Per ardua ad . . . ?

Seeing from my window the other day a Eurofighter manoeuvring at low level over the Moray glens, I was reminded once more of the Royal Air Force’s certainty when it comes to knowing what it wants. For here is an aircraft superbly optimised for its role: air-to-air combat against the best the Soviet air force could put up. That there is now no need of such a fighter hardly seems important when you see its sheer flying quality. What does it matter that, say, the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (and others) will be axed to make room for this magnificent cuckoo in the Defence nest when so many jobs at BAE Wharton, in the regimental area, are at stake? The RAF is, after all, defined by its aircraft, and these days it plays no part in the strategic deterrent, nor does it deliver sub-strategic, ‘battlefield’, nuclear warheads; nor, with the advances in cruise missiles and long-range precision-guided artillery munitions, are aircraft any longer a cost-effective means of ground attack; and even photo-reconnaissance is easily done by satellites. So without Eurofighter what would there be left for the RAF to do but fly the army around the world in airliners and helicopters? That would hardly justify the RAF as a third service. No, a doctrine of airpower, and aircraft appropriate to the doctrine, is as central to the separate existence of the RAF as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is to Christianity.

We have been here before. In the 1920s and ’30s strategic bombing doctrine emerged, the promise of victory through airpower alone based on the absolute conviction that ‘the bomber will always get through’. Its first and chief proponent in this country was Hugh Trenchard, the founder of the RAF, and few officers gained promotion who did not embrace the doctrine enthusiastically.