How aircraft evolve
From Sir Michael Arrnitage Sir: Max Hastings's rant about UK weapons systems (`How to lose the battle for Britain', 7 February) takes too narrow a view of the Eurofighter, aka Typhoon. To be sure, it was designed mainly to defend Nato airspace against Warsaw Pact bombers. Without a clear justification of that kind, the project would never have made it past the front door of the Treasuty. But combat aircraft are best seen as simply platforms in the sky. Those platforms can be adapted to fill a very wide variety of roles. Look at the Hawker Hurricane of the late 1930s, also designed for air defence. Yet just a few years later ground-attack versions of that aircraft were inflicting very heavy losses on enemy armour in North Africa. Or take the Nimrod submarine-hunter, still a world-beating weapons system in that role, yet very recognisably a child of the 1950s Comet airliner. An even better example is the Canberra, a machine that first entered service as a highlevel medium bomber in 1951. It was later adapted as a nuclear bomber in the low-level role, and today we see advanced versions of the same aircraft fulfilling a vital high-level recce-and-photo-survey function.
We have no idea what military challenges might face us in ten, 20 or 30 years' time; but if Max Hastings can foresee them, perhaps he will tell us what combat aircraft we shall need. Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Armitage (Retd)
Bath
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