Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1540-1559)
REAR ADMIRAL
DAVID SNELSON
AND BRIGADIER
JAMES DUTTON
CBE ADC
3 DECEMBER 2003
Q1540 Chairman: Has an inquiry be concluded
into that accident?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Yes, it
has, Mr Chairman. I am not sure we will ever know definitively
what occurred. It is a crash at night, in difficult visibility
conditions, at low level.
Q1541 Chairman: I did not know if we
had received a copy of that. Perhaps if you could send it to us,
please, if you would not mind?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Yes.[4]
Q1542 Mike Gapes: Brigadier, in the interview
in Jane's International Defence Review in September you
are quoted as talking about the Viking armoured all-terrain vehicle,
which will provide Commando units with a level of protected mobility
that hitherto they have lacked. Could you say something more on
that? I understand that the Royal Marines are soon to be re-equipped
with that vehicle. What difference would it have made in Operation
Telic?
Brigadier Dutton: As I mentioned
earlier, we are getting that vehicle shortly. We are getting just
over a hundred in the Brigade, we are going to hold them centrally,
there will be training allocations at each unit. Then our plan
operationally is that half the Commando unit, I will not go into
great details here, both the infantry and the supporting arms
element, will be equipped with Viking and the other half will
not. That will give us the capability either to use ATVs or not,
depending on the circumstances. What difference would they have
made on Op. Telic? Initially probably none because we did not
have the capability to get them ashore in the initial assault.
Had we been able to use the US Navy LCAC heavies, on which we
had put CVR(T)s, had we had Viking, probably we would have put
Viking on those as well, so, if we could have got them ashore,
they provide fire-power protection and mobility so they would
have been extremely useful. Later on they would also have been
extremely useful because the ability to be able to move troops
under light armour, protected from artillery shells and from some
element of small-arms rounds as well is a capability that would
have been extremely useful to us.
Q1543 Mike Gapes: Can you say a little
bit more about this problem of getting them ashore? Does that
mean that you would have had to find some other method to bring
them in?
Brigadier Dutton: Yes. Had we
had them we would have got them onto the Al Faw peninsula, in
the same way that we got the Scimitars onto the Al Faw peninsula,
so rather later than the initial assault. We got the Scimitars
across the waterway just north of Umm Qasr, which was the first
point at which we could establish a ferry-crossing with LCU ferries.
We would have tried to cross them there because we could not do
that initially, because we had to wait for 15 MEU to take Umm
Qasr and the area just to the north of it so that we could establish
that ferry-crossing.
Rear Admiral Snelson: Is it fair
to say, the LPDs, had we had them available, would have made a
difference, or not?
Brigadier Dutton: It would have
made a difference in getting them there but actually getting them
across the beach would have been the problem. Having said that,
they do swim, so there are circumstances in which possibly we
could have swum them. The beach profile of the Al Faw peninsula
is so small as to be negligible, you cannot see that there is
a beach profile, in fact, so a conventional landing-craft would
have grounded a long, long way out.
Q1544 Mr Cran: Brigadier, these are a
few questions, I suspect, for you. On one of the Committee's visits,
and I am not going to identify which one but certainly this was
not taken in formal evidence, the Committee was told, and here
I am quoting from a note I have, that "the Royal Marines
have no understanding of how to operate with tanks in support,
never having trained to do so and not possessing any of their
own." Why that is of interest to the Committee is that, I
think on 27 March, your Brigade came under attack from Iraqi tanks
and you had to call in heavy tank support. Therefore, against
the background of what we were told on this particular visit,
what is your side of the story?
Brigadier Dutton: That simply
is untrue.
Q1545 Mr Cran: That is why I am asking,
to give you the opportunity.
Brigadier Dutton: Precisely, yes.
Clearly, it was not a Royal Marine unit you were visiting. I can
probably guess.
Q1546 Mr Cran: You are not going to tempt
me.
Brigadier Dutton: The background
and training of Royal Marines officers is quite widely with the
Army, I was going to say exclusively, it is not exclusively at
all, we do a lot of training with the Navy and of course now we
do a lot of joint training, as does everybody else. If I take
my own background in training, I did the Army's Junior Staff Course,
I did the Army Staff Course, I did the Army Company Commanders
Course, it was called the All-Arms Tactics Course at the time,
and I taught on the Army's Junior Staff Course when the Cold War
was still going on and I was teaching armoured tactics and the
operational art for the defence of western Europe. The idea that
Royal Marines officers have no knowledge of how to use heavy armour
simply is not true. There is also an element of scale here. I
did not want to use these tanks for a big manoeuvre warfare event,
this was not a repeat of the battle of Kursk. We wanted just a
squadron of tanks, actually fewer would have done but they tend
to come in squadron packages, for obvious reasons, for the reasons
for which one wants tanks. With a squadron of tanks comes a Squadron
Leader who is a trained Armoured Corps officer, whoever he is
attached to then he becomes the armoured adviser to that commanding
officer or brigade commander, or to whatever level he has been
attached. The squadron we got from the Scots DG came with a Squadron
Commander. I placed them under the command of CO 40 Commando and
they used them with great success in the attack on Abu al Khasib
and also to defeat the armoured thrusts that were coming out of
Basra, and subsequently 42 Commando used them as well for the
final assault on Basra, alongside 7 Brigade in the west. Also
we had under command from the outset, before we left UK, C Squadron
QDG, not heavy armour but light armour. That comes with a Squadron
Commander, who sat alongside me in the Brigade Headquarters, did
all the planning, did all the estimates with us, practised with
us in Kuwait and we used them again with great success for the
armoured role, their fire-power, but specifically for their ISTAR
and recce role, and they integrated extremely well.
Q1547 Mr Cran: Just to tie this down,
the Committee is aware that I think you were reinforced routinely
by the Household Cavalry, in whatever circumstances that may be,
but that is Scimitar light-tracked vehicles. I think the Committee
wants to be absolutely clear that your Brigade does train, if
not routinely, with heavy-armour units?
Brigadier Dutton: Absolutely.
Q1548 Mr Cran: Was that the case before
this operation?
Brigadier Dutton: Absolutely,
and we hope to do so even more in the future. We are in regular
contact with the Royal Armoured Corps Centre at Bovington about
future exercises next year, when we would hope to deploy both
heavy and light armour if it were possible.
Q1549 Mr Cran: Here is something else
for you to knock down, or otherwise. Were your Logistics Operation
able to support the armoured units that you had? We were told,
again on one of our visits that the armoured units in question
asked for fuel well in excess of what you had yourselves. Is that
true, and, if so, how was it solved?
Brigadier Dutton: Certainly it
was well in excess of what normally we would expect to carry.
Challenger tanks use an awful lot of fuel and they had to be refuelled.
They crossed onto the Al Faw peninsula, the entry, they did one
run across, firing at the enemy in the south of Basra to the eastern
end of Abu al Khasib, when they needed refuelling. We arranged
for them then to be refuelled. I have seen a number of presentations
where it was said that the Royal Marines attempted to do this
with jerricans, and you could do it with jerricans, you would
need an awful lot of jerricans though. We did not try to do it
with jerricans, we made arrangements with the Regimental Headquarters
of the Scots DG, from where that squadron had come, to send forward
their refuelling tankers in order to do it. It is a concern, but
we are quite used to it. The difficulty of refuelling vehicles
and aircraft is something that the Royal Marines are well capable
of dealing with, because we expect normally to come from the sea.
We were lucky this time, we were able to bring a substantial part
of the force from the land. We expect normally to come from the
sea, so we have that problem of how to get fuel from ships to
shore and we have a variety of means of doing that, things that
are towed through the water, things that can be dropped from helicopters,
we have tankers, obviously. I have a pretty swept-up logistical
set-up in 3 Commando Brigade which is well capable of dealing
with anything that is attached.
Q1550 Mr Cran: You should be very grateful
to the Committee for giving you the opportunity to nail a couple
of misrepresentations from your point of view.
Brigadier Dutton: Absolutely.
I could go on for another ten minutes.
Chairman: You should tell the Brigadier
the source of our information so they can be severely reprimanded.
Mr Cran: No. I have no intention of doing
any such thing.
Q1551 Mr Roy: Rear Admiral, three points.
Naval Gunfire Support of forces ashore, how critical was it, how
did we compare with the United States, especially the gunnery
systems and, finally, what lessons are there to be learned from
other coalition forces and the type of support that they give?
Rear Admiral Snelson: The Naval
Gunfire Support provided another way of bringing a firing effect
onto the Al Faw peninsula. There was artillery in Kuwait, but
it would not reach all of the Al Faw peninsula. I am straying
into the Brigadier's area. There were the guns on the ships which
would reach into the bottom right-hand corner of the Al Faw peninsula,
and, of course, there were all the airborne assets, fixed-wing
and helicopters as well, which could bring fires down in support.
The Naval Gunfire Support gave the Brigade just another source
of fires. On the bay of the Al Faw peninsula, on the first couple
of days, the weather was poor and the operation was brought forward.
That led to a reduction in aircraft that were available for the
task, to some extent, therefore the naval fires played a greater
role, in the event, because of the effects of weather and changing
the timing, than otherwise they might have done. I was glad that
we had planned to provide that support to the Brigade. There were
some who felt that it was unnecessary and not needed in the modern
environment with fires from different platforms, in fact it was
needed. It was provided by UK and an Australian ship, it was very
accurate, I think, it provided exactly the effect that was needed.
It was not provided by the US ships, largely because their ships
are usually a lot bigger than ours, draw more in draught terms
and could not get so close to the coast and so the US allowed
the UK and the Australians to get on with it, we could get into
shallow water. A degree of risk was taken, in getting into shallow
water, but it was worth it. A lesson learned for the future, and
it is not a new one, and I know the Department will be looking
at it, is longer-range guns on ships at sea so that you can stand
further away from a threat and still provide that fire if it is
needed.
Q1552 Chairman: There is a competition,
I understand, for such a gun?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Yes.
Q1553 Mr Crausby: First Reflections
again informs us that the port of Umm Qasr was opened on 28 March
following intensive mine-clearing operations by Royal Navy Mine
Counter-Measures Vessels and the Fleet Diving Group, who are acknowledged
as the world leaders in this field. Given that the Royal Navy
has an excellent reputation in this field, why was it necessary
to procure additional equipment through the use of UORs and hire
equipment from the Australians?
Rear Admiral Snelson: If I heard
you correctly, I think the dates you quoted there are slightly
incorrect, because I think although land forces got into the port
on the 20th, the waterway which had to be cleared up to the port
was not cleared of mines until some days later. We will look at
the date when RFA Sir Galahad went in. Why did we need different
equipment for the mine-hunters, because we had expected and always
planned over the years to be mine-hunting in deeper water, in
more open water, not in rivers. Rivers clearly are very shallow,
by their nature, with a lot of sand and silt on the bottom. One
of the devices we have for normal mine-hunting is a remotely-operated
vehicle with a light and a camera on the front which transmits
a picture back to the ship so that you can see the object on the
seabed that you have found. That was not going to work in the
silty estuarine waters, so extra equipment, called a one-shot
mine disposal system, was procured, it is a newer sort of remotely-operated
vehicle, which allows you just to go out and basically blow up
any object you find on the seabed. I think it is a perfect illustration
of the use of urgent operational requirements, if you see a new
tactical situation, you need a different piece of equipment and
you buy it.
Q1554 Mr Crausby: Was there anything
else that you required, any other mine-clearance equipment that
you required, that was not available, either with the Australians
or anyone else?
Rear Admiral Snelson: We bought
some extra influence sweeping equipment in remotely-operated boats.
This was something that had been identified as ideally required
for this sort of operation, so we knew about it, and again it
was easy to buy, in UOR terms. Our six mine-hunters and four American
mine-hunters under command and control of an RN Commander turned
out to be very good and cleared the port in record time. I am
told, 28 March was when Sir Galahad got in there and the entrance
to the port was cleared.
Q1555 Chairman: Are we going to remedy
this deficiency? We have got a lot of rivers in the world?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Whether
the Department actually is going to buy the equipment permanently
or a reasonable amount of it I am not sure, Mr Chairman, but certainly
the utility of that equipment has gone into the "lessons
identified" process, very clearly.
Chairman: They can teach us how to use
that and we can teach them how to drop goals, although I would
prefer to keep that a secret.
Q1556 Rachel Squire: Can I ask if we
acquired a couple of dolphins, I believe they were of some use?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Yes, the
American forces operate with dolphins. No, we have not acquired
any. They were of use. I think you are likely to find that UK
forces will stick with the use of human divers.
Q1557 Rachel Squire: I understand that
they were pretty impressive, until one of them went AWOL?
Rear Admiral Snelson: That is
right, yes.
Chairman: They were probably cheaper
than Royal Navy divers.
Q1558 Rachel Squire: I want to ask you
about Host Nation support. First of all, can you clarify from
whom you received Host Nation support, as you were not exactly
static, and also how reliable and useful was it and did you receive
the support that you needed and required?
Rear Admiral Snelson: I will confine
the answer to the Gulf, not the transit out to it, unless you
want to explore that. First of all, the degree of Host Nation
support needed by a maritime force like this is relatively limited,
that is the whole benefit of having most of your equipment at
sea. We had two-thirds of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships with
us, which provided much of the food, fuel, ammunition and engineering
support. In terms of looking at Host Nation support, really we
were looking only for port and airport access for flying in spares.
We had one air head and port access in the United Arab Emirates,
in the south of the Gulf, although we did not use it to a huge
extent, but we set it up. We had another significant air and port
head in Bahrain, but mostly that was stores flown in by air and
then helicoptered out to the ships. Also we had a small helicopter
maintenance facility in Bahrain, which the Bahrainian Government
kindly allowed us to operate, and that helped us keep more aircraft
serviceable at sea. Then, of course, there was Kuwait itself,
which was used significantly for British forces overall. In terms
of the maritime forces, it was used largely to receive equipment
and stores from the maritime force, in order to provide the Brigade
Commander with a sort of two-pronged assault on the Al Faw peninsula.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that, of the 30 days of supply
that we took for the Brigade at sea, 20-plus days of supply were
landed into Kuwait for the use not only of the Brigade but also
of the whole UK Division. It had had to move from the north, from
Turkey, in its planning, to the south, and we were able to provide
significant logistics support from the sea to help the Division
until its own logistics flowed in. The fact that much of our logistics
support was in amphibious ships meant that we did not have to
get involved in the blocked-up Kuwaiti ports, we could put it
over the beaches and land it in a quasi-tactical way and then
drive inland. So three countries, fundamentally. Yes, we did get
the support required. Personally, I would have liked to be authorised
to approach those countries earlier in the operation to set up
the arrangements, but they were very helpful and it worked.
Q1559 Rachel Squire: Thank you. You have
emphasised also the importance of RFAs?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Absolutely
fundamental. Perhaps I should add that I did not want our warships
to go into port, because there was a terrorist threat. We used
ports only on a couple of emergency occasions, when it was necessary
for a ship to go in because of a particular engineering defect.
We used Royal Fleet Auxiliary, particularly RFA Diligence, as
an afloat engineering workshop. She would stay in the central
Gulf, ships could come alongside her and do repairs at sea. For
many of the ships, it was not unlike the Falklands campaign, in
that they went all the way out to the Gulf and some came all the
way back, one destroyer stopped only in Gibraltar, the only port
she ever went into in the whole campaign, because we were able
to sustain them at sea without reliance on ports and harbours.
That is an important attribute of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
4 Note from Witness: BOI reports are not normally
released to parliament. A copy of the Technical Summary is usually
placed in the House of Commons Library. Ev Back
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