Hawker Siddeley P1154 and HS681 - 50 years on

[Mike Pryce]

Today is the 50th anniverary of the cancellation of the P1154 and HS681, and of the go-ahead for what became the Harrier and the Nimrod:


http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1965/feb/02/actions-of-her-majestys-government


Happily, my P1154 history article has been restored after the ISP had the website down for six weeks:


http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/history_p1154.htm


Attached are excerpts from my old HS681 article.


It is interesting that fifty years on supersonic joint-service V/STOL aircraft and tactical transports for East of Suez are in or near RAF service again, as well as new carriers. Plus ca change...!

 

[Mike Pryce]

Harold Wilson's statemet, from the Hansard link, in full:


The Prime Minister[As I have already told the House, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence is engaged in a round-the-clock examination of our defence policy, commitments, the total burden, the three rôles we have been trying to discharge without any attempt to determine priority. He is also looking to see what this means in terms of expenditure. He will be reporting to the House in due course, but I think it right to make a statement in broad terms of our intentions concerning military aircraft. But I want to say one or two general words before coming to the question of aircraft.
As the House knows, right hon. Gentlemen opposite have spent a figure of £20,000 million during the past 13 years 930on defence. Although we did not expect much when we came to office we have been appalled at what we found, and what we have not found. The right hon. Gentleman and some of his supporters have attacked the fact that we have had to call in question some of the vastly expensive programmes on which they had embarked, apparently without thought and certainly without cost control. I submit to the House that it is the duty of any responsible Government, with the responsibility that the Government and this House owe to the taxpayer, to review all such programmes when, as is manifestly the case here, they have flatly got out of timing, out of hand, and costs have increased out of all proportion. But there is a more urgent and overriding consideration even than the control of expenditure.
The first duty of any Government of any party is to ensure that the nation's defences are adequate and effective, that the nation's security is fully defended. This means that if this House, as a matter of defence or foreign policy, puts British Service men into the field, or into the air, to fulfil national commitments, those who take up those burdens must have the right to feel that they are adequately equipped. Although I intend to give the House some grave figures of costs on the programmes we have inherited, if at the end of the day I felt that our security and the efficiency of our Service men, whether at home or abroad, could be guaranteed only by costs of this magnitude, I should not hesitate today to say so to the House, whatever the implications. But the problem we face is not only, or even primarily, one of cost. It is a question of the time scale and the availability of the necessary equipment. That is what I am dealing with principally this evening.
The House will recall the many statements, many changes of policy about replacements for the R.A.F. Hunter and the Royal Navy's Sea Vixen. In July, 1963 the project P1154 was going to meet both requirements. By November there was a wobble in policy. In February, 1964, this was all changed and the then Government decided to buy American Phantom aircraft as the Sea Vixen replacement. This was their decision. Meanwhile, the P1154 was to go on to provide a replacement for the Hunter when that was withdrawn from service.
931I have to tell the House that this is not a practicable proposition. It is not so much the question of cost, though the present estimate, made when the aircraft is still only in the design stage, is a very heavy estimate indeed; and, of course, our experiences of other planes and missiles produced over the past few years suggest that estimates made at this design stage invariably escalate sometimes many times. The problem here is that on these present estimated requirements, and on the latest realistic estimate of the remaining life of the Hunter aircraft, the P1154 will not be in service in time to serve as a Hunter replacement. That is the real answer to the right hon. Gentleman, who made some rather glib comments on this this afternoon, when he comes to examine the time scale. We are perfectly prepared, and I keep offering, to place all this information at the disposal of right hon. Gentlemen opposite if they will come and study it. When the right hon. Gentleman studies that, he will find that there is a time gap of some years which no Government can ask either its Service chiefs or its Service men to accept. In these circumstances, on defence grounds alone—quite apart from the cost argument—it will be necessary to extend the late Government's purchasing programme for Phantoms and to use this aircraft as a partial replacement for the Hunter. This is the only way to close the time gap. All of us regret it, but this has been forced on us by the facts.
They will have British engines and will incorporate as many British components as possible. We are urgently examining the possibility of manufacturing, or at any rate assembling, them, and making some of the parts in this country. We have been urgently surveying the needs of our forces in the light of present revised estimates of commitments. We believe that there is an urgent need for an operational version of P1127, a successful aircraft which, in its present experimental form, is about to go to an American-German-R.A.F. squadron for evaluation by all three countries. As soon as it can be negotiated, a contract will be placed for a limited development programme so that the R.A.F. can have, by the time they need it—it is no good having this wonderful twinkle-in-the-designer's-eye kind of aircraft, we have 932to have them in service when needed—an aircraft which will in fact be first in the field, with vertical take-off for close support of our land forces. We shall see to close control of the cost of this scheme. We are also going into the question of further R. and D. on this, to see whether it can be boosted into something much more substantial.
The House will be glad to know that after we had examined a wide range of different aircraft, Comets, specially modified to meet the requirements, will be ordered as a replacement for the Shackle-ton Mark II which has given splendid service for many years.
Now I turn to the transport plane. Hastings and Beverleys are still in service, although we all expressed concern at the time of the Cyprus airlift about their short range. Again, while the proposed HS681 can be developed at a cost—again a very high cost even on the first estimate and which might well escalate, for this also is at its earliest design stage—the fact is that its development was authorised so late that it cannot enter service at a date which will meet the real needs of the Forces. We have therefore—I say this with very great regret—to buy planes that are already in existence, with performance and capabilities—to say nothing of their cost—that are known, and which can be provided in time for the duty for which they are required.
The range of possibilities is not very great and in our view, after very thorough consideration, there appears to be no alternative to buying the American C130 which, though offering a lower performance than the HS681, can be ready much earlier. The problem is having them there when they are needed.
There is, of course, a very considerable saving to the Exchequer. Each C130 costs, off the production line, about one-third of the present very early estimate of the cost of the HS681, one-third per plane. And, of course, I think the expectation may well be from past experience that the early estimate of the HS681 will possibly escalate still further. I do not think that the House can really ignore the saving—one-third of the estimated cost—but even if that were not the issue at all, the question of time scale, having it for the right time, is the important one.

 

[Mike Pryce]

Easy to recall the cancellations, and not the Nimrod go-ahead.


Some good history about this at:


http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/aprvol16no1.pdf.


http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/3985/

 

[Mike Pryce]

The last outing of the P1154 lecture I have been giving will cover all these aircraft, and even, dare I say it, TSR2, too:


http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,23632.0.html

 

[Hobbes]

When was that HS.681 article published? I'd like to read it in full.

 

[Mike Pryce]

Air Enthusiast July/August 2006 -- No.124

 

[Hobbes]

Cheers, I'll see if I can track it down.