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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