The Royal Navy’s Sea Harriers have harried their last sea:
Britain’s Harrier jets took their final flight Wednesday before the 16-strong fleet is axed as part of spending cuts intended to help reduce a record budget deficit.
The decision to scrap the iconic military planes, and to send the Ark Royal carrier that hosts them into early retirement, means the Royal Navy will be left without the ability to launch aircraft at sea for a decade.
The distinctive grey Harriers took off from the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Cottesmore, completing a fly-past of several air stations before landing for the last time…
Ministers hope to save about 900 million pounds in the next eight years by axing the jets, according to reports, as part of a major tightening of the military budget…
Former military chiefs have strongly criticised the decision to retire the Harriers, writing in a letter to The Times newspaper last month that the move was “strategically and financially perverse.”
For my own part, I always thought them awkward buggers, but I hate to see a capability zeroed out with no replacement for 10 years. The bean counters will inevitably say, “Well, you’ve trundled along fine without them for a decade. Why not try another decade more?”
Talk about your fighter gap.
The British 10 Year Rule redux, alas. Still, what is more important, Sea Control, of welfare state payoffs? I read Police Inspector Blog, a UK police blog, and fear the Mother Country is doomed.
What’s worse is that traditionally we are about 20 years behind the UK. We are suffering from the same idiocy they are.
Sad days for the RN. I think the writing was on the wall for a few years. It was only a matter of time after they made the RN give up the Sea Harrier a few years back and go to joint ops with the RAF ground attack configured Harrier. I hope no RN sailor has to ever rely on the theory that the RAF will be able to project power to protect the fleet. Nothing against the RAF , but I think they are too optimistic about covering the fleet if needed.
Kiss the Falklands cheerio?
On a side note,
http://io9.com/5713581/new-research-shows-fighter-pilots-have-super+brains
Someone had to pay for that? Hell, we could have told ‘em.
They’re also more attractive than the rest of the population and every girl in the bar wants one.
My favorite comment (including a picture of the Captain from TOPGUN):
T don’t care how “cognitively advanced” these pilots think they are. If any of them buzz MY tower again, they’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong!
No more carriers, no more Fleet Air Arm, no more ability for power projection … sounds like pretty much “no more Royal Navy.”
bbc1969: I suspect that before that new carrier is ready, there won’t be much of a Royal Air Force left either. England has apparently given up on the entire idea of having a standing Armed Forces.
Wait. The British Navy ONLY had Harriers? Holy crap. This was once the world’s greatest Navy and now they don’t have the capability to launch an aircraft off a carrier? Wow.
they’ve now also scrapped their entire fleet of maratime patrol aircraft…
The RN has been reduced to a few frigates and destroyers, a handful of submarines.
The only power projection left are 3 (maybe 4) Trident submarines with 1 warhead per missile.
There just doesn’t seem to be the fire in the belly of the Brit leadership any more. Without that, I don’t know that HM Aviation would really have made any difference.
Let’s see… the Royal Navy is building two carriers, one of which they will probably sell to the highest bidder as soon as it’s out of the yards. The other one may not even have aircraft for it. The RAF is going to six fighter squadrons by 2019… not wings, mind you… squadrons… and if they get the updated Nimrod… a big if… they can only afford nine of them.
Sounds to me like Not So Great Britain is headed towards a limp-wristed, tiny unified military structure, similar to what Canada now runs.
Pretty sure the 9 Nimrods, already in various stages of production I think, you refer to are being scrapped.
This was confirmed by the UK press. Nimrods scrapped The take away quote was this will be a disaster for the taxpayer, as 3.6 billion Pounds Sterling worth of aircraft will be sold for scrap metal. All the electronic gear has already been removed.
Wow, so they’re in worse shape than I thought… and I thought they were in deep ****.
That squadron number I referenced… six… is going on the assumption that they’ll sell off their Tranche 1 and 2 Typhoons (supposedly it’ll cost too much to bring them up to Tranche 3 standard), and purchase the rest of the Tranche 3 orders they’ve committed themselves to. Can they even do that? They’re also counting on one squadron of F-35C’s… they want the C for it’s range to replace their Tornado GR4′s… so they’re in deep Ka Ka if we axe JSF altogether, something I’m not ruling out.
Not only are they in deep in overall financial condition, the Nimrod fiasco and Carrier fiasco have shown that what little money they have put aside for their military they’ve mis-planned a large portion of it into (literally in the case of the Nimrods) re-arranging matter 90% of the way to something useful and then destroying it. It’s been one of the saddest make work jobs with nothing to show for at the end of billions spent in human history. The bet on JSF, of which they’ve already called out on the -B model, is like the sick icing on this particular joke-cake.
The same mis-planning and spending vast sums of money to produce nothing of value seems to be on display here with JSF, LCS, LPD-17, V-22, EFV, FCS, etc. Most of these things come from the “transformational era” in which defense planning drifted away from responding to concrete real world events/actors on a threat basis to trying to chase the mirage of leaping decades ahead (of who? how?) with what has proved an ephemeral and catastrophic concept of capability based planning.
the other carrier will be effectively on permanent loan (crewed no less) to the French, flying French aircraft from its deck.
Or that’s the plan, you’re right it’ll probably be sold instead. China, India, Argentina, and by the time it’s done probably Iran and Saudi Arabia would no doubt love to have her.
My money is on a bidding war between India and China for the QE carrier.
Spent a few weeks aboard HMS INVINCIBLE and HMS ILLUSTRIOUS back in the day. Ocean Safari 85. Thought the SHARs were pretty cool, although somewhat limited in capability compared to our own jets. Very professional aircrew.
A Sea King from the ILLUSTRIOUS did a medevac from one of our Knox-class frigates in the GIUK gap in the middle of the night. A few of our sailors had been injured during an UNREP earlier in the evening and had to be evacuated posthaste for wont of proper medical attention.
Ceiling was about 50 feet, sea state 5 or 6. It WAS September after all. They couldn’t land on the small boy because the helo pad wasn’t big enough – designed for SH-2s – and there was insufficient rotor blade clearance. So they had to hover just above deck level and offset enough for blade clearance, while our five injured sailors were loaded aboard. The pilot told me he couldn’t even see the masthead ’cause it was in the goo. He wasn’t – the mast was. All the while trying to avoid being smacked by the ship which was dancing around rather energetically in all that white water.
Then they flew the 175 nautical miles back to ILLUSTRIOUS.
Yak, I was AB on America during Ocean Safari 85. GIUK transit was fun but worth it to get to launch and recover aircraft in the Vestfijord.
A quick little piece of background info
http://ussamerica-museumfoundation.org/Parson/ocean_safari.htm
The sun is setting not only on the British Empire, but the home islands as well.
We are little better than marching in the procession as our parent is borne to the grave.
England was once a great country, a beacon of freedom, a global power for good, and a staunch and reliable ally.
America alone, now.
We should welcome any Brits who chose to flee to freedom and seek asylum here and are willing to fight to defend freedom with us.
Hate to sound like a jerk, but most of the ex-pat Brits I know, outside of the ones that came here when their own aerospace industry largely collapsed due to massive government influence -the TSR.2 debacle and, sadly, the Concorde having a lot to do with that-, are of the cosmopolitan progressive set and *like* what’s going on there, spending their time split between the “posh” sections of London, LA, NY, etc.
The Brits who still have the stiff upper lip have, characteristically, too much pride and honor to leave their home country, even for America. Like old fashioned captains, they’d rather go down with their ships.
We need the BRITS and take it from me, they are valued allies in AFGHN as I saw how much they assisted with while there….Camp Bastion is their hub and well run…
Brits have a mess on their hands, that’s for sure….
Where’s Winston Churchill when you need him???? Oh, that’s right, the I’ll mannered idiots Protesting the other day were pissing on his statue the other day….sad, sad, sad.
In fact the RN have not had sea harriers for over a year.
They were retired.
The RN has been operating RAF GR7 and GR9′s
This was called “Joint Force Harrier”
RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilots flying harriers of of carriers!
However the GR7 and GR9 do not posess the air interception radar that the SHAR had and cannot fire sidewinders like the SHAR could.
They are ground attack only.
The RN has not had fleet air defence ability for a year already.
This just removes their fixed wing ground attack ability as well.
Reading this, watching the riots, the Muslim inroads–all of it, leaves one profoundly saddened–the kind that brings tears to one’s eyes. And as so many have commented, we’re circling the drain right behind. Depressing thoughts..DEEPLY depressing..Pissing on Churchill’s statue? How long before mobs torch Mt. Vernon? 10-20 years? He owned slaves, didn’t he? Circling the drain…
There is A REASON God invented Barbancourt–and I’m really not joking…….ANOTHER 2000 page TRILLION DOLLAR Omnibus spending bill funding mainly nebulous non-essential BS further mortgaging our future at this critical time rammed down our throats when everyone’s distracted by the Holidays!!?? Where do you think this is all heading? We’ll be back to training with wooden guns and Bread-trucks marked “TANK” (or whatever the modern equivalents are–probably will give every troop a game-boy for pretend exercises/maneuvers) sooner than anyone dares think..
SIGNED:
THOROUGHLY disgusted and sadly and totally despondent..
otoh, it’s a good thing that once the muhammedans do take over old Blighty they won’t have much of a military to cause trouble with…
Oh, and if you think I’m wildly exaggerating about Mt. Vernon, well, you haven’t been paying attention. This summer there were several little covered (by the MSM) large-scale “protests” in LA about immigration reform that totally paralyzed large segments of the downtown business district for hours and resulted in both small-scale property damage & violence. They’re already flexing their muscles..alarmist?…so, oh, maybe not exactly Mt. Vernon–or any time soon–but when I was a 26 yr-old Capt in the USAF I never thought I’d have to “press one for English” either…
PS: Perhaps I should retract that statement about “never thinking” I’d have to “press one for English.” I DID take my pilot tng on the Mexican border at Del Rio, after all–guess I was slow on the uptake..
(Funny story I may have related previously but worth repeating for fresh eyes. A bunch of us were up to San Antonio one weekend on R&R from Laughlin/Del Rio and were standing on the corner of the street just opposite the Alamo waiting for the light to change to cross to take the tour. One guy–can’t remember who now, looked around, surveyed the scene, then casually opined: “I don’t know why Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie bothered to fight to the death over this place–*they* own it all now anyway…and this was 1966! LOL!)
XAB,
I was TAD from VS-32 to FOF-3 as the S-3 (Viking) Liaison Officer. We didn’t get into Vestfjord, but Airops just outside were quite colorful. Watching a SHAR mis-time his roll and fly through a wave (totally, and I mean totally, submerged) after he jumped off that pointy-end ramp thing-a-majingy was quite an experience. Especially when Wings (their Airboss/CAG equivalent) turned and looked up at me, stogie belching, and remarked:
“Well Yak, that’s gonna f!€k up the bloody corrosion effort!”
Old Phantom driver he was.
A tremendously sad day for the Royal Navy and Great Britian. As others have noted above, all that money spent on the lovely MRA4 – gone. The RAF down to 6 squadrons by 2020 – idiocy.
How would this be for the ultimate irony – Brazil buys QE2 after she’s launched so the Brits can afford PoW?
I never thought I’d see the day where the Mother Country just decided to give up. It’s too expensive, after all, we have to pay for all those college kids….
900 million pounds to operate 16 planes for 8 years? 7 million pounds ($10,500,000) per year, per plane?
Methinks the problem was not with the aircraft…
Never count the Brits out.
Utterly depressing. And the awful thing with unchecked immigration of hostile third-worlders who refuse to assimilate, a soon-to-be public option (when Obamacare collapses the insurance industry) health care system and government sector unions gobbling up more and more funds with their outrageous pension and benefit packages, we’re headed on the same path to hell. Why is the Western world calling it a day and quitting?
“..the Royal Navy will be left without the ability to launch aircraft at sea for a decade.”
Damn.
Well, it’s not like they had the need to launch aircraft at sea for more than a decade. Playing about with a 40 year old design built 30 years ago and crediting it as a “fighter” is a bit of a leap.
Look at it from the RN pilot view. They’re not going up against the best fighters in the world in Brewsters or Hurricanes come the day.