Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence



Examination of witnesses (Questions 220 - 239)

WEDNESDAY 22 MARCH 2000

VICE ADMIRAL SIR IAN GARNETT, AIR COMMODORE VAUGHAN MORRIS, COMMANDER TOM HERMAN OBE, COMMANDER RICHARD HAWKINS and AIR COMMODORE GLENN TORPY

Chairman

  220. Air Commodore Morris, you said earlier that you could turn down target offers from NATO. Did you ever do so?
  (Air Commodore Morris) Yes, I did.

  221. Would you like to tell us, or would you prefer to write to us and tell us the number of occasions and the grounds upon which you turned a request down?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) We can certainly let you have a note on that.

  222. Or did you refer the request afterwards? Perhaps you could tell us?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) There was constant discussion between Air Commodore Morris and Air Commodore Torpy about targets that, perhaps, led to some doubt about whether they would be valid United Kingdom targets, and as a result of that close and continuous liaison between my headquarters and Air Commodore Morris in theatre some targets were turned down.

  223. Can you give us, in this meeting, the kind of grounds that might be used?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I suspect the targets with which we felt uncomfortable were targets that clearly we thought might lead to more collateral damage or civilian casualties, that I was under direction to avoid.

Mr Brazier

  224. Could I take you back to an earlier point, Admiral Garnett? In making the point that you only got formal orders to plan for a land campaign very late you did say twice, I think, that you were contingency planning throughout for land options. You said at one point that in mid 1998 you were looking at various land options. Can I ask whether that included forced entry?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) It was before I joined the headquarters, but I do not think it involved forced entry. It was very much to do with the OSCE mission and then, perhaps, the extraction force?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) That is correct in general. We were looking at what we would have to insert along the lines of KFOR, so a permissive entry.

  225. But not forced entry. There were two main types of operation, those orientated towards hitting the forces within Kosovo, and those orientated towards the civil military infrastructure in Yugoslavia itself. In General Clark's eventual assessment we were told that the former category involved astonishing successes, 50% in Serbian artillery, 93 tanks, 153 APCs. Do you share that assessment?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) The assessment of the numbers or the assessment of the overall effect?

  226. The assessment of the numbers and of the effect within Kosovo for that first category of operations?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I think the United Kingdom broadly accepts the SACEUR final numerical assessment. In terms of the effect, the fact is that he hid his weapons because he knew that if he brought them out they would be hit, probably, and in hiding his weapon he was not able to use them, so it hampered his operations in Kosovo.

  227. It is interesting that General Jackson in his article for the RUSI Journal comments that, "Tactical operation against the fielding force in Kosovo is a more debatable issue." He is talking about success or otherwise in the paragraph, and there was rather an absence of hulks, certainly when we looked round Kosovo, and there were not too many moving on transporters when we saw them withdrawing.
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I think in retrospect we probably thought we were having rather more success at the time than in hindsight we thought we achieved.

  228. In terms of the balance between these two elements, were you clear as to what we were trying to achieve in carrying out both these types of missions at once? Let me put two questions together. Were you clear why we were trying to do both at once? Secondly, which do you think, in fact, had the greater effect in terms of leverage on Milosevic's mind to the extent that anyone can see into it?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) It was very clear what we were trying to achieve. As to which had the greatest leverage on Milosevic, I do not know, only Milosevic will know that. I can surmise that by attacking strategic targets in Serbia that had an increasing impact on Milosevic, but I think there were probably political aspects that had a greater impact on his final decision to accede to NATO demands. Certainly in terms of impact on his operations in Kosovo, I think I have referred to that already. I think we did a good deal to restrict his operations and reduce his capability to cleanse the Kosovars, although we knew that we would not be able to totally prevent that.

  229. I was with you all the way until that very last point. The fact, surely, is that in the weeks after our bombing began the numbers of ejected Kosovars went from 60,000 to 600,000 in terms of people who left the country. It is possible that we may have restricted him a bit, but it is difficult to see how we restricted him very much. Two remaining questions. Can I take you back to something else you said earlier on in the questioning, or one of your colleagues said, "The need to do various trials on the use of ordinary dumb bombs from a great height." In the Gulf War, 10 years ago, we were forced to do a lot of our bombing from 23,000 feet. One slightly wonders why we should suddenly be finding ourselves having to do trials all over again on the problems of finding ourselves up against a reasonably effective air defence and having to drop from higher than we expected?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) We certainly had learnt some lessons from our operations in the Gulf and that clearly steered us down the PGM route. As you will recall, we only introduced the PGMs towards the latter end of the Gulf operations. We had continued to refine the way we operated from medium altitude, but there had also been some technical advancements like the introduction of GPS as well, and that improved the accuracy of bombing from medium altitude, but we were also only just getting GPS integrated into aircraft as well, and that was one of the things which favoured the option of using the GR7s for medium altitude bombing with unguided weapons, because of the actual system it had for its navigation as well.

  230. We had some interesting testimony from the General Accounting Office in Washington, to say that they assembled testimony from the Iraqi commanders to say that the bombing they found most frightening was the B52 and the mass unguided bombing rather than any precision weapons. Would you like to comment on that?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) I would not comment on that, but of course the situation is slightly different from the Gulf to Kosovo where we are looking at slightly different collateral damage constraints. I do not think we could have been doing the type of operations that the B52 carried out in Operation Desert Storm, we were not even carrying out that sort of operation in Kosovo.

  231. My last question is, what lessons would you draw from targeting policy for future operations that will, almost certainly, once again, be conducted in a multi-national context?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I turn to my Air Force colleagues in a moment, but in terms of targeting policy, I am not quite sure what you are getting at because there is clearly a need to do an awful lot of work in identifying targets to the precision required that can lead to very accurate, ideally, all weather attacks. We have already mentioned the need to improve our surveillance and target acquisition capabilities and identify those targets, particularly targets in the field, which are very difficult to identify. That would give us an increased battle damage assessment capability to see what we have achieved. In terms of targeting policy, I think the policy of clearing targets and giving me a targeting directive which controlled what I was able to do and what the United Kingdom forces were able to do, the process of clearing targets to the highest political and legal levels, is well established. I am not sure whether that needs to be changed.

  232. The first part of your answer is the interesting part, and just before your colleagues come in on it, let me be blunter. Inside the rather formidable ring of mountains, Kosovo is pretty much a dust bowl, it is flat and there is relatively little of it built up. I take your earlier points about them having to keep things tucked away, but there are probably less hiding places in Kosovo than almost anywhere else we could afford, apart from the Gulf Desert. In terms of the first part of answer, perhaps your RAF colleagues might like to develop a little further how we are going to be better at finding the targets?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) That is not a targeting policy issue. The targeting policy issue is establishing legality, the collateral damage and the casualties, and that is very clearly defined in the targeting directive that the CJO was given, and it was then delegated subsequently. I think the question is actually finding mobile targets. As I explained earlier, that is one of the biggest challenges we face. There is a lot of work going on in trying to improve the technical means of doing that. We have our own programmes and the US clearly have theirs as well. We are introducing equipment like ASTOR, which will go some way to improving the sensor-to-shooter timescales.

  233. The what?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) The sensor-to-shooter. That is location, identification and then the attack of the target. What we are trying to do is bring that cycle to the minimum possible time. It remains a very difficult area. Can I add one thing? It is in response to one of your earlier questions on the NATO option which they have been planning. There were many options considered. NATO did actually consider forced entry as one of the options in May.

  234. In May?
  (Air Commodore Torpy) Of 1998.

Chairman

  235. In the unclassified report to Congress on page 25 it said this: "Notwithstanding the allied contribution, the overall success of the campaign, Operation Allied Force, highlighted a number of disparities between US capabilities and those of our allies, including precision strike mobility, command control and communications capability. The gaps in capability were real and they had the effect of impeding our ability to operate at optimal effectiveness with our NATO allies." Now, the gap between the US and the United Kingdom in terms of air assets, where do you think they are and are you satisfied that efforts are being made to bridge this gap?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I think we have some very effective air assets. I believe the Harriers are a very effective weapon system, Tornadoes are too. The Americans have different assets, they have different weapons, and so in some ways they could be more effective than us. I will turn to air operations in a moment and explain what we are doing to improve our air capability. I think the gap between us and the Americans is there in some cases, it is bound to be a bit because the Americans are more capable in many areas, but we are quite close to them. I cannot speak for the other NATO allies, but we can certainly explain what we are doing to generally improve our capability to, as far as possible, keep up with the Americans.

  Chairman: I just wanted to have that on the record to start. We will be coming to some further questions and then we will return to that line of questioning, including the capabilities initiative and I would like to seek amplification on where you think these deficiencies are. Maybe Mr Hancock, when he comes back, will ask that.

Laura Moffatt

  236. The majority of the Members in this House were completely in tune with what we were attempting to do in Kosovo and supported, very much, the people doing the job, and this particular line of questioning is going to start to open the debate more for us about the capability, the equipment and the way in which we did our job in the context of NATO as a partnership with those other countries. So it is not with a sense of being critical about the event itself, but how can we make sure that if—I hope we never have to—we are ever put in this position again we have the best equipment and give people the best ability to do the job properly. It is with that in mind that I take forward the Chairman's point. We know from the MOD memorandum that only 24% of the weapons used in total by us were of a precision nature, they were precision weapons. We quite understood, when we watched the news reel, that it was incredibly important to have as little as possible in terms of collateral damage. Why is that such a small percentage compared to the other bombs that we used if that was one of our aims?
  (Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) I am not an expert, my colleagues are, but I will have a go. When you are doing weapon planning you have to consider a number of factors, you have to consider the target that you are going against, the risks, you have to operate in what you wish to achieve in terms of effect, and most importantly the degree to which you are prepared, or not, to accept collateral damage and risk civilian casualties. You put that all into a complicated analysis process and you come out with the weapon of choice. Sometimes that is a precision weapon, sometimes it is more effective to use a weapon against troops, sometimes it is a weapon you know you have to use through cloud, which cannot be precision guided.
  (Air Commodore Morris) It is weapon-to-target matching and there is a number of targets where you need to hit a point on a target. The classic example is an attack on a bridge where you would aim to hit a specific point on the bridge. There are other targets which will be area targets. I use an example of a roof of a storage depot, above ground area, we have all seen those large petrol tanks, and in those circumstances we actually want to apply the effects over a broader area with a munition that does not need to be so absolutely precise. Very often what we call dumb bombs are far more predictable in where they will actually go. We can assess the accuracy to reasonable parameters. You do have to match your weapons to your specific target. Also, of course, precision weapons, because of guidance techniques, are more expensive, so we want to be able to use the weapons we have cost effectively against those given targets. I believe that the mixed weapons we had during the Kosovo crisis, with the exception of our ability to conduct precision attacks, not area attacks, but precision attacks through cloud, were very good.

  237. In that statement what are you saying to me is that in only 24% of the missions, whatever we were trying to achieve, a precision weapon was required?
  (Air Commodore Morris) Those were our weapons of choice for that given mission.

  238. This is the issue that we are trying to get to grips with, was it the weapon of choice or were you given no opportunity because you may have been running out of those precision weapons, and is that why you started using cluster bombs when we know there was little or no political will to allow those sorts of bombs to be used, and deep unhappiness after the event?
  (Air Commodore Morris) Can I link it to the discussion we had earlier about the two strands of attacks into Serbia, very much point targets, and therefore precision? Almost exclusively attacks into Serbia, against what we would term strategic targets, were precision weapons that we used in those circumstances. Attacks in Kosovo were different because there they were effectively targets of opportunity where the targets were located, identified and then allocated to airborne platforms when they were actually flying on patrols in the air. We spoke earlier about the trials that we conducted on the Harrier, one of the trials was actually to provide the Harrier with the capability to carry a mixed load of both cluster bombs and also 1,000 pounders, and that enabled the pilot, in those circumstances, under very clear guidance and rules of engagement, to actually decide which was the most appropriate weapon for the target that he was going against and, also, the most appropriate number of weapons to attack with. I believe they were hugely disciplined in the way they did that. There will have been some circumstances in Kosovo where it would have been useful to have precision weapons as well, but we had to have a mix of different weapon types. We could, obviously, use some precision within Kosovo, but by no means all of it needed to be that way.

  239. Were all of the weapons that you had in this so called choice that you talk about all the weapons that you would have wished to have had?
  (Air Commodore Morris) No. I think we would always like to have more. We would like to have the precision through cloud and, also, we would like to be able to have the choice of having a precision weapon that we could use in the Kosovo type environment, which needs to be cheaper, more effective and maybe even smaller than we had in certain circumstances.


 
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