Page 8 - RAF Lossiemouth Special Report

Visiting RAF Lossiemouth: The RAF Shapes a Way Ahead

FIGURE 2 TYPHOON INVOLVED IN JOINT WARRIER 2016 EXERCISE. CREDIT PHOTO: RAF

Question: Reliability rates for the Typhoon in Operation Shader have been good?

Answer: Other than weather factors, we did not miss a single combat trip.

Question: You are here off the North Sea, so how is the cooperation with the other North Sea states in
providing for air combat capabilities?

Answer: There’s a normal working relationship among the coalition forces.

The quick reaction task requires a close working relationship.

For example, when the Russians flew their Blackjack bombers through our area of operations heading to Syria
to deliver their cruise missiles, those bombers were first intercepted by Norwegians and then handed off to us.
Those bombers were obviously armed and headed for Syria and then returned on their multiple hour mission
and then went back through the Black Sea.

We obviously are preparing the ground for more effective and integrated operations with our allies with
dealing with this kind of operational challenge.

Question: Obviously, this is a challenging transition as well.

How is the RAF preparing for this transition?

Answer: It is.

The RAF has started a program, which we call Thinking to Win.

It is about getting people to think differently to deal with new technologies and the new challenge.

I think over the last few years we’ve had to innovate because of budgets. The lack of budgets means that we
couldn’t throw money at problems therefore we’ve had to think carefully about certain problems that we have
and how would you solve them?

What we want to try and do now is just bring that into our normal approach.

Second Line of Defense

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