Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-78)
24 MARCH 2004
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER,
ADMIRAL SIR
ALAN WEST,
GENERAL SIR
MIKE JACKSON
AND AIR
CHIEF MARSHAL
SIR JOCK
STIRRUP
Q60 Mr Cran: When do you think you will
reach definitive conclusions?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
know the work is going forward now. I suspect it will be less
definitive than it is adjustment in terms of the way we do things
at the moment. I anticipate we will see something coming up to
the Chiefs of Staff Committee probably in the next three or four
months.
Q61 Mr Cran: Okay. The second sentence
that interests me says this: "We are also looking carefully
in the light of lessons identified from the operation in Iraq
at how we can improve the ability of forces to prepare in advance
. . ." those are the key words to prepare in advance ".
. . of a commitment to specific operational development".
That seems to me to be a tall order but tell me a little about
that?
General Sir Michael Walker: There
are a number of factors which give you the ability to prepare
in advance. The first, of course, is that you have to be trained
to the right level in the sort of operation that you are going
to do. We do, if you like, what I call, by and large, generic
training across the piece for all fighting as the basis for our
training. When we deploy on a UN operation, on a peace support
operation, on some other sort of operation there then needs to
be a specialist package put together for the troops going so that
the skills they may need there are focused on or given a particular
emphasis. We do that for ourselves and we do it for other people.
We have a very good system which is in the army's case called
the operational training and advisory group who do all three Services
where it is relevant to land based operations. I suspect the navy
and the air force have their own machinery for doing so in the
way that the JMC was described to you just now. So that is how
we do it. There is then, of course, the whole question of the
logistics and we have to make sure that all the bits and pieces
which are needed to go to a particular theatre are either available
within the system or that we initiate urgent operational requirements
to get them or that we get industry to turn up the volume of their
production. All of that has to happen on the logistics side. Of
course, it is always a debate because you have forces that are
at a certain degree of readiness, from the minute you raise their
readiness higher it incurs significant cost. There is always this
point at which you have to be certain that you are going to get
involved to start raising the levels. That is really the nature
of the debate that we have and we are going to have to make sure
that our readiness profile allow us to get people into the right
order to go on to the operations in good time.
Q62 Mr Cran: When are you going to reach
definite conclusions?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
cannot give you a definitive date on that.
Q63 Mr Cran: A ball park?
General Sir Michael Walker: There
is a whole package of work being taken forward. There are a number
of strands which are the lessons learnt strands. When we will
reach a definitive answer, I do not know. I do not know whether
the Services have an area but I would have thought within the
context of the next nine or ten months or so. It is not that precise.
Q64 Mr Cran: I must say I get the impression—I
may be wrong—that this whole question of graduated readiness
is causing certain strains in the various forces, simply because
the Committee heard various surface ships were not available for
Op Telic despite being part of the force available for deployment.
Would you argue that proposition I have put to you or not?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
will ask the chiefs to talk on that but I would not have described
them as tensions. This graduated readiness has been designed in.
There was absolutely no sense in having the whole of the armed
forces at a 48 hours' readiness to move, as we did in the cold
war. So the prospect of graduated readiness allows you to be much
more precise about your training objectives, it allows you to
be much more precise about the rotational manner in which you
used various forces. It does, of course, have to tie in and fit
whatever your policy is for concurrency and endurance and scale
of deployment. Now if you choose to move outside the scale then,
of course, you do bump into the problem that somebody is not then
ready. If you have designed your training machine to make sure
that you can deliver graduated forces of that scale at that readiness
and you are asking for more, you then have to wind up with a training
machine to do it so yes those sorts of tensions exist. I would
not say they were tensions in the sense other than they are fully
recognised as being one of the characteristics of a graduated
readiness.
Admiral Sir Alan West: There were
some problems because we were doing Op Fresco, of course, and
to provide people for fire fighting I had to tie ships up alongside
and that clearly had an impact on the readiness of a number of
ships. Those were ships which had come out of refit and things
like that, and were going to be starting this sequence of tier
one and tier two, getting ready for deployment but even so inevitably
it had an impact. I was tasked with providing my amphibious task
group in the northern Gulf, fully stored up, mission rehearsed,
ready for operations on 15 February and they were there in exactly
that state on 15 February and to have two SSNs ready then fine,
they were all there on 15 February. Actually, everything I was
asked was there on 15 February, now in fact they were not used
until March but they were there. We are focusing now more on the
JRRF in terms of our task group training and the like and readiness
is, of course, extremely expensive. High readiness is very expensive,
it means you have to have all the stores changes going through,
it means you are getting the spares for all those bits of equipment
and therefore I think it is right that we are quite hard on ourselves
about what do we really want at absolutely top level of readiness
and what are we happy to take below the standard. Now inevitably
that means you take some risks here and there and occasionally
one gets it slightly wrong but I think Telic showed we were remarkably
ready. The other thing we had was MCMs in theatre as well all
fully worked up so I was quite pleased actually because I hit
all the remits I was given. Fresco was causing problems and if
Fresco had gone on for a long, long time, much longer, that would
have caused me huge problems.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
There is nothing new about graduated readiness; of course, we
have had it for a long time.
Q65 Mr Cran: Absolutely but the White
Paper makes the point.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I think that where we have over the years become rather smarter
is in looking at readiness in the round rather than as applicable
just to specific force elements in isolation because you can have
an army unit at high readiness for example but if you do not have
the wherewithal to get it to where it needs to go in an expeditionary
era then you have rather wasted resources. Many years ago we took
that first step of having graduated readiness for our force elements
but now we have managed to take a rather more holistic view of
it and look at our capability in the round and apply some adjustments
to the force element readiness to take account of that.
Q66 Mr Cran: My final question, Chairman,
and Admiral you really led me rather well into it, what I think
the Committee would like to know, given, General Walker, you did
point out in your opening statement just the extent of the commitments
that you are having to undertake—five theatres, 14,000 men
and all the rest of it—the question I think the Committee
would be interested to have the answer to is simply this: how
long would it take the three Services to be ready from now to
undertake another attempt? How long would that take? What does
it mean for all these commitments?
General Sir Michael Walker: Absolutely.
I think we have already recognised that we could not do another
large scale because if we have to recuperate from the last Op
Telic and we have to take account of the current commitments beyond.
I think when you had your discussion with Simon Webb you were
given a pretty clear view about the way in which a large scale
would now be mounted. I am not sure what our latest figures are.
We are still going through the recuperation process, I have to
say that the air force and the navy are probably ahead in that
process than is the army because of the complexity of the business
and the fact there is still stuff going on in Iraq. I think we
are unlikely to be able to get to large scale until, in my view,
just before the end of the decade, probably 2008 or 2009, but
we have not measured it sufficiently accurately to be able to
tie that down to a date. What we have said is we, the chiefs,
have laid down the priorities of what we should be able to do.
We must be able to respond to counter terrorism in a small scale,
the next thing we must be able to do is to respond at medium scale
and then eventually build up to a large scale response as early
as we can and as early as the resourcing will allow.
Q67 Mr Cran: If circumstances demanded
that we had to do another Op Telic fairly quickly, I presume you
would say to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister something
has to go?
General Sir Michael Walker: Absolutely.
Q68 Rachel Squire: General, can I pick
up on some of the comments on training and readiness? You talked,
Admiral West, about skills fade on peace support operations and
needing to improve the skills of war fighting. You talked, General,
about generic training and training to the right level. Some members
of the armed forces have said to me in the past that they signed
up to contribute to the defence and security of the UK and engage
in war fighting where that was necessary, they did not sign up
to be global peacekeepers. May I ask you if that is a general
view; if it is your view and whether we should consider, as some
have argued, that we have discrete war fighting forces and separate
peacekeeping forces?
General Sir Michael Walker: Probably
a personal view from all of us but certainly it is not my view.
Certainly whilst, of course, there are those who would like to
be roughy-toughy people all the time, the fact of the matter is
that in modern military environments and operations, I am afraid
things like nation building and post conflict activity are a feature
of life. If you cannot take that as a joke, do not join because
I am afraid that is part of the reality of life. I do not think
equally that it would be sensible to have forces designed specifically
for peacekeeping. The trouble is if you have war fighters and
peacekeepers you end up with two speed organisations. You end
up with bigger organisations because we gain a lot from having
people who are trained in war fighting being able to operate down.
You cannot do it the other way round, you cannot train for peacekeeping
and hope that they can operate up to war fighting, it is hugely
consuming of time, effort and money if you try to do that and
the time just is not available. So train them for war fighting,
use them for the other forms of operation and make them available
across the piece within the capabilities that they have to train
and are equipped to manage and within the numbers you have available.
Admiral Sir Alan West: All I would
do is go to the example of a week ago last weekend when I was
in Baghdad. There were 22 naval people there, all of whom were
involved in effectively peace enforcement/peacekeeping. They were
all very, very bullish and buoyant about what they were doing
and what they were achieving and what they thought they were doing
for the people of Iraq. Down in Southern Iraq where we are setting
up there a River Patrol Service, we have a large number of navy
there and setting up their navy, again very, very positive about
it. Then I visited the St Albans which was alongside in
Bahrain doing MIOPS type operations which effectively is not hot
war stuff, it is boarding/searching, again I got none of that
flavour at all. They realise they are doing something very important
in terms of stopping terrorism building this picture of this flow
of drugs, terror and things like that. Similarly Grafton
in Karachi, when I was on board her, they knew they were doing
a lot in assisting President Musharraf to show our support in
these operations. I did not get any flavour of that. I believe
they felt they were doing something really important. Now yes
they joined to be involved in more hot war stuff than that but
I think they see what they are doing is important and they are
proud of what they are doing. I agree absolutely with CDS it would
be a mistake to try and have two types of force. What we need
is people who can do hot war fighting which is the most difficult
and then normally they are very good at doing these other things
because the requirements for discipline, training, leadership,
all these sorts of things fit rather well when one is doing those
other things.
General Sir Mike Walker: The question
revolves around some pretty fundamental things: what are armed
forces, what is their role in today's difficult world? They will
be deployed in pursuit of a set of political objectives, whatever
those objectives may be. The Iraq war was really only a precursor
to the end stage of those political objectives, a stable Iraq
etc. I do not think this is a take it or leave it situation, you
cannot choose this. The post-conflict peace in Iraq, as it has
been in Afghanistan and Kosovo, is the day that follows the night.
It is remorseless, it is going to happen, you do not have a choice,
and to complete the job you have to get into peaceable operations.
All of that said, I agree with what you have heard already that
soldiers respond to a challenge, whatever that challenge may be.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
We are quite simply in business to deliver military capability
when and where it is required and defence policy for a very long
time has laid out the full spectrum of that military capability
which goes from humanitarian assistance at one end all the way
through to war fighting, so there is nothing new in any of that.
Our people rightly take great pride in what they do and their
performance, how well they do it. I have certainly found as much
a sense of pride in peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and
all of those operations at that end of the scale as I have in
the performance at the high end of the scale. As for separate
forces, I think it is a misapprehension to think that they are
completely different skill sets, peacekeeping and war fighting,
there is an enormous amount of overlap. Also, it is a rather dangerous
assumption that peacekeeping is always a benign occupation when
nothing ever goes wrong and you do not need to respond very forcibly
with military power.
Q69 Rachel Squire: A certain place called
Mitrovica demonstrates that. Would you say that the distinctions
that used to be made between war fighting and peacekeeping have
become less clear in the last ten years rather than more clear?
General Sir Mike Walker: I think
the act of war fighting is a very different act from peacekeeping.
I think where the distinctions have become less clear is that
you can at one and the same time in the same geographical area
either be engaged in humanitarian assistance and in another part
of the area be war fighting, or equally you can find yourself
stopping war fighting, going down a peaceable road and overnight
back to war fighting. Those skills that the CNS mentioned are
fundamental. I would not feel happy putting peacekeepers into
a peaceable operation knowing from our long experience that these
guys were not up to handling themselves if things got rough.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
We have moved away from that vocabulary anyway, we now talk in
terms of effects. You will see in the White Paper that there are
all sorts of military effects that we are seeking to create and
most of them can be applicable to peacekeeping and war fighting
scenarios.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Of course,
to the soldier who finds himself in a fire fight, it is going
to feel like war whether it is called war fighting or whether
it is called a peaceable operation, he will feel himself under
attack pressure.
Q70 Mr Crausby: Network centred capabilities
is being replaced by the term network enabled capabilities and
I assume it means something different as it evolves. The Defence
White Paper is quite specific when it refers to NEC in that it
talks about the importance of the ability to "rapidly deploy
appropriate military forces to achieve desired effects".
What are the crucial capabilities that you have identified in
each of the Services in order to deliver those effects in a network
enabled way?
General Sir Mike Walker: The Service
Chiefs will talk to their Services. It is a quite widely used
phrase. It is quite widely misunderstood too. We see it as the
requirement to get sensors at the one end, shooters at the other
and have a fusion link in between that provides such a speed of
linking all the information to your effect that you can outpace
any enemy's activity. It goes wider than that, it is not just
electronics, as you will hear from the single Service Chiefs.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
First of all, the important thing to understand is that network
enabled capability is not something that each of the Services
will be providing for its own environment, that would defeat the
object of the exercise. There are many definitions of network
enabled capability but perhaps the key characteristic is that
it is a network and not a number of serial connections, so that
information that has become known from whatever source is available
to whoever might happen to need it, whether they ask for it in
the first place or not. The networking of information and the
speed of that networking is the crucial element. A lot of the
technical side of that capability is being provided for defence
as a whole. It would be wrong just to think in terms of single
Services, it is very important to understand that. We have people
who are driving that connectivity and building the network in
clusters that will serve all of our forces. There are, of course,
individual equipment programmes in each environment that will
(a) contribute to the network but (b) also make demands upon it.
Both of those aspects are critical areas of every equipment programme
that we have for the future. As far as the air force is concerned,
for example, we have Sentinel coming into service which, with
its modern synthetic aperture radar sensors, is going to provide
a lot of input. We have data links which have been put into our
aircraft, data links into the Tornado GR4, the Harrier GR7 and
9 which will help to build up that overall capability and many
other sensors besides, but it is the defence wide aspect that
it is contributing.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I would
add to that, which is very clear, it is not only the speed with
which you can take information and interpret it and use it to
produce an effect, whether that effect be of a violent nature
or otherwise, but it is also about information superiority, that
you know more about what is going on than your opponent. That
gives you the drop, it gives you the ability to increase your
tempo rather more than his.
Admiral Sir Alan West: I agree
with what has been said already, it is very clear. It is the ability
to fully understand the battle space and to share all of that
data and then use of the best means to achieve your aim, whether
that be precision weaponry, and of course we are getting better
and better at the use of precision weaponry, and there is a factor
in there in terms of timeline, the sensor-shooter timeline and
this sort of thing. We have a number of things in the programme
which are helping us to share data between all three Services
to have a better understanding of battle space and to be able
to reduce those timelines. During the last conflict, for instance,
the Navy TLAM shoots with navy special forces coming up with the
target, historically that was quite a long timeline between when
you have got a new target and you could fire a TLAM again. Those
have reduced down to about an hour and we are working on making
it even shorter. Sitting on a coast 1,400 miles you can have your
SSN or whatever holding this number of missiles and we are looking
at working on the timeline so that we can compress it right down
and ideally, finally, when we have got Sentry up and running or
some new satellite systems we can squeeze these down to five minutes
or so. You can actually have missiles, the TacTom block four in
the air for an hour or so ready to be re-targeted. You need an
understanding of your battle space to be able to make use of those
sorts of things. It is across all three Services, that ability
to interconnect and understand the whole battle space.
General Sir Mike Walker: There
is a particularly good example in the White Paper which talks
about a United States' air force officer at the CAOC in Kuwait
or Qatar, operating remotely 7,000 miles away an unmanned air
vehicle looking at the ground, finding a target and launching
in another Gulf State a couple of F18s at an attack target. That
is the sort of thing that is happening now. That is the exciting
things that we can see happening now, so really that is what it
is about. The future rapid effect system is part of this. This
is a hard piece of kit in its own right. This is a platform that
has been designed specifically to be part of the strategic rapid
deployment capability into which are going to be put the capabilities
to receive and use this information and maybe there will be some
capabilities there also to gather information and send it back
into the network. It is wider than just digital links, anything
is appropriate. What we have tended to do is to go through our
complete equipment programme to make sure that anything that is
in there is actually relevant to this new concept. It is not really
a new concept, it has just got a new name. It is making things
happen more quickly, more rapid deployment, better informed, those
sort of things. These are old military tenets but we have given
it a sexy new name.
Q71 Mr Crausby: It sounds like the beginning
of a revolutionary way to fight a war. Can you tell us something
about costings and, indeed, about reductions because the White
Paper does say "We will not be able to hold on to platforms
or force elements that do not reflect the ability to meet the
demand of future operations" and it does talk about it being
a force multiplier, allowing the same military effect to be achieved
with less. Is there some justification that NEC will allow us
to spend less in these areas or will it be a more expensive option?
General Sir Mike Walker: I do
not think it is going to be a cheap option and I do not think
it is going to be a single option. This is going to be an incremental
process of having attached ourselves to this process over the
years, making sure that everything is NEC friendly when we bring
it into service. Yes, technology these days of whatever sort is
expensive stuff and we need to make sure that we, who have no
ability ourselves, are always at the forefront of technology,
scanning the horizon for technology that is available, learning
from our allies who are doing this, and it is not just the Americans,
it is also the Scandinavians and one or two of the Europeans who
have some very interesting parts of a sort of NEC enabled system
which will be of use to us. Yes, it is going to be expensive and
it will be happening incrementally. It will mean that stuff that
was based on numbers of platforms, the legacy of the Cold War
if you think about it in army terms, the numbers of heavy guns
and heavy tanks, is going to be required less if you can produce
the same effect, which is what we are about, from such a system.
You only have to look at some of the precision with which the
PGMs during Telic delivered that effect, which was what we wanted,
we wanted to attack that room there, that was much better than
having a battery of guns which caused thousands of pounds worth
of collateral damage and destroyed about 15 houses and failed
to hit the target. It is this effects base at the tactical level
and the effects base at the strategic level that we are going
for. I think it is going to be expensive, I think it is going
to be exciting, and I think it is going to be something that we
are shifting increasingly towards to get away from some of the
older concepts.
Admiral Sir Alan West: Having
said that, in the final analysis if you have got one of something
it cannot be in two places, so that does become an issue in terms
of numbers. It is not the absolute panacea to everything, there
has to be a balance there. It is interesting because the Americans
went very fast down this route but they believe their navy, which
is down to about 380 ships, is much too small and they want to
start boosting the numbers again, so there is a balance.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
In Telic last year we deployed about 30% fewer fast jets than
we did for the Gulf War in 1991 and yet the force was far more
powerful and capable than in 1991 because we focused on the right
things over that period, modern sensors and particularly precision,
and we will see the same sort of gearing through investing in
network enabled capabilities.
The Committee suspended from 5.43 pm to 5.50
pm for a division in the House.
Mr Viggers: I would like to lead into
some questions about defence procurement and among other things,
as has been pointed out by David Crausby, the Defence White Paper
points out that some platforms or force elements that do not have
flexibility may need to go. May I ask each of the Chiefs to spell
out for us in their own way the biggest defence procurement question
coming up in the short and medium term.
Q72 Chairman: For their own Services.
Admiral Sir Alan West: The biggest
defence procurement question?
Q73 Mr Viggers: The biggest defence procurement
issue.
Admiral Sir Alan West: I think
as far as my top priority in terms of procurement, it is the CVF.
It is very much the Government's policy and our buildings policy
that we should go and procure two carriers. Basically the capability
required is they will carry about 40 aircraft, 36 Joint Strike
Fighters. We are in stage three of the CVF assessment phase at
the moment. A lot of successful work has been done in optimising
the design. The sizing has veered up, down and wherever, but the
most important thing is one should not get too fixated on size,
we need the capability that is required. I think on the capability
required at the moment it looks as though we have got something
like 275 metres and about 60,000 tonnes, which is about the figure
that has come out of that. There is still more iterative work
to go on. At the moment the main gate is due to be early summer.
I think there have been issues over the alliance and how this
is going to be produced and good healthy debate about cost because
clearly we want to get the best price possible for the UK for
that capability. I would not be surprised if that main gate slipped.
There is no reason at all why we cannot make the ISD for the Queen
Elizabeth, which will be 2012, and the Prince of Wales,
which will be 2014. I think it is very exciting that we are getting
these, it is a huge capability for UK defence, particularly in
the expeditionary operations that we conduct. That is the area
that I believe is my main priority in terms of acquisition. We
have had problems with other things that have been procured, there
have been delays and things like that, those do cause problems
and we have to run on old kit, so I do not like it when that happens.
For example, with Albion, which is at this moment as we
speak off North Norway in the final assault phase in a big exercise
up there, we have there the most fantastic ship. It is a complete
step change from the old Fearless and Intrepid.
In terms of network naval capability, the ops room has a fantastic
capacity, a huge intelligence section, for ISR. I do not know
if your Committee has visited it but it is really, really impressive.
Yes, we have got a few problems there but in terms of value for
money at the end of the day we have got an amazing piece of kit
there. Yes, I was annoyed that it was late because that always
costs money, but it is a super bit of kit and I am delighted I
have got it.
Q74 Mr Viggers: How many Type 45s do
you expect to get and what ships do you expect to retire?
Admiral Sir Alan West: We have
ordered six Type 45s at the moment. The plan originally was to
possibly get as many as 12 but that was never finally decided,
we have not ordered 12. We will have to see how many we finally
get.
Q75 Mr Viggers: Could I turn to you,
Sir Mike, for your largest procurement issues that you face and
any equipment that you see as failing to meet the test of flexibility
and so forth that will need to be retired.
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
single most important equipment programme where the army is concerned
is the Future Rapid Effect System, as it is called, FRES in its
initial form. This is not just metal, it has a new capability
dimension to it as well. At the moment, as you know, the army
has three armoured brigades at the heavy end and it has two light
brigades. I am so sorry, it has the one light brigade, 3 Commando
brigade as the second light option, and it has three mechanised
brigades, half of which are the heavy end as well because they
are Challenger 2 and Warrior. What we want to do is to give far
better options in terms of weight of effect when we get it into
theatre and the speed of deployment because at the moment we get
light forces there very quickly but their effect is less; heavy
faces up to any opponent but it takes time. This is where we are.
This new medium capability is going to be vital to getting the
army's deployability, readiness, expeditionary nature right. To
do that we need a new family of vehicles, some of the ones we
have at the moment are getting very old and in any event will
need replacing. This is to give the medium force the right mobility,
the right protection, the right firepower for a speedier deployment
than we can do at the moment. It is central to the army's future,
to its capabilities, not just as a number of vehicles, it is actually
the capability. This is the most important single project in army
procurement terms.
Q76 Mr Viggers: Sir Jock, do you need
232 Typhoons?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
Do we need 232? We always keep numbers under review as circumstances
change, as you know. What we have is a contract for 55 and an
MOU for two more tranches, one of 89 and one of 88. We are engaged
in negotiations on the contract for the second tranche now, the
contract for the third tranche is still some years off. I was
going to give you two examples from opposite ends of the time
spectrum and, indeed, the one closest to the sledges completing
the development of Typhoon, not yet complete, and getting a contract
for tranche two that gives us the incremental capability in the
sequence in which we require it. I ought to take the opportunity,
if you will allow me, to say a word or two about the nonsense
that tends to get printed about Typhoon being a Cold War aeroplane
and of no applicability to the modern environment. Large platforms
in all three environments from initial concept to out of service
date these days tend to be around something approaching half a
century and the notion that the world is not going to change at
least half a dozen times over that period, of course, is ridiculous.
The key is to ensure that our platforms are adaptable so that
we can change the nature and/or scale of the capability we deliver
from them. Capability is not just about the hardware in the platform,
it is about the hardware in computing systems, about software,
sensors and weapons and connectivity in terms of networks. All
of that is what we are building into Typhoon. At the other end
of the spectrum it is crucial that we maintain a suitable level
of investment in the exploration of unmanned systems. The Chairman
and other Members of the Committee will know my enthusiasm for
this. A lot of work is being done, particularly on unmanned combat
aerial vehicles and I think it is going to be a key area for the
future and one in which we must continue to experiment and invest.
Q77 Chairman: First the good news and
then the bad news. The good news is that we will draw stumps;
the bad news is that through no fault of yours, or ours, we are
not entirely satisfied with having four people here at the same
time, but if it is okay we will contact the Secretary of State
and yourselves and perhaps we can have another session. Maybe
we will have to work out the format. You have answered the questions
more thoroughly than we expected in many ways but I do not think
it has been something that is worth repeating, there are too many
people, too many questions. We will be in touch if that is okay.
I hope we can find a convenient time.
General Sir Mike Walker: Chairman,
it was not our choice to come here like this, it was yours.
Chairman: No.
Q78 Mr Blunt: You must explain it. You
must explain it.
General Sir Mike Walker: If you
want to have the Chiefs then you must have the Chiefs, I do not
think you can only have half the Chiefs, either we come as the
Chiefs or you have individual discussions. That is the difficult
bit.
Chairman: What happened was a compromise
between what we wanted and what the Ministry of Defence wanted
and, frankly, that compromise has not been as successful as we
would have liked, through no fault of your own. It has happened
to you a second time, General, that we will have to call you back.
I am really sorry. It will elongate slightly our inquiry but we
will have to discuss that with you when we have a more satisfactory
environment. Thank you very much for coming, we will see you again.
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