If Britain Goes to War With Russia UK Air Bases Are ‘Inviting Targets,’ MPs Told

F-35B Lightning II fighter jets arrive at the Royal Air Force Marham airbase in Kings Lynn, England on June 6, 2018. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A military aviation expert has told a committee of UK MPs that, in the event of a war with Russia, Britain’s three fighter jet bases would make “inviting targets.”

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute, said RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, RAF Marham in Norfolk, and RAF Lossiemouth in Fife, Scotland had “no air defences of any kind” and the planes were kept in hangars which were “easy to identify.”

Bronk told the Defence Select Committee, “Either we need to be able to disperse them over far, far more bases or we need to put in layered air defences in as protection because right now they’re pretty inviting targets.”

The warning came as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is heading to Madrid for a NATO summit, is coming under increasing pressure to increase defence spending.

Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defence Committee, pointed out on Tuesday that in the 1991 Gulf War, Britain had 36 fighter squadrons and now it is down to “half a dozen.”

Sophy Antrobus, a research fellow at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, said, “There is no way of getting away from it, the number of combat aircraft the RAF has, and the number of squadrons it has, it is a significant step back from where we were at the end of the Cold War.”

Years of cuts to defence spending may now be reversed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fear of Moscow’s intentions in Eastern Europe, as well as an increasingly belligerent China.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has reportedly asked Downing Street for a 20 percent increase in spending to counter the Russian threat.

In the Conservatives’ 2019 general election manifesto they promised to increase the defence budget by 0.5 percent above inflation, a promise which was made before inflation began to go through the roof.

Johnson Accepts UK Has to ‘Respond’ to Threats

Johnson, speaking in Germany on the final day of the G-7 summit before heading to Madrid, said, “Clearly we have to respond to the way threats continue to change, but don’t forget that we now have got a defence budget that is £24 billion [$29 billion] bigger under the spending review—the biggest increase since the end of the Cold War.”

In the Ministry of Defence’s integrated review in March last year it announced a number of aviation cuts, including the early retirement of 24 Tranche 1 Typhoon fighter jets by 2025, retiring the C-130J Hercules transport plane, and pensioning off many older Chinook and Puma helicopters.

In April, following the invasion of Ukraine, Britain announced plans to buy 26 more F35-B fighters from the United States, making 74 in total.

A picture shared by the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine purportedly shows a crashed Russian SU-34 fighter jet near the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2022. Courtesy of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Conservative MP Mark Francois told the Defence Committee he felt it was “madness” to take the Typhoons out of service with the possibility of a war with Russia looming and he suggested it would be better to mothball them “in the desert.”

Bronk told him it was “more cost-effective” to buy new Typhoons because the older ones needed significant upgrades.

RAF Must Be Prepared to Fight Russians in ‘3 to 5 Years’

“If the planning assumption is we have got to be ready to fight the Russians in Eastern and Northern Europe in the next three to five years, which is a sensible approach to take ... the first step to me wouldn’t be increasing the number of Typhoons, it would be buying more munitions. We will run out of munitions far before we run out of aeroplanes,” said Bronk.

The RAF plans to eventually phase out Typhoons altogether and replace them with the new Tempest, although they will not be ready for combat until 2040.

Francois asked, “There is surely going to be no way they can afford the Typhoons, an early batch of Tempests and 138 F-38Bs, the numbers don’t add up do they?”

Bronk said it would be difficult if Tempest was to be funded from the RAF air command’s existing £39 billion ($47.6 billion).