Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 506 - 519)

TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2003

MR DAVID GOMPERT AND MR BILL ROBINS CB OBE


Chairman

  506. Welcome, gentlemen; welcome to you both. Would either of you like to kick off with a few opening remarks, before we get into the questions?

  (Mr Gompert) I would, please, if it is satisfactory. First of all, thank you for the opportunity to appear here. I do not speak for the US Government because I am not part of the US Government. I do not speak for RAND, because RAND as an institution does not take a view on matters of policy, so I speak only for myself. My understanding was that you especially wanted to get an American perspective on what we call network-centric warfare, or a perspective on how the Americans are approaching the problem. And I thought I could help the proceedings by giving you no more than five minutes to try to give you a little bit of our context, because the US and the UK each has its own context. First, let me say that I think it is very helpful to think about this revolution in military affairs not just as any old revolution in military affairs but rather as something very specific, and that is, it is the information revolution having arrived in military affairs. I emphasise that because I think there is much we can learn from what we have already observed about how information technologies can transform operations and organisations, particularly those who have a strong motivation to transform themselves. We know from non-military sectors that these technologies, in particular networking technologies, data networking and distributed processing, enable organisations with a will to change to act with greater awareness, greater precision, and also, I think, of greatest importance, to distribute their operations without sacrificing coherence. From an American point of view, what we are seeing now is, those same basic advantages from information technology being realised in the military sphere. We often talk about information dominance, which presupposes that the adversary is not going to have the same degree of awareness, which I think is a pretty safe assumption. Information dominance is embedded largely in improving sensors that enable us to gather and fuse and disseminate and use unprecedented degrees of both data and image information. Secondly, precision effects. Here I am speaking mainly about the ability to have precision strike effects, increasingly, regardless of distance, which can have a decisive effect on operations because it makes it less necessary, not unnecessary but less necessary, for ground forces literally to close on a target in order to be certain of destroying that target. But the last point, that I think is of greater significance, is the ability to network, which I think is the principal focus of this Committee, and that is to be able to conduct operations that are as dispersed as you wish them to be while also being as integrated as you want them to be, and that is fundamentally new. So the revolution is less information dominance than it is the ability to network forces. I have been disappointed over at least a decade to see the rather slow progress in the United States at going from concept to reality, with regard to implementing network-centric concepts of operations and capabilities; it is not that the technology has not been there, it is that the will has not been there until lately. Because we know, again, from the non-military sphere, that taking advantage of networking possibilities requires major change in the way organisations operate, and that overcoming all of the barriers they have to have a very powerful motivation. When you are the sole superpower, not facing a peer adversary and not having just lost a conflict, you have to ask where that motivation comes from. It comes from the determination of the United States—and I think this is a bipartisan political determination—to preserve its ability to intervene in critical regions, wherever those regions might be, even at short warning, in order to protect our interests, our allies and regional peace. That is fundamental not only to US global strategy, it is also fundamental, most Americans think, to the current world order. The US must be able to do that despite the fact that since the Gulf War we have seen a growth in anti-access capabilities. There is a strong urge on the part of those who wish to neutralise our ability and our will to intervene, a strong urge on their part, to develop area-denial and anti-access capabilities, e.g. surface-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, or weapons of mass destruction. So the US now has the will. And that will was intensified with 9/11. 9/11 also did one other thing: and that is it provided the wherewithal. One reason why the US military was not moving more swiftly during the 1990s was that it was in a procurement holiday, it did not have the resources both to procure legacy systems, modernise the existing structure, but also to invest heavily in new systems. We now have a stronger determination to do so and we have the wherewithal, because of the growth in the defence budget. So we are well on our way. Two final observations, if I could. What are the downsides, or what are the risks? First, we are increasingly dependent upon networks. We may be able to increase our manoeuvrability, our rapid deployability, the possibility of having a decisive effect, lowering our risks, reducing the casualty levels on our side and the other side, all of these great benefits; but they come only with growing dependence upon networks. If those networks become vulnerable to information operations then the whole concept of network capability, network operations, could become more vulnerable. And the second downside has to do with coalitions. As I suspect we will get to in the questions and answers, I am quite optimistic about the ability of the United Kingdom to proceed down this path and for the United Kingdom and the United States to do so pretty much in step. But my optimism drops off pretty steeply after that, because I do not believe that our other allies, our common allies on the Continent, on average, have the same motivation or the same closeness of co-operation that will enable the United Kingdom to succeed. And I believe there is no question that if others in NATO to go begin with, do not move in this direction, it will become increasingly difficult to interoperate. It is not just technical interoperability that is needed, as forces become more integrated around a common grid, those that do not operate that way, that do not have the same concepts of operations, quite apart from whether the electrons will move across those barriers, will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace. So I am not terribly sanguine about the military interopability of the alliance as a whole. I think the role of the UK is pivotal in this regard. Those are my opening remarks, Chairman.

  507. You have probably made it difficult to ask about five questions now, but we will probably come back to you. Mr Robins, right to reply; or anything you would like to add, by way of introduction?
  (Mr Robins) Chairman, one caveat and one point. The caveat, since one good caveat deserves another, is that those of you who will have staggered through my CV will have seen that I work for BAE Systems. I do not talk for BAE Systems this afternoon but really as a private citizen with a little experience in this.

  508. We had better learn some French by Thursday.
  (Mr Robins) That is what I have been told; but I do not work on the CVF side[4]. The second thing is that whilst I endorse entirely, everything that Mr Gompert has said, I think the key thing about network-enabled capability, or network warfare, is it is not primarily, I would say, a matter of technology, it is a matter of process, in the same way as the re-equipping of a firm with computers is not primarily a matter of technology but a matter of understanding the processes of that firm. And, in the same way, what we would hope is that industry and the Ministry of Defence work together on understanding battle-space process, which sounds a bit of a catchword, but it is the same as business process transferred to the battle space, so that we make sense of the technology that is available, and that means that we have to take a much more holistic view than merely connecting things up. And that that emphasises one of the points that Mr Gompert made.

  Chairman: Thank you. I do not think any of us are very technical, so do not aim your explanations too high otherwise you will see glazed looks. Gerald will ask the first question.

  Mr Howarth: Before I do, Chairman, can I just put on record that I thought that Bill Robins' exposition at Farnborough Air Show was extremely helpful, and I would like to suggest that, in fact, that exhibition be taken round to those who have an interest in these matters. So I think it is a very good, practical example of what you are trying to tell us this afternoon, I suspect.

  Chairman: Is Mr Robins one of your constituents; you are not generally one to eulogise people coming before us?

Mr Howarth

  509. No, he is not a constituent, but, clearly, after that, he will be looking for a list of estate agents from me, in the Aldershot constituency. Can you help us, gentlemen, we do have all these different expressions which are running around, network-centric warfare, network-centric capability, network-enabled capability; what is the difference, in your view, between these various definitions? Should we be concerned to understand the difference, or does it not really matter, does it just depend which academy you come from, or which side of the Atlantic you come from; but if they are different can you tell us in what ways?
  (Mr Robins) The way I see it, and I have been a US watcher for some time now and worked closely with the US on many of these things, one of the central tenets of network-centric warfare is a number of grids, which David will be much better than I am at explaining, an information grid, a sensor grid, a grid of weapons, which are all linked together to produce the sorts of effects which the US see as contributing to network-centric warfare. The UK is not as committed to a totally gridded view of the battle space as is the US, for a number of reasons; one is because we are concerned about the financial aspects of it, and secondly because we have, I think, and I speak here as a watcher of the MoD as opposed to one of its members, a less enthusiastic approach to all-embracing technology as a way of solving a lot of problems. Therefore, we adopted the words "network-enabled capability", as opposed to "network-centric warfare" because the network is not centric to what we are trying to do. What we are trying to do is take the prospect of military capability, that is the linking together of this sensor, or these sensors, to those command centres, to that network, to these weapons, to make sense of the military capability that can be produced. So we do not start with a network, we start with the weapons, the command centres, the sensors, and we link them together in ways which make operational sense. So the network is not centric to it, we are looking at military capability and we are enabling it to be more effective. It is a rather more pragmatic, and some would say a rather more pedestrian, approach, but in my opinion it suits the British psyche.
  (Mr Gompert) I think of it fundamentally as networked operations, which is a term you did not mention, so at the risk of complicating matters further. In its essence, it is networked operations, and there are a couple of reasons why I favour that way of thinking about it. First of all, the emphasis is on operations and not only on warfare. I think it is a mistake to believe that the advantages of networking are confined to warfare; there are a variety of stability operations that one can imagine in which the same concept and the same types of operations and capabilities can be of value. The reasons why Americans, at least the gurus of network centricity, like to emphasise the centricity, or the centrality, of the network, I think, has much to do with the American defence system, in which the services still retain such a strong bureaucratic and political position. The services have within their traditions such a strong platform orientation, be it the aircraft carrier, the bomber or the main battle-tank, to sort of lean into this tendency. There has been a desire on the part of the network revolutionaries to emphasise, "No, it is the network that is the centre, it really is the centre," and everything must be seen, whether it is a sensor, or a weapons system, or a platform, as really nodes on that network.

  510. So would you agree with what Bill Robins has just said about the difference between us and the United States?
  (Mr Gompert) Yes. I think there is a subtle difference.

  511. It is partly money and partly because we . . .
  (Mr Gompert) Partly because, if we are not careful, we will go back to the heavy American emphasis on this platform, that platform, and the follow-on to each.

  Chairman: Frank will ask exactly the same question now as Gerald asked.

Mr Roy

  512. Mr Robins, we heard you describing, words like "pragmatic" and "pedestrian". Is it a case that between the two countries there is an evolutionary vision, against a revolutionary vision, is there a tangible difference, to the layman, from both nations?
  (Mr Robins) The first point, I said it could be seen as pedestrian. I do not, actually. I see it as pragmatic, but possibly a little too slow for some. I think, in the circumstances, given the British defence budget, given the legacy systems that we are trying to link together, I believe that the UK approach makes a lot of sense, and I am saying that really as a previous MoD person, and a private citizen now, and a member of a defence contractor. I think that the thing that we have to be careful about, and I would be interested in Mr Gompert's answer to this, is becoming prisoners of our own rhetoric, in that network-centric or network-enabled capabilities sometime promise far more than they can deliver, because they appear to point to a bright upland, in which computers will do an awful lot more than actually they are able to do, and in which the human being plays far less a part than actually I think he will. So I believe that the US approach and the UK approach are compatible, I believe that the UK has a very pragmatic approach to ensuring that it makes sense of its current legacy systems. And there is one thing, a parenthesis, which I will bring in here. Talking of legacy systems, I think that the US has a much more dynamic and creative approach to making sense of its legacy systems, in some ways, than does the UK. For instance, the well-known example of up-gunning the B52, a 40-, 50-year-old bomber, with precision-guided munitions and other updated equipment, so that it can be used in a network-centric operation with great effect. One of the things that our acquisition process is struggling to do, and smart acquisition, I think, is now making it more possible, is upgrade programmes, to take a much more creative and incremental approach to upgrading legacy kit. And I believe that that is going to be at the centre of making sense of the SDR New Chapter and making sense of our current armoury and reaching a graduated approach to improving it, as opposed to hoping that there is going to be a big bang and a lot of new kit and we are all going to get it right, because we will not.

Mr Howarth

  513. Obviously, you would leave Nimrod out of that equation?
  (Mr Robins) Of course. As a private citizen I understand why you say that.
  (Mr Gompert) I think it is a mistake to consider the US approach as being revolutionary. The ideas are revolutionary but the approach, either by design or just because it is in our nature, is very evolutionary. What is revolutionary about the concepts is that they do offer the possibility of changing radically the way our forces operate and how they operate together across service lines. For example, if you think about ground forces, the US Army, and I dare say most armies, would think that reoccupying territory where you are not sure what is on the other side of that mountain ridge, and you are really accustomed to being able to concentrate your forcesin order to concentrate your effects and also to feel secure about the survivability of your forces, that very traditional outlook means that you reoccupy lost territory with tank columns, if you will. What is revolutionary about network operations is that ground units can operate with knowledge of what is going on on the other side of that ridge. But also they can operate with various strike platforms, informed by the sensors available to the force as a whole, and that offers the possibility of a really radical transformation in how ground forces can operate. Now smaller units, which are more agile, faster, more elusive, they can operate effectively by virtue of being networked, without as much concern as in the past of being overrun. So it is important not to lose sight of the revolutionary, sort of the discontinuities, in concept. Now, that having been said, for better or for worse, the United States is moving deliberately in applying the concepts and in implementing them. This goes to what both Mr Robins and I said, about the fundamental changes BEING organisational and doctrinal. It is one thing to tell the US Army that you can see the opportunity now to operate in small units, able to call upon strike-power from the entire joint force; it is another thing to equip that Army, reorganise that Army and raise the level of confidence in that Army that it is going to be able to do that without fear of losing a battle or a significant number of people. Therefore, if you look at the Army's plan, it is a 20-year plan, some say even a 30-year plan, of transformation. The Navy, in a way has a head start by virtue of the fact that naval forces have always been networked, at least in theory, not so well in practice because the communications were never that as good. But still they have got a running start. The Air Force is somewhere in-between. But I do think, this is good news for allies, that it will take the United States 10-20 years to implement these ideas, and by the time it does the ideas will look a lot difference than they may seem to us at the moment. So we should not despair that the United States is moving along an absolutely set path, at a very high, even accelerating, velocity, and that its allies, even those with the intent to do so, are going to find it difficult to keep pace. I do not believe that is the problem.

  514. If we could explore that just a little bit further, you say that the US Navy is ahead of the game on this; can you give us an indication of how this revolution in military affairs affects each different force, whether land, sea or air, in any different way?
  (Mr Gompert) The US Navy now understands that its purpose in life is not to beat up other navies. Such missions as waging sea battles, securing control of the sea lanes and sea control cannot be dismissed as possibly important contingencies that the Navy must be ready for. But that is really not where the Navy sees its mission and its role in US national defence strategy. Rather it is to participate in joint operations. Where the Navy plays an invaluable role is in delivering strike-power, it could be missile strike-power, it could be carrier-based strike-power, short and medium range, to secure a litoral area, to secure perhaps deep inland and to go after specific targets in co-operation with land-based air, such as is available. But the Navy appreciates that none of that can really be done unless it is properly networked with the joint force. It is very largely in a supporting role, that is to say, it is supporting through gaining access in the first place and also through strike operations. Either to augment air operation or to enable a ground operation. But the reason why the Navy is comfortable stepping up to that is two-fold. First of all, naval operations at sea, e.g. anti-air operations or anti-submarine warfare operations, they have always relied to some degree on the ability to network, platform to platform to platform, because the sensor might be here and the weapon there. Again theNavy has never been very good at it because of the communications links. The other reason why the Navy is able to transform as gracefully as I believe it is, is its relationship with the US Marine Corps, which in and of itself is a highly flexible and entrepreneurial service, ready to adapt to different operational and strategic circumstances, and the Navy has always been able to operate and had to operate with the Marines; so it is comfortable operating jointly in that regard. The Air Force, of course, there are those advocates of air power, and I would say these are not dominant in the US Air Force, or dominant among the advisers of the US Air Force, including RAND, but nevertheless there is a school of thought that you can do a tremendous amount of the battle with air power, with a combination of penetrating and stand-off air, and by investing more and more heavily in a diverse suite of penetrating and stand-off precision strike capabilities, including long-range bombers as well as tactical air, that that really obviates the need, to some degree, for ground forces that can close in on a target, or for naval forces to augment land-based air power. So, as perceived by some of the other services, there has been some school of thought in American air power thinkers that the role of air power can expand among the services and really sort of dominate the joint field. I think that now the thinking is that this is really not the case, that there is a greater recognition that, because of its flexibility, naval-based strike-power has an important role, in some contingencies a central role, and that without ground forces air power can only do so much. We have seen this time and time again, and in recent history. So there is a greater recognition now, even among the air power enthusiasts, that it has to be viewed as a joint, as opposed to an air-dominant operation. The service in the United States that is having the most difficulty is the Army, for a variety of reasons, some cultural, having to do with the nature of the US Army. It tends to be consensus-based, it is the one of the world's largest democracies, the US Army likes to bring people along, making people comfortable. These are the forces that go into harm's way and they have to be comfortable with whom they are depending upon, and their tradition is to depend upon other parts of the US Army. Over the last 20 years, or so, they have come to accept the need to depend and the possibility of depending upon air power, but now they are being asked to go beyond that, and they are being asked to think about putting small units up against large units, to swarm and enter a battlefield from all directions, including overhead, as opposed to very traditional and proven ways of operating ground forces, in what are much more dangerous operations than strike operations. And therefore it is not just that the Army has a different view, it is that it intends to implement its role in an integrated and networked operational concept, in a much more step-by-step, cautious fashion. I am sorry to go on so long to answer the question, but the last point has to do with Army platforms. Neither the Air Force nor the Navy really had to rethink the nature of its platforms. To some extent, the Air Force is thinking that more unmanned vehicles can play a greater role both in surveillance and in strike operations. The Navy is thinking that perhaps it ought to have larger numbers of smaller ships, it is not fundamentally rethinking the basic platform. Whereas, in the case of the Army, there are deep questions about the future of the main battle-tank, on which most advanced armies, and not so advanced armies, are based. And when the Chief of Staff at the US Army gets up in front of the collected Generals of the US Army and says, "Oh, by the way, there's not going to be a follow-on to the main battle-tank of the US Army," that is a revolutionary statement that can only be implemented over 20 years, not overnight. I hope that is responsive to the question.

  Mr Howarth: It was comprehensive; thank you.

Patrick Mercer

  515. The question I will ask has already been partially answered, but after the Gulf War the British Army, for reasons best known to itself, decided to rethink its tactical and strategic doctrines and came up with this phrase "war fighting". Rightly or wrongly, from the ability to conduct high intensity operations, or war fighting operations, all other, lesser-intensity operations flow, the doctrine comes from that. What are the broad implications of network centricity for war fighting doctrines? I appreciate that you have already touched on this, very interestingly, in your last answer, but any thoughts, please?
  (Mr Robins) Really a follow-on from the points which Mr Gompert made in answer to the last question. Focusing on the Army, but leading in from Navy and Air Force, Navy and Air Force, I think, have a more homogeneous environment than the Army. The Army is a very messy environment, it is very full of surprises, the next few steps you can take can change the ground environment profoundly, because of the nature of ground, because of the nature of the things that the Army does, in the spectrum of operations, from war fighting, general war, at the top of it, down to peace enforcement, peace-keeping, patrolling, that sort of thing. And so the things that the Army is called upon to do, in the spectrum of operations, are by their nature much more messy, much less deterministic, much less predictive; and that is why I think the Navy, which I think is the natural seed for some of the sort of architectural work that has been done on network-enabled capability, or network-centric warfare, has been the lead. The Army, I believe, can make tremendous use of these networks, and indeed the way in which the Army is trying to adapt, bearing in mind the messiness of its environment and the unpredictability of its environment, to the sorts of things which the Navy and the Air Force are doing. But at the lower end, say, take a village square in Bosnia, with a Captain talking to one of the local warlords, the thing that that Captain has got to have in his head, as he is talking to somebody who may purport to be on the side of the angels but he is pretty sure is not, are going to have to be associated with what the refugee state is, are there any prisoners or hostages being held, what is the state of the alliances of the person he is talking to, the warlord, where is his power base, what are the faces of the people he should be looking for to be picked up and questioned. He has got a whole host of things going through his head, all of which can be supplied by well-networked information systems. But, of course, ultimately, it is him sitting on a stained bench, across a stained table, looking at some guy who is trying to outwit him. I hope that tries to illustrate the messiness of the Army environment, which is not matched in that way by the Air Force and the Navy environments. Now as the war gets hotter, as we found, for instance, the break-out from Gorazde in the 1990s was, in effect, an armoured engagement, which would not have put shame to Operation Goodwood in 1945, we get across the Army spectrum a whole bunch of different tempi of type operations, all of which the network has got to be able to support. And so the network that the Army is looking to support it actually is a much more demanding network than the sort of network which the Navy and the Air Force, in their homogeneous environments, are looking for. And I believe that that is one of the reasons, as well as the points which Mr Gompert made about the nature of land warfare and the nature of soldiers, compared with sailors and airmen, that leads the Army to be more hesitant. That having been said, there are different approaches to command and control, different approaches to design of land command posts, which I believe technology will lead us to, it will not force us into them but it will show opportunities for changing and getting a much more responsive land force environment. But it has got to take into account not just hot pursuit, not just hot warfare, not just general war, but also the ability to fight very, very complex peace engagement operations, which could be apparently very slow and suddenly spring into life and reach great tempo in a few minutes. So it is messy, it is difficult, and the Army, I think, is entirely, I would not say justified but I fully understand its difficulties in coming to terms with it.

  516. So with low intensity operations, or peace enforcement operations, we are talking about an enhanced C2 capability, really, are we not?
  (Mr Robins) We are talking about enhanced C2, and ISR as well; that is command and control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. In other words, the ability to gather information, to collate it and supply it to the right people.
  (Mr Gompert) I think that the United States military has a lot to learn from the British military, in regard to transformation of its forces, the process of transformation and also the application of these concepts and technologies. In fact, one of the reasons why I am a strong advocate of the closest possible relationship between US and UK force planners in concept development and experimentation is I believe that it is not only a way to pull the UK along with the US concepts but vice versa. Bill touched upon two points that are relevant to that observation. The first, and we may get back to it later, has to do with command and control. The tradition within the British military services is one of giving authority to the lowest possible level which it feels that authority can be extended to. This tradition certainly exploits the new technology through decentralising command and control and making the force as a whole and each unit of the force much more agile and responsive, by virtue of the fact that you have distributed authority. The UK forces are much more comfortable than American forces with that notion of decentralising, as and when you can, command and control authority. I have noticed, in fact, in the US military, that now there is a common operating picture the top commanders are taking advantage of this to centralise more, because now they can micromanage, and I have observed exercises in which there is more of a tendency for three-star Admirals and Generals to say, "No, I want that aircraft on that target," because they can see it. I think, in order fully to exploit the technology and the operational advantages from it, the United States is going to have to become more comfortable with the British tradition of entrusting to junior officers, and thus to smaller units, that which they can best act upon. The other point I wanted to make is that the Americans are going to have to learn a lot, and can learn a lot, from British counterparts in regard to how these operating concepts and capabilities can be used other than in high intensity warfare, or in addition to high intensity warfare. The Americans have been, I think, pretty good about forming a specific image about what a very high-intensity, dangerous, forcible military intervention would look like, it involves a heavy strike from all distances and directions with diverse platforms to condition the battlefield, it involves tactical forces, air as well as ground forces, to move in and really gain complete control of the battlefield, and essentially knock out the adversary's ability to fight, and then go into a third phase, where you are largely disarming, and bringing down those remaining capabilities that could cause problems after a conflict. This is a very specific image and it is a very elegant one, in a way, but the danger, as always, with the Americans, is that we get locked on to a particular image of warfare and then all of our models flow from that particular image of warfare, which after all is only one image of one type of military operation. Whereas, just based upon Mr Robins' reaction to your question, the important thing is to start not with the concept, or with an image of warfare, but start with whatever operational challenges we may face in what we now know, after ten years of seeing it, is a very, very messy world that confronts us, with very unpredictable and very different sorts of circumstances. So we need to start by thinking about what are those circumstances and the operational challenges and then, working back from there, now how can the sensors, how can the different types of units, how can better networked capabilities, how can all of that enable us to conduct that operation better. I do think it goes well beyond large and high-intensity warfare.

   Patrick Mercer: Please do not answer this, because others will touch on it, but what has concerned me is, since the slavish following of air/land battle and then the introduction of manoeuvre warfare and the British Army's utterly channelled view of what they are being told by other armies, we have had a series of propositions from American forces, for instance, in Bosnia, American forces coming to British forces and saying, "Look, we don't do this sort of stuff, we don't do peace; tell us how it's done." And then statements like "We don't do mountains, we do deserts." Well the British Army, with the exception of one or two brief excursions, has not had to do war fighting, they may be just about to do a spot but I doubt it, and what I think concerns me is that these systems that we are talking about are adapted for wholly the wrong sorts of operations. Your answer has reassured me partially.

Mr Crausby

  517. The US and British approaches may be compatible but clearly there are differences, at least in thinking and in initial attitudes; the British commanders still speaking about pushing information down to subordinates, whereas the American vision is more one of sharing the network, probably a bit more open than the British attitude. Do the British and other nations have any real choices in this, or effectively do they just have to get on board with what the Americans are doing currently in developing the networks?
  (Mr Robins) Without wanting to put words into Mr Gompert's mouth, we understand the US approach as being much more Internet type based, or intranet-based, in other words, the net contains the information which is available to everybody, depending on security restraints, and whether they are empowered to see it, but it is available. And the idea is, on an Internet type approach, and one can get into a debate about pushing information and pulling it, and all that sort of stuff, but the deal, as we are starting to see it, from the US, is that the information is in the network, and provided one has means to access it and authorisations to access it then it reinforces the point you made; the Ukare thinking hard about the operational implications of that. There are UK plans, I know, to have the sort of network approach in which information is available, and there are four tiers, for instance, of communications systems, which you will be only too familiar with—Skynet, Bowman, Falcon, Cormorant—which together have to produce a homogeneous network of communications, although they are built by different contractors, to different demands, in which information can flow readily over them. At the moment, the UK approach is driven largely by, as Mr Mercer pointed out, command nets, which tend to constrain the way in which operations are commanded and controlled, in ways which are reminiscent of World War Two. It is this that the network-enabled capability initiative is seeking to change, albeit belatedly.
  (Mr Gompert) I think that is a good explanation of a difference in philosophy, or a difference in architecture. But I think you need not be too concerned that the United States has such a rigid view and plays such a dominant role in defining the grid, and a dominant role in defining operations, so that others must operate with that grid. I think that is really not likely to happen. This administration, in particular, has been adamant, this Secretary of Defense of the United States has been adamant, that the American military establishment must be very creative and very flexible in thinking about how operations must be conducted and what sorts of forces might have to be assembled to conduct those operations. So he and others have opposed any thought that there is a single grid, a single type of operation against an enemy that is going to be operating according to a single set of logical sequences. And the strongest evidence to support the view, that we have to be very, very open-minded and very flexible in applying these concepts, was, in fact, Operation Enduring Freedom, because nobody had any thought whatsoever that we would possibly be conducting an operation like Operation Enduring Freedom. All of the thought that went into the development of network centricity, in defining capability requirements and defining force structures and operating doctrines was about high-intensity conflict against large, well-organised, state-owned forces. Operation Enduring Freedom involved very, very small forces, operating in difficult terrain, only because they were networked, they were only able to operate as effectively as they did because they were networked. So, in a way, this has been taken as a proof both of the power of the network, in enabling forces to operate in totally unexpected circumstances, on the one hand, but also a validation of the argument that it is a huge mistake to have in mind a very specific, very set, very narrow notion of what an operation might look like, and therefore how the capabilities and how these concepts of operations might be employed. So I think the American attitude is, particularly because of Afghanistan, we could find ourselves in all sorts of circumstances, and we have got to be flexible enough in the architecture that Mr Robins defined, as well as in the systems that we build and deploy, to be able to operate in that sort of an uncertain, unpredictable environment.

Syd Rapson

  518. In your opening statement, you recognised there is a very strong will on both sides, the UK and the US, to make this work, and you are very optimistic about that, and I recognise your scepticism about other NATO allies, but we have had General Fulton before us and he is exceptionally keen as well; but, because of the financial situation, we have to adapt most of our current programmes to mix in with the centric warfare enabling capability, and I am a bit worried about the way we adapt them. And I know you have mentioned B52s being used in this concept, but we have Watchkeeper, which has not got a "kill" capability, and other current programmes, such as ASTOR, etc., and I wonder just how they will fit in with the system, knowing that new future systems will be truly network-centric, and whether we can adapt the current programmes to fit, and how much it will enable the UK to become network-enabled? There is a worry that there is a fudge there, that we want to join, we want to participate, we have programmes currently that we have got and we are trying to play catch-up, and whether we can, in fact, fit in with these programmes, or whether it is a false impression?
  (Mr Gompert) I do not think it is a false impression. The United States has this problem itself, because the United States has a huge embedded base of capabilities, I am not talking about force structures now, I am talking about capabilities, platforms, especially, a huge embedded base of platforms, that is not going to be cast aside. Not only that but also it is investing in what it openly accepts are legacy systems, because it feels that there is a need for such legacy systems. So the United States is already struggling with the problem of how it can meld existing capabilities, that may have lifetimes measured in decades with new systems, that it is just now developing and procuring, that will come in in the next five to ten years but are basically legacy systems, with network-centric operations. Some have said that early on the actual capabilities, the equipment, the forces, the types of units and the types of platforms and weapons that are truly transformational, as opposed to legacy, could be as small as 10 or 15% of the total force; it depends on what specific capability you are talking about. I think some traditional capabilities fit nicely with a network concept, and some perhaps are less important or less effective in that concept. But to me the key in enabling systems, whether they are legacy systems or new systems, is in the command and control, and particularly on the technical side in interoperable command and control. I think that probably the most serious barrier we have, in terms of existing capabilities, is not this ship or that vehicle or this aircraft, but rather command and communications systems that were designed and built according to requirements that were set by this or that service, on a more or less proprietary basis, without taking into account that we are moving toward more integrated operations where everything must be able to operate within this grid. I think that there is no reason why the United Kingdom should find it more difficult than the United States is finding it to overcome that very specific obstacle, which is moving from non-interoperable proprietary communications systems to jointly interoperable communications systems. I think that is probably the largest investment challenge that we have. Other than that, we would have to go from one type of system to another type to another type before I could comment on what I think makes sense within a network operation.

  519. Are there any principal programmes, apart from that, in the USA that we ought to be locking into and concentrating on, to make this work?
  (Mr Gompert) To me, the most important investments that the United States is making right now, that really cry out for collaborative efforts, are sensors, particularly airborne sensors, and especially unmanned airborne sensors, where we are still very much in the foothills of understanding what can be done with those. I think that is a major thrust. All forms of airborne intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and command and control platforms that are being developed. Also precision-guided munitions. I think, if there is one capability where we are going to be hard-pressed to have sufficient numbers at low enough cost to be able to take full advantage of the improved guidance and improved precision that we have, it will be in stockpiles of precision-guided munitions, and, of course, there are great advantages in pursuing them together. So, I would say, surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, unmanned vehicles, and precision-guided munitions, those would be the most important.


4   Note from Witness: I was unable to comment as I did not work on that programme. Back


 
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