Some Challenges for the UK’s Combat Air Strategy: Learning Lessons to Enhance Future Practice

David Kirkpatrick
RUSI Journal, 25 September 2019
Aerospace, UK, Technology

For Tempest to succeed, the UK will need to regain the crucial infrastructure and technical expertise that it has lost in recent decades.

Among the challenges which must be overcome by the UK’s Combat Air Strategy, David Kirkpatrick highlights the sharp decline in UK defence research, and the destruction of many UK aeronautical test facilities, since the end of the Cold War. He discusses the erratic evolution of the Ministry of Defence’s relationship with the UK defence industry, and considers critically the various management initiatives proposed to facilitate its acquisition of a sixth-generation combat aircraft.

BANNER IMAGE: F-35Bs flying over the UK, June 2018. Courtesy of MoD/Tim Laurence/OGL