Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1280
- 1299)
WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2003
AIR MARSHAL
GLENN TORPY
CBE DSO AND AIR
COMMODORE CHRIS
NICKOLS
Q1280 Mr Roy: When were you at this
stage?
Air Marshal Torpy: I could say
we are at the same stage now except for our weapons' stocks. In
term of the capability of crews, state of the aircraft, they are
in exactly the same state that they were prior to the start of
the campaign.
Q1281 Mr Roy: And then the weapons'
stock ?
Air Marshal Torpy: I would have
to provide the Committee with a note exactly on time scales for
the weapons' stocks replenishment.[1]
Q1282 Chairman: In terms of your
intelligence—and obviously this is a sensitive area—can
you tell from your satellite recognisance whether an air force
is going to come out and fight or not?
Air Marshal Torpy: I regret, no
you cannot. We obviously kept very close track on where his aircraft
were. We knew—coming back to one of my original answers—at
which air fields the preponderance of these aircraft were located
and those are the ones in which we took particular interest. But
you had very little knowledge of his intent. So the threat really
is two components. It is the capability—well, we knew where
the aircraft were, we knew the capability of the aircraft from
our experience of the no-fly zones in the first Gulf war—but
the intent piece is always very difficult to judge. So satellite
imagery, tactical reconnaissance imagery, does not give you the
complete picture, Mr Chairman.
Q1283 Chairman: In the last Gulf
war—the last but one, should I say, Gulf war—in which
you were a participant, the Iraqi air force solved that problem
by getting the hell out of the way and ending up in Iraq. Were
there any signs over the years of an upgrading of their air force,
in the same way that we had done post Kosovo? Had they acquired
any new aircraft? Was there an indication of what you were likely
to face if it did come out to fight, that you would be facing
more or less the air force that you faced in 1991, or did you
think they may have some surprises up their sleeve?
Air Marshal Torpy: I do not think
we felt that on the air side there were going to be any great
surprises. We had a pretty good indication of how much training
they had been doing and the sort of training that they had been
conducting. So I think we had a pretty good idea of what their
likely capability was on their aircraft. We had also clearly had
a fair amount of experience of operating against their integrated
air defence system. We did know that they had been clever in adapting
equipment over the period to make it more difficult and more successful
against our aircraft; for instance, using optical tracking and
such like, rather than radar tracking. So there were certain areas
where we knew they were quite clever, and they were also quite
good at moving equipment around and resetting it up, which was
going to make our life more difficult. But, overall, I think we
had a fairly good handle on their overall capability. We were
always worried about a potential asymmetric threat.
Q1284 Chairman: I suppose burying
aircraft is a pretty clever way of obscuring their intentions.
How do you recover an aircraft if you bury it? Is it possible?
I cannot even repair my own car, but it must be quite tricky reactivating
an aircraft you have dug a big hole for.
Air Marshal Torpy: You are absolutely
right, Mr Chairman, and certainly we would never be able to recover
an aircraft which we had done that to, I do not think.
Q1285 Mr Roy: That is reassuring,
anyway.
Air Marshal Torpy: We do not really
understand their motives for doing that.
Q1286 Chairman: How many did they
bury?
Air Marshal Torpy: I do not know
the exact detail. We could let you know.[2]
Chairman: Thank you.
Q1287 Mr Roy: If you find out any
more, could you let us know. Could I come back to the point you
were making about the operational tempo, and in particular ask
you about the supporting aircraft, the helicopters, especially
the early warning E3D Sentries. Would they have been able to keep
the operational tempo going that they had, for example, over a
six-month period? Or were they particularly stretched?
Air Marshal Torpy: There were
certainly certain assets—and you have picked on one, the
E3D—which were flying at very high rates. We were in the
process, as the campaign started to reach its conclusion, of looking
at bringing more crews into theatre. It was a crew-limiting factor
rather than an airframe-limiting factor because, inevitably, when
you are flying or manning one orbit 24 hours a day then—
Q1288 Mr Roy: That is your stretching
point.
Air Marshal Torpy: It is, exactly.
There was that particular asset . . . I think that was the main
one where we had worries.
Q1289 Mr Roy: Were there any other
ones that were not main ones?
Air Marshal Torpy: No. E3.
Chairman: Thank you. I am sure that Mr
Havard, a fellow Welshman, will advise you on the dangers of underestimating
a weak opponent, Air Marshal. I am not sure whether the conflict
in Iraq will be like the conflict down under! I will call my fellow
Celt.
Q1290 Mr Havard: Thank you very much
for the introduction, Chairman. Yes, we know something about tribal
problems in South Wales. There is one every 150 yards! Anyway,
if we talk about targeting, and I would like to deal a little
more with that. We understand, I think, from what you have said
today and previously about the central process of targeting at
a very high level, the procedures and so on, and the people at
Tampa and Centcom and so on, and the influence the British had
in terms of the direction for targeting, particularly precision
munitions. But I would like to ask you, first of all, the declaration
we have heard both initially and in First Reflections was
that every care that would be taken was taken in targeting processes
and selection of weapons to minimise incidental civilian harm.
The targeting process that you deployed was apparently against
the Iraqi regime, the military regime's capability, rather than
the Iraqi people. In minimising this incidental civilian harm,
how successful was that? Also, on what basis did you assess this
success rate?
Air Marshal Torpy: You are absolutely
right, one of the main underpinning objectives of the campaign
was to make sure that we minimised damage to civilian infrastructure
and civilian casualties as well. We are only allowed to attack
a military target. When we look at a target and as to whether
we are allowed to attack it, that is the first question in our
mind: Is it a military target? We then have to go through the
process of proportionality. There will be in some cases the risk
of damaging civilian structures which may be near that military
target; there may be a risk of killing civilians who may be close
to that particular target. We have to then balance the military
worth of that target against the potential for civilian collateral
damage. That is a judgment that we have to make. As a result of
that, to help us in those deliberations, we have certain delegations.—that
is why I say there were certain delegations that I had. If the
level of collateral damage was likely to be above my delegation,
it had to go up to different levels, but to assist me I always
had a lawyer and I also had a political advisor to make sure that
between us we came to an agreed position on a particular target.
We did that for fixed targets and we did that for time-sensitive
targets as well. So there was a desk in the Combined Air Operation
Centre which dealt with every time-sensitive target, and these
were targets which would appear very fleetingly, you would maybe
have to attack them within minutes, and the person who was taking
a judgment on that particular target always had a lawyer sitting
next to him 24 hours a day.
Q1291 Mr Havard: How successful was
it? How do you assess it on the ground, in terms of how you assess
success?
Air Marshal Torpy: I think we
were highly successful. I think the reason for that is the increase
in the use of precision munitions. We have seen, in this particular
campaign, from a coalition perspective 70% of the weapons were
actually precision guided; from the RAF side 85% of our weapons
were precision guided—a lesson we learned from Kosovo, and
I think that trend will improve and increase in future years.
I think we were highly successful in that respect. Inevitably,
there will be some weapons' failures and there is then a risk
of collateral damage. I believe we had very few of those particular
sorts of incidents—and I think, if we had, the Iraqi regime
would have been very quick to tell us about them or the media
would have been very quick to tell us about them.
Q1292 Mr Havard: Presumably you had
other methods of assessing—
Air Marshal Torpy: We clearly
did.
Q1293 Mr Havard:—rather than
the Iraqi media.
Air Marshal Torpy: Clearly we
do. One of the major parts of the whole execution cycle is to
assess the effect that you have had against a particular target,
and battle damage assessment is a key element of that, so that
you can change the campaign plan when you know that you have created
the effect that you want to achieve, and, against a particular
target, that you do not have to revisit that target.
Q1294 Mr Havard: I was not on this
visit but some of my colleagues went to Cottesmore and had discussions
with people there. This concept of the killbox that you mentioned
earlier. I am interested that we had described to us this process
of precision, in terms of targeting for precision weapons to be
delivered and so on, and yet it seems as though something approaching
40% of the missions of these people were pre-authorised, and something
running at almost one in five were on this wonderful thing (which
in polite society is probably called "KI-CAS" but which
no doubt they called "KIC-AS"—and I am sure the
Americans liked that), this Killbox for Close Air Support. How
do you square a situation where somebody has, if you like, roving
authority to go and kill whatever comes in front of him against
this precision targeting process?
Air Marshal Torpy: Killbox Interdiction
and Close Air Support is what KI-CAS stands for. There are two
discrete, different bits to this. Close Air Support is when air
is used when forces on the ground are in close contact and need
air support quickly. Killbox interdiction is a more methodical
way of attacking targets in a particular areas. A killbox is an
area which has been defined. Aircraft are tasked into that area
to attack mobile targets—so fielded artillery, tanks and
those sort of targets. I gave very clear directions to my pilots
as to what their responsibilities were and inevitably it has to
be a pilot responsibility to identify that target as a military
target. He also, in his own mind, has to go through exactly the
same procedure that I go through for a fixed target; that is,
is it proportionate? If I am going to attack that particular tank,
is there a risk of collateral damage, damage to buildings or civilian
casualties? If he judged that the military worth of that target
is not sufficient, then he does not attack that target. I think
our crews are extremely disciplined in that respect. As a consequence,
inevitably weapons are brought back from those sort of missions
because either the target is not identified or the pilot is not
happy that he can positively identify the target or he could drop
the weapon within the collateral damage constraints.
Q1295 Mr Havard: The information
I have is that something like 5% came back because they were not
happy with what they had as a target—they aborted the mission
and came back. I understand what you have just described but what
is concerning me is that they are saying that in only 6% of missions
did they actually speak with someone on the ground. This will
come in as something we will discuss later on in terms of friendly
fire potential incidents. This puts a huge burden on the individual
flying the aircraft, if their intelligence from the ground is
effectively nil in the circumstances you have just described.
Air Marshal Torpy: If I could
just go back to killbox interdiction sorties.
Q1296 Mr Havard: There is a communication
problem, is there not?
Air Marshal Torpy: If I may deal
with the first piece first. In killbox interdiction, an aircraft
or maybe a pair of aircraft are tasked into a particular box.
They either identify targets themselves—they can be controlled
sometimes by somebody on the ground—or we also sometimes
put an aircraft in that box to control other aircraft using an
airborne forward air controller, who builds up a picture of activity
in that particular area and can then direct aircraft efficiently
on to targets on the ground. It means, though, that you have to
have the wherewithal to identify fairly small targets like artillery
pieces, like tanks, from medium altitude. This is something which
we recognise is difficult. It is one of the lessons that we have
learned out of the campaign, that our targeting pods need longer
range, better fidelity. It is something we are looking at for
the future. So positively identifying that a target is a military
target, I am not disputing is a challenge, but it is something
we have to train for, something we have to make sure that we equip
our aircraft correctly for as well.
Q1297 Mr Havard: Turning back to
munitions, you have described the situation in relation to precision
munitions. How did you ensure that non-precision munitions actually
achieved the same result in terms of target response?
Air Marshal Torpy: As I have mentioned,
we did not use a large number of non-precision weapons. In looking
at what weapon you are going to use against a particular target,
crews will take into account a number of different factors. Unguided,
non-precision weapons are suited to some target arrays but increasingly
we are having more sophisticated weapons which can do that job
with greater precision. They are governed by exactly the same
collateral damage rules that for precision guided weapons are
used, and I can provide the Committee with a follow-on note of
the details of the actual collateral damage considerations which
go into the use of non-precision weapons. It is really the distances
that we use for possible collateral damage.[3]
Q1298 Mr Havard: As far as the precision
material is concerned, improving its precision even further but
also reducing the time of its delivery would presumably be very
useful in terms of doing more to reduce incidental civilian harm.
From your experience, how do you think the Ministry of Defence
could seek to ensure that these sort of improvements could be
delivered?
Air Marshal Torpy: I think we
are doing exactly that. Our future weapons' programmes are all
pointing towards increased provision and tailored effects as well.
We recognise that the majority of our weapons' stocks are thousand
pound bombs, we recognise that, in particular, if you are going
to try to operate in an urban area a thousand pound bomb is probably
too large. I think the Committee is aware that we used some inert
(colloquially called "concrete") thousand pound weapons.
That was a method of having a smaller degree of damage. We really
need—which we are now getting—a 500 pound precision-guided
bomb, and there is probably a requirement for a 250 pound precision-guided
bomb as well.
Q1299 Chairman: Without touching
on my colleague's next question, the document on operations in
Iraq to which we have referred, First Reflections, lists
on page 48 the number of sorties, the number of weapons released:
919, excluding Tomahawk (of which there was, of course, a substantial
number). Are we able to see on whatever basis, not just the number
of sorties but actually how many succeeded in landing where they
were intended to land? Surely there must be yardsticks. Do you
try to circle an area of probability? You must have, you do have,
an ability to follow up reconnaissance, as it were, to see whether
it was worthwhile. It is one thing getting hold of this but another
thing in the MoD releasing it. But certainly we would like to
see it, because if, by the taxpayer, there has been a large amount
of money being spent on guided munitions, it would be useful to
see more than has been presented to us on the number of munitions.
Air Marshal Torpy: We can certainly
provide you with a follow-up note on the detail of that, Chairman,
through the Ministry of Defence.
Chairman: That will be held in the normal
restricted manner.
1 Ev 413 Back
2
Ev 414 Back
3
Ev 414 Back
| 
