Examination Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
DR BARRY
POSEN, PROFESSOR
CHRIS BELLAMY
AND MR
PAUL BEAVER
4 JUNE 2003
Q160 Mr Cran: You said everyone to
whom you talked, who are we talking about? At what level?
Mr Beaver: Up to very high level,
to star level.
Q161 Chairman: You have pretty good
contacts.
Dr Posen: It was reported, it
was not early in the war, it was day 15 or day 20 but I believe
the Commanding General of 101 told his troops at some point they
could stop. On the basis of on-going intelligence and experience
he developed a belief that it was not going to happen and it was
more aggravating than it was worth to keep putting the suits on.
At some point the view changed. I think you can ask another question
here, on the one hand we have evidence of this very energetic
effort to train the troops and the journalists, but what was the
actual level of energy that went in to protecting the Kuwaiti
population against chemical and biological attack? They were vulnerable
to these missiles, we know missiles landed in this area. It is
my impression that not all that much was done. This raises some
questions for me about what kind of threat people thought there
would be. My guess is that the most credible intelligence we had
was about artillery delivered chemical munitions, which the troops
would expect to face but which you would not really expect the
Kuwaiti population to have to face. This is my guess and based
on briefings and talks I heard last summer from people who had
been in the previous weapon inspections regime my impression from
them was the thing they thought the Iraqis might have was chemical
weapons delivered by of artillery and multiple rocket launchers,
short range stuff 15 to 20 kilometres.
Q162 Mr Jones: Have you come up with
any evidence? Somebody made reference earlier to weapons being
moved out of Iraq to neighbouring states, likewise if they were
not there ready to be used against invading troops is it the case
that also possessing them, how long in your opinion would it take
to actually weaponise if you had stocks of chemical or biological
weapons?
Dr Posen: You would have to ask
somebody who is on the inspection side and the chemical weapons
side, I could not begin to answer that.
Q163 Mr Crausby: I have some questions
about logistics, the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Defence
painted a pretty rosy picture of the logistics operation. He said
to us: "We are engaged in the largest logistic effort since
the Gulf War, deploying the same number of personnel and material
but in half of the time". What is your assessment of the
success of the logistics operation?
Mr Beaver: I think the logistics
operation worked well within the limits that it could work within.
I believe that there was time pressure put on the Defence Logistics
Organisation which quite frankly was a unnecessary strain on their
resources. The way in which a lot of the military equipment and
preparedness for the troops was organised was by means of Urgent
Operational Requirements, in other words not all of the equipment
is available because of the austere conditions currently imposed
on logistics in this country of not holding stocks but keeping
them in industry or manufacturing them and it was necessary to
buy them in. There were something in the order of 197 Urgent Operational
Requirements, something like 124 sustainability requirements,
now these are ones that are basically in the logistics areas.
These started to be discussed between suppliers and the Ministry
of Defence or rather by the military and the suppliers in May
of last year when there was an indication that there might be
military operations. Requests were made for the financing of that
to be moved, that was denied until round September. The reason
that was denied was it would be a combat indicator, if you go
and get desert uniforms from somebody that is an indication you
might be going to the desert, experience would show that is not
necessarily the case. One of problems is that in terms of supplying
us with those uniforms, and there were 110,000 sets in the theatre,
is there is no British manufacturer of the dessert uniforms, they
had to be obtained from Indonesia, Romania and Bolivia. That meant
there was going to be a logistics problem in doing that, you had
to go there. First of all you had a political barrier to overcome,
the political barrier was, yes you can start talking to people
and that was not forthcoming in the last year. Once you have got
through that and you have the political nod you then have the
higher and steeper problem to deal with of the Treasury barrier.
The Treasury is very happy to prepare and give half a billion
pounds for Urgent Operational Requirements but it is a matter
of getting the money out of the officials who are less than keen
to do that. You eventually have a mad rush in the December, January
and February time to get that all that equipment in place. Then
you had to fit it and then you had to train on it. Before doing
any of the fitting and training you had to get it there. There
was a period in January when there was not a western merchant
ship available to transport anything because everyone was picking
them up, the Americans, the Australians and moving things. It
began to be a logistics nightmare created in that regard as well.
I think that the Secretary of State is probably right to say that
the logistics worked well. I think that the Defence Logistics
Organisation and the military should be congratulated on it but
because despite the best efforts of Government and, perhaps I
could say, the Civil Service to thwart the free flow of logistics,
it actually did happen. How long we can sustain it for is another
matter. When you look at logistics it is not just a matter of
can we get the outflow of ammunition and equipment but can we
sustain it while we are there. Luckily the war was 28 days, or
whatever it was, I think we would have had some problems after
that. You have to remember where that has bitten into funding
for other projects in what is called the Equipment Programme and
there are now some serious holes.
Professor Bellamy: I would agree
with that. One of the reasons why the timescale for getting the
logistics out there was compressed was that obviously there was
a delay in pressing the political buttons back here to initiate
that process. Therefore a lot of material only arrived Just in
Time. The classic example I understand is some bolt-on armour
for fighting vehicles, which was bolted on just before they went
across the border. There were one or two minor problems, one problem
I heard about was the desert nuclear biological and chemical filters
for Challenger 2 tanks, which were dispatched on a ship with most
of the rest of the stuff but have not been found. I think the
logisticians call it asset tracking. There was clearly an asset
tracking problem there, they never got there.
Q164 Mr Crausby: Do you think they
might be with the weapons of mass destruction, in the same place?
Professor Bellamy: They might
be in the next container, yes.
Q165 Chairman: What did they do to
overcome the problems of the sand and the lack of filters?
Professor Bellamy: I do not know.
All I know is they did not get there.
Mr Beaver: They had sufficient
reliability, on the Challenger 2 it was 98%.
Q166 Mr Crausby: Did they learn lessons
from Saif Sareea on sand?
Mr Beaver: There were two crucial
lessons learned from Saif Sareea—you are going to hate this
expression—the sand is different in Iraq from in Oman, it
is talcum powder as opposed to rock sand. The second is that Saif
Sareea was an exercise designed to find out what the problems
were and the fixes were put in place. It was not desertification
of the tank, we did not create the export desert version of Challenger
2, what they created was a vehicle that could mitigate the dust
and they could work their way round it, it is a very British solution
to these things. If I can come back on Just in Time, Just in Time
is something that we have suddenly adopted in the military and
I do not believe it works. I believe it is a serious flaw in our
doctrine. There would be at least one soldier alive today if Just
in Time did not apply and that is Sergeant Roberts of the Royal
Tank Regiment, because his body armour had not arrived. There
were insufficient ceramic plates for the body armour because the
way in which it was ordered, because the monies were not released,
because we do not keep them as standard stock they did not arrive
in time. I think that is something. The other area is that we
did not have sufficient hand grenades. Our hand grenades are ordered
on a Just in Time basis from a company in Switzerland. The Swiss
Government decided it would not allow the export of hand grenades
to soldiers who were going to fight wars, presumably you can have
them in Switzerland if you are not going to fight a war. They
would not deliver them to a war fighting nation. That is the problem
we have with Just in Time
Q167 Mr Hancock: We did not know
that. It is a bit like the Belgium bullets in the Falklands?
Mr Beaver: In the 1991 war it
was the M109 ammunition from Belgium, it was the spare parts for
the tornado, it was the Lynx helicopter parts from Germany.
Q168 Mr Hancock: We did not know
about the hand grenades?
Mr Beaver: We presumably should
have done but it is not part of the process. We do not stockpile
hand grenades I am told.
Q169 Mr Crausby: Will Just in Time
ever work with a large deployment? It is not a question of learning
lessons, is it not possible to conduct a deployment of this size
with a Just in Time policy?
Mr Beaver: I do not like Just
in Time at all because Just in Time can be sometimes be just after
and that does not work. Just in Time if it really is Just in Time
is fine. With military operation requirements that tend to be
Just in Time you get the situation you have in Afghanistan and
the Congo, where 2 PARA received night-vision equipment, this
is really good night-vision equipment, but there is only enough
for the battalion that happen to be there, when 2 PARA came home—CO
2 PARA will hate me for this—they forgot to leave it behind
in Afghanistan, so it is now in Colchester. They had to then procure
another one. That is a difficult thing.
Q170 Syd Rapson: There were some
firsts in the conflict, not least Storm Shadow, the RAF's new
weapon was deployed for the first time, and very effective as
far as we know, 950 cruise missiles, 8,600 laser-guided bombs
and 6,500 GPS guided weapons, what equipment lessons have we learned
from the conflict so far? Can we split that into an American version
and a British one? Have we learned much other than Storm Shadow
was ideal and our rifles were magnificent?
Mr Beaver: We want to see what
they are willing to say about what hit what and when. We have
been seeing an accelerating use of air-launched missiles by the
American military. I think in the Afghan War and this war what
you are seeing is a kind of second nature assumption of plenty
as far as PGMs are concerned, they expend these things liberally
now. To do that they produce them liberally. I think this is a
new fact. As we used to say in the Warsaw Pact the quantity has
a quality of its own, well quantity of quality has a quality all
of its own. The US military now expects to order of the order
of 200,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions. I think that is the
stated requirement at this point, whether they are getting them
all is anybody's guess but they are going to get a lot of them.
They are ramping-up the production capability, as I think you
know. This is a new fact. At the other end of the spectrum on
equipment I think the tankers are going to have to get a chance
to make their argument again, because the safest vehicles to be
in turned out to be tanks. Almost anything else you had was vulnerable,
even to the least capable weapons. The other side had weapons
that are distributed round the world in vast numbers, like RPGs.
This should cause, it may not, some reconsideration of this eight
year obsession with light armoured vehicles that has occurred
in the western world and has begun to take over the US military.
At the other end this is an important issue. The US Navy periodically
reminds itself or is reminded by others that littoral warfare
is a special area. While the Iraqis did not make good use of what
they had it is clear that even what they had as badly used. It
was a complicating factor for us and could have turned out to
be dangerous. The synergies you get from naval mines, bottom mines
and truck mobile anti-ship missiles are important. These systems
are clearly hard to find. We had virtual command of the airspace
over Southern Iraq long before the war started, we were looking
for these things and yet many of them managed to survive and some
of them were fired. If the US Navy is objective about this war
I think they should redouble their efforts in the littoral warfare
area and should be looking for help from others. In this war the
British provided obviously terrific assistance on the mine area.
Q171 Syd Rapson: We were talking
about plastic tanks at one stage.
Dr Posen: Nothing can stop them
from chasing this dream. The American military has $300 billion
a year to spend and they are going to chase the dream. The dream
is to have a weapon that can fight on the land, take any hit or
avoid any hit and be rapidly transferred by air. They are going
to keep chasing this dream. I hope or I suspect that those Army
guys who like a particular piece of metal are going to have a
stronger argument now.
Mr Beaver: It is interesting that
from the British perspective that the tank has been proven to
be still viable but the future is not necessarily in protection
it is in survivability. The British attitude is to look for something
intermediate, something less than 30 tonnes. You are probably
aware of something called the Future Rapid Effect System and it
does seem that in general terms this war has borne out to a certain
extent the defence planning assumptions which call for FRES to
be there. One of the difficulties is you look at a war and say,
lots of lessons identified here let us apply them straight away.
Each war is different in that regard. There is no doubt that there
has to be some care. My understanding is that the Army Board is
looking at seven factors as a result of this war. The command
and management of the battle space is a generic title, in other
words situational awareness. Do we know what is going on? Where
our forces are? What the other people's forces are at any one
time? This awful thing called Network Enabled Capability, which
is the British way of saying it, and ISTAR, Intelligence Surveillance,
Target Aquisition and reconnaissance. The creation of a medium
force perhaps as a way of re-roling 3rd United Kingdom division.
Basically we have learned a lot of positive lessons about air
manoeuvre and how we would use Apache. For example in American
Apache operations they have no support for them. We would have
something called the BLUH LYNX, the Battlefield Light Utility
Helicopter Programme, where we would be able to pick up downed
crews, which is something that the Americans cannot do. When an
Apache goes down they cannot pick the crew up, they have no means
of doing that without calling in another unit. There is no doubt
that we have to improve our combat service support. There is no
doubt we need to have an indirect fire weapon with precision effect,
in other words something we can fire longer distances—up
to 10 kilometres and destroy something. We are worried about force
protection. We are worried about controlling our flanks. The 16
Air Assault Brigade, the very lightest of our formation, was not
used. There is now a question as to where that goes, do you keep
it as a helicopter force or do you split it and create 5 Brigade
again, a Para and air landing forces, or do you create a helicopter
battalion? In terms of equipment just about all of the heavy equipment
had a reliability range of more than 90%: Challenger 2, the AS90
Warrior. What was interesting was that the CVR(T) was 33 years
old and on Saif Sareea had a 49% reliability that had gone up
to 90% in this conflict because of the lessons learned from Saif
Sareea. We knew that the Combat Engineer Tractor was a load of
rubbish, less than 50% availability, that is going to be replaced
soon. The SA80A2, the assault rifle, excellent performance, even
the Royal Marines liked it, that is going some way. You were talking
about Storm Shadow, there were nearly 30 launched and all of them
that were launched hit their target. The difference about Storm
Shadow compared to the American system is it can attack a bunker
but it does not have to use gravity to do it, it does not go in
vertically it goes in at a slant angle. They were able to engage
a bunker under a school by going in via the car park and not hitting
school, which is something that the Americans cannot do. Hopefully
it is something we might be able to persuade them to buy. For
the first time the British had a SEAD aircraft, a suppression
of enemy air defence aircraft ASRAM missiles on Tornado F3 fighters.
Rapier was not used but it was serviceable. Helicopters as much
as they could be used, sometimes the weather hampered that. What
I think was interesting was in terms of supporting ground formations
the Army Air Corps 3 Regiment had the largest ever area to control,
60,000 square kilometres of Iraqi battle space and under command
they had RAF helicopters and infantry, so it is an all-arms air
manoeuvre battle group which shows the way forward. That has been
a list out of Jane's "All the World Somethings". It
is important to see that in terms of equipment that things happened
and worked well.
Q172 Syd Rapson: If I can ask a chicken
and egg question, did the conflict vindicate the network-centric
warfare, to use an American term, or did the Iraqis just not want
to fight?
Mr Beaver: From the allied perspective
it was great because it really worked and everyone knew where
they were. Whether the Iraqis were there or not I think they still
would have played with it.
Professor Bellamy: I am glad that
Paul talked about lessons identified, which is the correct military
phrase nowadays, we no longer have lessons learned. We have lessons
identified, which is perhaps a bit sad. I do not know whether
this comes under logistics or interoperability or lessons identified
but one of the most striking things which I thought was very impressive
was the fact that the British and Americans were using the same
fuel, F34-JP8 AVTUR. You can put this stuff in anything, you can
put it in aeroplanes, in tanks, you can put it in trucks and it
substitutes for petrol and it substitutes for diesel. I am amazed
you cannot buy it on the forecourt. It worked. The British had
misgivings about this before it was used but basically it worked
very well. In terms of contribution to a combined operation the
fact that everyone at last is running on the same fuel must be
a really major contribution.
Q173 Syd Rapson: We have used it
for 30 years in the United Kingdom. I used it when I was in the
service.
Professor Bellamy: Right.
Q174 Syd Rapson: Can I ask about
close air support, the US 3rd Infantry Division and the US 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force both had their own aircraft and close
support, they were fully engaged with joint land/air components
whereas the British contingent were relying on a pool of air support,
which meant a delay, as I understand it from letters received
in Parliament, of about 48 hours sometimes when close air support
was called in. The worry was how that functioned. Is that true?
Clearly the British are going to feel left out when the Americans
make the main decisions and they have much better liaison.
Mr Beaver: Things like the MEF,
the Marine Expeditionary Force have an integrated air component,
384 aircraft—I sound like a spotter—we do not have
a similar formation that has that sort of numbers. The concern
that I have heard was that we pooled all of our close air support
assets, there were Harrier GR7s that were somewhere in the west,
they came home and everyone said that is very interesting we did
not know where they were and we still do not know officially where
they were. There were Tornados and I think the British Army expected
those aircraft to be available for British formations when they
were required. What they had instead, it was not really support
in the same way, there were helicopters, the Lynx TOW a combination
from both the Royal Marines and the Army Air Corp, it is not quite
the same as having a Harrier because it does a different job.
There were not that many of them, and I go back to this urgent
operational requirement area. It my understanding that when you
go to war in coalition your air assets are pooled, your organic
assets, your imbedded assets, the kit stays with you, the helicopters
of 16 Air Assault Brigade would have been with them had they been
used. That is probably an area that does need to be better examined.
Since the 2nd Tactical Air Force in Normandy I do not think there
have been cab ranks of aircraft available to be called in when
there has been a coalition in operation because we had expected
the Americans to do that. The fact that they did not is all to
do with the way in which they prioritise their tasking.
Q175 Mr Howarth: That is a significant
issue. If you are saying, you are confirming that they priorities
the targets, which meant that our forces were not able to rely,
not able to call in air support when they needed it this has implications,
a number of implications not least for the next coalition action
and the pooling of air assets but it also clearly has implications
for the future of the Sea Harrier because the Sea Harrier's withdrawal
been justified on the grounds that the air defence of the Maritime
Force, currently provided by the FA2, will subsequently be provided
by the coalition forces. What do you think are the implications
for force protection?
Mr Beaver: In terms of force protection
on the ground battle the next time, and there will be next time
we go to war, we should have the initial operating capability
of Apache, which will give us that extra capability. Lynx TOW
with a range of two kilometres, yes, it can defeat bunkers and
buildings and, yes, they were using it in that regard but there
were not that many assets available. The next time we go to war
there will be sufficient Apache capability of engaging targets.
Q176 Mr Howarth: You just explained
to us earlier on the difficulties which the Apache ran in to.
Mr Beaver: Those are American
Apaches. This is not the British way of doing it, the doctrine
is different. This is a very important doctrinal difference, Mr
Howarth. What we do not have is we do not have the same close
air support capability, that is something which politically that
has to be worked out between coalition partners.
Dr Posen: On the Apache you want
to be clear, the US Army uses Apaches in many different ways.
At this particular time they got into trouble they were stretching
the envelope of their aircraft and the envelope of their tactics.
They were essentially using it as a deep interdiction aircraft,
which is a kind of air force wannabe-ism and they should not have
been doing it. When you have used Apaches in close proximity of
your troops in a typical close air support kind of mode, where
you have these hugely supporting fires and artillery to do suppression
you are usually going to be better off. If the lacunae for the
British was in true close air support then the arrival of the
Apaches will give the ground force a responsive close air support
asset that will be pretty reliable but it will not substitute
for aeroplanes and all missions, you still have the aeroplane
question. Then the flip side is that you want to investigate how
much of the fixed-wing aviation was controlled by the marines
on a day-to-day basis? How much of their own close air support
did they have direct control over versus how much was centrally
controlled? I am betting a lot of their longer-legged aircraft,
their F18s, probably fell into the air tasking order like anything
else. The question for you is, did the Marines manage to hold
on to their own Harriers, whereas you did not manage to hold on
to your own Harriers? I think that is the question that you want
to ask.
Q177 Mr Hancock: I have three questions,
it is one thing saying that the prioritising of close air support
was decided by the Americans in a different way, I think we need
to know on how many occasions it was requested and was not available?
It is one thing saying that it was not available and another thing
being told it was turned down. I think we need to have some clarification
on that, we can say, and it is pointless if it was never asked
for in the first place and we just assumed it was there. Secondly,
going back to your point about the tank, I hope we do not revisit
the issue of the tank based on this because the tank was a pretty
safe place to be in because tanks were pretty safe because they
were not fighting out in the open and there was no aircraft coming
at them, so the tank was a safe option. If there had been hostile
aircraft in the air the tank would have been as vulnerable as
anything else presumably. Maybe the tank survived this battle
well because of the opposition and the location, they were ideal
for in cities and along the edges of cities, giving protection
to troops to take out buildings. I think we have to bring that
into perspective. My third question goes back to what you said,
I thought you said a very damming thing about the Treasury, particularly
about the sergeant who was killed because of the ceramic armour,
we now that he died, the important question—and Geoff Hoon
was not willing to answer it—was how many of our troops
who were in the frontline on active duty, liable to be shot at
did not have the right armour? We know one did not because he
died sadly. You more or less put the blame well and truly where
it belongs for that.
Mr Beaver: I would imagine that
we are probably talking of several tens. It is interesting that
it should be that in a frontline unit, in a battle group that
somebody did not have the ceramic plates that go in the armoured
vest, they were missing. The reason they were missing was they
were in the theatre but they had arrived late and they did not
get out in time for the war to start because the war started earlier
than the logistics chain thought.
Q178 Mr Hancock: There was a specific
order saying that no troops should be engaged in war fighting
without the proper equipment, that was a specific order given,
was it not? Somebody somewhere overruled that order
Mr Beaver: That is probably a
question better addressed to the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Hancock: Absolutely. There
was a specific order that troops should not be exposed to hostile
fire without the proper equipment.
Q179 Patrick Mercer: Can you confirm
that Sergeant Roberts did not have plates available rather than
the fact that he left them in his tank, as an awful lot of armoured
troops do?
Mr Beaver: This is still subject
to an SIB investigation. My understanding is that he had not been
issued with the plates.
Professor Bellamy: Can I say something
about air support. I have heard reports that it was alleged that
the Americans appeared to give priority to their own troops rather
than deploying aircraft to support the British troops. As I said,
there were about 1,000 American aircraft and 100 British in the
theatre and under those circumstances it made total sense to pool
the aircraft. When you call for air support you do not necessarily
get it. I do not know what the proportion of air support requests
that are not fulfilled is, it could be, for the sake of argument,
50%, I would be very careful to investigate whether the number
of requests that were made and not fulfilled actually exceeded
the norm for any other conflict. The interoperability between
the British and the Americans for fire support was, in my view,
very good. The Americans had Air, Naval and Land liaison officers,
or Anglicoes as they were known, deployed to the British brigades,
one company with each UK brigade, and they were deployed down
to battalion level. Of course looking at the whole picture it
might well be that the decision was that the priority is there
and not there. I do not know. I am a little bit sceptical about
that particular allegation.
Mr Howarth: Can anybody say anything
about the Sea Harrier?
Chairman: No, if you want to you
can write. We have at least eight blocks of questions.
I suggest each block should be no more than
seven or eight minutes max.
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