Can RAF’s high-tech systems survive the cuts?

What was most impressive was not by the Typhoon fighter jet, afterburners blazing like angry eyes as it rocketed vertically upwards – but the intense, silent connectivity of today’s battle space.

At RAF Waddington all this week the Royal Air Force has been showing off its capabilities and emphasising its strengths to a variety of people, from a bunch of journalists to the mayor of Newark, from a gaggle of Treasury civil servants to squads of officers in the other services.

Flash as fly-boys in fast jets always are, the real story is how the modern ground soldier connects with his airborne protectors, not just by voice but with video streamed live straight from aircraft to laptop.

Airborne radar provides a map of the movements of every chunk of metal on the ground, allowing ‘pattern of life’ to be built up.

Whether he sits in an observation post on a hill or drives slowly along a dirt road through the mountains of Helmand, the cameras in the air give him eyes to see beyond his immediate horizon. And in his ear, an imagery analyst indicates threats and nominates targets for the attention of his guns.

The capability is truly extraordinary. For instance, the airborne “dual mode radar” of the ASTOR system provides a map of the movements of every chunk of metal on the ground (mostly vehicles of every variety), allowing what the intelligence analysts call the “pattern of life” to be built up.

Abnormalities in that pattern, such as vehicles avoiding a particular stretch of road, mean something’s up and soldiers on the ground can investigate or be warned.

ASTOR provides the “big” intelligence picture in all weathers from 45 000 feet, a framework within which the high-resolution images streamed from a Tornado’s Litening III pod at half that height allow detection of individuals and devices that threaten the soldier.

All this information, however, is only as useful as the people capturing, receiving, analysing and acting on it. That’s where the Air Battle Space Training Centre comes in.

Just like the multi-player video games beloved of today’s adolescents, the virtual training facility is essentially a very big and highly sophisticated LAN game.

Airmen sit in cockpit-simulator bubbles with high-resolution flight imagery, flying their aircraft in a synthesised world.

It’s based in a vast hangar at RAF Waddington, where airmen sit in cockpit-simulator bubbles with high-resolution flight imagery streaming around them. They fly their aircraft in a synthesised world (the databases are regularly updated from real world training grounds and Afghan battlefields) and fire their simulated weaponry at targets to which they are guided by soldiers training to handle the “air assets” available to them.

These forward air controllers and troop commanders are based in a tent beside the aircraft simulators where they look out over a ground-level video view of the same sym-world. The view is not benign and, as in combat, the enemy shoots at them whilst moving amongst civilians. Part of the exercise is to train the soldiers to attack the enemy whilst minimising collateral damage.

Behind the scenes, coordinators and contractors play enemy combatants, military air traffic controllers and other scenario elements whilst instructors assess the trainees’ reactions.

The facility claims to be one of the most advanced tri-service integrated virtual training facilities in Nato. Other players, such as a squadron of US A-10 Warthog tank busters based in Germany can be linked in and be used as they would be in theatre.

The unit trains and retrains troops about to be deployed to Afghanistan, with more than 500 doing the course last year. The main thrust of the training is ground/air coordination and fire de-confliction (making sure different attacks are targeted and timed so as not to conflict with each other) in a way that trains the brain and sharpens procedural skills vital to the modern battle space.

Air Force commanders are wondering what they’ll have to play with after the strategic defence review axe has fallen.

One of the basic tenets of military kit is it has to be so tough a soldier can’t break it. With such a high degree of computer complexity in the bump and grind of battle, it’s a wonder that it all works. The operators on hand to explain everything certainly say it does – but then, on a show day, they would, wouldn’t they?

As everyone who tries to keep up with the digital world knows, the inexorable advance of technology requires continual upgrade, let alone repair and replacement. That takes money, and with the strategic defence and security review drawing as much blood as a contact with the enemy, Air Force commanders are wondering what they’ll have to play with after the axe has fallen.