Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1232
- 1239)
WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2003
AIR MARSHAL
GLENN TORPY
CBE DSO AND AIR
COMMODORE CHRIS
NICKOLS
Q1232 Chairman: Welcome to you both.
We have quite a hectic agenda, but we will finish at 12.30. The
first question I would like to ask—and please do not feel
you both have to answer: the RAF deployment was announced by the
Secretary of State on 6 February. Can you give us some idea of
when you first became involved in the planning for this deployment?
Air Marshal Torpy: Mr Chairman,
before answering your question, I wonder if I may just introduce
Air Commodore Nickols and explain why he is here and what his
role in the operation was. He acted as my deputy. He went out
to theatre about ten days before I went out to Saudi Arabia, and,
during the actual combat phase of the operation, he was embedded
in the Combined Air Operation Centre as one of the three CAOC
directors, the other two being 1* Americans. For the whole of
phase three, he was in detailed contact with exactly what was
going on with the execution of the operation, and then he remained
in theatre for three weeks after I left theatre to wrap the operation
up. So he has the detailed knowledge of day-to-day execution as
the operation took place.
Q1233 Chairman: You have prepared
the way well, if you cannot answer the questions. I am afraid,
Air Commodore Nickols, you are the fall-guy if there is no proper
answer.
Air Marshal Torpy: Going back
to your question, we first became involved in planning for the
operation really in the summer of last year. That really came
about because of our intimate involvement in the southern no-fly
zone operations. Inevitably, because of the very close linkage
between the RAF and the United States air force in the no-fly
zone operations, we became aware that the Americans were starting
to look at some contingency planning and we became involved in
that at a very early stage. That matured over the autumn of last
year.
Q1234 Chairman: I know this is a
political decision but you are high enough up the hierarchy to
be aware of the political constraints and political problems:
How would you describe that phase? Because negotiations were going
on through the United Nations: they were still hoping that Saddam
would buckle under the pressure and that the French and Russians
would do likewise in a rather different context. How would you
call this period, as far as the RAF were concerned, when there
was no deployment, no formal order to deploy, but you were given
authority, I presume, by the Secretary of State to begin to precautionary
measures by way of preparation should a decision be made?
Air Marshal Torpy: You are absolutely
right, Mr Chairman, and I think that was only right and proper,
given our ongoing operations in the southern no-fly zones. We
always recognised that there would have to be some sort of transition
from Operation Southern Watch into any subsequent operation if
it materialised. So our involvement in that planning was, I believe,
right and proper and it gave us visibility as to the way the US
were thinking so that we could help to influence that thinking
and inform London about exactly what was going on. It was always
done with the US being absolutely clear that there was no commitment
on the UK's behalf at that stage to commit forces to any sort
of operation.
Q1235 Chairman: At what stage would
you have been given the formal political decision: Now you can
come out in the open, you can accelerate, you can deploy? What
was that transitional phase in the timing? What happened differently
from what had gone on before that you now you were able to do?
Air Marshal Torpy: You cannot
pick a particular date to say that we transitioned from one set
of planning to another. It was an evolutionary process. The plans
clearly started to develop towards the end of last year and, if
I recall, the Secretary of State announced on about 24 September
that he felt that at that stage we should be entering into serious
contingency planning with the United States. Parliament actually
then agreed and we announced our full structure in, I believe,
February of this year.
Q1236 Chairman: This is probably
a difficult if not impossible question to answer, but what percentage
of preparations and decisions had you made prior to go-ahead?
Is it possible to give some sort of idea?
Air Marshal Torpy: No, because
the plan evolved over those months in the latter part of last
year and, indeed, even through January, February and the middle
of March the detailed contingency campaign plan was still being
developed, as it should, as we gained more knowledge of the intelligence
that we were receiving and such like.
Q1237 Chairman: But you must have
wanted to buy things. You did not really want to wait until you
were given a formal order, because the procurement process can
be rather protracted, as we all know to our cost. In this early
stage, were you just saying, "I think we ought to get this
because we might be needing it"?
Air Marshal Torpy: I think we
were in very good shape on the air side. We had gone through a
major upgrade of our GR4 Tornado, so the aircraft was in a much
better condition, much more capable than it was during the first
war; we had learned experience from the Kosovo campaign. Our weapons
stocks, we had learned, again, the lessons from the Kosovo campaign:
we had Enhanced Paveway stocks already on the shelf, we had Maverick.
So, in general, we did not see a great need for a lot of additional
work on our equipment which had to be done in those early stages
of the planning.
Q1238 Chairman: When were the units
first warned that they would be flying?
Air Marshal Torpy: Not really
until the early part of this year, January/February.
Q1239 Chairman: There must be a decision—
Air Marshal Torpy: There were
certain people whom we brought into the planning. After the Secretary
of State announced in September that we were doing contingency
planning, then we brought our squadron commanders, our station
commanders, into the planning that we had done at that stage,
so that they could start preparing their training programmes,
so the crews were as familiar as they needed to be for the particular
style of operation.
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