LONDON - The British Royal Air Force (RAF) appears to be rethinking an earlier proposal to withdraw one of its five Sentinel R1 ground surveillance aircraft early in an effort to generate savings in order to accommodate new government rules under which such saved monies are redirected towards other equipment expenditures rather than being lost to the Treasury. The original proposal would have seen the Sentinel R1 withdrawn from service in October, a timeline now likely to be put on hold until at least the end of the financial year in March 2017 while more consideration is given towards operational capacity in the invaluable area of aerial intelligence-surveillance-target acquisition-reconnaissance (ISTAR).
The Sentinel R1s - modified Bombardier business jets equipped with ground-moving target-indicators and synthetic-aperture radar sensors - came into service towards year-end 2008 and has since been put on a high operational tempo supporting British external missions across the globe. These include Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, and now supporting coalition operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The fleet has already survived an earlier axing attempt when the 2010 Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) outlined a withdrawal upon the U.K. wrapping up its military operation in Afghanistan in December 2014. But by 2015 the fleet remained in service as the Ministry of Defense continued to examine its options and then under the 2015 SDSR (unveiled in November of that year) the Sentinels were given a reprieve under a plan that would push their operational usage out to at least 2021. That plan remains in place, though any extension beyond 2021 would likely be arrived at by weighing the cost of an update to the aircraft by Raytheon and acquiring newer capabilities.
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