Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
20 APRIL 2004
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER,
ADMIRAL SIR
ALAN WEST,
GENERAL SIR
MIKE JACKSON
AND AIR
CHIEF MARSHAL
SIR JOCK
STIRRUP
Q220 Mr Blunt: Thank you. Might I focus,
therefore, on the specific set of capabilities on land, with that
introduction. General Jackson, these are questions really aimed
at you, about this balance between heavy and light and the new
medium-scale forces. In the SDR we unsquared the brigades, which
was accepted as a penalty by the then Chief of the General Staff
but there was then a return to it, so there was a formation training
cycle which was then going to be, in a sense, to make up for that.
Now that, because of the operational tempo that has occurred since
the SDR, has not really been able to work and we now appear to
be paying the price of going from three armoured brigades in a
division down to two. What is the military price that you judge
is therefore being paid by that sacrifice of heavy capability,
going from three to two armoured brigades?
General Sir Mike Jackson: "Sacrifice"
is a bit of an emotive word, is it not? This is a balanced judgment
which was being made.
Q221 Mr Blunt: It is the cost part of
the cost-benefit analysis, I accept, yes.
General Sir Mike Jackson: When
you look back to the end of the Cold War and see what the army
has been required to do over that decade-and-some, it is quite
striking the relative frequency with which the heavy end, the
heavy armoured end, is used as compared to the light end. It is
the latter which has been called on very much more frequently,
partly because of the urgency of the circumstances and therefore
rapidity of deployment and partly because it is those sort of
forces which have actually been required to have the effect on
the ground. So there was an imbalance here of use and it meant
to some extent that we were having one part of the army being
over-used, and, if you like, another part being relatively underused—and
these are relative terms. It also has something to do, I think,
with the frequency—putting my point perhaps another way—of
large-scale operations as against small and medium. The large
scale seems to be about once a decade, when you count up the Falklands,
Gulf I and Gulf II. When thinking about a future army structure—because
we cannot stand still—that is not an option—we can
at least think about how in ten or 15 years time we will be structured
in the best possible way to continue to achieve the operational
success which we do now. The rebalancing exercise requires the
reduction of the heavy armoured forces, as you say, from three
brigades to two: the conversion, therefore—and it is not
quite as simple as that, but in arithmetical terms that is how
it is—of that third armoured brigade into a second, in the
army, light brigade, and not forgetting 3 Commando Brigade, of
course, a third light brigade. So you see that balancing there.
Of course, in between, we at the moment have three mechanised
brigades, parts of which are heavy—because, as you know,
each mechanised brigade has a main battle tank regiment and an
armoured infantry battalion, so that part of it is heavy. Not
only do we have a conundrum over frequency of use, there is a
conundrum over rapidity of deployment. The conundrum is of course
that the armoured brigade is a most powerful force when it is
in theatre but it is more difficult and lengthy to get it there.
Conversely, the light force is rapidly moved but its comparative
combat power of course is relatively low. We are looking to take
a trick here in the middle, balancing off heavy/light, with a
new style medium brigade which will give—and nothing will
be perfect in this sense because you have a weight-distance equation—a
better solution to this question of deployability. That leads
us on to FRES, but that was probably not the purpose of your question.
I hope that lays out where we are.
Q222 Mr Blunt: It is the purpose of my
question. The solution for the medium size or medium weight brigades
is FRES.
General Sir Mike Jackson: In due
course, yes.
Q223 Mr Blunt: When are we going to get
FRES?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
initial in-service date for the simple variant is 2009/2010, of
that sort of order, but there is still a study going on as to
what the acquisition process should be. That is the target date.
Q224 Mr Blunt: Are we going to reach
it? For me, with some knowledge of this, trying to understand
what FRES is going to look like is like trying to nail a blancmange
to the wall. It does not seem easy even to understand the process
that is happening inside the MOD, for the various stories that
seem to be coming out about how the procurement is being conducted.
When would you expect a brigade to be equipped with FRES?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I have
given you the target date for the simple variety.
Q225 Mr Blunt: You said the initial in-service
date is expected to be 2009/10.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes.
Q226 Mr Blunt: Initial in-service date
could mean the first—
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
you are getting frankly into too much precision over a new family
of fighting vehicles at this point. I cannot give you the answer
to that simply. There is not yet enough information for me to
be able to answer that question sensibly. It is one thing to have
a target, but it is another thing to have knowledge of what is
actually achievable. The study into what is the appropriate acquisition
process for this family of vehicles has not got to the point where
I can give you that sort of answer.
Q227 Mr Blunt: That is why I was a bit
concerned when the permanent secretary, in the language he used,
said, "We have said 2009/10, therefore I, as permanent secretary,
must say 2009/10". The concern here is that we are reshaping
the army to have a medium weight brigade and, if I were a betting
man, looking at how far the procurement process has advanced for
FRES and all the difficulties of producing the technology for
a vehicle like that to be able to deliver what the you want of
it, I would have thought 2009/10 was pretty difficult.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I would
accept that it is a challenging target to set.
General Sir Michael Walker: May
I help? FRES is a concept, as you know; it is not a vehicle. It
came about as a result of our understanding of the American transformation
model in which they wanted to produce a vehicle of dimensions
and agility that could be deployed in exactly the way Mike has
described. The then chief of the American army said to the science
and technology community: "This is the technology we need.
Go and deliver it to me by a certain date." Essentially that
technology allowed you to deliver the same combat power from a
medium-weight vehicle that a tank would give us or that an armoured
infantry vehicle would give us. That was the thinking. You are
left with two possibilities. Either you go out and you buy what
is currently on the streets and available now, which, in a sense,
is a platform of some sort and you fill it with everything you
can, or, alternatively, you develop, using the technology, so
that when you produce this thing it is as state of the art as
it can be, it has a reasonable life and it has the capabilities
that are necessary to give it enough protection, enough fire power
and enough mobility and enough strategic mobility to meet the
requirements. The process at the moment is looking at the debate
between those two. If technology cannot deliver, then maybe the
decision will have to go in favour of a platform that is available
on to which things can be placed. If the technology can deliver,
then we should exploit it to give us the best capability that
we can for our troops when they go abroad. That is the nature
of the examination that is going on now.
Q228 Mr Blunt: Given that is obviously
a challenging task and given the uncertainty therefore about the
date at which one might deliver FRES to a medium weight brigade,
are we not leaving our forces under-protected by reducing the
number of main battle tanks which have just proven themselves
in Gulf II? We now for the first time appear to have a tank which
is a world beater and our prompt reaction is then to cut its rather
slim numbers rather substantially. Are we not leaving our forces
under-protected by making that decision now?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes,
but you have to bear in mind what slice of the armoured capability
is going to be put in to even a large scale conflict. We do not
plan to field three armoured brigades simultaneously and have
not done. This is a careful balancing act set against what might
be required of the army in the most demanding circumstances.
Q229 Mr Blunt: Could you give us a percentage
of the amount of the amount of heavy armoured brigades we are
going to lose?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Not
at this stage.
Q230 Mr Blunt: Do you expect the size
of the army to change as a result of the White Paper?
General Sir Mike Jackson: It is
being examined. It probably will, but it will be, I suspect, a
relatively marginal change in percentage terms. But our ability
to react to changing circumstances does allow us on occasion to
take an advantage there and there is of course the whole question
of the future of military support to the civil power in Northern
Ireland which plays into this arena as well. There are unknown
factors there. We shall see.
Q231 Mr Blunt: How resilient, if that
is the right word, is the future army force structure going to
be? In other words, we have constantly had to backfill units being
deployed in operations over the last ten years. Once all the changes
have come into place, are we still going to be in the game every
time somebody goes on operations they are going to see 20, 30,
40% of their people are somewhere else?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
grateful for that question, because, you are right, unit establishments
have never been as robust as we would have liked. Therefore, the
backfilling, robbing Peter to pay Paul, or whatever phrase gets
used on deployment, has been part of life. The Army Board is determined
to put this right, to give unit establishments back that lift,
where appropriate, that will avoid having to go round that backfilling
route. We are devising ways in which we can readjust manpower
to achieve that, but I can assure you it is a very clear objective,
what is known in the jargon as Future Army, Step 2. We
are on the case.
Q232 Mr Blunt: Is there anything you
can give the Committee in slow time on Future Army Step 2?
I am sure that would be of much interest.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
am sorry to butt in here, but I think we are at the stage where
no decisions have been made yet, so it would probably, I do not
know, be outside parliamentary privilege. Ministers have to make
a decision, I think, first, before we—
Q233 Chairman: I would like to reply
to that, General. We are interested in things before decisions
are made. It is not our role just to react once a decision is
made. If the MoD has any intelligence, sometimes it is down to
them to deal with. Other times, I think it is profoundly unwise
simply to dump something on us and say, "Here is our decision"
when it would be really quite helpful at some stage if they could
give us some of the argument beforehand; not saying, "We
have not made a decision, therefore you have to wait until that
decision is made".
General Sir Michael Walker: I
accept that, Mr Chairman, but I do not think it is our duty to
speculate on the direction in which we might go. Certainly these
studies go on. You well know how the Ministry of Defence operates—or
Crispin does, certainly—and the way in which all these things
are looked at, but, as yet, none of these proposals has even been
considered by ministers, and I think that to put them before you
before they have had a chance to see them would be wrong—Don't
you?
Q234 Chairman: No! We can give a very
intelligent response.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
am sorry, I will withdraw that question!
Q235 Mr Blunt: May I finish by saying
you will remember Front-line First.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
will. It is seared upon my heart.
Q236 Mr Blunt: That was an exercise which
had to be carried out in the face of the Treasury—there
is no disguising that—but the way the exercise was carried
out was to go out to the whole Department and seek suggestions
as to how to improve things. It was a very open exercise in the
way it was conducted, with a statement to the House announcing
how it was going to be conducted and a statement to the House
when it was concluded. It was extremely open. Politically, as
far as ministers were concerned, in terms of the Department's
presentation it worked very well. I would just commend the transparency.
It does make the tough decisions we have to take easier to sell.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
accept your point, but, equally, this is routine work in progress,
and one of the difficulties, as you well know, is that much mischief
is made to the serious detriment of our workforce if things get
out about some of the ideas and proposals that are being put forward.
For a tank regiment sitting in Iraq, to see somebody's suggestion
that they should no longer exist is not helpful to their morale.
Quite clearly, we want to keep that within the bounds of the work
we are doing. It is the army who are conducting this study and
who will make recommendations to the Secretary of State in due
course.
Q237 Chairman: A seemingly rational argument
is predicated on the fact that nobody is going to leak inside
the system, so you get the worst of both worlds: you have a secretive
system where a committee like ours, which has an obligation to
try to find out what is happening, then reads in The Guardian
or The Times what somebody for their own vested interests
and reasons seeks to transmit to a broader audience and then you
have an allegedly closed debate which becomes a debate generated
by the amount of information that is leaked, which is usually
very partial. On the subject of tanks—and you have given
your warning there, General—and be careful, with The
Guardian on your right, your boss on the left and who knows
who behind—it seems to me that we have waited 100 years
for a good tank and now we have them. They are superb, superb
tanks. I would have thought that even if they are to be used for
what I might call Basra type, post initial conflict situations,
they are very useful to intimidate if it is necessary to intimidate.
I seem to recall a parliamentary answer quite recently that no
plans have been made as to what to do with the tanks. Whenever
it is said "no plans have been made" it gets me rather
anxious. If we are to cut down the use of tanks held ready for
operational use, at least I would hope that those left are not
sold off to whoever we can sell them to or give them to, but can
be held in reserve, in case the policy makers have got it wrong
yet again, when there is a requirement for the tanks. The end
of the tank, broached for generations, I do not think is going
to be reached for some considerable time. If it is feasible for
you to write to us or tell us a little more than "no plans
have been made as to what to do with any in-service tanks."
We would really like to know the philosophy behind the cutting
of the number of tanks, which is low anyway. If it is for financial
reasons, should you tell us that, and if it is not for financial
reasons what the other reasons are and whether we going to keep
them, use them.[1]
Maybe TA personnel over a period of time could learn how to use
them. In the event of a crisis, where we might actually lose tanks,
it is not much of a consolation then to say, "Oh, well, we
made a good decision in 2004 to get rid of one-third of them,
maybe now we can borrow the rest to undertake a military activity".
I am sorry for the barrage but I really feel the case has not
been made and will not be able to be made for reducing significantly
or at all the number of tanks.
General Sir Mike Jackson: First
of all, I think it is worth being very clear that Challenger II
has proved itself now to be a remarkably effective fighting system.
But I go back to what I said a little while ago, and that is that
we actually hold more tanks in the inventory than we would, I
think under any circumstances, actually put into the field. Again,
never say never—there is always the unexpected, as we have
already discussed—but we hold more tanks than plans—certainly
logistic plans as well—would support. As to disposal of
any Challengers which were deemed to be surplus, I have no real
knowledge on that, I am afraid. But I hear all you say.
Q238 Chairman: You talk about using logistic
plans as a rationale for perhaps dismissing the number of tanks
we have, then we find out from our own study of Iraq that logistic
plans are less than 100% perfect. As you said earlier, you can
never tell what kind of war we are going to fight. We are now
down to 150 tanks and we could lose half of them in a major conflict,
should that type of conflict emerge. Then where does one go? If
we have paid for them and we are not going to give them away—yes,
there will be costs of putting them—
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
certain in my own mind that the main battle tank, and of course
its companion fighting vehicle, the armoured infantry fighting
vehicle, the Warrior, those two very capable systems, are going
to be with us for decades to come. I have no doubt about that.
It is interesting that the United States army has just made it
clear that Abrams, their main battle tank, will be in service
beyond 2030-32 was I think the year given. This is not the end
of the main battle tank and its replacement by some gee-whiz bit
of equipment not yet invented at all. That is not what we are
talking about.
Q239 Mr Havard: On this question of the
size of the land army, I was going to try to wind it into something
I was going to ask you later about basing and joint training and
so on, but the army has a particular place here because the degree
of change it is having to make is probably greater than the other
two services in certain aspects. As I understand it, something
like 40% of the army is currently not trained-for-role. It is
the usage of the army and the question of the readiness cycle—and
I will come back to this later perhaps when I am talking about
how people train together. With the readiness cycle at the moment,
there is something like one-third of the army involved in that
process. It is a question about the deployability and the trained-for-role
at the given time you require them, so it is less to do with the
size of the overall number and more to do with their ability to
respond and be trained at the appropriate time. They seem to me
to be questions equally as large as questions about equipment.
They are not necessarily addressed in the public print at the
moment but presumably they are being addressed in terms of your
considerations.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Training,
of course, is an essential part of having military capability:
if you are not trained, you do not have it. It is as simple as
that. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. In the way the field
army sets about this, as you know, the six ground manoeuvre brigades,
three currently armoured and three currently mechanised, are trained
through what we call the "formation readiness cycle"
to which you have just alluded, designed to ensure that at any
one time we have one brigade from each of those trios which is
at high readiness and ready to be deployed. That system has worked
well. It is complicated by the operational tempo which we have
at the moment. There is a non-operational aspect to this as well
which is the arrival of digitisation and the Bowman system: each
brigade is being Bowmanised as a coherent formation, and it is
a program which takes some six/seven months for each brigade—
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