Thousands of Scots RAF jobs 'in jeopardy' from Hoon

THOUSANDS of Royal Air Force personnel at three Scottish air bases are nervously awaiting an announcement by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, later this week.

Defence insiders have told The Scotsman that the RAF is top of Mr Hoon’s hit-list and thousands of jobs among the 8,000 personnel in Scotland are in jeopardy as a result of threatened cuts in frontline aircraft and the scaling back of future procurement projects.

Although two Scottish regiments are likely to be disbanded, that would be small change compared with the huge savings to be made from scrapping billions of pounds of RAF aircraft orders, according to defence sources.

As the campaign to save Scotland’s infantry regiments gathered pace, it emerged yesterday that high-profile campaigners will protest against the cuts by standing against senior Labour politicians at the next election.

Clive Fairweather, the former commanding officer of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and a former chief inspector of prisons in Scotland, is one of those thinking about standing.

The Scotsman understands Mr Hoon is currently "negotiating" with Downing Street to get a parliamentary "slot" on Thursday or Friday to make the announcement on his ministry’s cuts.

This will follow Gordon Brown’s Comprehensive Spending Review announced today. Mr Hoon is expected to try to sidestep the political pain by passing the fine detail of any cuts on to civil servants or senior military officers.

In an attempt to put an upbeat spin on the cuts, Mr Hoon is to announce a new order for unmanned spy drones for the army, but these are to be built by a French company at a plant in Leicester.

Cuts in orders for the Eurofighter will be felt not only at the BAE Systems plant near Edinburgh, where the radars for the jets are built, but at Scotland’s frontline fighter base at Leuchars.

It is currently in line to receive the RAF’s newest jet fighter by 2008 and if, as expected, Mr Hoon scales back Britain’s order for the aircraft from 232 to 150 the Fife base might ‘drop off’ the end of the long-term plan to receive the Typhoon, placing its future in doubt.

The base, near St Andrews, is home to three squadrons of Tornado F3 fighters which have just received new missiles and communications gear so they are unlikely to be scrapped immediately.

As part of Mr Hoon’s reorganisation of the Eurofighter programme, dogfighting versions are reportedly going to be scrapped in favour of buying more ground attack versions which would then replace Jaguar attack jets in squadrons at other RAF bases, further threatening the long-term future of Leuchars.

Even though the massively over-budget replacement for the current Nimrod MR2 maritime reconnaissance aircraft has long been under threat, RAF top brass are reported to be fighting tooth and nail to keep the new MRA 4 version because of its new "network" warfare capabilities, huge weapon load and overland spy cameras.