Examination of Witness (Questions 220-239)
AIR MARSHAL
BRIAN BURRIDGE
CBE
11 JUNE 2003
Q220 Mr Cran: The
Committee would be quite interested to know where you fitted in
to the chain of command, given that, as we understand it, tactical
command of UK forces rested with 3* American generals and UK command
authority rested with the Chief of Joint Operations (CJO). Where
did you fit into this rather complicated structure?
Air Marshal Burridge:
The CJO, who was the joint commander, had operational command
of UK forces. These are prosaic terms, but we are going to have
to go through them. He was able to assign different forces to
different missions, that is what operational command actually
means. I sat below him and I had operational control, so I was
given the tasks and the forces and then I just had to match them
into the American plan. Tactical command, in other words executing
the individual tasks, was held by the UK 2* officers who were
contingent commanders within each environment, air, land, maritime.
They handed tactical control to their opposite number who was
in all cases a 3* American, who would actually be the person who
owned that part of the plan. I said this was prosaic. It actually
takes longer to describe that it does to use in practice.
Q221 Mr Cran: That
is quite over-simplified in a way, is it not? You are really saying
that all you had to do, when the tasks were set out, was to match
resources to them. Were you not able to influence?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Sure; sure.
Q222 Mr Cran: Just
talk us through how you influenced these things.
Air Marshal Burridge:
The role of a national contingent headquarters, my role, probably
revolves around three areas. Firstly, support; in other words
providing the necessary logistic support and other forms of support
to the contingents. Secondly, inform; in other words provide the
information that London needs for political decision making or
military decision making. Thirdly, influence. Influence is exercised
in a number of ways and was in this case. We had spent a considerable
time planning with the Americans at Tampa and we had embedded
staff there. We were able, from the bottom up to influence the
way the planning was conducted. We conducted an exercise with
General Franks and the CENTCOM staff before Christmas, which for
us was one of a series, but for them was mission rehearsal. We
were able to exercise influence over our analysis of the plan
against how it went. On a day-to-day basis he and I would meet
for a component commanders' conference for one hour a day at least
and we would look not only at what had just happened, but more
particularly at what was planned at about a 48-hour horizon. If
I had reservations, either because I felt that what might be planned
would be outside the delegations I had been given, or that from
a point of view of joint endeavour it would not be the right thing
to do in terms of the way the international community might judge
us, then we would have a discussion and invariably he would agree.
It is true to say, in that sort of a coalition, many of his staff
would regard us as their conscience, because we see things through
different eyes, maybe make a different sort of analysis. That
was just at my level, but this was going on continually. I had
particularly good relationships with General Franks' deputy, Lieutenant
General Abosaid, who is someone I had known a good eight years
ago. Similarly, my staff had very good relations with the senior
staff in CENTCOM, because we had been together for a long time.
Q223 Mr Cran: Just
so the Committee can fully grasp what your role was, what were
the limits of your influence? In the directives you were given
about the role you performed where were the boundaries?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Having agreed at chiefs of staff level what the UK's part in the
plan would be—and no doubt you will want to talk about southern
Iraq and all that sort of thing—then those were my limits.
If it became clear that to pursue the mission we would need to
do something else, then I would have to ask. So the chiefs agreed
the plan and that was my blueprint.
Q224 Mr Cran: Could
you tell us about your relationship with General Franks? I do
not mean the personal relationship, I mean the professional relationship
on the one hand and also with the political leadership in London.
How did all this work together? You had to undertake quite an
exercise.
Air Marshal Burridge:
To start with General Franks and I, because he and I first met
in April of 2002, had seen each other regularly, had swopped views
on planning throughout that time and because he recognised the
quality of the thinking that our embedded staff brought, he regarded
us as a very positive aspect of his coalition. He also recognised
from a strategic political sense the importance of the UK's part
in this as a coalition partner and was very keen to make sure
that what he did underpinned that. I thought my relationship with
him was very good; he was willing to listen and when we did come
up against points about which we were at variance, inevitably
we were able to resolve them. To answer the second part of your
question, the US political construct or political control of the
military was very different from ours. As it is under this administration,
it is very direct in that it goes from the President, to Mr Rumsfeld,
SecDef, and then straight to the commander, General Franks. There
is not quite the dynamic using the joint chiefs of staff that
I remember under the Clinton administration when we were doing
Bosnia. It is very much a direct daily phone call and a discussion.
Ours is different, of course. My relationship was with General
Reith, because he is the Chief of Joint Operations; occasionally
the CDS would call me either to resolve some ambiguity about the
perceptions which were being drawn in London about what was going
on or just to give me a bit of confidence or whatever. The Secretary
of State's relationship, of course, is with the CDS, so that is
how I managed the political side of it. The Secretary of State
came out to see us a couple of times, so I was able to spend a
fair amount of time with him and make sure that at least I had
given him the impressions from my point of view.
Q225 Mr Cran: All
of us in the Committee and doubtless you in the MoD are here to
learn lessons, if there are any lessons to learn from what happened
in Iraq. In relation to the various command structures which were
set up, are you happy with how they operated? Would you with the
benefit of hindsight have anything changed and if so, in what
way?
Air Marshal Burridge:
I should preface all my remarks with "What you see depends
on where you sit". From where I sat, I was very happy with
the command relationships, command arrangements, because they
allowed me to focus on what I needed to focus on and that was
integrating UK forces into a plan and then executing that plan
at minimum risk to UK forces. I appreciated very much that there
would be a great deal going on in London from which I was totally
shielded. That was the basis in our doctrine of why we set the
command structure the way we do. Something that we will undoubtedly
consider as a potential lesson is if we see the likelihood of
our participating with the Americans becoming more the norm than
the exception, then do we need a different sort of command and
control structure which fits a bit more easily with that direct
line that the Americans are currently using. My caution is that
I have seen it done different ways in America. In my view it is
very personality dependent. You cannot always say that their doctrine
looks like this and that is what they will do. If we modify, we
may find that the next time it does not work quite so well.
Q226 Mr Cran: My last
question, simply for any future coalition co-operation, is that
there are indeed lessons to be learned, are there not?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Indeed.
Q227 Mr Cran: Could
you just canter over one or two?
Air Marshal Burridge:
On command and control or more generally?
Mr Cran: More generally.
Q228 Chairman: We
will come on to that later, if you do not mind, or it will confuse
what is already far from simple. You mentioned that you had a
mission rehearsal. How many were engaged in that? Was it almost
like the real thing? I am wondering how the structure operated
in Gulf War 1, more complicated in Kosovo, then you had the mission
rehearsal, then you had the thing set up. What would be the relationship
between the different structures and how were they modified? I
know you were not in all of the earlier ones. All we are anxious
to find out is how this complex set of inter-relationships and
formal and informal structures and operations all gelled and whether
this is a structure which might be a model amended for any future
operation?
Air Marshal Burridge:
If we go back to the first Gulf War, at that stage we did not
have a Permanent Joint Headquarters, so we earmarked a 4* headquarters
which happened to be Headquarters Strike Command and earmarked
the commander in chief of Strike Command as the joint commander.
Then General De La Billie"re was essentially doing my job
in theatre. That was pretty much what we followed this time. Kosovo,
different, because it was a NATO operation. The efficiency of
small coalitions versus the consensus basis under which NATO operates
probably clouds the difference in efficiency between the structures.
In the NATO case it is the process rather than the structure which
perhaps made things difficult. I said that we did an exercise
before Christmas. That was a computer-generated simulation of
the plan, so it just involved staff officers and senior commanders.
We modified the plan based on our experiences, but we also recognised
that the command structure we had created and the linkages which
existed, were pretty much 95% right. As we did a bit more analysis,
we just saw the occasional place where there was potentially friction,
or the communications would not jump the air gap, so we needed
to put in liaison officers to those sorts of places. That is why
a mission rehearsal of that sort is very valuable, because if
you cannot get the orders to the right people at the right time,
then your plan, if it does not fail, will certainly not be efficient.
Q229 Chairman: Were
you satisfied that the technology for decision making was compatible
with American systems?
Air Marshal Burridge:
No. One of my significant lessons is about that very thing, CIS
generally. We are just about to launch into the defence information
infrastructure project, which I hope will be the beginning of
putting this right. The US are considerably ahead of us in their
command and control technology and they use a single secure system
for operations and intelligence and for all participating agencies
such as CIA, DIA, etc. That really is the goal as far as I am
concerned for war-fighting CIS. We do not have a system you can
just plug into that. It is called SIPRNET and it is a no-form
system, so US eyes only. We had therefore to come up with some
work-arounds, for example in my headquarters I had a small enclave
with an American officer operating this equipment, so I could
get the information, but my staff could not actually access it
themselves. To alleviate that problem, the US provided the infrastructure
for a mirror image of it called XNET and that is slightly inefficient,
because it requires them to transfer the information from one
system to another and then sanitise it on the way. As it happened,
it was not a huge problem, because the participating nations were
just ourselves, Australia and to a limited extent Canada in planning.
We are inside a known intelligence agreement for sharing intelligence,
but if the coalition is big and contains partners with whom we
would not normally consider sharing high grade intelligence, then
the efficacy of that system is limited. Big lesson here: not only
the compatibility and connectivity of war fighting CIS, but also
the robustness of it as well.
Q230 Syd Rapson: During
the conflict there was a lot of contact between Rumsfeld and the
politicians and General Franks, stories around about undue influence
in the operational capacity of Franks. Was there at any time direct
contact from Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State, with yourself,
or were you left to get on with your responsibilities?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Let me just correct whatever may have been circulating in London
at this time. In terms of military direction, Mr Rumsfeld did
not, as far as I am aware—and I think probably I am in a
pretty good place to judge—exercise undue influence. As
for myself, I was very much left to get on with things. I was
trying to remember just before coming in. The Secretary of State
phoned me once and that was just to give me reassurance that everybody
was happy with the way things were going. Yes, I was very gratified
to be able to work that way.
Q231 Jim Knight: Some
people would have listened to something you said in response to
Mr Cran's questioning, that you started meeting with Tommy Franks
back in April 2002, and may have one or two questions they would
want to ask, such as while you were planning from that early stage,
did you have a military timetable, did that have a date at the
end of it by which you would need to have started the campaign?
They would want you to respond to the charge that if you started
planning that early, this whole thing was pre-determined and that
everything that went on in New York was a charade and a lot of
theatre.
Air Marshal Burridge:
They would, if that were right.
Q232 Jim Knight: That
is why I put it to you, to give you the chance to respond.
Air Marshal Burridge:
I first met General Franks in April because I was designated as
the UK's 3* deployable commander. On my first meeting with him,
we discussed Afghanistan, because that was the campaign which
was going on at the time. I well remember our first conversation.
We were discussing going from what in Operation Telic we
know as phase 3, in other words decisive operations, into phase
4, which was the nation building stuff. We spent an hour discussing
that on that occasion. We began looking at Iraq planning in the
summer. We had no timetable, but it was put to me that if the
UK was at any stage likely to participate, then best we at least
understand the planning and influence the planning for the better.
At no stage did we say "Here is the end date by which we
are going to do this". What we did have was a couple of windows.
We said ideally it makes sense either to do this in the spring
of 2003 or autumn of 2003. When we started planning, the US forces
were still reconstituting after Afghanistan. That was an issue
for them: how quickly would they be ready to do another operation
of this size?
Q233 Jim Knight: That
is very helpful. I would only ask in supplement to that whether
there were any other nations involved in any of that early planning
who then subsequently did not want to join the party or was it
just a happy coincidence that the same people who were planning
in that early stage around a contingency of needing to do something
ended up being those who took part?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Only the UK was invited in for planning in the earliest stages
and subsequently Australia. The Canadians were considering what
their contribution might be and in their case quite firmly against
the prospect of a second resolution. They did not participate
but observed; in the event, as we know, they chose not to participate.
Q234 Mr Jones: I listened
to you very carefully and you actually used an interesting word
"invited" in. What format did that take? If the only
ones involved in that planning were Britain, the United States
and later Australia, what would have been the case if we had got
a second resolution and we had had other nations, for example
France and others, who wanted to contribute militarily to this?
Air Marshal Burridge:
In what terms do you mean "what would have been the case"?
Q235 Mr Jones: Clearly
what you have described is a lot of pre-planning taking place
the summer before. If we had got a second resolution to authorise
military action, it would have involved countries other than just
the United States, Britain and Australia. Where were they in this
loop? How would they have got into it?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Had there been the conditions in which other countries would have
wanted to participate, I have no doubt they would have done, but
they would not have had the degree of influence on planning that
we had. Governments take a view. Depending on the size of their
contribution, they might say that sending a battalion to integrate
into, say, a British brigade is okay, they feel that they can
trust the robustness of the planning. If it is a nation which
is going to send a division, they may have a different view. You
take a choice. If you feel you are going to do something, then
governments have to take a choice over the moment at which they
are going to become engaged, even in planning, without commitment.
Q236 Mr Jones: Yes,
but you did use the word "invited" in. Who gave the
invitation? Was it the Americans? You said Britain was "invited"
in. By whom?
Air Marshal Burridge:
The US. It was their plan.
Q237 Mr Jones: Therefore,
there was no plan at any time to involve other nations.
Air Marshal Burridge:
Why?
Q238 Mr Jones: If
you are going to "invite", in your words, a country
like the United Kingdom to take part in very early planning, up
to a year in advance, clearly plans were being drawn up quite
ahead of any resolution in the UN, which clearly excluded other
nations, did they not?
Air Marshal Burridge:
No, because any other nation could have come on board at any time.
Q239 Mr Jones: Why
were they not invited to take part?
Air Marshal Burridge:
As I recall, the State Department sent out a letter to embassies
at some stage around September/October—I may be wide on
the dates. In just the same way as at that stage there were 34
coalition members at Tampa participating in Enduring Freedom,
so the US intent, indeed CENTCOM intent, was to build a coalition
for Iraq.
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