Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2004
RT HON
GEOFF HOON
MP, SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG AND
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER
GCB CMG CBE ADC GEN
Q40 Mr Blunt: No, I want to move
on, because we do not have very much time, to a theme that runs
through a lot of this, which is "cuts today for jam tomorrow",
and if I can deal with the Army. Given the difficulties encountered
on Operation Telic to find enough tanks to equip one armoured
brigade, is it not unwise to cut the number of Challenger tanks
several years before FRES is going to be ready?
Sir Michael Walker: Can you substantiate
your initial statement?
Q41 Mr Blunt: You are taking four
squadrons of Challenger.
Sir Michael Walker: No, no, I
have said, given the difficulty of finding enough Challenger tanks
to equip the armoured brigade for Operation Telic—
Q42 Mr Blunt: The evidence the Committee
has received is that in order—and certainly the experience
I was familiar with as far as Gulf War I is concerned and my understanding
is that Gulf War II has been the same, is that in order to produce
an armoured brigade in the Gulf you have had to take spares and
equipment from other Challenger regiments to produce a regiment
of full war establishment on operations in the Gulf. If that is
not the case and we now have armoured regiments that are able
to go to war without borrowing anything from any other regiments
that is marvellous, but I would be rather surprised if it was?
Sir Michael Walker: No, no, it
is true that the priority of the spares would have changed to
the brigade that was going there, but there was nothing like the
cannibalisation that went on in Operation Granby, absolutely nothing
like.
Q43 Mr Blunt: One hoped that lessons
would have been learned from that, but the point at issue is that
you are going to withdraw tanks from the front-line, before FRES
is even suggested to be ready, in 2009?
Sir Michael Walker: No, what we
are doing is, and this is why you need to look at the future Army
structure . . . The cavalry, of course, are reorganising into,
as you know, some reconnaissance regiments, so the withdrawal
of the tanks is not that so much as a conversion of these armoured
units into reconnaissance units. That is what happened. Nobody
is going to be left wandering around looking for a piece of equipment
to fight with.
Q44 Mr Blunt: No, I understand that,
but before the medium-weight vehicles come in, FRES, which has
a proposed in-service date of 2009—and I do not know of
very many people who actually think that has got a cat in hell's
chance of being met—you are moving forward with the changes
to the Army's operational structure. Part of those changes involve
significant reductions in the Army's military fall-back, which
includes seven Challenger II armoured squadrons, six AS90 batteries—those
will be withdrawn by 2007—the reduction in the number of
Rapier anti-aircraft missile launchers, a reduction in the number
of high velocity missile finds, for example. Focusing on the armoured
element of this, you are reducing the heavy capability before
you get the new equipment that is going to provide the medium-level
capability which to a degree is replacing it?
Sir Michael Walker: No. What is
happening is that we are moving to a different structure which
allows the servicing of a medium-scale and two small-scales, two
medium-scales or a large-scale so we have the capability to generate
what force structure is necessary to service any of those, and
that remains in service. What we are doing is shifting people
out of heavy armour into medium reconnaissance, and in due course
that medium reconnaissance will be replaced by the FRES variant
of the armoured vehicle when it comes into service. That is the
longer term plan. So this is not about taking tanks out of service
and leaving us with low capability, this is about the change of
the structure to give us a different capability to respond to
the most probable sort of activities we are under. We only had
two armoured regiments fully employed in the Gulf in the last
operation in the Gulf.
Q45 Mr Blunt: Can I ask you a specific
question about an armoured battlegroup. Under SDR the first session
of the Joint Rapid Reaction Force, in other words those forces
which are held in very high readiness for early entry operations,
included an armoured battle group. Will this still be possible
under the proposals in Future Capabilities?
Sir Michael Walker: Absolutely.
We remain two full armoured brigades; absolutely.
Q46 Chairman: How many Challenger
IIs will there be after re-organisation?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: There will be
18 squadrons instead of 25.
Q47 Chairman: I failed O-level maths,
so how many is that?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I cannot do
the arithmetic immediately in my head. The CDS probably can!
Q48 Chairman: Can you let us know.
Are we going to give away the surplus or keep them in storage?
Mr Hoon: That is not a decision
we have taken yet. I suspect, for historic reasons, we may choose
to keep a significant number in storage. We have paid for them;
they are ours.
Q49 Chairman: It is a very good tank?
Mr Hoon: It is a very good tank.
Absolutely.
Sir Michael Walker: It will match
the whole management concept that is coming in over the next few
years as well.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Can I just say,
I quite accept you needed to move on, but, since I am Chairman
of the Defence Management Board the CDS referred to, I ought to
say that of course we operate within a resource environment and
framework but the judgments we made about the future structure
were based on a serious appraisal of the future, as we saw it,
in terms of requirements together with which areas we really needed
to concentrate on to meet those requirements and where we over-matched
or out-performed any possible adversary that we could contemplate
within the timescales of the review. That was not just unilaterally
as the UK, it was also against assumptions of operating in coalition
with others, whether European partners or whether the United States,
and taking a balanced judgment about those areas where we had
enough or more than enough to meet our guidelines and those where
we needed to do more, particularly in the sort of future technology
area in order to meet the requirements. We had to take into account
judgments like precision guidance, network enabled capability,
giving us much more effect per platform than before, as well as
things like a reduction in the nuclear threat, which had an effect
of how many ASW frigates we require, a reduction obviously in
the air threat, which had relevance to air defence capabilities.
So the reason we have come forward with the proposals was a serious,
considered, detailed political and military assessment of the
future, together with a detailed analysis about capability, strengths
and weaknesses, which we took on board. That is really, I think,
why the CDS said it is not just a question of affordability.
Q50 Chairman: Is this document an
unclassified version or could we look at the document that is
figuring so prominently in your analysis, or do we have to make
do with what is publicly available at the moment?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The Secretary
of State has made all of the statements relevant to that issue.
This is the 21st July statement and the material produced at that
time.
Q51 Chairman: That is what you are
operating?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Which were the
force structure consequences of the White Paper produced last
November.
Mr Hoon: I can provide the figures
on Challenger tanks.
Q52 Chairman: Yes, go on.
Mr Hoon: The current total is
385. Although we will be reducing squadrons from 25 to 18, in
fact we judge that we will take less risk with the remaining squadrons,
so we anticipate a reduction in the order of 40 Challenger tanks.
So 40 from 385.
Q53 Mr Viggers: That is interesting.
The advice we were given was that between 80 and 100 tanks would
be withdrawn, but, of course, the Challenger II is a world winning,
world beating tank and the AS90 155mm gun, I have not heard anyone
comment as being out of date. So you are phasing out modern powerful
respected equipment and you have given a firm date for that, which
is March 2007.
Mr Hoon: I am sorry to interrupt
you, Peter, and I would not normally, but the premise implies
somehow that this is because we have not utilised sufficiently
the Challenger II tanks. The reason for the phasing out is not
because we are in any way uncomfortable or unhappy with this modern
very successful main battle tank, it is because a judgment has
been made, given the strategic global environment in which we
have to operate, that it is important to have more medium-weight
forces available, that we cannot get to a crisis with main battle
tanks as quickly as we might like and that, therefore, a medium-weight
capability, an enhanced medium-weight capability, will be important
in the kind of conflicts that we have to deal with currently,
which is one of the reasons why I am edging towards the idea of
storage because I accept that that could change. We will still
have a significant requirement for main battle tanks, but it is
not as great as we might have anticipated given the kind of conflicts
we thought we might be facing.
Q54 Mr Viggers: Yes. Paragraph 2.12
of Future Capabilities makes a valiant attempt to explain
how Apache helicopters and other facilities will be used to redeploy
armed forces, but my worry is the availability of the future rapid
effect system. Anyone reading paragraph 2.11 quickly would read:
"FRES will operate alongside a new generation of command
and liaison vehicles, which will begin entering service in 2007."
You might think that FRES is coming along in 2007. It is not.
FRES will really start coming through in about 2009 and it will
be the simplest of the array of vehicles in the FRES arrangements
which will be available first. So, I suppose, if one is putting
the point at its crudest, it is that you are phasing out first-class
and effective equipment for an artist's impression of what you
hope will be available in the next—
Mr Hoon: General Walker has already
answered that question.
Sir Michael Walker: We do not
have a medium capability now. We never have. We have been living
without this capability. So we should be celebrating the fact
that we are bringing one in for the first time in the history
of the British Army.
Q55 Chairman: Are you now claiming
to be Director of Public Relations, General, because you are singing
a very happy song of rejoicing with those words before!
Sir Michael Walker: Do you wish
me to answer, Chairman, or not?
Q56 Chairman: No; privately afterwards!
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The reason for
not coming forward with a more specific FRES in service date at
the moment is the balance you always have to make between buying
today's equipment which is going to be second-rate quite quickly
and waiting until you have got the right technology level, mature
enough to get something which is going to last you through from
the end of this decade right through to the next 20 or 30 years.
As of now, the technology is not quite where it needs to be for
us to be absolutely certain we have got a low-risk project, something
which will last for a very long period of time. Which is why we
are now appointing a systems house to give us advice on who is
going to have the best combination of these technologies, reliable
and will work, so that we are going to bring it in at the right
moment with the right level of capabilities. It is not about delaying,
or pie in the sky, pushing things off, it is about making the
right judgment when we can, as it were, take a serious, good decision.
There are lots of people with the stuff around, but it will not
be world beating in 2014, and that is what we have got to do.
Mr Viggers: I am sure we will follow
this with keen interest.
Q57 Mr Havard: Your reply to our
last observations on the White Paper said that you can make the
changes to the armoured brigades irrespective of whether you get
FRES. It should not be held up pending the introduction of medium-weight
capabilities. I think that is the concern, that you are making
the change without the other supporting element being available
at the time, and is that a risk?
Sir Michael Walker: We are still
going to have two armoured brigades, three mechanised brigades,
a light brigade, an air assault brigade and a commando brigade.
That is the structure that we are going to. What we will have
to do is introduce a medium-weight capability to the mechanised
brigades when the medium-weight capability comes in, which we
do not have at the moment. So the only changes we are making is
a change to the number of units that exist in each of the brigades
and the move out of some tanks into some medium reconnaissance
vehicles and to give the light brigade some light reconnaissance
so that it can operate as well. Those are the changes we are making
now. The arrival of FRES is not, if you like, the basis on which
we are getting rid of other bits of kit, rather FRES is an additional
capability that we much look forward to taking into service.
Q58 Mike Gapes: Can I switch the
focus to logistics. Secretary of State, you said earlier on that
logisticians have been most under pressure, I think was the phrase
you used, and you will be aware that our own Committee's report
on the Lessons of Iraq last year was very critical in some respects
of aspects of the logistics supply, particularly questions of
asset-tracking and the coherence of the system. You have sent
us a response to that, which no doubt you can refer to, but I
wanted to ask specifically, in the light of previous recommendations
in every conflict in the last 20 years since the Falklands of
the need to improve logistic capability, why does the Future
Capabilities document only specify a few additional resources
to go to this area? Is it not being under-estimated? Is not the
importance of improving the boring, unglamorous but, nevertheless,
absolutely essential logistical operation and the tracking of
assets more important than some of these big headline things which
we have been discussing up to now?
Mr Hoon: Forgive me, I am just
a little concerned at the way that you ran together, I think,
two separate issues at the outset. I certainly say that we need
more people trained and available as logisticians. That is not
in any way a criticism of the logisticians who did a superb job
in moving equipment to Iraq for Operation Telic; and there was
a slight implication in what you were saying—
Q59 Mike Gapes: I was not criticising
the people, but nevertheless the Committee made very clear there
were issues, and they were raised with us, about the fact—
Mr Hoon: If we go back in a sense,
back to the Cold War, and contrast the kind of organisation that
we had to eventually put a large force into Western Germany to
confront the Warsaw Pact, that in effect required a single logistics
line of communication to support that force. What we have seen,
as the world has changed, is the requirement to sustain, simultaneously,
a number of different operations, and in a way we have moved beyond
even the assumptions we made in the Strategic Defence Review.
We have recognised that we may well require smaller operations,
but those smaller operations, as far afield as places like Afghanistan,
require a huge level of support, and we need more people to assist
with that. More people allow us to, as I said earlier, I think,
in answer to a question from Mike, use the operational capability
of our infantry battalions more effectively, but those people
have undoubtedly been under enormous pressure. At one stage people
were being redeployed literally almost directly from Kosovo to
Bosnia and back again because of the need to support the operations
there. What I am looking to do—and this is a process actually
that has been under way for quite a long time if you look at it—is
provide more support and make sure that that chain of support
for deployed operations is more effective.
| 
