Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


In the absence of the Chairman, Syd Rapson was called to the Chair.

Examination of Witnesses (Questions 863-879)

LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN REITH CB CBE, MR IAN LEE AND REAR ADMIRAL CHARLES STYLE CBE

9 JULY 2003

  Q863  Syd Rapson: Can I start the meeting by making two apologies. Firstly, for keeping you waiting. We took longer in our private session trying to talk things through, as is normal for we politicians. Secondly, the Chairman is away on other parliamentary business, along with other members of the Committee. So apologies from us all on that, and I hope that the afternoon will go fairly informally. We do intend to finish at five o'clock, which might help you, to know the end time, and because of that if we could give short questions and short answers it would be more than welcome, but we have got a five o'clock finish time plugged in. It will probably ruin the whole programme but at least we know where we stand. First of all, can I ask the original question that was laid down for the Chairman, which opens things up, and this is mainly to you, Lieutenant General. Can you explain briefly to the Committee the role of the Permanent Joint Headquarters and the Chief of Joint Operations within it, and clarify your role in the command chain of Operation Telic?

  Lieutenant General Reith: Yes, of course. The Permanent Joint Headquarters was formed just over six years ago. Having reviewed previous operations, we found that we needed a permanent Headquarters to run them. The system works that the Permanent Joint Headquarters is part of the Defence Crisis Management Organisation. We have a direct link with the MoD and we work with the Policy and Commitments area in the MoD very, very closely indeed, and we have a daily video teleconference link with the MoD, and clearly my staff are talking to them on an hourly basis. The Chief of Joint Operations works directly for the Chief of Defence Staff, and he has responsibility for planning, mounting, directing, sustaining and recovering all troops on operations abroad, and I have a responsibility only for outside of the UK. So in that process my Headquarters does the operational level planning and gives politically aware military advice into the MoD, and then the MoD puts the strategic piece on top of the operational piece in the decision-making process that goes before ministers.

  Q864  Syd Rapson: Thank you. We took evidence from Air Marshal Burridge, but how did your working relationship with him operate during the major combat phase?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I was the Joint Commander and I was delegated by CDS, and the single Services then put their troops under my command. As the Operational Commander, I had command, I delegated operational control to Air Marshal Burridge, and therefore he was controlling the operation as the man in theatre dealing with the detail.

  Q865  Syd Rapson: That is a regular link, all the time, on an hourly basis?

  Lieutenant General Reith: That is within our doctrine, that we put forward either a Joint Commander in theatre or a National Contingent Commander; in this particular case, because we were junior partners, obviously, in the conflict, with the Americans, he was a National Contingent Commander.

  Q866  Syd Rapson: Did you ever consider having a Permanent Joint Command in theatre?

  Lieutenant General Reith: One of the lessons which I have drawn from this operation is that maybe our doctrine is wrong, we have to review it. It may well have been, with modern communication, that actually, as the Joint Commander, I could have been forward and still performed the function that I did for the Chiefs of Staff Committee and ministers in the briefing process during the conflict from Qatar on a video teleconference link.

  Syd Rapson: Thank you.

  Q867  Mr Howarth: General, what percentage of your staff based at PJHQ were detailed for Operation Telic?

  Lieutenant General Reith: What do you mean by `detailed'?

  Q868  Mr Howarth: How much of the operation at PJHQ was set aside for the running of the campaign, and how much of it was left to run the day-to-day business, if you like?

  Lieutenant General Reith: That is very difficult to answer, and I am not being evasive. I work a system where we form what we call an operational team, they are the only people dedicated to the operation, and in the case of Telic it was about 12 people. They work a 24-hour shift, with the link into theatre, they act as the conduit into the staff, and the staff branches then answer all the questions and do all the work required to support the people in theatre, using that as a conduit. Those staff branches also, of course, were doing all the other concurrent operations, Afghanistan, the Balkans, we put a battalion into Sierra Leone during the period, and so forth. I cannot say specifically. If you ask me, just off the top of my head, I would say about 50 per cent of our effort, maybe a bit more, was on Telic during the operation.

  Q869  Mr Howarth: Can you remind us how many people are employed under your command at PJHQ?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I have a basic establishment of 460, and during the Telic period then we built it up right through Afghanistan, and ever since Operation Enduring Freedom started I have been running at about 550.

  Q870  Mr Howarth: Was PJHQ's involvement in Operation Telic different from its involvement in other operations, such as Kosovo? Did you learn any lessons from Kosovo which have been applied during this campaign, or indeed lessons from Afghanistan, more recently?

  Lieutenant General Reith: What we did was no different from any other operations that we do. We learn after every single operation. The immediate thing, during an operation and after it, is to draw lessons from it, and, once identified, obviously, then look at how we can resource to make the changes.

  Q871  Mr Howarth: Given that, as you were just telling us, you were running a number of operations simultaneously, were you satisfied that you had enough people, even with this augmentation of about a hundred, that you have just referred to?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I was very happy with what I had. My people were working very hard, but, nonetheless, there were sufficient to do the task.

  Q872  Mr Howarth: They were stretched, not overstretched?

  Lieutenant General Reith: Correct.

  Q873  Mr Howarth: You mentioned earlier that you are part of the Defence Crisis Management Organisation. Looking at the general structures, how well do those current structures for PJHQ work within the Defence Crisis Management Organisation function?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I would say, after nearly two years in this job, extremely well. Clearly, very often it comes down to personalities, but I have a very good relationship, as do my staff, with all the branches within the MoD, and we talk to them, as I say, on a daily basis, and if we do have any differences of opinion we get together and we sort them out.

  Q874  Mr Howarth: So your overall verdict, as a result of this campaign, has been that the systems, structures, have been tested, work well and the personnel are sufficient to carry out the functions?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I am confident of that, and I am blessed that I have got such quality people in my Headquarters.

  Q875  Mr Cran: General, moving on to planning and working with the Americans, the Committee have received varying indications of when your Headquarters started planning for the operation in question. I wonder if you could tell us, as it were, from the horse's mouth, when you did start planning?

  Lieutenant General Reith: I have had staff embedded with Centcom, in Tampa, since the twin tower bombing in New York, very shortly afterwards, because we were then preparing for Afghanistan, and I have left them in place. So I have that permanent link in with Centcom Headquarters. It was in about May last year when we picked up that the Americans were doing some, what they call, `no foreigners' planning, to which we were not allowed access, which was unusual, because normally we have very, very good access on everything. Clearly, there was a decision, I think in June of last year, by the Americans to bring the UK and Australia in on their planning cycle. I then got authority from the Ministry of Defence to get involved in that planning, on the basis of no UK commitment.

  Q876  Mr Cran: That was when?

  Lieutenant General Reith: That was end of June last year, and we have been involved with the planning, with the Americans, ever since, obviously right through the combat phase and still now, dealing with the aftermath.

  Q877  Mr Cran: This document, which you will be well aware of, First Reflections, it says, at paragraph 2.4, and I will just quote it to you: "While overall planning for the operation was led by the United States, the UK was fully involved, including through personnel embedded" as you have said just now, "in US Central Command in Tampa and elsewhere." What I think the Committee would like to know is, how did that really work, in practice? The bald words suggest that it all works terribly well, and all the rest of it. Talk us through this?

  Lieutenant General Reith: It worked extremely well. Altogether, at Tampa, I had approaching 40 people, of which roughly half were embedded staff working as Staff Officers in the American Headquarters, giving UK staff power into their system, and actually we are very good at this. I had then a UK team working with them, alongside, of roughly 20, with a 2*, a Major General, who was really my link in to Tommy Franks. We were involved in the planning, as I said, we had a very close-hold group back in PJHQ and in London, which we christened the Warrior Group, which did the planning on a very close-hold basis, so it did not get out generally in the early stages, until we were more certain of any form of commitment. The staff at Tampa were able to influence the American planning and inform the American planning and ensure that the chiefs and ministers here in London knew what was going on all the time, as the plans were progressed. I refined that further, as time progressed, and I embedded staff into the Land, Air and Naval Component Headquarters as well, so that then we got into the detailed planning of each of those components, and again contributed to the planning and were able to influence them. What we were able to do, I think, was put a degree of sensitivity into the planning. The American military machine is on an industrial scale and therefore tends to be slightly less, shall we say, flexible and sensitive than we are, and I think we helped contribute in that way, and I know that General Franks appreciated our contribution.

  Q878  Mr Cran: Could we get behind the words for just a second, and you introduced `sensitivity' into it. What does that mean, could you tell the Committee what that means? I know it is difficult, because you will not want to go into the details, or anything, but in a broadbrush way, could you tell us how we influenced the Americans, apart from that, if we did?

  Lieutenant General Reith: Yes. Clearly, we were going into combat. In combat normally you use massive fire-power for effect, and, shall we say, the more massive the fire-power the more effective you will be in destroying your enemy. Also we were hugely conscious of the fact that we were liberating Iraq and the people, not subjugating it, and therefore we wanted to break as little china as possible, because we knew that we would have to either replace it or mend it afterwards. It is in that respect that we were able to influence the Americans and, very closely with them, look at all the targeting and at the way we were going to conduct the operations to minimise casualties to the civilians and minimise damage.

  Q879  Mr Cran: Just one more supplementary, Mr Rapson, then I will pass on. If I asked you, in the light of the experience which you have just had, with the co-operation and the arrangements which you had with the Americans, would you do it exactly the same next time, would you, if there were to be a next time?

  Lieutenant General Reith: If there were to be one, we would, yes.


 
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