The Royal Navy still has no firm plan to replace its Crowsnest airborne early warning system, with options remaining at the investigation stage and a decision held up by the Defence Investment Plan that has yet to be published, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed to Parliament.
Asked by the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty, what progress had been made in procuring a replacement, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, offered no timeline, no chosen system and no commitment, saying only that the Royal Navy was “investigating successor systems for the Crowsnest Airborne Early Warning system, including the potential use of Uncrewed Air Systems”. The work, he said, was “consistent with the development of Hybrid Air Wing as set out in the Strategic Defence Review”, and was “subject to the Defence Investment Plan”.
Crowsnest is due to leave service towards the end of the decade, and with the replacement still being investigated rather than procured, the Royal Navy faces the prospect of a gap in one of the most important capabilities protecting its aircraft carriers.
Crowsnest is the airborne early warning system carried by the Royal Navy’s Merlin Mk2 helicopters, providing the radar eyes of the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers by detecting aircraft and missiles at long range and buying the carrier group time to react. The capability has had a difficult history, with its introduction running years late and its performance repeatedly criticised by the National Audit Office and the Commons Public Accounts Committee, and the question of what comes after it has been live for some time without resolution.
The reference to uncrewed aircraft reflects the Royal Navy’s stated intention to move towards a Hybrid Air Wing, set out in the Strategic Defence Review, in which crewed F-35B jets and Merlins fly alongside uncrewed aircraft, and the carriers have already been used to trial fixed-wing drones designed to operate from their decks. Moving the early warning role onto an uncrewed platform would fit that direction, but the minister’s answer makes clear no such decision has been taken.
The deferral places Crowsnest on a growing list of capability decisions the government has parked pending the Defence Investment Plan, alongside recent answers on the future of the Type 45 destroyers and the wider shape of the fleet. The plan has become the single document on which a long line of procurement choices now hangs, and its repeated delay has drawn sustained criticism, with a techUK survey of defence technology suppliers finding the vast majority reassessing investment as a direct result.
Fair enougth. No rush obviously. There won’t be any money for it any way. Maybe sell the carriers to Russia in exchange for oil?
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We have to live with crows nest. Short catapults being mentioned to launch drones. If we are the only navy doing this, then again we are going down a niche way of doing carrier operations. Rightly we questioned emerging emal catapults at time of QE carrier build.
Whatever happened to the initiative to fit a ‘drone’ catapult to QE? Despite all the recent progress in lightweight drones, isn’t it the case that if you want a really significant and practical step up from Crowsnest you need to accept that means E-2 Hawkeye?
No idea.
And yes, Davey B here has explained the issues with just plonking a Radar on a Drone many times.
Ark Royal was abandoned as too expensive and has been replaced by project Vanquish for a fast STOL UCAV.
There’s a big margin between E-2D and Crowsnest and we don’t necessarily have to go all of the way up to what is one of the most capable AEW aircraft anywhere never mind carrier AEW. Crowsnest’s range is supposedly around 160km, while MQ9B AEW is rumoured to have about a 300km range and E-2D does 650km. So we can get a good step up in altitude, endurance and radar performance without needing CATOBAR, and I think that’s good enough without vast expenditure on the carriers.
Between E7 and the F35’s radar we have an abundance of additional assets. Crowsnest is fine for just now. We are also in the position where General Atomics and SAAB are pretty much about to role an off the shelf solution out with MQ9B STOVL.
If the navy is given a budget to develop a new helicopter borne AEW asset it will spend a couple of billion and take ten years. They spent the best part of a billion and ten years to get CORWSNET on which was only the transfer of an existing radar to an existing helicopter.
It’s not hard to see why the Treasury treats the MoD like children.
Complete bollox – Crowsnest has never worked properly despite £billions invested in it. Why don’t you EVER check the facts before you post bullshit like this?
The whole-life cost of Crowsnest is around £500m and the radar works, it just isn’t very powerful.
Well I support just buying OTS whenever possible anyway, so hopefully a solution comes on the market soon.
Otherwise, yes, the military have the image of squandering money, sometimes fairly, sometimes not.
The land domains Boxer comes to mind, with a Serpens radar variant planned.
Just why is that level of gold plating necessary, for such an expensive vehicle? Can a radar not be placed on a flatbed truck?
All vehicles are extinct anyway, listening to the Drone threat doom merchants, so might as well save money.
The Haweye’s have an 80 foot wingspan, which is about 1/3rd the width of the flight deck. As the say in LA (Lower Alabama), “That dog don’t hunt,”
A “drone” is the obvious answer….or sell/scrap the carriers and invest in more useful kit like submarines and frigates. Mass is needed, nor gin palaces with Farce 35’s that cannot do the job they were intended to do.
Love and hugs
What I don’t understand is the constant excuse to wait for the DIP.
The military still carries on looking, studying, and considering, and can still have made a choice on what it wants.
Whether then that is funded by HMG or the requirement is deleted or pushed to the right has no baring on that, surely?
The choices should have been made, but cannot be revealed yet as it isn’t decided which survive.