The Navy Vol_64_Part2 2002 - Navy League of Australia

R TThe early prototype of the Harrier, the PI 127. (XP83I) conducts ademonstration landing on HMS ARK ROYAL. X February 1963. NATO Basic Military Requirements (NBMR) were written.NBMR 3 called for a lightweight, single-role. VTOI. strikeaircraftcapable of carrying a single nuclear weapon on ashort-range tactical mission. It had to be able to take off andland vertically on unprepared fields near the Forward Edge ofthe Battle Area (FEBA). NBMR 4 asked for a VTOL tacticaltransport aircraft in the C-130 class able to support NBMR 3in the field. Both completely under-estimated the logisticproblemsposed by dispersed operations and took no accountof bad weather recovery, homing through hostile or friendlyairspace, intelligence briefing, site defence and many otherpractical details.Britain. France, the USA and Germany all put effort intoNBMR 3 but only Britain put design effort into NBMR 4.Aircraft such as the Hawker PI 127. Dassault Mirage IIIV andVAK 191 were all flown for evaluation purposes with paperstudies based on them put up for the glittering prize ofstandardised NATO production. The British Treasury hopedthat production by an international consortium wouldradically reduce development costs for a new UK aircraft butNATO had no power to order anything itself and could onlyrecommend a solution. Sensitive to the political issues atstake, it named the British and French entries as "jointtechnical winners" and left the various governments to makeof that w hat they would.In 1961. the British concept had evolved into a practicalstrike fighter design which was given the Hawker type number1154. It was more capable than the NBMR had demanded andwas to have a single Bristol Siddeley BS KM) engine,developed from the Pegasus, w ith rotating nozzles giving a farmore elegant solution to the VTOL problem than the batteriesof lift and thrust jets fitted in the rival designs. It couldcertainly land vertically and with a form of reheat* known as"plenum chamber burning": it was capable of VTO with asmall military load for a few minutes endurance. It did muchbetter with a short take off run. however, and was betterreferred to as a Vertical/Short Take off and Landing (V/STOL)aircraft. It would have been expensive to develop and operatebut it would have been supersonic at height and would haveoffered a useful performance increase over aircraft like theHunter and Scimitar. With an engine optimised to give athrust to weight (T/W) ratio of better than 1:1 on landing,however, it wouid have had a poor Specific Fuel Consumption(sfc) in cruising flight. This would have led to a pay load/radius of action capability inferior to that of othercontemporary fighters, especially those designed in the USA.Export potential would not have been great, as it would havebeen expensive and very specialised. Sir Sydney Camm,Hawker's chief designer, is believed to have said that V/STOLfighters would not sell well until they approached thecapability of the F-4 Phantom. Time has shown him tobe right.To complicate matters, in 1961 the UK Defence Secretaryinsisted that the PI 154 form the basis of a joint project toreplace the de Havilland Sea Vixen in RN service and theHawker Hunter in RAF service. This despite the fact that theformer wanted a two seat, twin-engine, high flying fighterwith a very powerful radar forming the core of an integratedweapons system and the latter a single seat, single-engine, lowHying ground attack aircraft without radar. Further, the navalversion had to be stressed for catapulting, carry a large fuelload to give endurance on combat air patrol (CAP) andweapons for at least two interceptions. The RAF version couldaccept less fuel and lighter structure to give "quick dash"strike capability. Two years were wasted trying to produce acommon airframe that met these two very differentrequirements before the RN managed to convince the BritishGovernment that the USN Phantom II was the only aircraftcapable of delivering the operational capability that itrequired. Eighteen months later the simplified RAF versionwas. in turn, cancelled in favour of a buy of Phantoms. TheNBMR 4 design, by then identified as the ArmstrongWhitworth Type 681 was also cancelled.Some operational analysis of V/STOL operations wascarried out in 1965 using nine aircraft derived from the PI 127and given the name Kestrel. Three each were purchased by theGovernments of the UK. USA and Germany to form aTripartite Evaluation Squadron, which operated from RAFWest Raynham. Pilots and ground crews were drawn from theRAF. USAF. Luftwaffe and US Navy. The RN was notrepresented. When the squadron disbanded, six of the eightsurviv ing aircraft went to the USA for further evaluation whiletwo continued with development work in the UK. TheLuftwaffe and USAF both concluded that operations fromhardened aircraft shelters on conventional airfields byconventional aircraft were both cheaper and more efficientthan dispersed operations by VTOL aircraft. Had there beenoperational merit in the latter, it is difficult not to believe that theUSAF would have hastened it into service in the Vietnam War.After all the investment, some interest in V/STOLremained in the UK and a developed version of the Kestrelwent into operational service with the RAF in 1969. This hadlittle to do with cost-effective delivery of an interdiction/strike capability and more to do with the sitting LabourGovernment's wish to provide some work for the Britishaviation industry which had suffered a series of cancelledprojects in the preceding months. The new version was giventhe name Harrier, originally intended for the PI 154 had it goneinto service. 84 were ordered in the first batch but.significantly, the RAF ordered 200 of the cheaper but morecapable Jaguar strike aircraft to form the main component ofits strike force.A USMC AV-8 Harrier 11970s). The USMC took up the Harrier design foruse off its smaller helicopter carriers. They believed, quite rightly, that ilsVSTOL ability would give its troops an edge by having USMC Close AirSupport assets readily available at short notice. (USMC)A RAF GR-3 ground attack Harrier. RAF GR-3s were tasked with operatingon the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battlefield Area) in Europe againstWarsaw Pact forces. Its ability to take off vertically or from very shortrunways was seen as an advantage as war gamming proved time and againthat major airbases would be the first victims of a NATO - Warsaw pactconflict. The GR-3 also performed well in the Falklands War. (RAF)In retrospect, this British fascination with the platform,rather than the operational effect it was intended to create isdifficult to understand. It contrasts starkly with the Germandecision to focus on a strike capability that was best providedby conventional aircraft operating from conventional airfields.Even more difficult to understand is the NATO planners'assumption that concrete runways were the vulnerable part ofthe equation, not the aircraft or their logistic and technicalsupport. On the ground, near the FEBA. aircraft and thehundreds of men and vehicles needed to make them workwould have been vulnerable to small arms, mortar andartillery fire in addition to missile and air attack. In hardenedshelters on an airfield in a rear area, they must have been lessso. even though it took longer to reach an urgent target. Theconcept of dispersal away from airfields was quietly droppedin the 1970s.The US Marine Corps was impressed by the Harrier'sundoubted ability to deliver bombs in amphibious operationsand to move ashore with the marines and their helicopters. Ibelieve they were also impressed by the fact that it was sohighly specialised in the short-range ground attack role that itwas not likely to be miss-employed on naval missions as theF-8 Crusader and F-4 Phantom often were. The politics behindprocurement can be surprisingly devious. Despite a licenceagreement between Hawker Siddeley and McDonnell Douglasthe AV-8A Harrier was built in such small batches that all werebuilt in the UK.After the cancellation of its CVA-01 carrier project, theRN found considerable political opposition to the idea ofmaintaining any sort of fighter aircraft in ships at sea. TheChief of Naval Staff. Admiral Sir Varyl Begg was an opponentof embarked aviation and acted quickly to run down theconventional carrier force. He focused attention on a futurenavy comprising cruisers armed with missiles and. to a limitedextent. VTOL aircraft or helicopters. Design work started on acommand cruiser which went through more than 50 iterationsA RN FRS-I Sea Harrier of 800 NAS. During the Falklands War Argentinepilots had great respect for the Sea Harrier which they dubbed 'The BlackDeath - . (RN)and which had an aviation facility which grew from a singlespot for a helicopter aft to a runway running the length of theship with an island structure to starboard. The latter proved sosuperior, even for the operation of a modest number ofhelicopters that it was adopted. The ability to embark Harrierswas obvious and. from the outset, was a factor in the design ofwhat became the Invincible class.There is a myth that V/STOL fighters can use small,simple and. therefore cheap, ships, often called HarrierCarriers, which provide affordable capability. In researchingbackground papers for this article. I found a Paper written in1966. only six weeks after the cancellation of CVA-01. whichputs the counter argument. It compares a baseline V/STOLaircraft, the Kestrel, with the maritime Jaguar, in developmentat the time for the French Navy and seeks to put numericalvalues on their relative cost effectiveness. Kestrels were moreexpensive to buy than Jaguars in the ratio 8:5. Because thelatter was designed for cruise efficiency in flight and theformer for its take off and landing performance. Jaguars havebetter SFC and carry more weapons further, faster. For a giventask, fewer Jaguars than Kestrels would be needed.Two RN FRS-I Sea Harriers from 801 NAS off HMS INVINCIBLE conducta •cross-deck' landing on the US aircraft carrier USS RANGER (RN)The Paper compares two weapon effort planningscenarios, sinking a destroyer sized contact and destroying abridge. Different parameters were used, some favouring theKestrel, some the Jaguar. On average, it was evaluated that 12Kestrels would be needed to do the same task as 8 Jaguars andthere are tasks that the latter could do that the former couldnot. Thus cost factors of 96 against 40 were given making theJaguar more than twice as cost effective as the Kestrel. Thelarger number of Kestrels need a large ship from which tooperate but it would be a simple V/STOL carrier. There is,therefore, a cost penalty of building the V/STOL capabilityinto every aircraft rather than the single ship from which theyoperate. Taking the CTOL (Controlled Take Off and Landing)comparison further, the Paper examines the cost of puttingV/STOL capability back into the carrier. It uses pricesequivalent to half the cost of a Jaguar for each catapult and thecost of a whole Jaguar for the arrester wire system. For aHermes sized ship with two catapults and arrester wires, thismodified the cost factors to 96 against 50. It is still nearlytwice as expensive to procure the less capable V/STOLaircraft and the 'cheap ship' has been 'bought' by expenditureon an expensive but less capable aircraft. The numbers mayvary, but these factors still hold good for today's Joint StrikeFighter where comparisons show that the USN's carrierversion is cheaper but gees further with more weapons thanthe V/STOL version. It is arguable that the British decision totake V/STOL to sea was politically rather than capabilitybased.4 VOL. 64 NO. I THE NAVYTHE NAVY VOL. 64 NO. I 33