RAF deterrence is back after 30-year sabbatical, Chief of the Air Staff says

"After a 30-year sabbatical, deterrence is back", with the service needing to move back to its Cold War role of being strategically capable, the head of the RAF has said.

Giving the annual Trenchard Memorial lecture at the defence think tank Royal United Services Institute, Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton said he had not known a more challenging strategic environment in his 35 years of service.

The Chief of the Air Staff said the Air Force had spent the last few decades optimising itself to fight less powerful adversaries or take on asymmetric threats.

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He told his audience the RAF must now change.

"We need to become match fit for the new bigger and more important game… to deter a costly war we must build a credible force that foes fear and our allies value,"  Air Chf Mshl Sir Rich said.

"We cannot do this alone, the RAF must evolve."

Talking about the growing need to replace the UK's "ageing" ground-based radar system, he advocated switching to a "mobile, integrated and distributed sense and warn capability".

"We should also remember the old dictum that the best form of defence is attack," he said.

"Ukraine cannot put up a shield to protect themselves against the 30,000 glide bombs lobbed into the Kursk Oblast.

"Instead, what they need – and what we would need – is the ability to strike the aircraft launching these bombs on the ground."

Air Chf Mshl Sir Rich also warned that Western countries had grown too accustomed to air domination and could not rely on this in the future, again citing Ukraine as an example of what happens in war without control of the skies.

"Ukraine is a stark reminder of what warfare becomes when neither side can gain effective control of the air," he said.

"Those who fight without control of the air tend to remember the lesson more vividly than those who have bathed in its luxury."

He concluded by reminding his audience that "hope is not a strategy" and said the country had an "opportunity and a duty" to ensure the air force is ready to "fly, fight and win today, tomorrow and together".