Interceptor in most people's minds as one part of the wider air defence system (including "Fighter"Command) rather than the Fighter = All Weather Fighter that operates much more individually

 

[Scott Kenny]

@Hood
To me then Lightning comes across as basically a piloted SAM. You've got ground based radar providing the early warning and then mid course updates via CGI to get the aircraft into the endgame intercept position; the pilot then takes over for final acquisition and then engagement with short range weapons (guns, rockets, missiles). It was effectively replaced by Bloodhound Mk II in the mid 60s as the primary defence approach but remained in service.

It's very different from the all weather fighter approach of finding, targeting, engaging by itself.

A lot of it comes from language e.g. Fighter = Interceptor in most people's minds as one part of the wider air defence system (including "Fighter"Command) rather than the Fighter = All Weather Fighter that operates much more individually

That almost seems to be an Air Force versus Navy thing.

Navies pretty quickly went to wanting All Weather fighters while Air Forces kept the idea of the manned interceptor going a lot longer. Hell, even the F-16 was originally proposed as a day fighter only!

edit: I should add that what Sandys did say was that the fighters the UK needed were big, long range Barrier Combat Air Patrol types. F4, F14, arguably Missileer. And those types were not developed in-house till Tornado ADV, basically starting in the 1970s and not being deployed till 1979, under ASR395. Admittedly even the US took a bit to get a good BARCAP plane figured out (not till F-14), but the UK could have taken F111B since the carrier compatibility issues weren't a problem for the UK. Or they could have built a subsonic Missileer type early on with plans to update to a supersonic fighter comparable to F14 later on. Buccaneer might work, though it's a bit too optimized for low level flight. Canberra would have the payload for 4x-6x Bendix Eagle class missiles, for example, and was capable of very high altitudes even by today's standards.

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

Canberra would have the payload for 4x-6x Bendix Eagle class missiles, for example, and was capable of very high altitudes even by today's standards.

Or they could've gone even further and take the A2A Vulcan more seriously. At one point even Sea Dart was considered, but it was deemed impractical.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Okay, I've just downloaded the Outline of Future Policy, Cmnd. 124 - that is, the actual White Paper, from ProQuest.

The relevant sections, as far as fighter aircraft is concerned, are:

7. Since peace so largely depends upon the deterrent fear of nuclear retaliation, it is essential that a would-be aggressor should not be allowed to think he could readily knock out the bomber bases in Britain before their aircraft could take off from them. The defence of the bomber airfields is therefore an essential part of the deterrent and is a feasible task. A manned fighter force, smaller than at present but adequate for this limited purpose, will be maintained and will progressively be equipped with air-to-air guided missiles. Fighter aircraft will in due course be replaced by a ground-to-air guided missile system.

and

Work will proceed on the development of a ground-to-air missile defence system, which will in due course replace the manned aircraft of Fighter Command. In view of the good progress already made, the Government have come to the conclusion that the R.A.F. are unlikely to have a requirement for fighter aircraft of types more advanced than the supersonic P 1, and work on such projects will stop.

There is no other statement in the White Paper about the future fighter force. There is a certain amount about equipping various theatre air forces with nuclear weapons, but nothing of the need for fighters for them.

Probably the biggest shortfall in the paper, by modern standards, is the lack of specific details about the future Armed Forces. The greatest virtue, compared to is modern equivalents, is that it uses a lot fewer words to not give any specifics!

The second-to-last paragraph bears some attention, even today: It should not however be expected that it will show a decline in anyway comparable with that in the manpower strengths of the forces. Thisis primarily due to the ever-increasing complication of modern weapons andequipment, the higher cost per man of regular forces and the fact thatproportionately more civilians will be employed.

 

[red admiral]

The relevant sections, as far as fighter aircraft is concerned, are:

Fighter = Interceptor is my understanding, which also ties into "Fighter" Command's role during this period

 

[Rule of cool]

Interception is a role that any combat aircraft can do, some are better than others and some are designed specifically for certain interception situations. However that doesn't make them useless for other roles and situations, indeed the Phantom was specifically designed as an interceptor because the E1-F8 combination couldn't achieve DLI interceptions against supersonic nuclear bombers. Yet it became the premier air-superiority fighter and multi-role fighter of the 60s, the very performance that allowed it to make the tough interceptions meant it had the power and capability to take on agile fighters in close combat (with appropriate training to use the available weapons), the Mirage III was the same and the Lightning would be too if given the chance.

If Sandys had pushed the Lightning on the RAF instead of the Hunter conversions it wouldn't have ended up with a worse fleet of FGA/FR aircraft than it actually got because the Lightning was an 'interceptor'. For the extra money it would have gotten a fleet with individual service lives of ~20 years, vastly superior air to air combat capability, ordnance carrying capability, all weather capability and upgradability than the Hunter. In a broader sense it would have made the Lightning vastly more attractive to export customers, provided critical mass to make upgrades to weapons, avionics and other systems attractive and spared the RAF from the Hunter replacement debacle that started in about 1962.

 

[red admiral]

I disagree with this fantasy as stated with evidence over multiple threads that you bring back to this topic

 

[Scott Kenny]

Okay, I've just downloaded the Outline of Future Policy, Cmnd. 124 - that is, the actual White Paper, from ProQuest.

Link, please?

The relevant sections, as far as fighter aircraft is concerned, are:

and

There is no other statement in the White Paper about the future fighter force. There is a certain amount about equipping various theatre air forces with nuclear weapons, but nothing of the need for fighters for them.

Probably the biggest shortfall in the paper, by modern standards, is the lack of specific details about the future Armed Forces. The greatest virtue, compared to is modern equivalents, is that it uses a lot fewer words to not give any specifics!

The second-to-last paragraph bears some attention, even today: It should not however be expected that it will show a decline in anyway comparable with that in the manpower strengths of the forces. Thisis primarily due to the ever-increasing complication of modern weapons andequipment, the higher cost per man of regular forces and the fact thatproportionately more civilians will be employed.

Right, because 1) fighter = interceptor in British mindset at the time, and 2) they had not yet worked out the implications of deck/ground launched interceptors versus supersonic bombers (and missile carriers) like the USN had.

The threat of supersonic bombers with supersonic missiles requires Barrier Combat Air Patrol, stationed some distance away from the target to be defended. On the order of a couple hundred miles away from the target to be defended. Long endurance, equipped with a long range radar, and armed with long range missiles. It may also require Airborne Early Warning, unless the targets happen to be well inland relative to the threat axis.

If Sandys had pushed the Lightning on the RAF instead of the Hunter conversions it wouldn't have ended up with a worse fleet of FGA/FR aircraft than it actually got because the Lightning was an 'interceptor'. For the extra money it would have gotten a fleet with individual service lives of ~20 years, vastly superior air to air combat capability, ordnance carrying capability, all weather capability and upgradability than the Hunter. In a broader sense it would have made the Lightning vastly more attractive to export customers, provided critical mass to make upgrades to weapons, avionics and other systems attractive and spared the RAF from the Hunter replacement debacle that started in about 1962.

Lightning is a terrible ground attack plane. We've been over this. A lot.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Link, please?

Here:https://parlipapers-proquest-com.nl...-e59b-49f7-b37e-d71f7b0b2a30&rsId=18E7994255F

I have access through my local library (guess what, the UK has sold off rights to its parliamentary archive!) so you may not be able to view it.

Fighter = Interceptor is my understanding, which also ties into "Fighter" Command's role during this period

Agreed; there's no statement one way or the other about air superiority. Given the views of nuclear warfighting at the time, and the shift towards nuclear weapons, one can imagine the view being that air superiority is automatically achieved with one Red Beard per airfield... but that's not actually stated.

Right, because 1) fighter = interceptor in British mindset at the time, and 2) they had not yet worked out the implications of deck/ground launched interceptors versus supersonic bombers (and missile carriers) like the USN had.

Without that realisation at a staff level, the necessary change in procurement can't take place. Given that long-range SAMs were objected to on the grounds that 'we're not defending the bloody French' in this time period, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

That said, the UK was pretty good at operations research, so it's capable of making the recognition. It just culturally couldn't.

 

[Hood]

To me then Lightning comes across as basically a piloted SAM. You've got ground based radar providing the early warning and then mid course updates via CGI to get the aircraft into the endgame intercept position; the pilot then takes over for final acquisition and then engagement with short range weapons (guns, rockets, missiles). It was effectively replaced by Bloodhound Mk II in the mid 60s as the primary defence approach but remained in service.

Which makes it all the more fascinating why the Lightning's planned automatic interception capability was never cleared for operational use.

 

[Purpletrouble]

Last first. The 57 DWP wasn't just a cost cutting exercise, it was a realisation that war was changing. Prior to about 1957 it was assumed that WW3 would be like WW2 but with nukes, there would still be mass armies, mass production of weapons and the need for convoys to protect global trade etc. With the introduction of thermonulear weapons fighting on after losing tens of millions in days simply wasn't a realistic option. In addition mass production of something like a Lightning wasn't possible the way it was with a Hunter, so the wars of the future were going to have to be deterred or fought and won/lost with whatever was in the inventory at any one time. In a lot of ways Sandys DWP was a good reaction to these wider circumstances.

Stating the TSR2 will replace the Victors as well as Canberra will change expectations, I'd also push that its cutting-edge technology will keep Britain at the forefront of aviation. I don't know if this would avoid the 10kt nuke ban, so I threw it in.

If Sandys pushes the Lightning as the RAFs 'limited war' plane I'd think well over 200 would be in service or on order by the time the radar Red Top is mooted from about 1962. I'd almost think a CW emitter could be standard with the AI23B.

Absolutely true.

The RN had actually already trodden this path with the Radical Review of ‘54 and so had begun to reposition itself away from the convoy and long drawn out obsession towards cold war requriements of deterring and defeating minor powers and having some tripwire forces for any major conflict.

I don’t think the RAF and Army had really done this.

As Sandy’s I‘d have shot the forces senior leadership for the vast plethora of overlapping and competing projects, often on utterly unrealistic requirements and completely undeliverable.

My controbution would have been that “nuclear plenty” would be acheived soon and as such actually these were very unlikely to be used and thus conventional forces

@Hood
To me then Lightning comes across as basically a piloted SAM. You've got ground based radar providing the early warning and then mid course updates via CGI to get the aircraft into the endgame intercept position; the pilot then takes over for final acquisition and then engagement with short range weapons (guns, rockets, missiles). It was effectively replaced by Bloodhound Mk II in the mid 60s as the primary defence approach but remained in service.

A key requirement then as now is peacetime identification and shadowing plus you tend to get a better (confidence in) kill confirmation with a pilot on the spot.

Problem of missiles is the lack of SA as to what the target actually is, what it is actually doing and what has actually happened to it.

GCI wasnt much different for a Tornado ADV or is it much different for a Typhoon tbh- they can just do more themselves as its recognised from experience that GCI (or airborne) only gets you to the fight - that endgame of missile/guns you refer to has basically just moved to be earlier due to the much increased reach of ours, and theirs, weapons.

It's very different from the all weather fighter approach of finding, targeting, engaging by itself.

A lot of it comes from language e.g. Fighter = Interceptor in most people's minds as one part of the wider air defence system (including "Fighter"Command) rather than the Fighter = All Weather Fighter that operates much more individually

Fighters (in fact fast jets and usually helos) operate in a minimum of a pair and for jets, usually groups of 4. I think this comes from the Germans and in WW2 the RAF dropped traditional Vic/3 for it iirc?

2 pairs gives you a wide range of tactical options and covers a very wide area yet is small enough to be easily coordinated by a lead and for communication relatively informally (ie quickly/accurately and without overload) within the group.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Here:https://parlipapers-proquest-com.nl...-e59b-49f7-b37e-d71f7b0b2a30&rsId=18E7994255F

I have access through my local library (guess what, the UK has sold off rights to its parliamentary archive!) so you may not be able to view it.

Had to register, but it works for me. For now. We'll see how long I keep the access, since I'm not a UK national.

Agreed; there's no statement one way or the other about air superiority. Given the views of nuclear warfighting at the time, and the shift towards nuclear weapons, one can imagine the view being that air superiority is automatically achieved with one Red Beard per airfield... but that's not actually stated.

Without that realisation at a staff level, the necessary change in procurement can't take place. Given that long-range SAMs were objected to on the grounds that 'we're not defending the bloody French' in this time period, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

That said, the UK was pretty good at operations research, so it's capable of making the recognition. It just culturally couldn't.

Funny enough, I'm picturing most of the long-range fighter bases being up in Scotland or Northern Ireland, not down south.

Fighters (in fact fast jets and usually helos) operate in a minimum of a pair and for jets, usually groups of 4. I think this comes from the Germans and in WW2 the RAF dropped traditional Vic/3 for it iirc?

2 pairs gives you a wide range of tactical options and covers a very wide area yet is small enough to be easily coordinated by a lead and for communication relatively informally (ie quickly/accurately and without overload) within the group.

Pairs of pairs is a very easy and natural organization for humans. Though funny enough the usual stable organization is 5.

 

[Rule of cool]

Lightning is a terrible ground attack plane.

It's a trade-off. It would have been nice if there was a British plane in the class of the Phantom ready to go by 1960, but there wasn't. In any case while the Lightning isn't in the class of the F105 or F4 it's comparable to the F104 and Mirage III in terms of ground attack capabilities.

The RN had actually already trodden this path with the Radical Review of ‘54 and so had begun to reposition itself away from the convoy and long drawn out obsession towards cold war requriements of deterring and defeating minor powers and having some tripwire forces for any major conflict.

I don’t think the RAF and Army had really done this.

I think a great example of this is the seeming lack of any plan or aircraft design to replace the ~17 sqns of fighter-bombers/fighter-recce that were in service in Germany, Mid East and Far East in January 1957. There were fancy F.155 interceptors and high-altitude, high-speed recce/bombers in the works but no handy all-rounder. Indeed the requirement to replace the Venom was urgent in 1958, as if the RAF was surprised it had to happen.

 

[Scott Kenny]

It's a trade-off. It would have been nice if there was a British plane in the class of the Phantom ready to go by 1960, but there wasn't. In any case while the Lightning isn't in the class of the F105 or F4 it's comparable to the F104 and Mirage III in terms of ground attack capabilities.

Both of which are pretty terrible ground attack planes.

I think a great example of this is the seeming lack of any plan or aircraft design to replace the ~17 sqns of fighter-bombers/fighter-recce that were in service in Germany, Mid East and Far East in January 1957. There were fancy F.155 interceptors and high-altitude, high-speed recce/bombers in the works but no handy all-rounder. Indeed the requirement to replace the Venom was urgent in 1958, as if the RAF was surprised it had to happen.

I believe that this is caused by there not being something like Tactical Air Command in the US. RAF Fighter Command tracks to US Air Defense Command, RAF Bomber Command tracks to SAC, but there's no Command whose job is to get aircraft for RAFG, Near East AF, Far East AF, and whatever the name of the last group is. And the lack of this Tactical Air Command group seems odd to me, as it would represent another Command level officer and staff for the RAF to hold onto.

 

[Purpletrouble]

I think a great example of this is the seeming lack of any plan or aircraft design to replace the ~17 sqns of fighter-bombers/fighter-recce that were in service in Germany, Mid East and Far East in January 1957. There were fancy F.155 interceptors and high-altitude, high-speed recce/bombers in the works but no handy all-rounder. Indeed the requirement to replace the Venom was urgent in 1958, as if the RAF was surprised it had to happen.

quite. Although i think TSR2 was part of that and the NBMR stuff too.

F155 and Avro730 are glorious but utterly unrealistic. Sandys was absolutey right to bin them.

But yes the lack of something in the F4 class or even any of its peers is odd. P1121 was PV and never came close to being real, other than that its TSR2 and what became P1127.

The RN had far more sensible ships in the pipeline which could more easily flit hot to cold war policy shifts- carriers, Countys and its frigates. It was almost like they decided on the ships and just wrote/changed the policy to suit the prevailing wind…

The Army was basically as it had been in 1945 at this point. When you look at its post war orbats there is no discernable difference from 1945 to the 1960s, its as if the lessons of combined arms armoured/mechanised warfare got parked for 10 years and it maintained standard “infantry” divisions and armd divs of a very tank heavy armd bde and a lorried inf bde. I dont know if that was lack of resources and/or focus on global garrisons and the to be fair, quite demanding minor wars, or just not thinking about it. It certainly doesnt seem to show much awareness of the nuclear age until the 60s whereas the RN and RAF seemed immediately aware of the impacts of that and proceeded accordingly, even changing their position as things evolved.

I believe that this is caused by there not being something like Tactical Air Command in the US. RAF Fighter Command tracks to US Air Defense Command, RAF Bomber Command tracks to SAC, but there's no Command whose job is to get aircraft for RAFG, Near East AF, Far East AF, and whatever the name of the last group is. And the lack of this Tactical Air Command group seems odd to me, as it would represent another Command level officer and staff for the RAF to hold onto.

dont forget 2 (allied) tactical air force which was germany stuff which was the bulk of grd atk/fgtr recce and was very much a command. NEAF/FEAF were “all arms” and quite FGR focussed.

TSR2 was both TAF and NEAF/FEAF bound and the biggest program of the period. Albeit “offensive support” was a very low likely priority of it. But in parallel was the STOVL stuff which was explicitly aimed at TAF.

But yes, pre that it seemed satisfied with Canberra and Venom to later Hunter which was aiui a bit of a “oh bugger we need a Venom replacement”. Perhaps they just drank too much of the tactical nuclear cool aid and saw no role for light/conventional attack?

 

[Rule of cool]

Both of which are pretty terrible ground attack planes.

Sure, but by the 60s few air forces (including the RAF) would afford big fleets of specialised, high-end tactical aircraft. I think a lot of air force chose to accept mediocre ground attack capabilities in order to get the Mach 2 fighter.

I believe that this is caused by there not being something like Tactical Air Command in the US. RAF Fighter Command tracks to US Air Defense Command, RAF Bomber Command tracks to SAC, but there's no Command whose job is to get aircraft for RAFG, Near East AF, Far East AF, and whatever the name of the last group is. And the lack of this Tactical Air Command group seems odd to me, as it would represent another Command level officer and staff for the RAF to hold onto.

The RAF put a pair of Hunter FGA9 sqns into Transport Command in 1960.

Also the RAF had a lot of Canberras, which I assume would have been used in tactical attack roles.

 

[red admiral]

Which makes it all the more fascinating why the Lightning's planned automatic interception capability was never cleared for operational use.

The UK does quite a lot of R&D that never makes it over the line into service because it gets more and more difficult to justify the increasing amounts of money needing to be spent. e.g. building all the hardware and then retrofitting to the fleet and supporting it.

In this is case its probably timing relative to Bloodhound coming into service and taking over the wartime air defence role, while there's less drive for it in peacetime. And at least from what I can see, it looked pretty expensive (£30m = buying a squadron of Lightnings), and whilst the data link bit worked, the software had issues. So it just boils down to Value for Money decisions.



On the "peacetime" role of identification and shadowing - its notable that this doesn't appear to come up at all in F.155T. It's all about making sure that UK had a effective detterent through protecting the V bomber bases. No one appeared to care about peacetime usage, but then there was also much less air traffic.

 

[MadRat]

Deck launched intercepts are primarily a fleet specific defensive role, and doesn't so much pertain to the RAF procurement. F-4 was procured by the RAF for studying the multipurpose future of aircraft. North America and Europe raced to multirole from there, scrapping a lot of designs in between to avoid buying systems obsolete at production launch. People seem to forget that aircraft were all pretty specialized in the 50s and 60s out of necessity in order to perform their roles in an efficient, cost-effective manner. Think how large fleets were in the end of WW2 compared to by the 1950s. They kept shrinking because of obsolescence of old aircraft brought on by the production of shiny new ones. The need for 7,000 aircraft in NATO was no longer necessary with each new iteration. The Soviets were not skipping new purchases and it bankrupted them by the 90s.

 

[Hood]

A key requirement then as now is peacetime identification and shadowing plus you tend to get a better (confidence in) kill confirmation with a pilot on the spot.

On the "peacetime" role of identification and shadowing - its notable that this doesn't appear to come up at all in F.155T. It's all about making sure that UK had a effective detterent through protecting the V bomber bases. No one appeared to care about peacetime usage, but then there was also much less air traffic.

NATO it seems had regulations on the interception of unidentified civilian aircraft during NATO exercises in 1958, with moves to make that applicable to any time. The origins of these regs were those originally agreed in 1953 with the USSR for use over Germany.

https://archives.nato.int/uploads/r/null/1/3/135217/SGWM-701-58_ENG_PDP.pdf

Wider application seems somewhat tardy, for example the ICAO's Manual concerning Interception of Civil Aircraft was not created until 1983, building on the precedents NATO had set.

https://skylibrarys.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/doc-9433-interception-civil-aircraft.pdf

Agreed with Red Admiral though - RAF policy at this time seems to have been focused on pre-laid down interception profiles of targets of Soviet types of estimate/hypothetical performances and operating doctrines rather than more general purpose roles.
Most of the F.155 designs had multi-pane greenhouse canopies so visual observation would have been trickier anyway.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The Army was basically as it had been in 1945 at this point. When you look at its post war orbats there is no discernable difference from 1945 to the 1960s, its as if the lessons of combined arms armoured/mechanised warfare got parked for 10 years and it maintained standard “infantry” divisions and armd divs of a very tank heavy armd bde and a lorried inf bde. I dont know if that was lack of resources and/or focus on global garrisons and the to be fair, quite demanding minor wars, or just not thinking about it. It certainly doesnt seem to show much awareness of the nuclear age until the 60s whereas the RN and RAF seemed immediately aware of the impacts of that and proceeded accordingly, even changing their position as things evolved.

I suspect that was the Army HQ not thinking about what throwing nukes around would mean, but I hope it was partially a recognition that the US's Pentomic Division idea was just not something a human mind can command (too many "things" to order around).