The Europeanisation of British Defence Procurement in the Cold War : The RAF and the Panavia Tornado

Hollins, Samuel and Wyss, Marco and Mills, Thomas (2025) The Europeanisation of British Defence Procurement in the Cold War : The RAF and the Panavia Tornado. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

The Panavia Tornado Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) project, initiated at the end of the 1960s, signalled a sustained shift in British defence-industrial policy. It brought to a definitive close the long-established practice of unilateral combat aircraft design and production in favour of multilateral collaboration with European partners. Situated at the intersection of Britain’s global retrenchment, its reorientation to NATO Europe, and its pursuit of European Economic Community membership, this thesis examines the imperatives that undergirded the British government’s decision to commit to the MRCA’s Project Definition stage during the final years of Harold Wilson’s first premiership (1964–70). While this was a multilateral project involving the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy as equal partners, it was Britain’s participation that represented the most substantive shift in defence-industrial policy. Based on research conducted principally at The National Archives in London, this thesis investigates the maturation of procurement policy during the Wilson years and critically assesses the hierarchy of imperatives that shaped the decisions taken, which ultimately led to the new multilateral approach. In particular, it evaluates the relative weight of global retrenchment, NATO commitments, European integration, fiscal constraints, and industrial preservation in driving the new British approach. Through these investigations, it becomes evident that, although wider European integrative processes ran concurrently to the project’s early gestation, Britain’s decision was motivated primarily by national interests. This thesis argues that the MRCA commitment demonstrates a practical, pragmatic ‘Europeanisation’ of British defence procurement, shaped by strategic necessity, economic constraint, and defence-industrial concern.