The Third World War (55 page)

what was known as
TAVR
II was again, after some years in suspense, brought into being. It was a force resembling a militia. mobile and lightly armed, with an important role on the home front.

By 1984 the whole position had been transformed: 5 Field Force stationed at Osnabriick had become a division, which, with its
TAVR
and regular reinforcements, could be made fully up to strength. Both 7 Field Force and 8 Field Force (which was stationed on Salisbury Plain and which had had a home defence role), with their
TAVR
components, became fully-fledged armoured divisions on the same pattern as those in I British Corps. Their despatch to Europe meant that a second corps would be available to
NORTHAG
, a corps HQ having been formed at Bulford from resources thrown up by the reduction of HQ
UKLF
and the former HQ South-West District. In addition to these increases. 6 Field Force became a full light division with a limited regular and
TAVR
parachute capability, to be employed either on the flanks of
NATO
or in the Centre.

The Home Defence r.nits of the
TAVR
. together with certain regular units formed from the Training Establishments and Base Organization, numbered in all some 30,000. Thus C-in-C L) K LF was able to retain a sufficient fighting strength to ensure the security of so-called key points, and have a mobile reserve for emergencies, provided initially by 6 Field Force, and later from mobile columns from the Training Establishment.

It was planned that from 1985 onwards II British Corps, with its headquarters normally located in Britain and with a wartime location near Rheine on the Dortmund-Ems Canal, would carry out manoeuvres in
BAOR
once a year. The extra divisions would at last give the Commander of
NORTHAG
what had been lacking for so long—some degree of depth. He would now have in consequence a better chance of containing an incursion without very early recourse to nuclear weapons.

During this time of awakening interest in defence, perhaps no question in any Allied country (except possibly the truly critical problem of reserves in the United States, to which we shall return) raised more domestic difficulties than that of the air defence of the United Kingdom. The nakedness of
NATO
, once the nuclear shield was seen to be so brittle, was nowhere more brutally exposed than in the vulnerability of the British Isles to air attack. The comforting assumption of the short, sharp war conducted in someone else’s country had vanished once it had been realized that in the present condition of
NATO
a war with the Warsaw Pad was most likely to be short and sharp if it were to end in victory for the other side. To prevent this would need a capacity for sustained intensive conventional operations, and in these the position of the United Kingdom-as a rearward base for Europe and a forward base for the United States made heavy air attack inevitable.

Rueful looks were now cast back at the baleful consequences of the 1957 White Paper, of which one had been the concentration, in the interests of economy and ease of management without operational penalty, of
RAF
installations in vulnerable patterns offering responsive and rewarding targets to penetrating aircraft. The recovery and rehabilitation of airfields disposed of to the army or to civilian use, the construction of further airfields to relieve dangerous congestion on those used by the
USAF
(which already in 1977 had more than 200 F-IHs in Britain), the hardening of operational control centres and the provision of mobile alternatives were all only parts of a very big construction programme demanding the expenditure of something like Ł1,000 million in a three-year plan.

It had soon become apparent that the permanent stationing of further
USAF
squadrons in the UK. probably on the west coast, would now be unavoidable. I his brought at least partly into public view a matter which had long been under confidential discussion: the question of the distribution of responsibilities between British and American air forces in an emergency-There had long been little doubt that the
USAF
would generally play the dominant part in air operations, based in the UK. There was equally little doubt that. although the
USAF
would assume the chief responsibility for the security and air defence of its own installations in the UK and a high degree of responsibility for the defence oi the UK base as a whole, the
RAF
would have to play the chief part in the defence of national territory. It was. indeed, a sign of the reviving national self-respect evident in Britain at the end of the seventies that in the matter of air defence, as well as in other respects, total reliance on the United States was being increasingly replaced by a robust determination in the British people to play a full part in their own defence—and to pay for it.

A growing public willingness in Britain from the end of the seventies to see a higher proportion of a rising
GNP
devoted to defence can be said to have been truly indispensable to the survival of the Western Alliance in the years that were to follow. There was a limit to the share of other people’s burdens which would be borne by the United States. There was also no tack of latent support on the western side of the Atlantic for the dangerous argument that the US should disengage itself from the Alliance.

At sea. the rundown of the Royal Navy had thrown a heavy additional load on the US Navy in maintaining the flow of fuel. food and raw materials into Western Europe, which would be vital in an emergency. Contraction of the
RAF
had gravely impaired Britain’s ability to give air support to
BAOR
ground troops and keep the air forces of the Warsaw Pact oft their backs, and above all had removed the capacity to defend the U K base. The reduction of Britain by blockade at sea, the collapse of the Northern Army Group on land, the neutralization by air attack of Allied forward bases in the British Isles—together these would spell ruin for the Alliance as a whole. This was in the event only prevented by the reversal of the rundown in Britain’s defences forced by public opinion on politicians from the end of the seventies It was costly but the money had to be found, if necessary—if, that ts, a growing
GNP
could not cover the increase—at the expense of other programmes The reconstitution of UK air defences was at least labour-intensive and thus useful in the continuing fight against the obstinately high level of unemployment in Britain.

Important though the problems of the British contribution to
NATO
ground forces might be, the situation of the
RAF
and the needs of air defence could be said to be marginally even more critical Britain could survive, in some form, if only for a while, the collapse on land of Allied Command Europe It could probably get along somehow under severe blockade at sea What it could hardly be expected to survive, given the state of technology today, was devastation from the air To prevent this, then, was the task of highest priority It was also the most costly Because of its impact on so many different aspects of life in Britain, and its widespread requirement for the diversion of effort and resource from other uses, the recreation of the air defences of Great Britain was also the most difficult part of the defence programme

The programme got off to a relatively slow start in the financial year 1979-80 and gathered strength in the following years, as the percentage of the
GNP
devoted to defence moved upwards from 5 per cent and began to approach—though it never quite reached—the 11 per cent it had touched during the war in Korea at the turn of the fifties It never, in fact, until the outbreak of war. exceeded 9 per cent, but since this was a percentage of a greatly increased
GNP
, the rise in expenditure in real terms was very considerable Vulnerable points, such as main ports, airheads, defence and other key industrial installations and command and control centres, against any or all of which attack by precision-guided weapons could be expected, were furnished with point-defence surface-to-air missile systems supplied by the United States Airfields were extended and hardened to 2
ATAF
standards, like those in Germany, and light and easily concealed operational control centres were established The lack of ordnance for operations sustained for any more than a very few days—one of the gravest weaknesses in all aspects of Britain’s defences—began to be made good by the reactivation of production lines allowed to lapse, and where this was not possible (as was sadly all too often the case) the setting up. at great expense, of new ones The training machine began to be rescued from the poor condition to which successive defence cuts had reduced it and a vigorous recruiting drive opened in the schools and universities The Auxiliary Air Force was expanded with a non-combat role of weekend instruction, thereby developing a nucleus capable at the appropriate time of taking on a full-time function and releasing flying instructors for combat duties Even so, with the training time for pilots to front-line standards approaching three years and a grave shortage of instructors it was to be a long haul before the new cockpit seats arriving in the front line would be filled with competent combat pilots As was also happening for the other two services, legislation wasamended to permit the embodiment of volunteer reservists in advance of Royal Proclamation At the same time provision was made for the utilization of reservist
RAF
general duties personnel without high specialization but with an invaluable initiation into service under arms These were absorbed into Home Defence units of the land forces

In the matter of equipment, as a top priority, orders for the MRCA (multiple role combat aircraft)—the Tornado—in the air defence variant were increased, but lack of elasticity in the production line compelled the RAF to run on theirexisting F-4 Phantoms to achieve the 100 per cent increase now sought in air defence aircraft Radar cover was provided around the west coast, and a tanker force augmented by aircraft from the United States to sustain long-range interception of enemy aircraft operating in the Western Approaches Real progress, hitherto stalled for lack of funds, was made in exploiting over-the- honzon radar techniques and satellite information, organic aircraft radar was steadily improved and increasingly relied upon, airborne early warning (AEW) became available to the extent that >t could be relied upon as a mainstay, and the ambition of the RAF to be largely independent of ground radars by 1990 looked like being realized as much as five years sooner

A bid for a 100 per cent increase in maritime patrol aircraft was agreed, but it was already too late to save the Jigs for Nimrod production, and the American Lockheed Orion had to be purchased instead Finally, proposals to station further
USAF
air defence forces in the UK, both to afford further security in the Western Approaches and to strengthen U K air defence as a whole, proposals which had only received lukewarm support in Britain in the early seventies and had encountered stiff resistance in Congress, were now as it became evident that Britain was at last beginning to do something for herself, looked on with favour.

On the side of offensive air operations, it was not quite so easy to secure funds for expansion An increase in front-line strength of 30 per cent was eventually negotiated, to be taken in a combination of Tornados Jaguars and Harriers with an option on the F-16 and f-4 Phantom if Jaguar and Harrier production should prove as turned out to be the case—to have been run down too far to meet the requirement A long and keenly debated decision as important as any in the development of air power was taken to bring the cruise missile into service with the
RAF
in its air-launched version I his, in its high-explosive mode. was seen as a quantum jump in the capability for counter-attacking enemy air bases and attenuat-ing the weight of effort which might be mounted from them against the British Isles Fhis was a complex and expensive programme which had to follow in the wake of the American re-equipment with these weapons, and it was not expected to be available to the
RAF
until the middle, possibly late. 1980s

The flag of the Soviet Union flies over the oceans of the world.* observed Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G Gorshkov in 1974 ‘Sooner or later the United States will have to understand that it no longer has mastery of the seas ‘ Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, even after Admiral Gorshkov’s retirement from active service, successive Politburos had accepted his well and persistently argued thesis that world peace, that is to say the triumph of Marxism-Leninism throughout the world, must be, and could only be, based upon mastery of the seas

To gain this it would be necessary to allocate an exceptionally high proportion of Soviet resources of men and material to naval and maritime purposes, and to apply these scientifically The classical sea power doctrine of Mahan had to be reinterpreted in the light of Marxist-Leninist theory and the socio-political and technical conditions prevailing in the last quarter of the twentieth century These included the continuing credibility, and therefore necessity, of the submarine-launched

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strategic nuclear missile system, with matching general-purpose naval and air forces in support, and to counter, as far as possible, the opposing submarine strategic systems. Necessary, also. was the evolution from Mahan’s theory of general command of the sea of a doctrine of local and temporary command appropriate to the support of “state interests’. Additional general-purpose naval and air forces would be needed, in consequence, for use in situations involving a limited number of participants, in a limited area. using limited means to realize limited ends.

This line of reasoning was not only persuasive in itself, and accorded almost universal agreement by the naval hierarchies of the non-Soviet world. It also seemed to be fulfilling, when put into effect, the promise of its progenitor. The activities of the new Red Navy began to hit the headlines just after the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War in 1967, when Soviet naval forces entered Port Said and Alexandria “ready to co-operate’ with the Egyptians to repel any aggression.