Wh y ?
So the Government is to go ahead and buy a further forty Fl 11 aircraft after all. Why? The official reason appears to be that they will provide a useful figleaf to cover the substantial withdrawal of forces East of Suez which Mr Healey has been hinting at ever since the disastrous defence debate at the end of last month. Britain, it is said, will still be able to make a showing in the area if the need arises, even if the majority of her troops have gone home.
Indeed, with fifty Fl 1 1 s Britain could probably put on the show to end all shows. At six million dollars apiece, the Fill is an extremely sophisticated fighter-bomber with, though the Government may choose to play this down, a nuclear capacity—the most ad- vanced the Americans have ever produced. That is why it is so expensive. If in any con- flict the enemy has really modern weapons the aircraft has additional uses for recon- naissance. It could thus provide valuable, perhaps indispensable, air support to anyone engaged in serious fighting on the ground.
Therein, of course, lies the error. The Fl 11 is a useful addition to ground forces; it is not a substitute for them. British policy East of Suez is one of withdrawal, now it seems sooner rather than later. Purchase of the Fl I Is, however, at least in the terms it is being presented, suggests either that the Government intends that Britain should re- main a military power into the 1970s after all, or that it is investing heavily in provid- ing air support for ground forces that will not exist. Yet it is difficult to conceive of any circumstances in which the deployment of such sophisticated planes alone could be of any use to anyone.
As the Americans have found in Vietnam, the most advanced aircraft have severe limi- tations. The targets which they are designed to cope with simply do not exist. Any future fighting in Asia is likely to be on the initial Vietnamese pattern, that is of guerrilla fight- ing on the ground. Again, as the Americans freely admit, it is on the ground that such fighting has to be countered. To this the Fill alone can make no contribution. And the cost of a wholly misconceived ven- ture is some £250 million in bard-earned foreign normal exchange.
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