Examination of Witnesses (Questions 580
- 599)
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003
AIR VICE
MARSHAL IAIN
MCNICOLL
CBE AND MR
HUGH KERNOHAN
580. Talking about defence doctrinal publications,
is there anything innovative that we will see? It all seems to
be about the same and taken care of but if we are looking for
innovation and change do you think there will be any significant
ones?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I am not sure that is
quite an accurate reflection of what I was trying to convey, which
is that things do evolve. There will be significant changes. They
will happen in an evolutionary manner. I mentioned earlier the
work that we are doing in our future doctrine structure which
is looking at the UK operational level of doctrine and trying
to position that better for the future. We are already working
on defining better the strategic context in which the operational
commander is operating and giving rather better guidance on how
he builds and campaigns the joint force and within that will be
these command and control ideas. We will have to build in command
and control ideas and also base them on the lessons that we are
learning from past and current operations. There are significant
changes in prospect which mean that it will happen in an evolutionary
fashion in the doctrine field. Just on the timetable of our future
doctrine work, we are looking at a process which will carry us
through at least to the end of this year to get subordinate publications
in line with our new higher level publications and probably into
the beginning of next year as well.
581. Excuse me if I do not seem to read the
answers correctly, but it seems to be fine-tuning of a well-established
process. There is nothing innovative or fantastic that we are
going to see and I take it that that is the way it is. It is fine-tuning
of an already established system that has gone on for years and
years, re-adjusting it to modern thinking, rather than something
that gives you the "wow" factor.
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) Yes, I think partly it
is a reflection of the fact that we do have already a well-established
doctrine structure. I do think that once we have thought through
and incorporated the effects of network enabled capability it
will be fundamentally different in future. I really do think that
there are changes in prospect. We are certainly, both in our work
leading up to the White Paper, which is due to come out this summer,
and in the work for our future doctrine structure and in our high
level concept work, trying to understand the notion of agility
better, for example. Certainly during the Cold War our thinking
had become sclerotic, I suppose you could describe it as. It was
in stasis. We have evolved drastically since then and I think
a change such as network enabled capability will prompt another
significant change.
582. One of the benefits of being a Member of
Parliament is that they give us documents like this and I have
received one that I can read on the train; very boring. Because
of the questions that came up I had to concentrate on it and inside
the document it sets out four or five themes which are key to
the British approach to doctrine. One of these is mission command
and that will be discussed later, but how will the others—war-fighting,
ethos, joint integrated and multinational operations and the manoeuvre
approach—be affected by network centricity?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) That is a very big question.
Can I start with the joint and integrated aspect first? There
is obviously a challenge inherent in this, that you cannot nationally
build a network that is not interoperable with the allies with
whom you are going to work, so there is a technical challenge
in there, but that is the lesser part of it in my view. The real
challenge is to get the procedures that underlie it more coherent.
We are working closely with the US on their devising what they
are calling capstone concept at the moment and we are calling
it a high level operational concept, which will try and get at
some of the issues involved in this. On the first point of that,
the joint and integrated, the challenge is as much about how you
think in future as in terms of the technical bit, important though
the technical bit will be. The manoeuvrist approach is really
at the heart of the UK approach to warfare or of the use of military
force, which is to try and get inside the opponent's decision-making
cycle. It is the attempt to have your ability to think through
something and act before the opponent has the chance to do his
thinking and acting as well. Our network enabled capability undoubtedly
offers the prospect of being able to do that more quickly. There
are vulnerabilities attached to that as well which I can outline
later. The third out of your four was?
583. The third was joint integrated and multinational
operations and the manoeuvre approach. Basically you have covered
them. Your students are obviously being trained on accepting the
new processes and the air manoeuvribility exercises we saw today.
How much more difficult is it to get more senior members of the
military to absorb the concept of network centricity? What worries
me is that you can teach all these people but unless we have got
our senior people grasping it to their chests and saying, "This
is great", it does not seem to follow through. Is there a
problem with that? Am I assuming that there is a problem or are
our admirals and senior officers grasping that this is the way
to go?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I think there is the potential
for a problem there. Can I just mention though that they are not
my students. In other words, the Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre
is not part of the Defence Academy. That said, we have a very
strong link with them and try and educate them in conceptual and
doctrinal thinking as well. In terms of whether people get it
or not, I am enormously encouraged because I think all parts of
the organisation now understand that there are opportunities as
well as threats. There are tremendous opportunities in network
enabled capabilities, and I do not detect at any level within
the Ministry of Defence doubters saying, "We do not think
this is a good idea".
Mr Cran
584. Air Vice Marshal, unfortunately we are
still on this subject of network centric warfare and I wish we
could find a better collection of words to make it understandable
for the rest of us but that may not be your responsibility. In
the light of the answers you have given to my colleague, Mr Rapson,
I suppose it would not be too strong to say that in a way this
is almost a revolution in military thinking, is it? You used the
word "significant" in answer to Mr Rapson. Is it a revolution
in military thinking and what are the practical effects going
to be on our armed forces?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I think the effects will
be significant and I am not sure it will be tremendously helpful
to get into the debate as to whether it is a revolution or an
evolution.
585. You can dismiss that if you want.
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) No. I accept that others
characterise it thus and a revolution in military affairs has
been talked about in terms of how the information age affects
it. There have certainly been some things which have been revolutionary.
The introduction of global positioning systems, giving everybody
at least the possibility of knowing exactly where they are, has
been a revolution in how the military conduct their affairs. You
can describe it as that. Similarly, network enabled capability,
the ability to link everybody together, could be described as
a revolution but I do not think it is important to get hung up
on the words as to understand the concept and the opportunities.
586. When you and I last spoke you spent a little
bit of time telling us about the differences in the terminology
used by the Americans and the British. What I would be interested
in knowing is, is there any difference between the American vision
of this concept and the British vision, or is it a shared vision?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I think it would be strange
if it was identical in every respect, but I am enormously encouraged—and
I have been just recently in fact to Joint Forces Command and
discussed with my opposite number who is involved in concept development
and experimentation there—by the work that they are doing
and we are looking to have a liaison with them as well. I have
also been engaged in discussions slightly longer ago with people
in the joint staff in the Pentagon on this, and I am very encouraged
by the convergence that there is. People are encountering the
same issues, the same problems, and coming up with very similar
ideas as to how to solve these and the impact that they are going
to have.
587. But if the American vision—let us
hypothesize for a minute—diverts from the British one and,
let us say, your counterpart in the United States has a different
vision from you, which one prevails? Do we just have to like it
or lump it?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I was always taught not
to answer a hypothetical question. The situation has not arisen.
The idea, I think, is to work together to see if there is a common
view and a consensus there. The idea is not to try and diverge.
We have not encountered any major divergence in our thinking so
far.
(Mr Kernohan) It is also true to comment that you
can, by divergence at one level, have a different tactical doctrine
for carrying out the task, but it does not mean that you cannot
operate effectively alongside each other because your doctrines
at the operational level, or even at the strategic level, do match.
You can achieve advantage by alignment at higher levels. It does
not mean you have to align at the lower levels, which are partly
determined by the nature of the equipment and the technical capabilities.
Rachel Squire
588. Air Vice Marshal, you have talked about
some of the fundamentals in the changes in prospect. It has been
argued that enabling technologies and the network capabilities
will enable militaries to achieve with brigades what they previously
required divisions to do. Do you agree?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I do not think I would
make my answer to that just a simple yes or no. In some circumstances
you might achieve the effect with a fewer number of forces. If
I take something from my own background and my own environment,
it is very apparent that the number of aircraft, for example,
that you require to carry out some tasks now are an order of magnitude
fewer than was required, let us say, 15 or 20 years ago. In the
land environment the situation is rather different because, depending
on the task that you are engaged in, it may require boots to be
on the ground and that may require numbers of people who cannot
be everywhere at the same time. I think the answer in the land
environment, saying somehow that a brigade can carry out what
a division used to, is rather too simple a description. It would
depend on what was being asked and even though the capability
in some respects of the land formation could be enormously increased
it may not carry across to all missions that it might be asked
to perform.
589. Especially if you are taught that it is
too easy to think that forces on the ground will be much more
thinned out than perhaps they have been in the past or even atomised
or in individual groups. Is doctrinal thinking able to deal with
those challenges and be that flexible in really saying that you
have got to almost look at every operation differently perhaps
because of what you think may be required?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) Yes, I think you do need
to be flexible and pragmatic about it. If you have a network which
incorporates all the elements of the land forces that you are
employing in an operation, for example, you would not necessarily
have to form them up in one place before you carried out an operation.
You could, because everybody was on the same net, mass for effect
at a time and place of your choosing, so that is possible, or
could become so.
590. Listening to you, and thinking how forces
were used in Afghanistan, certain ground forces reflected that
when it came to the war-fighting aspects of it.
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) Yes, I absolutely agree.
Again, that is one example and the situation on the ground there
was such that the opponents did not mass their forces, so we were
able to use our forces and American forces were able to be much
more flexible about how they parcelled their forces out to carry
out missions.
Patrick Mercer
591. We have heard before how network centric
capabilities will probably be easier for the Royal Air Force and
the Royal Navy to grasp rather than the Army and your last answer
explored that a little further. As network centric capabilities
increase and improve what are the implications for the current
force structures? What are the changes that we are going to see?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I think it really is too
early to say. You are talking about force structures amongst the
land forces here, are you?
592. I would be interested to know about the
other two forces as well.
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I think you are absolutely
right in suggesting that because the other two services are more
platform centric, if you like, joining them on a net is in some
respects easier, although it is technically challenging and quite
expensive. The problem with land forces is the range of individuals
that you will have to join up in it. It is certainly not clear
to me yet, although we are engaged in discussions with Director
Land Warfare and others on this, exactly what changes in structure
might be involved. The Army are working on a paper for their vision
of where they may be in 2020 and in fact I am attending an Army
Doctrine Committee tomorrow where they are going to expose some
of their thinking to me, so perhaps we will move further forward
then.
593. What are the realistic implications, do
you think, in the short term, in the next year? What changes are
we likely to see, particularly as we face some pretty challenging
operations within the next 12 months, or indeed within the next
couple of years after that?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I would not envisage radical
force structure changes in the next year or two because you are
looking at issues relating to equipment which will take rather
longer than that to bring into service.
594. What are the implications for mission command?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) That is a really interesting
question. We are looking at how mission command in the information
age can work. We are agreed that mission command encapsulates
one of the best aspects out of the British approach to the use
of military force, the ability for a commander to articulate his
intent and for the people beneath him to decide on the best way
of carrying that out. The information age should allow a much
greater dissemination, a much clearer exposition, of the commander's
intent. The question that we are looking at at the moment—and
this is ongoing work so please do not view it as policy—is
whether we need in some way to decouple more than we do at the
moment the command and control functions. If I can just expand
on that slightly, if, for example, there was a small operation
going on somewhere and something was happening in that operation
that might have a strategic impact, it may be possible in future
(and it is to some extent possible now) for people at the strategic
or grand strategic level to reach across the operational and tactical
levels of command an make a decision and alter what is occurring
there. How do we see that happening in the future? We do not see
that that means that we get rid of the tactical and operational
layers of command. There are still functions that these levels
will have to carry out and the larger the operation the larger
the burden on them because of the ability of somebody at the top
of the tree to be able to see everything that is going on will
obviously not be there regardless of how big the network is. This
is one of the potential downsides of network enabled capability,
that it might allow what has been described as long screwdrivers
to reach forward. What we want to try and do in our evolving thinking
is try and work out procedures, a doctrine, for how we exercise
that command such that control is exercised when it should be
but is not over-control nor excessive control across the layers
of command.
595. It is difficult to envisage, is it not,
because I quite see the point that a patrol, particularly in the
sort of operations that are likely to lie ahead in the next five
or ten years, is involved in an action which has strategic implications
and yet we are talking potentially of a very senior officer, perhaps
a politician, becoming involved directly at the patrol level.
Is that a reasonable vision or is that wholly unreasonable?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I do not think it is just
a theoretical issue. Let me give an example. The apprehension
of indicted war criminals in the former Yugoslavia or in Bosnia
is an operation which could easily have strategic impact. It would
probably be carried out, and I cannot comment on events that have
happened or may occur in the future, by a relatively small number
of people, and certainly you are looking at the tactical level
there, and yet I can imagine that people at the most senior levels
would be interested should that operation not go according to
plan and might wish to be involved in the decision making process
if something had to be done rapidly. A suitable network might
give you the ability to do that and that would actually enhance
your capability and not detract from it.
Mr Jones
596. There is obviously going to be an emphasis
on more technology as these concepts are developed. Has any thought
been given to the challenges that are going to be faced in terms
of recruitment, in terms of the type of people that you will have
to recruit in the future to carry out this type of doctrine or
actual work and equipment technology that will be used?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) I will hand over to Hugh
in a second but I think it is true to say that the armed forces
today are recruiting in many ways different people from those
that we wanted 20 or 30 years ago across all levels. We do need
to recruit people who are more technologically aware, who are
more aware of the opportunities presented by technology and who
are more capable of using them. In terms of implementation, I
do not know if Hugh has anything to add.
(Mr Kernohan) A general point is that as the nature
of the equipment changes it is not the ability to become better
at making equipment that does not break down that matters. It
is the ability to be aware of what it offers which may be more
important. As you know, recruitment is a continuing challenge.
We cannot get enough people with all the technical skills that
we need at the moment, and as to the longer term impact of that,
we do not know.
597. Is this not going to put some more pressure
on you in terms of recruitment, if you are looking for people
who, as the Air Vice Marshal said, have an understanding of technology
or an ability to learn technology? Should not the MoD be doing
something around that if the average squaddie you want to employ,
say, in 20 years' time, will be very different from the one you
are going to recruit today? Is there any thought going into that?
(Mr Kernohan) Yes, there is. It is one of the themes
in the Defence Training Review and one of the things that underpins
the Armed Forces Foundation College, the sense that we need to
train the people in the way that we want them and what we want
them to be. The issue is as much attracting them into the service
in the first place. Why do people want to join the armed services?
The recruiting effort is and continues to be considerable and
we do not see it getting any smaller.
Syd Rapson
598. At the risk of being facetious, 15-year
olds now can use computers like nobody on earth and it would be
much better to have a lot of 15-year olds fighting the war than
a lot of old people like us. I wonder sometimes how we will get
this concept right when I see them operating faster than the speed
of light. I cannot believe it, so perhaps we need to think about
that and also probably about whether or not women would be more
useful in a dextrous way to fight these warfares in future. Those
things are out of the loop of your thinking presumably.
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) There is a serious point
in there as well. Obviously, we are not about to start employing
child soldiers but the sorts of skills that people are acquiring
due to the computer age and the information age are skills which
will be valuable, so perhaps the challenge in future will not
be as high as has been suggested in that more people will have
these skills.
(Mr Kernohan) It picks up a point that you made earlier
about those up the chain, that actually those responsible for
running the training and determining what sort of people we want
have to recognise that this change is taking place.
Chairman
599. I shall arrange for Mr Rapson to receive
the documents I received recently on child soldiers. I think 17
is beyond the pale, as do the people who have been sending us
letters. What work has been done on the trialling implications
of delegated decision making inherent in the detect, decide, destroy
approach?
(Air Vice Marshal McNicoll) We have been involved
in some exercises and some experimentation work in the United
States on this but I think we are very conscious that we need
to experiment here in the UK as well. You may have been briefed
on an experimental network integration facility which the equipment
capability area is planning to bring in which will give us, I
hope, as well as the ability to integrate in the technical sense,
also the ability to do experimentation on these aspects.
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