A September 15 article in the Wall Street Journal brought to light the sad state of Britain’s Royal Air Force. The article pointed out that military power is declining across the NATO powers and both Britain and the United States are not exceptions. It pointed out that the RAF has declined, for example, in numbers of aircraft from 500 in 1973 to 165 in 2023.
The same reductions are found across the major NATO nations. In 1973, France had 500 aircraft and now has 231, Germany had 460 and now has 214, and Italy had 330 and now has 199. And numbers don’t tell the whole story.
The RAF, for example, is also being subjected to the wokeness that President Biden has forced on our military. In one example, the RAF shouldn’t continue to recruit “useless white male” pilots. Yeah, like those guys who won the Battle of Britain against the onslaught of the Nazi Luftwaffe. As Winston Churchill said of them, never was so much owed by so many to so few.
The NATO agreed spending level — 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product — is blithely ignored by most NATO nations.
The Wall Street Journal article quoted a House of Commons Defense Committee report which said, “There are serious questions as to whether the UK’s diminished combat air fleet can successfully deter and defend against enemy aggression. Whilst made up of highly capable aircraft, it is just too small to withstand the levels of attrition that would occur in a peer-on-peer war.” (READ MORE: NATO’s Bleak Future)
I asked a friend of mine, a very senior retired RAF officer, if these opinions on the state of the RAF were accurate. He answered: “I fear most of this is all too true. We are a shrinking Air Force and it follows that it is steadily losing its international reputation. My friend also pointed out that the problems were not just in numbers of aircraft. He believes that there are problems in training new pilots and that there may be a shortage of instructor pilots for the RAF.
More serious was the lack of an airborne early warning fleet. My friend said, “I think the withdrawal of the C-130 fleet is dreadful and the lack of an AEW fleet is a real capability gap — with a ridiculous three aircraft fleet in the pipeline. Five is an absolute minimum. We have too many eggs in one basket … for example, RAF Brize Norton has all RAF transport aircraft and tankers on one base.”
There are, he said, just too few aircraft to do the job. He added, “I do not understand why we have not yet bought the F-35A which is much more capable than the F-35B but the money is not forthcoming.”
In my friend’s opinion, the British army and navy are also underfunded which, he added, “is quite a worry in the present world order.”
That is a masterful understatement. One of the principal elements of deterrence is air power. Unless a nation has enough combat-ready aircraft of the right types, with enough pilots to fly them in a peer-to-peer war, deterrence fails. Successive Conservative and Labor governments have neglected the U.K.’s armed forces to the degree that, as a senior U.S. general privately told then-UK defense minister Ben Wallace in January, the U.K.’s forces are no longer regarded as top-level forces. (READ MORE: NATO Needs Ukraine, and So Do We)
The same can be said for all of the NATO nations’ armed forces. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised a huge increase in military spending when he came into office, but he has failed to keep that promise. The U.K.’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, seems oblivious to the problem.
Former president Trump often ridiculed our NATO allies for not investing in their own defense. He was entirely correct. The NATO agreed spending level — 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product — is blithely ignored by most NATO nations. Biden is as oblivious to defense spending needs as the rest of NATO’s “leaders.” And he has denuded our arsenal of weapons to supply Ukraine. Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi, the Norks’ Kim and even the ayatollahs of Iran are all entirely aware of these nations’ refusal to invest in their own defense. In NATO they see only weakness, ambiguity and confusion. (READ MORE: Does Ukraine Joining a ‘North Atlantic’ Treaty Organization Make Any Sense?)
That means NATO’s deterrence — including ours — has failed. NATO’s deterrent hasn’t been directly challenged even in the Russian invasion of Ukraine because Ukraine is not a NATO member. But what happens if a NATO nation is attacked and invokes Article 5 of the NATO treaty which compels all other members to come to its defense?
The only thing that prevents such an event is Putin’s unwillingness and apparent inability — so far — to make war on any NATO nations. Putin has his own problems, but if he lives into 2025 — when we may have been foolish enough to re-elect Biden — all bets are off.
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