Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1571-1579)
AIR VICE
MARSHAL MIKE
HEATH AND
WING COMMANDER
IAN CHALMERS
16 DECEMBER 2003
Q1571 Chairman: Welcome, gentlemen. We
have quite a large number of questions we have to ask. I will
start by giving you the overall question and then I will go back
to the first part so you can see the direction we are going in.
I really want to ask you to explain the United Kingdom concept
of Information Operations and how it fits in with other aspects
of campaign planning, and how far have Information Operations
really achieved a cross-government government approach to its
challenges, and which departments are most concerned with it other
than the Ministry of Defence? That is the overall question, and
I will kick off with the first part, if you can briefly explain
to us the United Kingdom concept of Information Operations.
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Mr Chairman,
the concept of Information Operations for the military is to garner
cross-government activity, not just military activity, to contribute
towards influence and persuasion. I like to think of it as a continuum,
that if you get it right it starts during pre war fighting where
you are looking towards dissuasion and coercion; it continues
into military operations; and, of course, it then wraps up and
it is just as essential that you carry it through into post conflict
restoration and reconstitution. If you do not mind I would rather
like to read you the pat definition of Information Operations
which I think will give you a good insight to the definition we
work to.
Q1572 Chairman: Mind you, we do not believe
anything the Ministry of Defence writes so we will have to tease
out additional elements of it, if you prefer!
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Sadly,
however, the truth here is that I wrote these words so they may
come home to roost! "Information Operations is co-ordinated
actions undertaken to influence an adversary or potential adversary
in support of political and military objectives by undermining
his will, cohesion and decision-making ability through affecting
his information, information-based processes and systems, whilst
protecting one's own decision makers and decision-making process."
It is a bit trite but I think that gives you a wide feeling.
Q1573 Chairman: We have been on the receiving
end of it now for twenty years so I do recognise the concept!
If we were students of Information Operations, what documents
are publicly available for anyone listening to look at?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: The joint
services military doctrine is an Unclassified document which maps
out the lower level of process. At the more senior level, I provide
the strategic oversight: there are no documents today. A large
element of Information Operations is, of course, Classified. It
comes under several disciplines and those include electronic warfare,
psychological operations, operational security, deception, computer
network operations, and information insurance.
Q1574 Chairman: Are we very good at it?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes, I
think we are exceptionally good at it, and getting better. I have
a very positive story to tell this afternoon.
Q1575 Chairman: Because when we were
inquiring into the lessons of the Falklands I really did not have
the impression that the skills had advanced very far. I can recall
the amusing session we had on who accepted responsibility for
Radio Atlantic del Sur, and no hands went up, and to this day
I have no real idea who it was.
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Indeed.
Q1576 Chairman: So you say we were excellent
at it and we are getting better?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes.
Q1577 Chairman: How does this fit in
then with campaign planning? You have given us the broad concept.
How would this fit into the early stages of a conflict? How do
you deter? If you fail to deter, what is the transition then from
deterrence to operational decision making?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: The underpinning
is, first of all, a positive statement of national intent from
the government. Without that it is nigh impossible to come up
with a military Information Operations package.
The Committee suspended from 3.02 pm to
3.07 pm for a division in the House of Commons.
Q1578 Chairman: We were discussing campaign
planning. Could you amplify how it fits in, please?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: As I said,
the first starting point is government policy and government intent.
My task is then to try and make sure that we can align that as
closely as possible with our close allies. In a perfect world
we will all go forward with the same espoused common policy. In
reality that is hardly achievable but it is at least essential
if we are going to be coherent that we start from the same starting
point. Now, once I have that and depending on where we are in
terms of the tension or situation that is arising, I would look
through the DTIO staff to raise the best profile we can of understanding
the potential adversary. We will look at crafting what the target
audiences are: we will look at the type of message that we would
need to respond to them with, and we would look for the avenues
that we could employ. The very next thing is to make sure we are
closely co-ordinated with media operations. Without coherence
between the two we do not have an erudite plan and then you would
start to conduct military operations across government activity
at the same time, and you would hope that the other departments
would buy into an understanding of why you felt it was necessary
for the Ministry of Defence to become engaged. What I can tell
you today is that, through Iraq, that is exactly how things happened.
If it fails to deliver an avoidance of conflict then, frankly,
all that changes as you move into conflict is that the style of
the messages change. The audiences remain the same but the messages
now become more crafted to individuals in some instances or to
wider groups depending on the vehicle you are using. Once you
move into restitution, the audiences still remain the same but
once again the type of message and the emphasis on the audiences
shifts.
Q1579 Chairman: The theory very often
or the word used endlessly is "cross-cutting", cross-governmental
approach. Can you give us some indication how other departments
fit in, not just at the abstract level but, if it is rather detailed,
the departmental structure of taking a genuinely interdepartmental
approach?
Air Vice Marshal Heath: Yes. The
Ministry of Defence as far as Information Operations is concerned
is willing to talk to anybody and everyone who will listen. It
is obvious in what we are talking about today that the major interlocutor
is the Foreign Office, and through the process of Kosovo and Sierra
Leone, which is the time I have been engaged in this particular
department, we have had a meaningful and constant dialogue with
the Foreign Office. We have also had dialogue with the Cabinet
Office, and through Iraq we had conversations on the daily basis
with the Campbell group in No 10. On an ad hoc basis we have included
DfID in our discussions and the Home Office, although I have to
say those are infrequent. The advantage we have had in the Ministry
of Defence is that we have a directorate that stood up for constant
engagement in this area. The disadvantage of the Foreign Office
and this is not a criticism but an observation of reality, is
that they are regionally focused rather than information focused,
although that has recently changed, and I will ask Wing Commander
Ian Chalmers, who is still involved in DTIO, to bring you up to
speed on that because I have been out of the directorate for about
four months now.
Wing Commander Chalmers: The Foreign
Office has a group now called the Information Directorate which
used to be part of the Public Diplomacy Department with whom we
directly interact. Additionally, we have two cross-government
organs, I would say, with which we try and formalise our co-ordination.
The first one is a group called the Information Campaign Co-ordination
Group, it is chaired by Ian Lee, DG Op Pol who I think has been
before you already, and the aim of that really is at a 1/2* level
to agree in general terms that the themes and messages that we
propose are agreeable to other government departments—we
obviously could not force them on them—and then within the
Ministry of Defence to decide our individual lines of attack between
individual ops and media ops. At a working level, this group was
set up for the first time for the first conflict in Sierra Leone,
we have a cross-government implementation group, whose purpose
really is to ensure our activity either in theatre or directed
towards theatre is ideally co-ordinated but at the very least
deconflicted, so that the target audiences around the place hear
hopefully a similar message from us although produced by different
means.
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