Examination of Witness (Questions 280-299)
AIR MARSHAL
BRIAN BURRIDGE
CBE
11 JUNE 2003
Q280 Rachel Squire:
May I ask you your view on whether you consider that the British
brought something unique to Operation Telic and if so,
what?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Yes, I do. The quality of our campaign planning and the thinking
that goes into it made a significant difference. I think the elegance
with which we were able in the south to move from high intensity,
high manoeuvre combat into peace support operations and humanitarian
aid, the way in which the 1st Armoured Division dealt with Basra,
was really elegant.
Rachel Squire:
Thank you. I think there would be widespread agreement with that.
Q281 Jim Knight: The
Americans were working at the level of a corps in their HQ, while,
given the scale of the British contribution, you and your staff
were operating at a division level. To what extent were you therefore
able to operate as a true part of the American network, benefiting
and embracing the full spectrum of American capabilities?
Air Marshal Burridge:
I was not operating at anything other than the operational level
of war; in other words, I and my staff were alongside General
Franks. If I catch your drift correctly, you are wondering whether
I was sitting over a division fighting a divisional battle. That
is not the case. I was sitting alongside a coalition partner who
was fighting a multi corps battle. The extent to which we were
able to optimise our contribution was unhindered.
Q282 Jim Knight: So
you and your staff were really able to track and influence everything
that was going on across the whole piece.
Air Marshal Burridge:
Yes; absolutely.
Q283 Jim Knight: Not
simply the British piece.
Air Marshal Burridge:
No, but we paid special attention to British activity because
that was what London would need to know about. No, we are part
of a construct at the operational level that is fighting an entire
campaign.
Q284 Mr Cran: Could
we come to the legitimacy of the operation we are talking about,
not from the point of view of international lawyers, because you
and I are not that commodity at all, but I mean from the point
of view that there were considerable reports before, during and
indeed after the operation that British public opinion was pretty
divided about the operation and whether British troops should
be committed or not? Was this something which concerned you and
your commanders or not?
Air Marshal Burridge:
I personally had no doubt about the legality of it.
Q285 Mr Cran: I do
not really mean the legality. I accept what the Attorney General
says; I cannot argue.
Air Marshal Burridge:
If we use the term "appropriateness" perhaps, is that
what you mean?
Q286 Mr Cran: I mean
the fact that British public opinion was clearly divided and there
were considerable numbers of people who simply felt that we should
not go into this operation without the cover of the United Nations.
That is really what I mean and whether that concerned you.
Air Marshal Burridge:
Yes, it concerned me that we were going into an operation and
if the ICM polls are to be believed, with about 33% public support,
which is an unusual feeling for UK armed forces. I had an inkling,
which was borne out by experience, that actually the troops on
the ground, sailors, soldiers, airmen, marines, were unaffected
by that. What concerned me though was the effect that this would
have on dependants, nearest and dearest back at home, the extent
to which that group of people are already under stress and then
this additional load is on them and the way in which that might
permeate forwards. Actually it did not and, as we know, public
support during the combat phase went up to about 80% according
to The Guardian poll. We try to have faith that when we
go to war the British public traditionally supports its armed
forces and deals with the politics or whatever later.
Q287 Mr Cran: To get
the clear signal from you, this was not a morale issue among the
troops and there were no significant numbers, or maybe none, among
our troops who wished to be repatriated because they did not want
to be part of this.
Air Marshal Burridge:
No, it was not a morale issue and I am not aware of anybody saying
they were not going to participate.
Q288 Mr Cran: One
final question, because you have been very clear in your answers,
is simply the question of weapons of mass destruction. A discussion
is going on and we are trying to find them and all the rest of
it. In so far as the military have a view about any of these things
was this part of your thinking too? Did this legitimise the operation
for the armed forces or did it play absolutely no part? You took
your orders from government and that was it.
Air Marshal Burridge:
It would be nice to think we were that single-minded. The notion
that our government decided on the legitimacy of this operation
on the basis of disarming Iraq was something that we in the armed
forces could and did identify with.
Q289 Rachel Squire:
Coming back to aspects of military planning and the avoidance
of civilian casualties, I know you have already said you used
minimum force to protect the people of Iraq and defend the infrastructure.
You also said that the world will judge us by our conduct in phase
3. Certainly the stated campaign objective was to demonstrate
to the Iraqi people that the quarrel was not with them and that
their security and well-being was a concern of the coalition forces.
Would you like to make any further comment on the way in which
the coalition forces delivered violence, aggression, to the battlespace
was affected and influenced by that stated and very clear objective?
Air Marshal Burridge:
It informed everything we did in that from kinetic targeting through
to the way in which we dealt with urban areas. If you take Basra
as an example, and I have described that as very elegant, the
most inelegant piece of urban operation I know is Grozny. We always
wanted to be at the elegant end because it was very, very much
uppermost in our minds that we needed that. The reason I said
the world will judge us on our conduct in phase 3 is because we
need them on board for phase 4, as we are seeing. It was very
important to me to ensure that phase 4 was doable, in other words
there was a country which was very rapid to regenerate and that
it would be a large task and would require the contributions of
other nations. Clearly our conduct could not be in any way deemed
to have put off other nations joining us for phase 4. Another
aspect comes to mind and we have talked a lot about kinetic targeting,
dropping bombs, but we have not talked about information operations.
The balance between achieving an effect—and this is an effect
based campaign—using non-kinetic methods, information operations,
leaflets, radio, all that sort of thing, versus kinetics is again
an aspect that was different about this campaign, because we used
a lot more non-kinetic methods to achieve an effect because we
did not want to convince the people of Iraq that we were anything
other than on their side.
Q290 Rachel Squire:
Talking about targets and so on, can I come on to ask you about
the list of targets to be attacked and the way in which I gather
they are heavily scrutinised by legal advisers. That was something
I was first made aware of when the Committee visited Operation
Saif Sareea. I never thought that you would have lawyers out
with you in the command tent before. Can I ask you how comfortable
the military command was with what our witnesses described last
week as the "heavy lawyering" of the target set, that
is the continuing requirement for legal clearance for individual
targets and how that operated in practice, especially as lawyers
are not generally known for giving you an immediate response within
three seconds flat.
Air Marshal Burridge:
I feel extremely comfortable with the construct we use embracing
legal advice because it protects me and it protects the person
who is delivering the weapon. I think it is absolutely vital.
We train our lawyers as operational lawyers, so they do get lots
of practice at how to deal with targets, so they do learn to do
it quickly. Personally I would only have to clear targets which
might be deemed difficult, because otherwise I would have delegated
simpler targets to lower levels. The actual construct I use for
target clearance is that I create a targeting board of which I
am the chair and, because I am the person who has the personal
delegation, I have the final vote, I am the final arbiter. Sitting
on that board with me is my lawyer and my political adviser. My
political adviser is actually a senior civil servant whose job
it is to reflect the policy and ministerial interest and between
us we take each target in turn, we go through those tests which
I mentioned earlier on proportionality, take a legal view, take
a policy view and then come to a decision. That is how it actually
works. It can take a long time to do one target. If you think
there is some information missing or you do not understand why
that deduction has been made or you need to go back and look at
the audit trail, that is what we do. I am very happy and most
of us operators are entirely happy about having a lawyer alongside.
Q291 Rachel Squire:
Clearly you were happy about how it actually worked in practice.
Air Marshal Burridge:
Yes. If I may just digress a moment, we have some experience going
back from the first Gulf War and then through the Bosnia air campaign
and then the Kosovo air campaign, Desert Fox, northern
and southern watch, where all those things were different but
they were relatively low tempo. The decision making required in
those cases was relatively sedate. It was never going to be like
that in Telic because the whole point, the way the campaign
plan was put together, was to generate a multitude of mass effects
to overwhelm the command and control of the regime. This was going
to be fast and furious, high tempo, high manoeuvre. I was gratified
that our system in this country allows delegation down to people
like me to allow us to do that. I think it worked well.
Q292 Rachel Squire:
Can I come back to your earlier answer when you were talking about
the information operations and the decision on when to use those?
How successful have you found them to be?
Air Marshal Burridge:
It is very difficult to apply measures of effect to information
operations. We are really only just learning this and one of the
lessons out of this will be to understand more about how to deliver
the effect and it probably is a question of needing to do it over
a long period and how to discern and then measure you have achieved
that effect. Essentially in most cases information operations
are seeking to influence the decision making of an individual:
fight, not fight, blow up oil wells, not blow up oil wells. It
is very difficult to say that the leaflets which said "Do
not blow up oil wells" were the pivotal factor as opposed
to loyalty to my company or whatever. These are the things we
have to get into now because this is right at the heart of effects
based warfare.
Q293 Chairman: I cannot
remember whether you gave the answer to the question: on how many
occasions did you veto an American decision to attack a specific
target?
Air Marshal Burridge:
I think we agreed that we would provide you with a classified
note on that.
Q294 Chairman: Fine;
thank you. What about having made your decision on a target and
the adviser said "Fine, go ahead" and the lawyer said
"Fine, go ahead", then when you made an evaluation of
the target you said "Oops"? On how many occasions did
you find that the decision made was in fact the wrong decision,
that there were individuals around who were not believed to be
there or it was a wrong decision? How did you evaluate what you
had actually authorised once you had seen the battle damage assessment
or whatever terminology you use?
Air Marshal Burridge:
You cannot really. Battle damage assessment provides you with
the degree of damage to where you drop the weapon. If you have
caused considerable numbers of civilian casualties, then the other
side will use that and the media will portray it. Actually being
in a position and from a battle damage assessment point of view
be able to assess casualties is difficult. When I went to Basra
the first time and just looked at some of the targets we had hit,
I was taken by the degree to which there was minimal collateral
damage. Using precision guided weapons on single buildings which,
when you place the aim point right in the middle of the building,
the way in which they collapse causes very little damage on the
outside. There will be a weapon effects team going in at some
stage soon, but they are not in a position to measure civilian
losses. That is a forensic job really.
Q295 Syd Rapson: I
have the impression that some pilots were able to react to threatening
situations and attack those targets virtually free-lance. I understand
one wedding party was attacked at one stage. Your orders to pick
out and specifically choose targets on political and legal advice
seems to be very good, but is there another overlay of pilots
who are able to react to circumstances they find if they are flying
over a particular area, they are locked on and they can then attack
without asking your permission?
Air Marshal Burridge:
I do not recognise the example you gave about a wedding party.
I do in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq. The law of armed conflict
applies: if you are fired at then self-defence can apply. In close
air support, for example, the targets are fielded forces and fielded
forces do not go through the targeting regime which I have just
discussed. There are similar constraints on the person designating
the target who then has to go through that distinction, proportionality
argument.
Q296 Mr Howarth: You
were and are subject to the International Criminal Court; General
Franks was not and is not. You will have seen that there are people
in Belgium—you may ask what the Belgians are for—who
are apparently seeking to bring action under the International
Criminal Court against certain people involved in this war. To
what extent did the knowledge that you were and are subject to
this Court have any bearing on the way in which you and your colleagues
took into account the very onerous responsibility laid on you
for choosing these targets?
Air Marshal Burridge:
Not at all, because if my conduct was outside the constraints
of the Geneva Convention or the law of armed conflict, then I
would stand charged in the UK courts. If there were anything I
might have to answer to the International Criminal Court on, I
would already be answering in a UK court.
Q297 Mr Howarth: So
your view on these attempts to bring legal action is presumably
pretty dismissive.
Air Marshal Burridge:
I do not dismiss lightly anything like that. I am just making
the point that UK law is perfectly adequate to deal with these
aspects.
Q298 Mr Howarth: So
we do not need to be signed up to the International Criminal Court.
Air Marshal Burridge:
I could not possibly comment.
Q299 Mr Hancock: May
I ask you about the Iraqi air force and when you were first conscious
of the fact that you would not encounter them in combat in the
air? Was there at any time during the early part of the campaign
a decision to take out planes of the Iraqi air force which might
not be in Iraq?
Air Marshal Burridge:
We never say never about whether the Iraqi air force is going
to fight, but it was quite clear from day one, when they did not
launch anything against our attacks that they were not going to
fight that day. Their level of preparation indicated actually
that they were probably not going to fly at all, but you never
know. You did not know, for example, whether they would use combat
aircraft in an asymmetric attack, which was always a possibility.
No consideration was given to taking out Iraqi aircraft which
might be in other countries. Frankly I do not know whether there
are any in other countries.
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