A new era for UK maritime air power: testing times, testing waters

hello i'm nick childs i'm the senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the international institute for strategic studies and i'd like to welcome you to this webinar on a new era for uk maritime testing times testing waters and we're delivering this in association with the royal navy strategic studies center our speakers today are voice admiral jerry kidd who's the fleet commander royal navy air marshal jerry mayhew deputy commander operations royal air force brian clark senior fellow hudson institute joining us from the united states and our own dr lin kwok shangri-la dialogue senior fellow for asia pacific iss asia joining us from singapore i'll introduce them each again in more detail in turn shortly as they each give some opening remarks and then we'll be able to move to the discussion session uh for you the audience and then you'll have essentially two options to participate and a chance to put questions to the panel or make interventions the first of these is by using the q a button at the bottom of your screen which will allow you to write a question uh which i can then put to the speaker whichever speakers or or speaker that you particularly are addressing the question to or you can use the raise hand function which allows you to speak directly to the the panelists when i identify you if you could uh then put your question you can either do so purely or in audio terms or you can do so if your camera is also on visually as well so you'll um you'll be able to be seen as as well by the audience you may want to weigh that decision uh when you when you put um put put that option uh with that option on your on the table um but to the subject in hand this is a moment of significant transformation uh for maritime air power for the uk uh in the case of the regenerated aircraft carrier capability uh it was the result of a deliberate decision to step back up the strategic ladder of capability in the case of land-based maritime air a an urgent need to revive a capability but in both cases i think they are coming to fruition uh admittedly along different time scales uh into very different a very different world from the ones that they were originally uh envisioned both in terms of the strategic context but also in terms of the technological context and that presents uh challenges but it also presents opportunities so that's what we're going to discuss today and also to put all that in the context of the the globally unfolding situation um so i'm going to turn to our first speaker today uh vice admiral jerry kidd who joined the royal navy in 1985. um he had a number of uh operational deployments in the gulf kosovo northern ireland caribbean and um the indian atlantic oceans he had a number of notable um command positions which particularly qualify him for for this um for this subject as the commander of the aircraft carrier hmsr croil of the aircraft carrier hms illustrious admittedly in its commando carrier role and as the first sea going commanding officer and at the time also commander uk carrier strike group of the new aircraft carrier hms queen elizabeth he was subsequently promoted rear admiral in november 2018 and appointed commander of uk maritime forces and rear admiral surface ships before he was further promoted into the current assignment which he took up in march 2019 so admiral kidd over to you first well thank you very much indeed nick and uh can i just say uh joining the other three highly qualified panelists it's a great pleasure to be speaking to you all today on uh maritime um air power um a phrase that um is not as new as some people realize um air power has been a feature of the maritime flank for well over 100 years now and going back to when the germans investigate the use of zeppelin airships for scouting and bombing over the north sea and of course that mission set evolving in today's into today's maritime patrol aircraft currently been delivered by the royal air force's p8 poseidon's so you know we're 100 years down track on this uh maritime piece and uh but some things have changed but an awful lot hasn't as a as an interesting segue there's um people keep asking me why british aircraft carriers have a pending number starting with r romeo rather than steve for carrier and of course it's the initial set for aircraft aboard ships was to act as a reconnaissance aircraft to spot for the big battleship guns hence are for reconnaissance but of course things have evolved rather quickly since then but it's really the second world war certainly for the u.s uh japanese and the royal navy which demonstrate the utility and power wielding um aircraft over the water both in the atlantic and the pacific and today in 2020 i have to say fundamentally operate the operational requirement has not fundamentally changed we talked more today about maritime air power as a mechanism for power projection and i think that's very true but fundamentally it's about fighting power at the heart of the maritime flank uh but of course there's no power projection from the sea uh without control of the sea and i don't get into uh definitions now but today deploying air currency is essential to both elements both protect your power and to control the city for whatever you need to do with that and that's largely vested in carrier strike groups and of course we have air power and our frigates and helicopters and some unmanned aerial systems but they're very much about local force protection and delivering to a frigate or destroyer the big stuff the real power projection air maritime power really is vested in the accumulation of those force elements that come together in a carrier strike group carry at the center and let's not forget a carrier is very much just a big metal box that takes aircraft around keeps them dry and moves around the planet is the totality of all those frigates destroyers and submarines and the air wing that come together in synchronized effect uh to deliver the punch so it's bloody complex it's complicated um and i've always said it's the most complicated military formation to bring together properly uh blending those air and maritime uh elements tightly together but now of course uh supported so closely and knitted together with space capabilities uh cyber and other government capabilities certainly in the uk's keras strike group so i would propose that uh charisma strike groups are still the only military vote for more nation that can conduct full-scale military operations over nearly 70 percent of the earth's surface in nearly any environmental condition and with the capacity to move and store vast quantities of aircraft fuel ordnance and supplies that enable you to deliver months literally even intense combat and wider influence operations uh wherever how and whenever you want uh we mustn't forget that um but the delivery of air power and maritime power projection seeker for the next decades for the uk uh as nick says will be through our new queen elizabeth class carriers the hws queen elizabeth and hms prince of wales and they are no doubt about it a pretty big investment for uk defence and a pretty big shift in some of our doctrine and i'll come on that in a minute but basically british defense doctrine is still very much based on deterrence uh marathon air power at this scale is essentially the uk's conventional strategic deterrence capability complementing our nuclear submarine and strategic missile submarine capability aircraft carriers and kerastrike groups their operation utility has been well rehearsed not supervised political choice uh strategic mixing power projection capability flying the flag in support of diplomacy and the nation's prosperity agenda and very few countries do that well but whatever the views of the audience are on cost um imitation is in many ways this sincerest form of flattery it is sobering is it not to reflect that all five un permanent members are invested in carrick capability and many many others aspire to it they can't either afford it or do it properly so aircraft carriers and maritime air power is not just about metal and ships and aircraft they are very much more about being a metaphor for a nation-state intent to be relevant on the global stage at the strategic level and that's crucial so air power at sea through carriers quite simply shows intent and strength and as a capability that must be valued by our allies particularly the united states uh uh and also deters potential foes in a credible and meaningful way when aircraft carries sail it tends to be noticed when an aircraft carrier group turns off an enemy coast uh or any other country of that matter it is noticed now for the uk queen elizabeth class is not new um you know largely we've not been at this scale since the 1970s with the art royal forum and the phantoms and buccaneers and we had our smaller aircraft carriers the 2i commanded our royal illustrious and invincible and they were very much a stop gap for us for three decades but they did extremely well and i think their use strategically and operationally really underpinned um the uh the drive to replace with something a bit more capable uh we can go back to the faultless war 82 bosnia operations goal for the last 20 30 years and operations in sierra leone that really demonstrated fundamentally both the military but also the political use of aircraft carriers around the planet an aircraft carrier capability whether that combined air maritime cut is lethal it's agile it's multi-dimensional it is survivable and is a symbol of military strength and immediately reassures our lies and it deters adversaries if you can do it why not have it um so counter-strike influence can be described in my view by three key attributes one is the aero maritime power delivered by your airwing it's uh the freedom of maneuver that you get by being at sea in a carrier and it's the range of the bad air wing and the influence it can deliver including strike so maritime air power sits across the air and maritime boundary the key thing is that air power constraints and and jerry will roll his eyes a little bit but the air power constraints and i'm talking here of impermanence a limited payload uh dependence on access basing overflight and their force protectors aircraft were on the ground and an airfield ashore are offset uh by the persistence uh poise and access of a moving aircraft carrier or a moving airfield should i say atc so carry strike groups in this sense are the very best example in my mind for combining uh the royal air force gen five uh air wing and my ships uh through my aircraft carrier groups and i'm always reminded um of the george bush uh strike group in the gulf in 2014 which displayed these attributes um george bush in 2014 uh was stationed in the middle east it was uh conducting flight operations over afghanistan and then a new group called isis moves into iraq now 30 yar 30 hours after flying over afghanistan strike aircraft from bush were launching overwatch missions into iraq from the arabian sea during these missions george bush was expertly protected by type 45 escorts from his defender and also from american ships it was the only manned offensive strike capability and it came from the sea as gulf coast countries have not yet provided permission for land-based aircraft to launch events and missions uh we took 54 days to reach those accommodations 54 very crucial days where we started a lot of other isis advances so it was the flexibility and the responsiveness of air power coming from the sea that was demonstrated there absolutely brilliant uh lastly queen elizabeth class different scale from cvs 65 000 tons they are truly strategic and with their philosophy built in through tech innovation but also our doctrine about integration with other defense elements clearly jerry may use uh other government departments international whaling uh royal naval helicopters uh so we're all about integration now that's something that jerry may pick up on and i'm seeing this moving much more for interoperability with allies and elements of uk defense uh to interchangeability and i think the first carriage strike group deployment next year in 2021 with hms queen elizabeth uh where we're taking you on board for the first time ever a u.s u.s squadron of f-35s and they are totally knitted in uh to six one seven squadron the uk f-35 squadron and i think it's a great signpost the future uh where we stand together as we move around the world say look for the royal navy the royal air force this is an ambitious program there's no doubt about it it's bloody hard work but it's one that's necessary and right for a maritime nation such as the uk with global responsibilities and a high dependence let's be frank on the sea and i think we all therefore contribute meaningfully to the evolving challenges of a changing planet and a new operating environment which is seeing much more borderless control a much more globalized threat set not least through state-based competitors such as russia and china and an increasing threat they're all based international systems and then you've got climate change pressures on resource pressures on the environment and the fact that taking territory landsat is getting out of vogue and actually state-based uh power play is more likely going to be played out at sea in the future and not least threatening the vitality of maritime trade routes and arteries that are so fundamental to our all our ways of life so investing in power projection capability at sea to my mind makes entire sense uh so when you boil it down uh for me uh uk air marathon power vested through the carriage strike groups is a manifestation of a shift certainly by the royal navy in partnership with the royal air force to a much much more offensive operational doctrine um it marks a return to carry centric global task of operations after essentially 10 years for me of singleton deployers and a much more lighter amphibious capability carriers quite frankly offer a well found sustainable base for delivering influence uh supporting government's wider foreign policy objectives and at the end of the day hard-edged uh strike warfare i'll end on two points um firstly a lot of people say to me jerry it's uh harkey back to glory days of the royal navy um you know you're out of the big carry game the 70s uh this is not required well i hope of our ticket operation and sushi that they are but a reflection of the utility and value for money mccarrick-based navy enhanced through integrated cavities dogs well i think with the global britain manifesto of this current government in the post-brexit world if ever there was a mechanism that best demonstrates the fusion of so many military and cross government cables in one place and the ability to deliver a range of strategic effects than air maritime power from the sea is it and of course kara strikers can do all the trade and in three days uh and so forth but really it's the fulcrum for what we're now calling multi-domain integration and the key three sort of key four for me is the fusion of maritime air space and cyber and i think the synchronization of those four uh through the carrot strike group is gonna be pretty powerful lastly i must address the critical perspective that carries and marathon air power in the round is over i strongly disagree uh the wielding of integrated air power from sovereignty xxc is more relevant than ever today so as we look at increasingly contested spaces disputed seas uncertain access particularly the land geography and the vitality protecting the regulated and open trade routes of the world moving acres of sovereign airfield with all the other cables invested in air maritime force is an enduring symbol of power which i quite frankly see has no other substitute so i'll add to the audience center the panel that's my opening pitch as you can see i'm pretty hard over and for the royal navy they remain a central plank of our uh of our future proposition as you move forward in the next 20 or 30 years so with nick i'll stop there i'm just over 10 minutes and i'll hand over to you admiral kid thank you very much for getting us off to a great start um and without further ado i shall move straight on to the other service that has probably the most direct stake in all of this in terms of maritime air power but also its own perspective and that's the royal air force uh in the shape of air marshal jerry mayhew who was commissioned into the raf in 1988 as a pilot he's flown i think i'm correct jaguars f-16 tornado typhoon um in addition to senior appointments in the ministry of defense he works in the cabinet office as the deputy director responsible for the defense and homeland security aspects of 2015 strategic defense and security review as an air vice marshal he commanded the raf's number one group so very much uh hands-on on all the all the frontline capabilities including including these um before becoming assistant chief of the air staff for strategic coherence and coordination and then as air marshall assuming his current role uh in april last year so marshall mayhew uh please take it away thanks nick and uh thanks to jerry um it's at that point where you say whatever he said because we haven't compared notes but the good thing is there's quite a lot of good crossover between us uh thanks for allowing me back because i know it's 12 months ago since we did this at uh yeovilton in front of a really exciting audience so the good news is we have continued in the same vein and that our services have worked really hard together in the last year not just on on exercises training and trials but on operations future concepts and future policies so i'd like to pay tribute to everybody who's worked for us and worked so hard collegiately to get after some of those challenges and i think it's already paying dividends uh jerry's described what we're seeing with with carrier strike group development and from my perspective from an f-35 lightning view i think we've been very proud of what 617 squadron 2-8 squadron and our colleagues in the u.s marine corps have delivered for us from the uk's perspective f-35 is now at operational capability uh from land and it has actually participated in operations in this last 12 months so uh despite all of the uh chantings and mutterings of er when's the aeroplane and the carrier come together we have provided parallel track and we've been on board quite a lot in the last few weeks and months to ensure that by the time we get to autumn of this year and we certify the whole of the carrier strike group our folks from royal navy and the royal air force are working hand in glove and the relationship on board queen elizabeth has been absolutely superb uh and my thanks to the ship's company for ensuring that those that come on as visitors or part-time operators from uh from the platform are welcomed and made to feel part of the team that is also echoed wider it's not just on queen elizabeth with f-35 but it's in our operational headquarters between the maritime op center and the headquarters for 11 group here again history 11 group for us was the group that protected the southeast and london during world war ii and is now our main center for operational command and control for the royal air force but they've been working hand in glove with the maritime ops center for a whole host of operations and exercises and training opportunities and also to bring p8 back into the orbat and as you've recognized we've we've now got them operating from kin loss as we do some final bits of work at rf lossy math and the pa force is growing and is now on operations as uh as we grow the force back in the uk so lots to be proud of but it's not just about it's not just about platforms it's about the threats and i think that's what jerry and i have been really concentrating on it's threats to the united kingdom and that rules based international order and it's about bringing air and maritime power together complementary alongside cyber space and not forgetting our land colleagues to get that multi-domain integration that jerry talks about and it's it's another phrase that is banded around sometimes rather loosely multi-domain integration it's it's a it's a bingo phrase but we do take it seriously there there are five very different domains that are reliant upon each other and that the relationship is now getting stronger and more open to ensure that defense and the united kingdom gets the best from them but we're not alone in that our partners and allies are doing the same so it's not just a buzzword it is for operation and strategic effect and that's been done at pace and we're taking a proactive stance we're not just sitting by and waiting for the competition to come to us we're making sure that we are working closely with mod colleagues across whitehall joint helicopter commands strategic command headquarters land and those allies and partners around the globe to ensure the uk security is as short as it can be in a dynamic and ever evolving threat environment and jerry and i are doing operations on a daily basis we're not just waiting we're not just doing training and that's why our collaboration is as exciting and as tight as it was this time last year we're multiplying effects again not a not a buzzword moment but we are we're bringing together the things that we need to bring together on a daily basis for operations around the united kingdom waters and united kingdom airspace and wider around the world so we're living it as well as just training for it our two services are also comparing notes on transformation and we've got to be ready we've got to be engaging we've got to be operating and we've got when required to be able to transition to fight and for us that's what the carrier strike group preparation phase is all about is not just moving around the world waiting it's got to be ready to go and fight and that uh the harder edge of of our game has got to be tested and that's what we've been doing in recent months but it's also an information and data dominated world that we're living in and so complex operating environment of the 21st century is one for sailors and aviators of of all branches and trays to be worked up to not just our folks who are driving and piloting various bits and pieces around the globe it's got to be everybody's game in multi-domain so irrespective of any defense review or integrated review the ministry of defense and the government need jerry and i to frame the threats that we face in order that we can develop the capabilities and our tasks we want to look forward not back and whilst we absolutely see the relevance of history to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes as our predecessors we are learning from that history not necessarily living it on a day-to-day basis we've got to be forward-leaning our expeditionary forces and those protecting the uk homeland must be credible and that's why we in the royal air force continue to see air power and the combat air power particularly as as vital to our future with typhoon and f35 both truly multi-role platforms highly capable and in service for decades to come and they can be complementary or independent and this is something to uh jerry's lines when he says you know we can we can be forward-based with f-35 but we can with typhoon as well so the the the complementary nature of our two combat air platforms is very much a living breathing thing on a daily basis often risks independence complementarity and mass in a very different way they're also on the forefront of research and development test and evaluation so again you're not just sold as seen from the 1990s we've got platforms that are being developed all the way and uh sorry all the while and alongside the ships that uh the gerry is commanding as well ships and submarines so we are here we're we're looking to provide speed and resilience between us not just a slow or offer something that has lack of agility but you can do that differently potentially or with additive complementary things in the future such as around our unmanned platforms as we move from reaper to protector and protector has really got some opportunities in all environments and we're working together to look to see how that could be done space yes it is on everybody's lips now we can't do this without space never mind operate the capabilities that we have so we must get deeper and better across our forces to do that and air commander at the forefront of that working with our naval colleagues you can have swarming drones yes 216 squadron already stood up in that regard we're looking to do more of that as you heard from the airpower conference last year and other technological developments means that the aviator of the future is actually the aviator of today and i would probably say the same for our uh our mariners um we always talk about oh that fifth generation thing and that's now we are in fifth generation time frame uh yes we've got to develop for sixth and seventh and and everything else for the future but again our operators of today are doing things that uh jerry and i when we were youngsters would never have dreamed about such as the pace of development in both of our our environments and we will look to do more of that as we explore tempest and fcas both in the uk and also with our colleagues for the future overseas data and information flows have become crucial to us all and that's what's making again so many differences to the marriage of f-35 and queen elizabeth when you see it in operations on a day-to-day basis with no words of communications rapidly developed data interpretation and then development out to the operator themselves so that they can change their their operating models almost minute by minute based on the data they are receiving and the information they are getting not just on the ship but also when they're uh forward forward operating with the aircraft i think it's absolutely stunning and the skills that our people need now are very very different and again that's an area that we will be working closely on as we get the experiences of carrier strike this year and next of looking at the joint skills and capabilities of our people in the maritime air environment so we've got cyber and space specialists in large numbers across defence already our two services are i think working well with strategic command and the evolving uh national cyber force uh but it's it's our ships it's our stations it's on our units everywhere that this is happening this is not just a headquarters thing data and information cyber and space are in everybody's business so i think again the young men and women that we are developing for for the future will be training and operating in a very different way than the people who are sitting on board our platforms right now it's also about partnerships and alliances and interoperability as jerry said it's about working with our nato colleagues it's about the five eyes partnerships it's about the jeff and it's about many of the bilateral relationships that we have already had and putting aside brexit that that that is going to continue france germany our colleagues in the far east through the five past defense agreements and with japan and a whole host of partners who we could be here days listing are really excited by the air and maritime opportunities that we bring not just with queen elizabeth and f35 but a whole host of other platforms as we look to do a return to global britain the raf are are doing that already and you will have seen with things on the the the other end of the scale where you've seen the red arrows if you put the red arrows as a global britain front of house but you also sit a majestic hms ship queen elizabeth alongside and have f-35 p-8 and a whole host of modern platforms and people out in the world that makes people sit up and watch and the competition sees it as well as our friends so we are definitely fifth generation we're looking to sixth generation we're working closely together and we are taking global britain very very seriously that is for operations and it is for our prosperity agenda with industry and and the like so strike groups expeditionary airwing and modern capabilities are here to stay and we really got the government intent of the sdsr in 2015 when we were tasked and asked to go and work with industry and across whitehall out into the wider globe so i can see a real impetus at the moment to go and do that so without going over jerry's jerry's ground i think we are energized we are excited and we are maintaining that close working relationship that sees air and maritime power working together around the globe i'll stop there chris nick air marshall thank you very much for that and for uh for for complimenting the uh the uh the remarks of uh admiral kidd uh as well um let's move swiftly on to broaden things out a little bit further in terms of perspective and and uh to get a a a us and then hopefully more global um aperture on on these issues i'll turn now to brian clark who's a senior fellow at hudson institute as i said before with expertise in naval operations electronic warfare autonomous systems defense strategy and procurement um before being at hudson he was from 2013 to 2019 a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments uh during which time amongst other things leading studies in a whole range of new technology and future warfare issues he was one of the key authors of a a major study of the transformational requirements for us navy carrier groups and air wings regaining the high ground at sea very much in a a great power competition uh context um prior to all of that he he was special assistant to the chief of naval operations and director of his commanders action group and led a whole range of activities on developing naval strategy and before that he was um a submariner in the u.s navy so he also has a very particular personal perspective perhaps on particularly aircraft carriers but maritime air generally so um so brian the uh the digital floor is now yours uh well thank you nick uh very much and i appreciate the opportunity to uh be on this terrific panel uh with vice admiral kidd uh with her marshall mayhew and with dr kyok so um i'm to talk a little bit today about the uh trends in uh maritime uh aviation uh we're going to start off a little bit with with what's happening with the threat environment uh what some of the opportunities are in that threat environment and then uh go into a discussion about what that means in terms of u.s carrier air wings what we're seeing in maritime aviation in general uh and then also what's happening with ground-based uh aviation as our marshall mayhew mentioned this is you know there's a maritime aviation that comes from land bases as well as from sea uh so tom if you go ahead to the next slide so what we're finding in our analysis is that the threat environment is causing the role of carriers to change a little bit from what we've been comfortable with over the last 20 years or so particularly in the united states we've become used to the idea of carriers being mostly a power projection asset where we use them to cause strikes ashore we hit terrorist targets we threaten regional powers that might be attempting to control the sea from the land like iran um or or north korea where we do shows of force there but we're finding though is that the the ability of these countries even a regional power like a north korea or an iran to threaten aircraft carriers and other naval forces at sea is making us think about maybe moving our aircraft carriers a little bit further out from the shore than we have had in the past and that's not so much because the carrier is not survivable it's because we're seeing that the reduction in the sorority generation that occurs as a result of defending the carrier can sometimes impact its ability to achieve the effects it was designed to achieve in the first place so there's a lot of discussion in the in the international sphere about national security here in the united states as well as elsewhere about the survivability of carriers and their viability as a future part of naval forces and uh we found uh in our analysis that they're absolutely essential you know as as admiral kidd mentioned they provide you a sovereign base from which you conduct their operations uh they provide you options when uh in a lot of cases you don't have any other ones and they provide this level of mobility and flexibility that is absolutely essential to what combatant commanders need but we're finding that is that the role of that carrier is changing so as we move away from it strictly being a power projection asset uh we're also finding that's going to be important for sea control as well um the advent of uh proliferating uh submarines not just by the chinese and russians but also in other countries that have now adopted submarines as a new technology for sea control we're seeing longer range weapons that can be launched from shore we're finding an increase in the size of navies as well as their proliferation into militia and other coast guard and paramilitary forces so all of these threats to sea control are creating the need for better capabilities to conduct air defense and surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare out at sea to protect naval forces as well as remote bases like for the united states guam um or for the us and britain diego garcia so sea control is becoming a more important role for carriers than it has been in the last 20 years while at the same time we're finding this need to have a little bit more standoff from places over which we might want to uh exert power projection and both of those are affecting the the composition of the aircraft and the mix of aircraft we need on our uh aircraft carrier decks um the um and so the last thing i want to mention here is and i and dr cook will probably talk more about this is we found the need for uh sea-based maritime aviation particularly important in the as i show on this chart uh the uh asian and indo-pacific uh littorals with the introduction of increased chinese forces and influence in eastern africa and their continued effort with the one belt and one road to establish a range of uh access and basing throughout the indian ocean having sea based maritime aviation is often the only way that we can push back on the ability of uh chinese forces to influence and coerce uh new potential allies or partners that they've been seeking out outside of east asia uh continuing the next flight time so that the trend that we've seen in uh carrier aviation uh over the last you know since its advent about a hundred years ago as uh admiral kitten and air marshal uh mate you've mentioned has been um to both increase range and increase payload so as we see on this chart what we're finding is uh we started out with a set of aircraft on aircraft carriers that had relatively short range and relatively small payloads but as as engines got better aircraft got better and we needed to during the cold war have the ability to deliver large strikes uh over long distances we saw this shift toward attack aircraft and then as the cold war sort of receded and we needed to move towards something that was more capable of doing a number of missions we saw this shift back to a set of airpla airplanes and strike fighters that uh both could deliver a decent payload as well as uh have some range but we had to balance those two capabilities so you see now that the um components of our air wings are largely these multi-role airplanes that have balanced range and payload the problem with that is as we have to operate from longer ranges to be able to achieve effective sortie generation against longer range threats and as we need to do sea control over wider areas we need longer ranges in our aircraft carrier air wings and we're looking now with this faxx to try to do that with the introduction of new engine technologies the other thing is driving is an increase in the emphasis on specialization in our air wings so if you go to the next slide tom so this shows the trend over time with what our air wings look like at least in the united states and it's a trend that kind of reflects the the major geopolitical trends of the time and in particular i want to focus on this idea of specialization so carrier air wings today if you look out on the right hand side of this chart are composed mostly on the top part of the chart of multi-role aircraft and a small number of specialized aircraft the multi-role aircraft in this case being in the u.s case uh f a-18 super hornets uh and soon f-35 lightning two strike fighters and those aircraft are intended to perform any of the missions that the air at the um air wing needs to do strike air defense uh surface search uh surface warfare etcetera um the one mission that they ca there's a few missions they can't do very well though which is um maybe airborne early warning at long ranges anti-submarine warfare um air refueling in most cases and so those tend to be specialized missions that we shift over to an aircraft that's designed for that operation and you can see on the bottom part what those missions have been over time and so you can see the general trend has been as as the threat environments gets worse um for example in the early 1960s as the cold war progressed and and the soviets capabilities grew better um we saw an increase in the number of specialized aircraft because we needed to address improving submarine threats uh longer range air threats that required specific air defense aircraft uh and then aerial refueling to support those aircraft um so that trend toward specialization was something that accompanied an increase in the threat environment we're finding the same thing today is that we're now embarking in another another uh in this case great power competition that's going to create a threat environment where we need to have more specialization more aircraft that are capable of doing missions like anti-submarine warfare like air refueling like electronic warfare um and uh and like airborne early warning that are able to enable the air wing to remain effective as it tries to deal with better threats and operate at longer ranges so that that trend is what we see already starting to pick up in the later years of the current air wings uh so if you have the next slide the uh the predicted the kind of the track we're on in the united states is towards a 2035 air wing that looks kind of like this so it's it's going to be still a relatively large number of multi-role strike fighters so the f 18 ef super hornet f-35 charlie lightning ii strike fighter a new fighter that's being developed in the united states called faxx or next generation air dominance that's maybe more oriented towards air-to-air operations and is capable of longer ranges and higher speeds and would depend on new engine technology and then you've got this increasing number of specialized aircraft so compared to today where we don't have any aerial refueling tankers in the in the air wing we're likely to have up to two up to a dozen up to two detachments of these aircraft as well as the continued use of electronic warfare and airborne early warning aircraft along with some uh helicopters designed for anti-submarine warfare uh so the increase in specialization is a response to the improving or the increasing threat environment that's being faced by our aircraft carriers but this is not to say that the aircraft carrier is is not going to be relevant these changes are absolutely essential to allow the aircraft carrier to perform these the functions that it still will need to be needed to do because an aircraft carrier is still a much more survivable base than a fixed land base that doesn't have the ability to move and is not protected by a collection of ships that are part of its escort package but these changes would allow this particular air wing for example would allow um up to uh 24 of these uh strike fighters to be able to go out to a thousand miles and deliver a payload that might itself be a standoff weapon capable of going in several hundred more miles and that's a pretty good range of effect and capacity of effect for a future air wing another thing that this uh this air wing might be able to do is provide air refueling services to other aircraft in other aircraft carriers particularly of smaller carriers um like the queen elizabeth like um the french carrier like the charles de gaulle and its follow-on like um the us lha the lar the amphibious assault ship which will carry up 35s as well so this aerial refueling capability that the cdn will deliver in the future might be the most important enabler that it can actually provide because it will uh improve the capability of an entire set of aircraft on multiple ships um and will be essential to allow this um longer range of effect that will be needed for sea control and power projection in the future if you go to the next slide tom so one other thing we're seeing is uh and as we trend toward a need for improves more specialization as we did during the cold war anti-submarine warfare is going to be a key area that will continue to be a challenge for aircraft carriers um in particular uh one problem that we have is aircraft carriers are going to be subject to threats from anti-ship missiles launched by submarines um those missiles will eventually get to a range of probably a thousand miles on par with the u.s tomahawk which is a submarine-launched missile already um so as anti-ship missiles reach this range of you know hundreds to thousand miles it's going to be very difficult for a ship at sea to be able to protect that that range of area from uh submarines and and find them all and interdict them before they're able to attack so they're going to need to rely increasingly on uh air land-based air to provide some of that capacity um so we're looking at many concepts for how to do that with the protector program so looking at male uavs a medium altitude long endurance uav and looking at p8s we've looked at several concepts for how those aircraft can combine to enable you to conduct a more offensive approach to anti-submarine warfare that would reduce the threat to ships out at sea including aircraft carriers and then it could also be used in conjunction with carrier aircraft to conduct anti-submarine warfare so on the left-hand side it's showing sort of a choke point kind of operation where your uh p8s are going to act more as a command and control node and as an excess capacity of weapons and sonobuoys while you use stationary sensors that could be deployed over the side of a ship small sonars like those as well as sonobuoys deployed by um both the p8 and pretend and the protector uh uav to guard this potent this choke point and keep submarines from making it out to the open water where they can threaten uh naval forces and then the right-hand side shows a picture from above what that might look like but these concepts are going to be absolutely essential to deal with the submarine threat which we haven't really had to contend with nearly as much since the cold war ended and that has progressed and improved in the intervening years uh if you go to the next flight tom all right so looking at the how um the the uh the smaller carriers can work together with larger carriers this is looking at some notional force packages that could be deployed on the queen elizabeth class carriers as well as the u.s amphibious assault ships cus is already looking at concepts like the lightning carrier concept where we're going to shift from a multi-uh platform package on a lha to instead carry predominantly strike fighters and in this in this configuration that lha would be used mostly as a small aircraft carrier whether it's with marines or operating in concert with cvms but with those aircraft it provides a fifth generation capability to a cvn that otherwise would carry mostly at this point um fourth generation strike fighters and will not carry a large number of fifth generation strike fighters for another decade almost um the uh the same approach could be applied with the queen elizabeth if you look at the different force packages it can deploy you to the littoral maneuver package which is more of your um amphibious type uh assault type uh package or with the the more standard maritime package on the bottom where we look at the f-35s in concert with the force protection aircraft um the queen elizabeth can you deliver itself an independently a significant capability it also can provide more specialized capabilities because its flight deck is not um as configured as a cvn is which which limits the ability of the cvn to deploy for example a lot of rotary wing aircraft easily and then it could do a similar set of operations with fifth generation aircraft as the lhas can delivering 5th generation capabilities into a fight that might predominantly be 4th generation aircraft otherwise and that's the last slide on that so if you could uh turn off the slides so just to close out the uh that what we're finding in our analysis is that the uh advent of a a more threatening environment a more challenging threat environment is requiring us to be uh to operate from longer ranges with our aircraft carriers that also is going to be a factor in driving them towards a more sea control orientation in their operations and an increased specialization in their air wings so we need to look at ways that we can operate both independently and as allies to gain that specialization increase the range of effect and make sure that we don't lose sea control in the course of these operations so thank you very much nick for the opportunity and i'm looking forward to any follow-on conversation here ryan thank you very much and uh in terms of uh of perspectives it's interesting to hear the the queen elizabeth class the um you know biggest ever um warships in the royal navy and uh and indeed the biggest ever warships in europe um uh up to now being described as small aircraft carriers relative to um relative to the uh the hundred thousand ton uh cvns currently in the uh us navy um but uh we're going to move to yet another perspective and having heard from the from the operators about the uh the capabilities that are um um embedded in in what we've been talking about and um to some extent the the testing times of the title of the webinar as far as the chat some of the challenges that brian you you raised for for operations i i'm now going to turn to dr lynn cook to um look i suppose in in more detail at what i would term the sort of testing waters element of the uh of the discussion um lynn as i said is uh shangri-la dialogue senior fellow for asia pacific security the double i double s and he's also a co-editor of our strategic dossier the asia pacific regional security assessment and her research focuses on the international relations security and law of the asia pacific with a focus on south china sea uh dispute she's also a senior research fellow at the university of cambridge and and holds and has held multiple um fellowships at a number of uh very significant establishments uh yale law school harvard law school uh harvard kennedy school the center for strategic and international studies in the center for international law at the national university of singapore her area of focus is i suppose one where the rules-based order at sea um really has in many ways been most overtly challenged in a region which is we've heard both from uh admiral kidd and marshall mayhew in the context of global britain you know the uk is showing a more renewed engagement i hope lynn will will look at her what the state of play there is in a general uh regional context um from a regional perspective but also the potential for um perhaps greater uk engagement with i hope a nod also to um how maritime air power and particularly the symbolism of what we've been talking about but particularly the aircraft carrier uh resonates or might resonate in that region so lynn over to you thank you nick um these are certainly as you pointed out earlier testing times for the region um i think i'll begin by giving a brief overview of what's been happening in the south china sea and its implications um uh for the balance of power as well as the rules based order uh and i'll then look at um what the uk's role could be in the region uh based on some recommendations that i made last year at the house of commons defense committee hearing when i provided testimony there um so first in terms of uh the dynamics of the south china sea i think it's safe to say that a rules-based order in the south china sea is under threat by uh china's actions uh fortifying features uh disputed features uh in the south china sea as well as its attempts to consolidate its claims and control over surrounding waters around them in the last seven months despite a pandemic we have not seen chinese activities uh slow down in fact i think what we have instead seen is an intensification of them now that activities are can broadly be grouped into three uh first china has encroached upon the exclusive economic zone or eez of indonesia vietnam and most recently uh malaysia this has uh taken the form of sinking a vietnamese fishing vessel and conducting survey activity in vietnam's exclusive economic zone it's also taking take in the form of uh survey activities in malaysia's eez as well as harassing uh drillship that malaysia had hired to uh conduct survey operations in its own eez the west capilla now such activities are in direct contravention of the u.n tribunal ruling in the philippines case against china which actually saw its fourth anniversary yesterday that ruling made clear that ruling was mainly focused on resource rights in the region and that made absolutely clear that literal states in the south china sea enjoyed their exclusive economic rights unencumbered by any chinese nine dash line or any claimed eezed from a feature or group of features in their spratleys so that's the first type of activities that china has engaged in at the second type of activity that china has engaged in it is has been that it's maintained a near constant presence around uh features that are occupied or administered by countries in the region and it sent hundreds of vessels around t2 island which is the largest feature that the philippines occupies in the spratlys now such a presence may not necessarily be unlawful china or any user state in fact has innocent passage uh in territorial seas around features as well as high sea freedoms outside of it but the numbers and persistence of these chinese vessels suggest that they are aimed at uh coercion as well as consolidation of control now the third group of activities that china has engaged in has been to maintain its objections to uh surgeons of maritime rights and freedoms that the united states and others including the united kingdom have asserted in the south china sea now some of you might remember uh the hms albion had actually sought to traverse the paracel islands which is to the south of the south china sea in september 2018 and that was met with huge chinese objections on the basis that such actions were provocative now all the united kingdom was doing that respect was actually to challenge china's claims to illegal straight baselines around the paracel group of features so china had drawn uh a sort of uh lasso around the paracels and and those straight baselines seek to enclose the waters within them as internal waters through which no country is allowed passage so that was clearly uh problematic uh the united kingdom sought to challenge that and that was met with vociferous objections from china now chinese objections to valid assertions of maritime rights and freedoms by the uk and u.s and others uh is in clear contravention of the united nations convention in the law of the sea which enshrines uh passage and high c freedoms um its activities recently have been more worrisome because of intensifying u.s china rivalry as well as heightened recriminations around curb at 19. now in april we saw a sort of close encounter between a us and a in a chinese warship it came within 100 meters of each other this close encounter recalled in turn a near miss in september 2018 when the chinese warship came within 41 meters of the uss decatur in the context of worsening trade relations with the united states so the uss decatur had to maneuver to avoid a collision so all this is of course very worrying if we are looking at uh the possibility of incidents at sea now regional countries are seeking to push back against chinese encroachments but within limits by and large they want uh to maintain good ties with their militarily and economically more powerful neighbor uh curved 19 is likely to increase rather than decrease this imperative as countries in the region particularly the the more um the the weaker ones seek to rebuild their health systems and economies after the pandemic so what we've seen is countries have sent out their naval vessels as well as their coast guard to respond to chinese incursions but they're generally mindful of not upsetting border relations with china malaysia is a good example uh in this respect uh malaysia's government uh vessel malaysia sent its government vessels out to patrol around the west capela the vessel that was conducting survey operations in malaysia's eez at malaysia's request so that it could counter chinese harassment by and large however malaysia's uh responses to china has been rather muted and this may be seen in the ministry of foreign affairs statement that it issued in april when it did not mention chinese encroachments into its ee said nor did it mention uh chinese harassment of the west capela what it did mention however was uh the need for the peaceful peaceful reservation of disputes in accordance to international law and unclass it also urged um countries to avoid sending the navy ships as well as other vessels to the region because that could lead to miscalculation and increased tension now i think what this means is that if the uk should deploy uh vessels to the region regional sensitivities do need to take do need to be taken into account um what i would say though is malaysia is largely an outlier in terms of how it views uh naval presence in the region um it has been uh less welcoming than most of the countries in the region of external uh naval presence now what role then for the united kingdom um i think great power competition has increased the importance of contributions by middle powers including the uk in my view the uk can play a modest but important role in upholding the rules-based order as a naval power the uk should continue to regularly assert maritime rights and freedoms as a matter of law this will ensure that passage and other high sea freedoms are not lost through the lack of use over time as a matter of practice it ensures that the international waters of the south china sea do not become a chinese lake now with its historical ties to the region as well as being a member of the five-power defense uh arrangement of fpda which is east asia's only collective security arrangement i think the uk can also play a very important role in working with allies and partners in the region to build capacity whether in the form of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief or enhancing maritime domain awareness the latter will give coastal states uh greater confidence to be able to shine a light on unlawful behavior and lawful and coercive behavior in the south china sea now countries in the region largely i think would welcome and welcome uk security presence they appreciate the importance of anchoring uh different stakeholders to the region not least because i think it helps to take away take the edge away from direct u.s china rivalry that said although the uk has shown an increased sign of security engagement in the least in the region in recent years i think a degree of skepticism about the uk's role remains i think british credibility has been hurt of course by brexit the uk's ability to handle challenges closer to homes such as russia or kobe 19 um as well as its staying power in the event that china uh threatens uh economic uh severing of economic ties for instance has also been questioned in the region moreover it's the region still moreover remembers the uk's uh precipitous withdrawal from singapore in 1971 ahead of the 1970s uh deadline which left singapore scrambling uh to set up its security as well as economic um position in later decades i think the regionals saw the uk scale down its fpda participation while it sent aircraft command teams and royal marines to the region it failed to send uh royal naval vessels so i think deployment of an aircraft carrier would be a potent symbol of um the uk's commitment to the region um given its power projection capability at considerable cost i think i fully agree with admiral kidd who mentioned earlier that it's a powerful metaphor of a nation states nation-state's intent to be strategically relevant and i think this is something that the region would welcome but if the uk is serious about its role in the region such deployment must be part of a broader strategy which must in turn i think satisfy four conditions what these four conditions what are these four conditions um i would suggest they are presence that is purposeful principled and persistent now a purposeful presence is one that has a clear sense of the uk's interests and priorities in the indo-pacific so that the region is left in no doubt about uk interests and commitments to its peace and security a principled presence must be guided by and framed as support for international law including passage and other freedoms of the seas the sovereign equality of states and condemnation of the threat or use of force it's important to frame u.s press a uk presence in the region around principles because that means that it can more easily build coalitions partnerships in the region the countries there might otherwise be quite um hesitant about joining hands with a coalition that appears to be anti-china or aimed at containment and finally a persistent presence would involve a sustained presence over time as well as level of commitment and continuation in spite of other demands or challenges now the subtitle of today's webinar is testing times testing waters i think to be credible though the uk cannot be seen as merely dipping its toes in the regions it's not about testing waters it must aim to be a presence that's strongly rooted in a clear sense of uk interest in the indo-pacific and commitment to principles that cannot be traded away these are certainly testing times for the region and for the uk as well and for the wider world but i think this makes sustained uk engagement all the more important for britain to be truly global i think it must more deeply engage with an economically and strategically important region and the opportunities and challenges it throws up so in this vein i think a strong policy statement for of the uk's vision and strategy for the indo-pacific needs to be a priority this will provide a clear roadmap for meeting uk interests in the region and signal that the uk is a serious player an india pacific uh vision of strategy would also help it to align itself with its allies and partners in the region not least the u.s japan france australia all of whom have issued their own indo-pacific visions and strategies now last year at the shangri-la dialogue france issued an indo-pacific policy statement uh and for good measure sent its aircraft carrier the shelter goal complete with aircraft carrier strike group and dots in singapore during the course of the shangri-la dialogue weekend perhaps next year we'll see the uk uh do the same um and then a final note before i close i'd like to highlight the absolute importance of uh not looking at the region through a narrow lens a holistic approach uh needs to be adopted uh china's ambitious belt and road uh initiative was altering this uh the region's strategic landscape before kerber 19. i think over 19 has stopped its momentum for a bit but i think that it's unlikely to uh spell an end to uh to the belt and road initiative which i suspect uh will be perhaps even in even greater demand post covetous countries seek to rebuild the economies so as um the uk looks to uh consid contemplates its presence in the region and its role in the region um i think it needs to seriously consider as well uh the extent to which it can cooperate perhaps with partners like japan uh to complement or counter the belt and road uh initiative in a way that is is also will also help to uh boost its domestic economy thank you lynn thank you very much for that and uh for apart from anything else reminding us that um uh it's still very much choppy waters in the uh in in the region in spite of the preoccupations with them or perhaps because of to some extent the preoccupations with the uh curvit 19 at the moment um right we're um have about 20 20 minutes bit more than that for um for some discussion and we've got quite a few uh questions already in the bag as it were and i'm going to open up with a couple of related questions um the first one uh from uh captain paul manzi who's the neighbor advisor of royal australian navy for the australian government here in london who asks um the with the rise of a2ad capabilities will the royal navy pursue sea based ballistic missile defense capabilities with the type 45 destroyers and this class is replacement for carrier protection and i'll roll that in with um with uh michael mostick who says admiral kidd used the words for survivable our billion dollar or pounds carriers becoming uh increasingly vulnerable to missiles barely costing six figures so that i suppose that trade-off issue um especially from china so um admiral kid perhaps and then perhaps i don't know if brian clark would like to sort of weigh in on that as well thanks yeah thanks uh nick um i gotta just pass my compliments to the rest of the panel members for their really insightful words i've learned a lot uh thank you very much indeed and uh and lynn on your last piece we could talk for hours um we obviously were running with jerry mayer through the policies and the politics of our far-reached deployment or even day-packed deployment next year it's it's interesting work on the question nick um yes listen uh we've got type ballistic missile um threat is a massive issue for every everyone wishing to play on the on the operational stage there's no simple solution uh any uh ballistic missile defense uh uh capability is hugely expensive uh you could argue that uh beyond nato and the united states very few others can even contemplate a credible blissful missile defense program uh because the complexities of the threat set praise against you hypersonic missiles uh coming at very high angles uh from sub uh sub orbit is extremely difficult to counteract but i i think we we have a viable capability we're going to build on for the type 45 destroyers uh certainly the radar and type 45 is probably acknowledged i think fairly is one of the best if not the best in the world and uh the viper system uh the missile we have embarked on those ships is also very capable however it will have to be developed further uh to meet the full ballistic missile threat set and uh where i can't say where we are in that negotiation but clearly that requires more investment and we'll have to wait uh for how that that conversation develops over the next year or two but what i would say is that when we look at threats and how to counteract any threats in any environment it's always an amalgam of all the cables you have at hand and this goes back to doctrine or working with allies and making sure you can offset threats and mitigate them in various manners it's not just about kinetic strike or knocking the arrows it's a bit like going back to ashen core sometimes you have to take out the archer not the arrow and with ballistic missiles uh that is absolutely apt because the number ranged against forces both land and at sea will be significant so it's not easy easy solution set but the answer to the question is yes we're looking at evolving at the target 45 set in the coming years um and the second question uh was about a280 was it yes it was basically the trade-off between between you know your multi-billion dollar uh carriers and uh and uh much less expensive um lethal start capabilities yeah well again i think we've got to be very careful here when we talk about vulnerabilities and survivability uh there's not one latitude or longitude on the planet not one car building human being ship or airfield that's invulnerable so we need to get out of the rather dull i have to say discourse about vulnerability it's all about as chester nimitz riley said it's all about what is calculated risk and that's up to the operational commander uh assuming you have the political um agreement to risk your forces is up the operational command to decide uh how he wants to deploy his forces and what level of risk he wishes to take and that can be done in a whole host of ways but comes back to um the point we made jerry mayhew and i made earlier about multi-domain integration uh every problem set now the solution to it is quite complex it's not just about knocking missiles out the sky with another missile about that's last resort quite frankly uh it is complicated yes uh an air a ship or any anything a building or an airfield or a tank brigade can be taken out by by ballistic missiles and ship missiles of course they can it is the operational command of his job to make sure he mitigates that uh sufficiently there is no easy answer if you want to deploy complex machinery like aircraft carriers you have to spend the money they are expensive bits of kit and you have to make sure that you have the operational wherewithal and the information power at your fingertips information operations to protect it as best you can but there are no guarantees in warfare warfare hurts sometimes that's just a fact brian did you have anything to add on that yeah i'll i'll add a couple of things so uh as uh as the admiral said uh absolutely they're you're gonna be vulnerable you know just some kind of attack wherever you are um what we found is that um like you said it's a multi-dimensional problem where you need to be able to balance your ability to do counter isr operations against the enemy strike his uh archers before they launch arrows uh and be able to vote and then also defend yourself against what comes and what we're finding is that the ability of the aircraft carrier to cause effects over longer ranges gives you that flexibility so that the uh commander can position the carrier in such a way that he strikes a balance between all of those uh multi-dimensional techniques of defending the carrier because if you've got to at the same time look at being able to cause the effect that you're trying to cause so if you get too far away then you can't cause the effect if you get too close you're dealing with too many threats and you're not able to generate sorties so striking a balance in terms of where you are having the flexibility to operate over wider ranges is the combination of things you need to be able to deliver that multi-domain type uh survivability thank you very much for that um i'm going to uh take a couple of questions that are a bit of a a counter point to each other and to some extent one is from our uh from uh one of our associate fellows eric grove who says in a world where one rarely if ever sees multiple us carriers in european waters what is the potential for two rn carriers with two uk and four um us marine corps f-35b squadrons aboard um how we make that up um uh uh will that what what what difference would that make how much of a difference would that make and then from dr lee willett i suppose to some extent a counterpoint uh to that which is um there are u.s carrier groups in back in the atlantic there's the charles de gaulle um the the rn carriers russia doesn't have an active carrier capability so what does carrier strike uh bring to the mix if you like in a in a strategic context in in nato in the north atlantic again perhaps um admiral kidd and and i don't know marshall mayhew wants to sort of bring in the broader picture of the sort of maritime uh air picture in in around the north what the other contributions are um yeah thanks thanks thanks nick i'll tackle that pretty quickly um i get the question and you know let's be very clear and i'll take eric grove's point and eric will remember the days the 1980s where we had the the north atlantic strategy where combined united states united kingdom aircraft carrier groups off the norwegian sea um directly threatening uh russia and their ability to uh to strike back um so i'm a great fan of the combined kerastrike group methodology i think it provides a complementary suite of capabilities um we've integrated between the us and the uk for for a number of years particularly on carrier development and and i think as i said earlier the united states marine corps embarkation next year just signposts for much uh to a much more rich future um listen it's all about um you know prioritization we've only got two aircraft carriers um we'll see where we go in terms of air wing development and what that looks like the combination of uk us uh other allies and you know and unmanned aerial systems in the future but certainly the expeditionary force the combination of two aircraft carriers is pretty potent the central the center of gravity for me as fleet commander is the atlantic uh against the russian threat set and that's where i'm i'm uh focused uh but as lynn pointed out um yes we are going to come back to the indo pack and i love the four uh conditions she listed and um i can reassure her that our ambition is to be absolutely persistent and forward-based there um maybe with a character arguable maybe not we'll have to see um but you know we we have choices to make politically nick um so we'll see where we go but certainly the ambition is to remain combined and joint and to to flex the uk uh very modest levels of ambition um and forces in the nato context primarily but that's not going to limit us moving around the world in the future hey marshall thanks nick so firstly to to me it was about having a sovereign capability it isn't always necessarily going away with us marine corps or other nations embark but that is the great freedom that we have now is there's an aircraft carrier that can support a community of platforms uh just to look at the f-35b community there's obviously ourselves the us marine corps the italians singaporeans japanese so there is a lot of choice of who can embark and who can't uh so that's that's good and the interoperability that that brings is a significant amount of work that is going on with that community at the moment to ensure that we can do that in the future but it isn't a routine operating model of always having us marine corps on board as for operating in the north atlantic or elsewhere that's why we recognize the importance of global reach and global support ability so i know if i may be naughty and just reach ahead to one of the other questions which is slightly ahead is the solution we have does not necessarily need to be embarked for supportability and the solution we have with lockheed martin in industry is to support a global market of f-35s and so spares and capabilities will be sat in all sorts of locations and i'm sure it'd be the same for for the ship so our ability to be in the north atlantic or in the indo-pacom region is all backed up by support solutions that are built for the 21st century model thank you very much now we do have a number of uh hands raised the first person to raise their hand was um vice admiral retired duncan potts so duncan if you'd like to um step forward and put your question you're muted at the moment duncan tom are we uh are we able to unmute uh okay we don't don't seem to be able to to here to hear animal parts i'll see if we can come come back on that one um what i what i will do is um is is go i think to um the question to which um uh uh air marshal uh mayhew was referring and that was uh from uh uh former first sea lord admiral lord west 70 years since the start of the korean war um for three years royal navy like carriers provided the only uk fighter grounded attack do you agree that the provision of uk fast jet power in the indo-pacific uh can only be provided by carriers and that we should exercise this as soon as possible um and in the short term how will we ensure uh airborne early warning while operating in the region so there's there's some other elements to un unpack there perhaps um uh jerry uh kid if if you if you'd like to sort of have an uh have a stab at that as well and um i'd also like to uh bring uh lynn kwok into the uh into this as well just in in terms of of um a broader range of capabilities um we've talked about aircraft carriers um marshall mayhew has talked about other capabilities that have a global reach um all of which um i think in an earlier comment he said are things that make people sit up and watch and i just wondered if if that as far as you're concerned region is something that does happen do these do these really have symbolism and what the what the real resonance of aircraft carriers uh and and other high high-tech capabilities do have in the region so um jerry do you want to add further to that and i don't know there marshall mayhew wants to say a bit more on the same time okay yeah sorry when you're ready i think i'm on now so when you've finished with this i can come back all righty we'll do uh kitty ceiling yeah uh welcome lord west um question i you know yes is the answer i mean the queen elizabeth class like um you know american cvn's are are a well-founded base um but they are one that does not stop um the air wing from from disembarking um and jerry talked to the the global reach and global footprint the ability to sustain f-35 particularly in the indo-pak area not least through our u.s allies and through the hub in japan um so i think we're very careful that uh we see it just as a binary issue um i think what the aircraft carrier does is takes them out there it acts as the well-founded base it's protectable it's sustainable and it brings them back home again but it doesn't mean it's a one-stop shop um so you know our intention is very clear that we're going that way next year i think we will have to work out what our routine operating model looks like in the future for the for the uk carrier strike groups about where they go uh year on year and that course that'll be a question of for policy and also for resource which should um unfold in the next six months or so but i certainly see the ambition as being in uh flexing out in the persistent uh personal manner uh out to the far at the indo-pak area um uh but that doesn't mean that the f-35 and the air wing will not be doing other things once it's out there um on the issue about aew critical we got it wrong in the falklands where we got rid of gannett in 1978 and it cost us seven ships and uh quite a few hundred lives so we're not shy of course enduring problem about um isr understanding what's around you and information power and of course airborne early warning is a critical part of that isr equation you've got the crow's nest aircraft cable is coming in towards it towards the end of the year it's at very early stages ioc um but my view and this is a real punt here not for the record really is that we'll probably see a fairly rapid transition to an unmanned systems uh solution in the in the near future putting a radar airborne either by it doesn't matter really what it is but it's that persistence and that range advantage it gives you uh around the task for false protection it comes back to the point made early about you know the balance to being too close to a threat and too far off of course it's all about warning time if your uh entertain kill chain is uh completed quicker than the enemies then you survive and you win um so airborne early one remaining is vital but this comes back to the point about combined capabilities space based isr big wing coming from ashore with mpa um and other agencies uh inputting information into your group is the amalgam of all that information that's critical here so focusing too much on one capability like aew is not the complete solution for professional commander to consider it's uh the alchemy of everything you have to consider but um i'll head over to so um i'm not sure we can go in there there nick but that wasn't um and then lynn perhaps for a sort of further thought thanks nick lord west thank you yeah isr always an issue for us whether it's wherever it is domained and we're looking at space opportunities but of course for airborne early warning and c2 moving out of uh e3d sentry platforms into the future is a program of of great interest to us at the moment d7 p8 and other opportunities which jerry describes and of course looking at how we might do other things with protector as that comes in very much a hot topic at the moment uh i would also just qualify my statement of making uh people sit up and and watch uh four years ago we moved typhoon into japan for the first time into that part of the world for a very long time that uk combat air had deployed we also go into malaysia on a regular basis and fpda 50 next year is another opportunity to do that and we know through measurement of effect and measurement of communication that does make people recognize that globally royal air force and the royal navy can project power as they have always done so lynn do you have a thought on the sort of the you know the wow factor element i suppose to these these kinds of capabilities in the region well uh it definitely makes uh the region set up a notice and i think uh the most obvious example was in 1996 when uh the united states has sent um its aircraft carrier battle groups to the region in response to chinese missile tests um in the taiwan straits uh so that of course got china to behave a little bit better after that um uh so it got china at least to set up and notice um since then of course we've live we live in a very different world china's some military capabilities have advanced and progressed um massively um and so the question of course is the sort of response it would get from china uh i i suspect china would still remain um uh uh would still view it with um with with the with the same sort of eyes awareness that it viewed in 1996 but somewhat less so as for the rest of the region i think aircraft carriers do provide a reassuring presence of commitment as i said earlier um in terms of how they position themselves uh both in terms of alignment uh with allies and partners but also in terms of whether or not they're willing to stand up for a rules-based order that all depends on whether or not external forwards are able to kind of come into the region and offer a degree of reassurance a degree of sucker i understand that security is economic development is not possible uh without security um that said for the region many in the region view uh economics as security so it cannot only be about aircraft carriers while they send an important signal at the end of the day the bread and butter issues do matter as well so we're talking about trade and um you know infrastructure investment development you know in the wake of covet it's going to be health initiatives chinese uh president xi jinping has already talked about belton road uh health silk road uh so these are so this sort of issues that we cannot lose sight of as we send this awesome instrument into the region as well thanks lynn uh we are right up against our time i don't know if anyone really has to dash away but i will try and get in if i may um admiral potts question so and and perhaps one one other so um uh duncan uh you have the floor okay nick thanks you've got me now have you absolutely glad yeah good well firstly can i can i just say to all the panelists i thought that was an excellent uh afternoon and uh i particularly observed that it was very good to hear the two jerry's uh both speaking strategically but in a very joined up and aligned way something that certainly i didn't always see uh when i was in service my question really revolves around and built on on the last one really i mean both uh both of the two jerry's made the point about the importance of seat control and control of the air uh the need for a day one capability uh and i think it was jerry kidd who who said that uh he thinks that bringing a carrier battle group together is perhaps the most complex military formation to bring together uh and i wouldn't disagree with all of that um but looking ahead and especially uh you know operating in the far east region there are there any parts of the jigsaw that gives this capability we've just been hearing about some of the eyestar assets but is there anything else that um that both of you are particularly concerned about at the moment which we really need to press on to make sure the investment is fully capitalized thank you duncan and i i'll actually because it's opposite um i'll also uh throw in this this question from uh from vice admiral um clive johnston uh which is um on the on the subject of resilience and sustainability really as far as maritime and air power is concerned can we afford the stocks weapons and support shipping to keep this capability operational high tempo forward loaded and war winning so so it's it really is the um the the you know the step change in terms of high tempo capabilities including at range so to the two jerry's um i i think if you if you just have um a sort of reflection on that um but um i don't know if uh i'll just forewarn uh brian clark as well whether he has a thought on on those issues around you know the sustainable firepower would you would you like to kick off with that and then we'll we'll finish off with the two of the two admirals uh of course yeah thanks nick so the uh uh we've done a lot of work on logistics uh of late um i'm sorry yeah yeah and uh i'm sorry lynn are you are you gonna speak okay okay so uh what we're finding is that the there's a need to improve our logistics both in terms of getting more logistics and be able to account for attrition of our logistics forces as well as a greater distribution of our logistics forces so get away from a small number of very large logistic ships and and forces to a more a larger number of smaller logistic ships so that's something that we're looking at to be able to support this more distributed operations that we're likely to find among the allies um getting the stocks right is something that the us has been investing in a lot and i think that's going to be one of the biggest challenges really is having sufficient weapons to support this new form of warfare which is very much missile based uh which is a greater cost than what we've seen previous conflicts and being able to supply the fuel to those uh ships at sea they're going to be deploying airplanes it's going to require this more distributed logistics infrastructure which will mean that maybe a new class of logistics shifts and i'll turn it over the animals and uh thank you forgive me i said the two admirals are actually uh marshall mayhew and uh admiral kid so marshall may you if i could come to you but uh but but also if i could throw in if you one one extra uh question as as well which is um on the subject of uh tempest uh which you may have seen there from boaz shoshan and whether whether the tempest program will have a will have a maritime operational capability but so so social answer that one i'll answer that one first then if i may thank you for the question on tempest no i was just indicative that there are future platforms and programs that in the 2040s and beyond we need to have our imagination and our eyes open to to not just wait for that moment but use the technologies that we're developing for that to put on the platforms and capabilities that we have now so there are opportunities in the tempest program and the future combat air system work that will allow us to do more with f35 typhoon and a host of enablers rather than wait until 2040 and who knows where that will take us as that develops um you asked about what worries i would have i don't really have worries i would just reflect that we are a credible force when we go out the door and that we are also on the first of our credible force deployments so this is still expectation management yes we're credible on day one all the way through the deployment but we will also be still working up from initial operating capability to full operating capability so we will still be ensuring that we are ready to do the tasks that we are asked to do throughout the voyage and in that instance i would just reflect that we're not just going to somewhere thousands of miles away we're going through other places and doing other things on the way there so this is not just about the final destination this is about having a credible day one operational capability that we will be testing and proving all the way from uk waters to the return thank you admiral kidd i think this will this will be the last word probably thanks nick yeah very quickly uh agree everything that brian and jerry has just said i think for me and i'll be very careful when i say yeah i'll choose my words very carefully i think for uk um we are on a journey as jerry rightly says in terms of capability delivery i think there's also an element here after 10 years without a carrier and arguably 30 years since we've been here at this scale is getting the poll mill uh policy level to understand what we've bought and how they're going to direct and also make the choices about resourcing it properly to deliver something that's truly strategic and credible i think we're well down the path on that one and that's warming but we still got a bit to go there yet um and i think then it comes down to the operation level about you know making those choices about uh how we balance off other commitments uh you know the royal navy in the royal air force remains a modest um force and i think there's some key choices coming up about the balance of home and away and about how often we pulse the carrier strike groups out and indeed where they're based in the future and therein lies the questions about uh new ships to support and sustain it and where we place our our bombs and our missiles in the future do you put all the carrier we'll you half and half here or did you keep them back in the uk so you know i've got no big worries as jerry says um i think we're well done the path we're doing really well but it's getting uh back to using those muscle moves of uh wielding a kerosene group back of the world stage that's going to take a few years yet thank you very much admiral kidd um thanks i would say um thanks to all those who've attended today and then and participated um particularly in the question and answer my apologies we uh we haven't been able to get through all the questions but i think we have had a a rich uh and and fascinating uh discussion so um thanks to all of those who've intervened from the floor as it were but i'd particularly like to to thank uh all the panelists who've all contributed very strongly to i think a very broad ranging but also a deep and uh interesting discussion so uh thanks to you all and and unfortunately we can't do it in uh offer our appreciation to you in the in normal sense but i'm sure it's it's there in the ether somewhere so um so thank you thank you for that and and and with that i i would say thanks to everyone who's attended and i'll draw the session to a close thank you very much

Channel: The International Institute for Strategic Studies

Views: 923

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: navy, covid-19, UK, maritime power, IISS, jerry kyd

Id: 2kIm3A4rOHw

Length: 96min 1sec (5761 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020