Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1560-1570)
REAR ADMIRAL
DAVID SNELSON
AND BRIGADIER
JAMES DUTTON
CBE ADC
3 DECEMBER 2003
Q1560 Mr Havard: A couple of questions
on personnel. First of all, about Marines. There is a lot of discussion
at the moment about, for example, I think the Americans have got
this Land Warrior system they are looking at for the future, which
is all about being able to see round corners and do all these
things, that the ordinary soldier will have. We have seen American
Marines, in particular, waddling about with 55 kilograms of kit
on them, apparently, this is about 11 ½stones worth of gear,
and there were comments from some of the Marines that, again,
they are having to carry a lot of equipment and a lot of stuff.
I have seen some of your big Marines running about with MILAN,
and all the rest of it, they cannot all do that, they cannot do
it all the time, especially in the sort of environment in which
you were expected to operate. We want to know what consideration
was given? It is alright saying, "You need this, you want
that, you want the other," but sustaining the individual
Marine, the individual infantry soldier, or whatever, over a period
of time, what are your observations in relation to that?
Brigadier Dutton: Your comment
is right. Clearly, all these new capabilities tend to come with
another bit of equipment and it weighs a certain amount.
Q1561 Mr Havard: What sort of weight
were your guys carrying?
Brigadier Dutton: It depends which
one you look at. Nobody would have been carrying less than 50
or 60 pounds, and some twice that and more, depending on what
ammunition was being carried, and so on. That is why things like
quad-bikes were so useful for carriage of ammunition over short
distances in difficult terrain. There is a continual trade-off
between the capability that you get from yet another piece of
equipment, with the added inconvenience of carrying it, and I
think it is just a judgment you have to make. Of course, the fact
that the equipment exists does not mean necessarily you have to
be carrying it 24 hours a day, so, in certain circumstances, NBC
equipment is a good example of this, actually it is not particularly
because everybody was carrying them even if they were not wearing
them. We did not wear NBC suits for the initial assault because
it was left up to commanders to judge the situation, so we did
not, but actually they were carrying them. What we need is a system
whereby weapons systems are available but not necessarily being
carried. The MILAN and the heavy machine gun theoretically are
man-portable over short distances but not much more than that.
It needs to go in some sort of vehicle. The Bowman Radio System
is a good example of this. Bowman is going to be a fantastic radio
system, it is going to give a fantastic capability. It comes with
something of a bill, in terms of carriage, which, initially, when
first you look at it, seems an awful lot for one man to be carrying.
Again, it is the trade-off, the capability it gives you is worthwhile
against the added weight and inconvenience of carrying it.
Q1562 Mr Havard: The Bowman is made in
Wales, it is bound to be good. What I would like to know from
you is, in a sense, given the experience of the Marines and the
kit they had to carry, were you building in your own redundancy
here, were guys falling over? Was there any perception, from your
point of view, that the weight they had to carry was causing a
particular problem, in terms of making them redundant, and shin
splits, or whatever it is?
Brigadier Dutton: No. To my knowledge,
I do not think there were any cases of people actually injuring
themselves, however lightly, through excess carriage of equipment.
We do make a lot of use of helicopters. I mentioned the value
of the Sea King IVs earlier on. The Sea King IVs carried in an
enormous amount. They shuttled from the shipping equipment required
on the Al Faw for at least 36 hours after the initial assault,
and then again after that but not on quite such a continuous basis.
Q1563 Mr Havard: We have had a request
from the Marines we have spoken to, because they want this issue
to be an issue that is being addressed in any assessment that
is coming of what has happened recently?
Brigadier Dutton: The American
experimentation, of which we are a part and intend to be a greater
part, of course, will give a superb capability at some time in
the future, but again there is that trade-off and then you have
got to carry the equipment. If that equipment allows you to know,
in an urban environment, let us say, where the enemy snipers are
and allows you to fire at them perhaps remotely, or from round
corners, then I think most Marines will want that equipment, or,
at least, they will want it available. You have to judge what
your enemy is like and whether it is worth carrying this equipment
all the time.
Q1564 Mr Havard: Thank you. A question
about welfare packages and particularly I think we have heard
from a number of parts of the services about this. In terms of
Royal Navy personnel, could you say what welfare packages are
available both to themselves and their families throughout this
period, they were at sea for a long time, they were out of port
a lot?
Rear Admiral Snelson: The Operational
Welfare Package, as the whole arrangement is called, was popular
at sea, that certainly was my finding, going round and talking
to men and women at sea. It had to vary to some extent from ship
to ship, depending on their communication capability. In some
ships there was television reception but not in all because of
the capability we have, but in virtually every ship e-mail connectivity
and limited telephone calls home. This perhaps is not what the
modern young man or woman is used to around here, in the UK, certainly
it was sufficient for them to stay in touch with families and
was extremely well received. It is an issue for commanders whether
or not you allow people in the front line who are close to operational
plans, which necessarily need to be kept secret, continued access
with home. I was heartened by the mature attitude of our people.
I spoke to probably a few thousand sailors within a month of the
operation and told them pretty much when I thought we were going
to do the operation and what they were going to be doing. I was
able to say to them, "Now you could, if you wished, go straight
to an e-mail terminal and send that information home, but I trust
you not to because you know how important it is." I think
our training and the good sense of our people shine through in
the fact that, as far as I know, nobody abused that trust we put
in them.
Q1565 Mr Havard: Obviously, you have
done some sort of analysis of feedback. Is there a consistent
process being developed to try to get information back on how
it was perceived?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Yes. Most
of the informal feedback, I would have to say, that we have had
is that the Operational Welfare Package at sea is well received.
We need to do more in terms of getting TV coverage to ships. Those
ships I have listed that were able to see what their fellow Marines
were doing ashore were much more engaged in the campaign and understood
their part in it than those ships that could not see what was
going on ashore. Of course, as you give people better connectivity,
in terms of e-mails and telephones, their expectations go up and
so that has to be managed, to an extent.
Q1566 Mr Havard: What feedback have you
had from the other side, from the families? Have you had any feedback
that way and have you collected any information?
Rear Admiral Snelson: Not directly,
for me, as the Operational Commander, but my understanding is
that it has been positive. Certainly we have not had negative
feedback anyway. It is a different situation for land forces though,
clearly, because connectivity from an isolated place in the desert
is not the same as from a ship.
Q1567 Mr Havard: Would you like to make
some observations on the same issues from your point of view?
Brigadier Dutton: Yes. The Operational
Welfare Package, I know it has been acknowledged, does not work
as well for early-entry forces as it does for either maritime
forces or enduring operations, like the Balkans, or something
like that, where you have time to set up these things and for
them to become established. It does not work really for early-entry
forces because people are not interested in getting in libraries
of books and televisions and e-mail facilities, there are more
important things, like ammunition and weapons and vehicles, and
so on, and helicopters. I know that the Ministry of Defence SP
Pol and PJHQ, in fact, are conducting a study on how early-entry
forces may be treated slightly differently. I do not know whether
it is complete or not, certainly they have been down to Plymouth
to talk to me and my team. It is a problem for Royal Marines,
it is a problem, I suppose, also, and I am sure also, for 16 Air
Assault Brigade, because early-entry forces tend always to be
early-entry forces, it would not be so bad if it were spread around
more. When the system works, it works well and is popular. The
bit that did work very well, from our point of view, was the `phones,
the weekly allocation, I think, 20 minutes, of `phone cards per
week, which is universally popular. E-mail also is extremely popular,
when it is set up. It was not set up, in our case, until not long
before we came back, end of April, early May.
Q1568 Mr Roy: On media coverage, what
was your assessment of the Royal Navy's media coverage? Was it
balanced, unbalanced, in the total picture did they give a true
and accurate assessment of exactly what you had done, and what
lessons have you learned?
Rear Admiral Snelson: As Air Marshal
Burridge would say, what you see depends on where you sit. Of
course, I was sitting in the Middle East tending to watch American
channels because I was in American Headquarters and not watching
British ones, so I caveat what I am going to say because I was
not experiencing the media coverage myself. I think, for the most
part it was balanced, but it was not particularly great, in terms
of volume, I mean, there was not a lot of media coverage, and
that reflects a couple of problems. One is the business of getting
television pictures back from ships in a timely fashion. We have
invested a certain amount of money in this, in devices that will
take a tape out of a camera and then send it back via Imarsat
commercial satellite. All of that takes time, and our experience
was, in this operation, that when television pictures from sea
eventually got back it would be some six to eight to ten hours
later. As far as the editors were concerned, on the rolling news
channels, that was old news, so frequently, I think, we missed
opportunities to get the maritime dimension in the news. The coverage
itself that we got, I think, largely was balanced. There was one
other problem too. We had embedded journalists in different maritime
units. That in itself was not a problem, but we were not permitted
to move them round to different ships after the initial allocation
had been done from London. This was because of an agreement between
the Ministry of Defence and the Press Association on where people
should go, and there was a wish to stop imposing, say, three camera
crews on one ship and five print journalists on another ship.
A lesson we learned, and I have put forward and I think the Department
has accepted, is that I wish I had been delegated control of where
I could move the journalists round, because I knew, a few days
in advance, that actually there would be nothing worthwhile seeing
in that particular area, there would be something much more worthwhile
in that area. There was a degree of rigidity in being able to
move journalists round which I wish we had not had. That lesson
has been learned.
Q1569 Mr Roy: What happens when you do
have this ten-hour void and they say it is not any good? The public
do not want to watch something that is ten hours late even though
it is at the other end of the world. Has there been any thinking
that a steer could be given to some embedded journalists about
what is going to happen in the next couple of hours, or could
that be more of a danger?
Rear Admiral Snelson: In terms
of what is going to happen, that is an extremely dangerous road
to go down, (a) because it could give away tactical information
which would endanger somebody's life, and (b) you never know that
the world is going to turn out like that. My thinking was going
in the same way. If I could have put journalists in the right
place, had I had the freedom to move them, so that they were there
when hopefully whatever it was was going to happen, we need that
freedom in future. That lesson, I think, has been hoisted in.
We need to make more investment in being able to get pictures
back from ships, and that is the most critical thing.
Q1570 Mr Roy: They do not need library
footage of missiles going off from ships ten hours before they
went off, so that they look more up-to-date by the time they are
on the television screens?
Rear Admiral Snelson: I think
using library footage can cause difficulties, as it did in one
incident, of which I think you are probably well aware.
Chairman: Thank you both very much. That
was a very strenuous session for you and we appreciate your frankness.
Thank you very much.
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