Retired Air-Vice Marshal Gary Waterfall was one of the Royal Air Force’s most senior and experienced Harrier pilots when he was selected to become the figurehead of the United Kingdom’s Joint Force Harrier from September 2009. It was the start of a historic and deeply emotional rollercoaster journey that ultimately culminated in him having to personally oversee a highly controversial decision to completely shut down British Harrier operations over a short, two month period.
“I took charge of Joint Force Harrier as it came out of five years dedicated to operations in Afghanistan, with the view of getting it reconstituted, regenerated, and ready for small focused interventions from land or sea,” Waterfall told the War Zone.
However, even before he assumed his new role, the lingering economic crisis of 2007-2008 was leading politicians to look at potential cost savings across the entire defense landscape. By mid-2010, the Harrier force was smack-bang in the firing-line, but removing a British-born icon that occupied a place close to the hearts of the services and public alike would not be an easy task.
Saving money in hard times
In 2010, the United Kingdom's new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government faced a “black hole” in the defense budget that it inherited from the previous Labour Party administration. It had to find cash to fund a wealth of expensive new headline projects such as two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers — that were already underway and virtually impossible to cancel — and other immediate savings had to be made.
The Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) is now firmly established as a five-yearly appraisal of the entire British defense landscape. It forms the basis of a frequent reassessment of capabilities against a constantly changing strategic environment. The first such review in 2010 was entitled “Securing Britain in an age of uncertainty” and it was also the first major review under the new government.
