Eric Grove: Navy under attack from vested interests

Strategy implies a relationship between means and ends. Never has the mismatch between objectives and capabilities been greater.

David Cameron said – rightly – that the United Kingdom needs to "project power and influence in a rapidly changing world" and thus requires a "capability to react to the unexpected".

Unfortunately, his Government is scrapping exactly those forces that are the core of any such strategic flexibility. The sudden and rather unexpected decommissioning of the carrier strike capability removes our nation's core capacity to deploy the necessary air power free of the support of perhaps unreliable hosts.

What makes this quite perverse is the decision to try to resurrect a carrier capability in 10 years time. Apparently, the Government has gazed into its mark-one crystal ball and has decided there will be no serious conflict requiring a carrier in the next 10 years and, hence, it is "unlikely to be essential". So much for responding to the unexpected.

One hopes this "10-year no-war" rule will be a little more accurate than the inter-war 10-year rule that was only abandoned in 1932 – a little on the late side.

The flaw at the heart of this review is the attitude of the RAF to the Harrier. The Prime Minister said that the "military advice was clear" that it was more important to keep the Tornado than the Harrier. What he meant was the advice he was receiving from the Air Staff was telling him this.

The RAF had been careful to replace the Harriers in Afghanistan long before the review, to make sure that these aircraft were associated with the campaign and, therefore, untouchable. In reality, the Tornado has proved itself rather less than capable in this theatre. The country

is spending more than necessary to indulge the RAF's passion for this old jet.

Notoriously, the "Tornado Mafia" runs the RAF. These officers cannot see beyond an aircraft that is well beyond its sell-by date. It used to be said that a battleship was to an admiral as a cathedral was to a bishop. This could be applied to certain Air Marshals and the Tornado.

In reality, the latter is at best obsolescent, if not obsolete. Its pilots are embarrassed to show it to visitors when compared with aircraft like the Typhoon and, indeed, the Harrier. Clearly, its supporters have been very economical with the truth in the comparative assessments of the Tornado and Harrier given to the gullible Prime Minister.

The objective analysis that I have seen clearly shows that the Harrier is superior to the Tornado in the Afghan scenario. The Harrier requires fewer people to operate it and it is happier in the hot and high conditions of the theatre. For most of the campaigning season, the smaller Harrier can carry more fuel and weapons than its larger counterpart.

One suspects the Prime Minister was insulated from these truths in order for him to make the "right" decision.

In the carrier controversy of the 1960s, the apocryphal story got around in Naval circles that the RAF had moved land masses in order to make their island-based aircraft more competitive with carrier air. The evidence for this is not strong but I am sure that future historians will find proof of cynical RAF political manoeuvring in this defence review. The very ability of the Harrier to be more flexible and carrier capable was its downfall.

In the last Strategic Defence Review, the Royal Navy contributed its Sea Harriers to a Joint Force in order to help make the case for carrier replacement.

The RAF has spared no effort to undermine this compromise. First, the Sea Harriers, less suitable for strike warfare in hot environments, were taken out of service. This made some sense if the RAF's Harriers were shared between the two services.

The Naval Strike Wing was duly formed but the RAF remained determined to destroy the joint Harrier force so that the Royal Navy's wing would disappear. This will mean that when the F-35 eventually appears, the RAF will claim monopoly ownership.

Nothing, even the effective disarmament of a force that has proved its capabilities both ashore and afloat, can stand in the way of this blatant single service sectarianism.

I have to admit to being dreadfully disappointed by this result. Having defended the Joint Force concept, and even the continued existence of the RAF, it is extremely frustrating to see British defence policy

being so patently hijacked by narrow single service interests. The resulting policy makes no sense at all.

The RAF is not alone in culpability for this strategic mess. The Army still seems incapable of deploying more than 10 per cent of its

strength on a regular basis. We are told that it is losing 7,000 personnel from its inflated numbers, half the proportion of people that the far more efficient Royal Navy is losing. One wonders what fraction of the Army's 3,000 horses, each the cost of a lieutenant colonel, is being cut.

Sadly, Afghanistan has been used as a cloak to protect vested single service interests.

Eric Grove is Professor of Naval History at the University of Salford.