Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260 - 279)

WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004

GENERAL SIR MIKE JACKSON KCB CBE DSO ADC GEN

  Q260  Mike Gapes: You mention network enabled capabilities and this is probably an appropriate time to deal with those questions and then to move on to something else. The Secretary of State has talked about "the exploitation of the opportunities presented by new technologies and network enabled capability". You have mentioned them, but to what extent can these be exploited to the full in the land environment? What constraints do you face in this, particularly in bringing them in quickly?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: I think that you have put your finger on an eternal dimension. It is not just about NEC, network enabled capabilities. The land environment is more complex than my comrades-in-arms in the air and at sea. If you take a warship, to equip that warship with all of the electronic side of life that it needs, you have a single large platform and you can deal with that technically in whichever way. You do not need within that ship to have different parts connected, other than obviously by voice within the ship itself. If you take a deployed field army, my analogy is always the orchestra. You have a number of instruments in the orchestra and they are spread out. Somewhere there is a conductor; hopefully, they all have the same sheet of music, and you try to get all that working together. It is more complex. It therefore means that producing the maximum value from better communications is a more complex thing, because you are talking about every man now with his personal role radio. You are talking about every vehicle with some sort of radio. Getting all of that together is a complex business. Whether we are maximising, I cannot answer that question because I do not know what the maximum is. You do not know until you have got there. What I do know, as I said a moment ago, is that we are putting a great deal of effort—again, I hesitate to use the phrase and I was caught up a little bit earlier for it—into something along the lines of a quantum jump. Not the least is that we will be on secure radio all the time. If you have ever had the joys of using code at three o'clock in the morning, when it is pouring with rain and you are trying to get it off a code sheet, you will realise just what a huge jump forward having a secure radio at low level is.

  Q261  Mike Gapes: There have been some reports about radiation burns and some other problems with Bowman. The radio system might be secure, and it might be developed—

  General Sir Mike Jackson: But it sets you on fire? No, it does not.

  Q262  Mike Gapes: Are you happy with the operations of Bowman or are there difficulties at present?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Like any major equipment programme which is groundbreaking in its technology, you cannot expect everything to go perfectly from day one, because life just is not like that. There have been—it is no secret—some teething problems with this first tranche of Bowman, and you allude to one of them. These are being worked through; modifications are being done. I am not in any way downhearted by the way Bowman is starting to enter service. There is more to be done of course, because we have only got through about one and a half brigades' worth of conversion yet. So I am not saying there are not teething problems, but I do not see them as being fatally flawed.

  Q263  Mike Gapes: The White Paper talks about priorities to deliver network enabled capabilities over three interconnected phases. Could you enlarge on that? What are the priorities and what timescale are you talking about?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: I described NEC, network enabled capability, as much as a concept as not being a single black box. There is some jargon here, which I am very happy to share with you. The initial phase is characterised by interconnection. In other words, things can connect one with another without difficulty. The transitional phase, the second, is integration—where you do better than that and you have the whole thing together. The mature phase is characterised by synchronisation—we are all informed, everywhere, everything. That is a conceptual approach. There are many parts to this in terms of hardware. We have talked about Bowman. There is the whole defence information infrastructure, DII. That is all part of this as well. There is a great deal.

  Q264  Mike Gapes: What timescale are we talking about? Are we talking about all three things happening at the same time, or one after the other?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: No, they are sequential. We are looking for that first stage, the initial stage, by 2007, the transitional phase by 2015, and the mature phase beyond that. I think that it would be almost plucking figures out of the air. So this is not an overnight wave of some magic wand. It is not the arrival of a gee-whizz black box: it is a very progressive programme, which depends on equipment which is just coming in now, and some yet to come in.

  Q265  Mr Havard: I was at a meeting yesterday evening, with the Commandant General of Marines explaining what he had seen in Iraq, what they had done, and a general discussion about it. What was interesting was that he said that he had seen two task-led—this was crucial to his command and control and his view of the battle space and so on—and he said from this experience he began to understand what he thought network enabled capability could be—so that he could have UAVs, helicopters, and so on. That is interesting. However, what also came from that was the formation of things which made that up. It is something you were saying earlier on, about a light, heavy, medium, and so on. From what I understood he was saying, the formation, the Marines' model, that they would like to see in the future will include—and I understand you sort of agreed with it—main battle tanks going with them into the littoral environment to conduct ops. So the formation is a number of things, in order to allow the capability to be connected together; because if all the elements are not there then some are not in the connection, are they?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: There is nothing new in putting main battle tanks into a marine force. We have done that for many years. But it was done—you are absolutely right—on the Al Faw peninsula. I would look at this one—and this is almost mother's milk—as the way you task-organise for a particular mission in that all-arms environment. We are trained from the word go to think in an all-arms environment; to be able to regroup from one task to another, so that you get the right order of battle. At whatever level you may be talking about—at battle group, at brigade, at division—this regrouping, this sorting out of your order of battle right to the next task, is bread and butter to us.

  Q266  Mr Havard: So the network enabled capability allows you to manage that process better at the time of conflict.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Absolutely.

  Q267  Mr Havard: But also presumably leads you to be able to put the formation together, does it?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Of course the formation itself has its default setting, which is its peacetime structure which is, if you like, generalised. Take an armoured brigade with its main battle tank regiment, its two armoured infantry, its guns, engineers, sappers, et cetera. That is a peacetime structure which is a general approach, but you can add to that, you can take away from that, according to the particular tasking in hand.

  Q268  Mr Havard: So is the network enabled capability then leading you to break down the demarcation lines which traditionally have been there within the armed services about who forms what and how the traditional structures are built, so that you can have the ability to pick and choose elements you wish to put into any given formation with much more flexibility? Is the idea of network enabled capability driving the reorganisation change, or how is it working?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: No, I would not say that is right.

  Q269  Mr Havard: Or is it for other reasons?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: The language here is quite interesting. In the United States they call it "network-centric warfare". "Centric" is an interesting word there, is it not? That implies that the network is at the centre. Our view is somewhat different, because we do not quite see it that way.

  Q270  Mr Havard: That is wrong.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: At the end of the day, being an infantry officer—if I may indulge for a moment—you have infantry soldiers at the point of decision. They will be at the centre, in that sense of decision-making. I believe our phrase, "network enabling", is absolutely right. Better, more sophisticated, and faster communications enable us to do things we have done before—I am not saying that regrouping is anything new, far from it—but much more quickly, smoothly, securely, more easily.

  Q271  Mr Viggers: I am sure we all support the concept of network enabling capabilities that you have been referring to, but as there has been some publicity for two of the areas, could you say a word more about the difficulties that you have been experiencing? As to Bowman, the publicity has focused on these practical implications of the installation of Bowman into a Land-Rover—top-heavy, breaking the chassis, and so on. Could you say a word as to whether Bowman's difficulties are practical in terms of implementation, or are they technical—which might indicate a longer-term problem?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: My best judgment here is that there may be an element of both there. I am not an expert when it comes to electronics and communication, and all that. What I do know is that the Bowman system is very ambitious. It is a whole leap forward in technology. I am aware of the report about the weight. I do not think it is as serious as perhaps some newspapers try to make out. It will be worked through, and we will not accept something which is not going to do the job. We are very clear about that, but I do not think we are at that point.

  Q272  Mr Viggers: Would you similarly say a word about ASTOR, the airborne stand-off radar, about its application and the problems it has experienced?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Now we go back to this question of what does NEC mean. Information is all part of that. That airborne radar is going to be quite a jump forward on anything we have now. Airborne radar uses the principle which we have used elsewhere, but this is a tailor-made aircraft and we very much look forward to it coming into service. I am sorry, the second part of your question was . . .?

  Q273  Mr Viggers: The delay which has been experienced and the timeframe within which you see that being resolved.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: The ISD, as I understand it, is 2005, next year. I cannot help you more than that. That is, into service date. Forgive me for using alphabet soup.

  Q274  Mr Roy: Can we move on to restructuring the regiments? General, you will know that there is significant opposition to the restructuring programmes, especially from Scotland and the area I represent which takes in the King's Own Scottish Borderers. What progress have you made towards reaching a consensus on that particular restructuring programme of the regiments?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: You will be aware that the Secretary of State, as part of his July announcement, said that the Army would reduce its order of battle by four battalions, and he said that one of those would be found from the six battalions currently recruited in Scotland and three from those recruited in England. So be it. You also heard me speak earlier about the inevitable requirement, having decided to stop arms plotting, to restructure the infantry on to a large regiment basis, so that we can move individuals around with them still feeling that they are identified with their own regiment and they are not having to go from one regiment to another, with all the administrative difficulties and lack of identity that that incurs. So the Army Board then asked the divisions of infantry—you know how we split up the infantry into six divisions—and said, "We need to restructure on to regiments of at least two battalions", but that left the door open for more if that was suitable. What we want to do, if we can achieve it, is to get the Army Board's top-down direction on this meshed with the wishes of the divisions themselves coming bottom-up. If we can mesh those two together, then we will achieve what we must, and have done it pretty smoothly. I am not saying yet that we have achieved that, and the definitive announcement is not going to be made for a little while yet—certainly this side of Christmas. The exact date is not yet clear, and the Army Board has a final meeting yet to come.

  Q275  Mr Roy: Can I just clarify? The Army Board will not be coming back with a decision on the Scottish regiments this year?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: It will, this year.

  Q276  Mr Roy: It will or it will not?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: It will. Again, let me be constitutionally correct here. I say "the Army Board will . . ."—it will recommend of course to the Secretary of State. I have spoken to the Secretary of State on many an occasion about this, and we are both quite clear that we need to have this sorted out this side of Christmas—and clear and announced.

  Q277  Mr Roy: When will the Army Board make their decision? When is that due? Is it this week or next week?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: No, it is not as imminent as that. I cannot give you an exact date because it has not yet been decided, but we are quite clear that the announcement needs to be made and made public this side of Christmas.

  Q278  Mr Roy: Would that mean there is a possibility that that could be made during the Christmas-New Year recess of Parliament?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: No. You are taking me into areas which are arguably not properly my call, but the intention is to get it done well before we break for Christmas. Does that help?

  Q279  Mr Roy: That is very helpful. Probably not agreeable, but at least it is helpful.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: I said before, Mr Roy, that I understand and sympathise hugely with the emotional pain which this restructuring brings with it; but I would not be wishing that on anybody if there was no point in doing it. That would be a stupid thing to do. I do believe the prize, which I have outlined, of an infantry which is structured—I hope for a generation or two to come—is greater than this difficulty of getting from A to B. I do not want another Army Board to go through what we are going through now, and to have done so three times before. It is time to move on.


 
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