BY : Timesonline

THE RAF is being forced to borrow American spy planes and paint roundels on them to replace its fleet of Nimrod R1 signals intelligence aircraft.

The crews of the US Rivet Joint spy planes masquerading as RAF aircraft will not even be totally British with US personnel expected to take control on some missions.

The move, forced by a Ministry of Defence (MoD) cash crisis that rules out the money for a replacement aircraft for the Nimrod R1, has provoked outrage among RAF air crew who say it will mean a major loss of capability.

The MoD said last week a final decision had not yet been taken. But Air Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, chief of the air staff, briefed air crew during a visit to the Middle-East just before Christmas.

“He told the R1 crew that he had brought them an early Christmas present,” one source said. But when he described the plan to use the RC135 Rivet Joint spy planes the response was blunt.

It was so unenthusiastic and blunt that several RAF officers were subsequently hauled up before their commander for a dressing-down, the source said.

“I am incandescent with rage that we are even considering ditching what is a world-class, ‘gold standard’, war-winning capability in the name of economy and the dubious claimed benefits of greater interoperability with the USAF,” one insider said.

The Nimrod R1 aircraft, among the most secret aircraft in the world, were due to be flown on to 2025 but the loss of one of its sister aircraft, the Nimrod MR2 over Afghanistan in 2006 has forced a rethink.

Both aircraft types suffer from the same fuel leaks and are fitted with the same hot-air pipes that caused the Afghanistan incident in which 14 servicemen died.

Restrictions on the use of hot-air pipes following the inquiry into their deaths has sent temperatures inside the already cramped Nimrod R1s soaring above 50 degrees Celsius.

Initially, RAF chiefs were to replace the Nimrod R1 with a different aircraft which could be fitted with a brand new top-secret signals intercept system called Helix, which is currently under development.

But that would cost more than £600m altogether whereas the cost of sharing the US Air Force’s Rivet Joint aircraft would be much cheaper in the short term. That solution appeals to RAF chiefs who are under pressure to find cuts to ease a £1bn black hole in the MoD’s finances and have other expensive key projects they need to keep.

The move also makes good sense for the US Air Force which has a fleet of 20 RC135s but not enough crews to man them all.

But RAF aircrew say it makes no sense at all for the UK in the long term. This is a “very, very short-sighted and very cheap solution”, one insider at the RAF spy plane’s base. There are three Nimrod R1s flown by 51 Squadron based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.

The R1 has a four-man flight crew and a mission team of 24, intercepts enemy communications- known in the jargon as communications intelligence - and radar signals, electronic intelligence.

Its 24 operators not only translate and collate enemy communications they can also map out the entire enemy radar system, so it can be jammed to protect friendly aircraft.

The R1 is far more capable than the US Rivet Joint that the RAF is planning to rent, which concentrates on communications signals and has only a limited capability against radars.

While this is not important when operating in a country like Afghanistan, it would be disastrous against a country like pre-war Iraq or Iran with a good air defence radar system.

While the US has other aircraft that concentrate on enemy radar systems, the RAF’s electronic intelligence capability will wither on the vine.

The US Rivet Joint, based on the Boeing 707, is “not as capable overall, in all areas of the radio frequency spectrum,” one RAF officer said. “The UK will lose collection capability and lose the operator expertise.”

The US Air Force has a squadron of Rivet Joint aircraft based at Mildenhall in Suffolk and the plans involve the RAF paying towards the operating costs of these aircraft and having two always available to them.

The “British” aircraft will be painted with RAF markings and flown by joint USAF/RAF crews. The first of the two aircraft could be loaned to the UK as early as next year.