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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