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MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE
11 February, 1975.] Mr. A. P. HoCKADAY, C.B., C.M.G.,
[Continued.
Rear Admiral A. S. MORTON, Mr. T. CULLEN, Mr. D. M. EVANS, Mr. G. C. B. DODDS, Mr. A. R. M. JAFFRAY, Mr. J. D. BRYARS and Mr. T. C. G. JAMES, C.M.G.
these aircraft have been taken out of front line service. Would you say this means the original military justification was not sound after all?- (Mr. Hocka- day.) No, Sir, I would say that the deci- sion regarding the Nimrod force is essen- tially a reflection of the overall phil- osophy underlying the Defence Review which we discussed with you last time, and the fact that as part of the review we are proposing to give up certain com- mitments means that we reduce the capabilities linked with those commit- ments, and the Nimrod happens to be linked with several of those.
Mr. Roper.
135. On transport, I wonder whether we could be told how far the reduction in manpower will result from the reduc- tion in requirements for transport air- craft?(Mr. James.) I imagine you are referring to the total reduction in RAF strength which has been given as some 18,000?
136. That is right, yes.A very sub- stantial fraction of that does arise directly from the reduction in the trans- port force, something of the order of 6,000 plus.
137. It has been suggested that the military transport aircraft of the small European countries might be organised on a centralised pool system rather than on a national basis, but this made rather less sense for us while we had commit- ments to a substantial extent outside Europe. Does the
the Defence Review mean it would be worthwhile for us to consider combining with our European allies in running a centralised air trans- port pool?I am not personally aware that that suggestion of pooling of mili- tary air transport resources amongst the European members of NATO is a lively issue at all. There have been, in- deed currently there are, ideas of look- ing at NATO's civil air transport re- sources and seeing how far they might be brought into the overall picture. As far as the reduced air transport force which would result from the Defence Review is concerned, that is hypothe- cated to specific war time tasks largely, of course, involved in moving reinforce- ments from this country, and once that
particular task has been undertaken then those resources are available for SACEUR to use as he wishes and there are no difficulties in the command arrangements for him to do so.
Mr. Finsberg.
138. On this question of transport, could I ask what inquiries have been made to ensure that if an emergency like Cyprus arises after much of trans- port command has been stood down there are standby arrangements for ex- ample with civil airlines?-May I try to answer that in two ways? First of all, the residual transport force, although substantially reduced from what we have had hitherto, is still a very substantial force.
139. What seat capacity is being taken out? -It is about half. We did, as a matter of interest, ask ourselves the question, could we have handled the Cyprus troubles last July with the kind of transport force which we will have as a result of the Defence Review, and we said to ourselves we could have got by with that smaller force. I am answer- ing your question in a rather literal way, but it is still a force which will have quite considerable carrying capacity. But on your second point, there are already plans for the use of civil re- sources in this country in a major emergency. How far we might wish to draw on those same resources in a peace time emergency is very difficult to say, but one need not rule out the possibility of straightforward charter in the kind of circumstances that you are mention- ing.
-Not
140. Pursuing that for a moment, you said that you looked to see whether you could have dealt with the Cyprus plan, presumably with half the capacity it would have taken twice as long?- necessarily. It would to some extent have depended on other routine tasks and how far we might have to put those out to charter and concentrated the military transport force on what was in some respects a military emergency.
141. What specific plans exist as of now for using the surplus capacity in the private charter field? We have