It’s an ancient adage predating even the Roman Empire and going back as far as Plato, but one with relevance today as the smoke billows over Ukrainian trenches and cities; the restive Russian bear looks west; and the Chinese dragon flexes in the South China Sea.
So how, then, are our preparations for a war we hope never to have to fight?
Not exactly sparkling if the sorry saga of the RAF’s Wedgetail early warning and control aircraft is anything to go by.
The Wedgetail will never win prizes for looks. It’s a Boeing 737 twin-engine airliner of the sort that takes us to the Costas in droves, but with sensors in what looks awfully like a giant I-beam perched atop.
It’s a combat-proven Australian design offering a detailed insight far beyond the horizon so our pilots in Typhoon and F-35 Lighting II strike-fighters know what’s coming, who to salute – and who to shoot.
In the modern aerial battlespace, early warning and control is a prerequisite, yet we have a yawning gap in RAF capability and, indeed, credibility for our E-3D Sentry – instantly recognisable with its giant frisbee radar disc – aircraft are retired.
RAF ‘eyes in the sky’ are myopic as we are reliant on allies’ ageing Sentries despite ordering five Wedgetails, at a cost of £1.5billion, in 2019.
In March 2021 the order was cut to three aircraft, a move the Defence Select Committee called folly, for it delivered a 40pc fleet cut for about a 12pc cost cut.
And while one Wedgetail was meant to overfly July’s Royal International Air Tattoo, ‘technical issues’ delayed this for a day in an apposite metaphor for the entire programme, as not a single RAF Wedgetail is yet certified for action.
There have been delays caused by the wider malaise in the aviation industry post-covid – lack of materials and staff – and problems with complex certification.
So is Wedgetail the ‘Ajax of the skies’, that troubled armoured fighting vehicle now the benchmark for late and ruinously over-budget military procurement?
There is guarded good news in that the deal stuck with Boeing to build Wedgetail in the West Midlands was based on a fixed-price contract, so costs are not skyrocketing.
Yet still our RAF Top Guns risk flying blind unless we can rely on the indulgence of allies.
The Government is committed to Wedgetail, expected to operate out of RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland alongside Poseidon, our 737 tweaked for maritime missions, next year.
The Strategic Defence Review’s recommendation that further Wedgetails be added has been accepted, caveated by ‘when funding allows’, and there are innovative suggestions of defraying costs and protecting hundreds of British jobs in the supply chain by persuading allies to purchase Wedgetail.
That may be a tough sell as the Americans think interlinked satellites could do Wedgetail’s job, though even they are eyeing the aged E-2 Hawkeye – which first flew in 1960 – as a stop-gap.
I have argued since arriving in Parliament a year ago that fully harnessing the UK’s mighty defence-industrial base is the cornerstone of the defence of the realm.
Wars are fought on battlefields, but won in shipyards, on factory floors, in design offices and on production lines…
We learned the lesson in the Shell Crisis of 1915 when our artillery on the Western Front outpaced our ordnance factories. We forged a military-industrial alliance through necessity then; we can do so by choice today.
Military procurement is changing from a leaden peacetime footing as this message filters through. The new Neutral Vendor Framework for Innovation (NVFi) is a good example, making defence supply chains accessible to adroit SMEs previously shut out by cost and complexity.
But back to Latin and the motto of the RAF – Per Ardua Ad Astra: Through difficulties to the stars.
Wedgetail, and too much of defence procurement, is still at the ardua stage.
Where are the Government and industry champions who can get us to the stellar moment of securing the cutting-edge kit the brave men and, increasingly, women of our armed forces will need if Britain is indeed marching – however reluctantly – as to war?
Si vis pacem, para bellum – if you wish peace, prepare for war
