Post-Cold War development of United Kingdom joint air command and control capability

Air & Space Power Journal,  Winter, 2004  by Redvers T.N. Thompson

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The RAF took this COS direction forward, and in 1995 the RAF's Air Force Board Standing Committee endorsed a paper entitled "Command and Control of STC [Strike Command] Assets" that reviewed the UK structure for air C2 and recommended the permanent establishment in peacetime of a UK combined air operations centre (CAOC). By April 1997 this new air C2 organization had been implemented in full alongside the RAF's STC peacetime HQ at RAF High Wycombe. It subsumed the NATO defensive operations capability that had existed at Sector Operations Centre (SOC) United Kingdom, at nearby RAF Bentley Priory, and became responsible for the vigil over UK national and NATO airspace and the monitoring and control of the UK Air Surveillance and Air Control System (ASACS). In addition to the very real-world SOC responsibilities, the UK CAOC went on to achieve a capability to plan, task, and control offensive, defensive, and combat support air operations. Surprisingly, however, given the genesis of the decision to form it, the UK CAOC was not initially tasked with, nor equipped for, the conduct of C2 of deployed operations. Notwithstanding a lack of higher HQ guidance, an in-house UK CAOC initiative developed an interim deployable capability that was in place by late 1997, although this was limited to an ability to host the "initial CAOC capability" air battle-management system (ABMS) (NATO's equivalent to the Contingency Theatre Automated Planning System/Theater Battle Management Core System) on a limited number of deployable laptops.

Strategic Defence Review Pushes Forward "Deployability" and "Jointery"

In July 1998, the UK government announced its Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which it labeled as "a radical review of the UK's defence requirements, with the aim of modernizing and reshaping the UK's Armed Forces to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. (6) The two central pillars that were to emerge were moves towards more rapidly deployable armed forces and "jointery." The SDR identified that, in addition to maintaining extant standing commitments, the United Kingdom should also be able to do the following:

1. Respond to a major international crisis. This might require a military effort of a similar scale and duration to the Gulf War.

2. Undertake a more extended overseas deployment on a lesser scale while retaining the ability to mount a second substantial deployment if this were made necessary by a second crisis. We would not, however, expect both deployments to involve WF [warfighting] or to maintain them simultaneously for longer than six months.

3. Rebuild, given much longer notice, a bigger force as part of NATO's collective. (7)

SDR also identified that, other than under a warfighting (i.e., significant military) threat to the United Kingdom, the RAF would almost certainly deploy overseas and operate from host-nation airfields or ships in support of national, allied, or coalition operations under a range of possible C2 arrangements; this observation manifested itself in the draw-down of RAF squadrons in Germany and reconstitution on the UK mainland.