8 THE START OF OPERATIONS
185. The opportunity attacks by US forces attempting
to kill Saddam Hussein on the night of 19-20 March did not pre-empt
British plans according to the Secretary of State, but rather
'accelerated certain decisions that were in any event going to
be implemented very shortly'.[270]
However, the British were only told of the planned attacks 'a
few hours prior to the air strikes taking place'.[271]
It has since been suggested that the opportunity strikes not only
missed Saddam Hussein, which they self-evidently did, but that
there were no bunkers in the buildings that were destroyed. Asked
whether the 'de-capitation' strikes brought the Royal Marines'
attack on the Al Faw peninsula forward the Secretary of State
replied:
there was no difficulty. Those forces were poised
and ready to do the important job on the Al Faw peninsular and
begin the move north…there was some acceleration in the timescales
but essentially we are talking hours rather than days.[272]
186. Mr Paul Beaver told us that he thought that
the campaign had started two to three weeks ahead of schedule.[273]
Air Marshal Burridge said that he was not surprised by the attacks
on the leadership targets that started the war.[274]
The execution of the plan went according to expectations, he went
on, claiming that the only surprise was the 'inelegant' way in
which Baghdad fell.[275]
General Brims admitted that the attacks had brought forward 'D-Day'
by 24 hours and then another 24 hours (ie 48 hours in all) and
that the British had been 'bounced' into going early, although
they were ready to go:
D-day and H Hour did get pulled forward, first
by 24 hours and then by another 24 hours. That was partly because,
as I understand it, there were some opportunity targets for deep
air to do, but I think that we had always decided that we wanted
to get the land campaign launched early so that we could try to
capture the oil infrastructure intact, and, in the final analysis,
as I understand it, there were thoughts that the oil infrastructure
was in danger of being trashed; and therefore, the decision, because
we were bounced to go early, we did.[276]
The Coalition Force Land Component Commander, US
Lieutenant General McKiernan has since stated that he brought
forward his plan to launch the land attack after receiving reports
of a number of oil wells having been set alight following the
attacks on the leadership targets. As the security of the southern
oilfields was regarded as a vital objective for both military
and environmental reasons, he judged that if the troops were ready,
they might as well go.[277]
The question of readiness matters because of the suggestion that
operations may have begun too soon for elements of the British
force and that that may have been a contributing factor in the
later equipment and distribution problems which the Committee
has repeatedly heard about.
187. General Reith told us that although the British
came 'perilously close'[278]
to not being ready at the start date, they actually were ready
and that troops would not have been committed if they had not
been operationally ready:
I would not have allowed our people to go into
peril, and the plan was flexible enough that if those two battlegroups,
and we knew it was going to be tight-run with those two battlegroups,
had not been operationally ready they would have been held back
and then committed later in the operation, and that was within
the plan. We used the words 'perilously close' but I can promise
that I would not have allowed them to commit to the operation
if the operational commander had not been satisfied that they
were operationally ready.[279]
188. The Royal Marines who arrived in late January
and early February, were explicitly aiming to be ready by 15 February
which was the date by which General Franks had indicated he wanted
troops ready. Brigadier Jim Dutton explained that:
42 Commando and the Brigade Combat Service Support
Units that deployed with me by air arrived by, roughly speaking,
the end of January, so there was adequate time for familiarisation,
acclimatisation and in-theatre training. The 40 Commando
group that deployed amphibiously, in the Amphibious Task Group,
arrived in the middle of February, of course having acclimatised
coming through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, round into the
Gulf, and they had exercised already in Cyprus, as you have heard,
but then latterly in the UAE, so that was important to them. 15
MEU, who sailed from the west coast of the United States, from
San Diego, on 6 January, arrived on or about 12 February
and deployed ashore almost immediately to do familiarisation training
with the other units of my Brigade, and indeed acclimatisation
training, and so on. I am content that certainly there was adequate
time, bearing in mind, of course, at the time, we did not know
that 20 March was going to be D-Day. We were always aiming
for 15 February…which we could have met just—just—but
we used the time available for more training in theatre.[280]
If a date was set for the amphibious force to be
ready by, it is strange that there was no date by which time the
ground forces were supposed to be ready.
189. The point about how close run things were was
underlined by Brigadier Kerr, Assistant Chief of Staff, PJHQ who
admitted:
We did come perilously close. There was a debate
all along when we were going to actually desertise the armour.
I can remember the discussion going back a couple of months before
that as to whether or not 7th Armoured Brigade—which
those tanks came from—was going to have the opportunity
to desertise before we sailed the tanks out to the Middle East.
The decision was to allow some training to take place. We knew
when it came down to it that it would be all about that set date;
we thought it was going to be the end of March but we never knew
quite when it as going to be…General Robin Brims…and
General John [Reith] discussed it with the Americans and the view
at that time was that we came perilously close but we were ready
to cross the line of departure.[281]
The Chief of Defence Logistics described it as 'the
optimum way to use the whole of the strategic base in order to
achieve the operational commander's decision cycle; and it worked'.[282]
General Brims argued that the division was 'ready' even though
certain units were not ready:
from my perspective, we were ready; if you work
from their perspective, certain of the units would say they were
not ready, because, the last Brigade, we came in Brigade by Brigade,
so the first one ready was 3 Commando Brigade, then 16 Air Assault
Brigade and then 7 Armoured Brigade, and we defined readiness,
the readiness to be able to conduct the plan that we had agreed,
would be where we had two battlegroups of 7 Armoured Brigade ready,
and that was the definition of readiness. Now, if you went and
saw the two battlegroups of 7 Armoured Brigade that were not the
two that were declared the first ready, they would tell you that
they were not ready, but the Division was; if that is a reasonable
explanation. And the two battlegroups, the last two battlegroups
in were the Scots Dragoon Guards and 2 RTR, but, I may say, they
did do the catch-up and they caught up remarkably quickly, and,
with all their professionalism, skill and determination, they
made light of that; but, from their perspective, they would be
entirely accurate to say that they were not ready at that stage.[283]
190. However, 16 AAB told us that they were at the
bottom of the priority list in terms of their deployment to Kuwait
with the order being 3 Commando Brigade, 7 Armoured Brigade and
then 16 AAB. That is because 16 AAB was given the role of securing
the oil fields and of supporting the other two brigades and of
acting as reserve for the Division. General Reith explained 16
AAB was there for 'exploitation':
The principal task of 16 Brigade had been
to get in and keep the oilfields secure and then they were to
be used for exploitation; they were used for exploitation. Once
we went beyond Basra, we went up into the north east, up into
Maysan Province. Now, of course, that did not get much publicity,
because by that stage the embedded journalists had left them,
and I do not think it even hit the UK media.[284]
191. Thus, whereas General Brims was no doubt correct
in saying that 16 AAB had achieved readiness ahead of elements
of 7 Armoured Brigade, it should be noted that their role was
separate from that of the main front line elements of General
Brims' force at the start of operations. As it was, the two main
heavy armoured battlegroups of the division were not ready. These
battlegroups included the majority of the Challenger 2 tanks deployed.
General Brims therefore took a command decision to state that
his division's readiness was acceptable even though the majority
of its main battle tanks were not ready. If the battle plan called
for four battlegroups, it may have been that the decision that
two were enough to start the campaign was based on an assessment
of the strength and willingness to fight of the enemy. It may
also be a somewhat vivid example of what was called the 'rolling
start'. General Brims' view was that it was a reasonable judgement:
Sometimes, you have to be positive, and you are
dealt a hand of cards and you have to play the hand of cards you
have got to the very best of your ability to deliver the mission;
you cannot turn round, on some sort of scientific basis, and say,
'I'm not going to do it.' (You would like to have 52 cards in
the deck, when you do play them?) But, in this case, we had actually
declared readiness in that scenario with 46 cards; that was the
state of readiness, because two of the battlegroups were not,
to go back to the earlier question.[285]
192. Brigadier Graham Binns, Commander of 7 Armoured
Brigade, told a television documentary programme that:
I felt that we were carrying a lot of risk. The
mood was one that we were not ready for this that the soldiers
at a personnel level were not properly equipped. That we had problems
with clothing. we had problems sourcing ammunition. We knew it
was in theatre, but we couldn't find it.[286]
Sir Kevin Tebbit emphasised that a statement of readiness
had been sent out before operations began:
…commanders…have…four things to
monitor…Equipment, people, sustainability and command and
control and these are monitored by them on a colour code system,
red, amber and green. This is information fed up through the subordinate
commands, to the National Contingent Commander and through him
to the Chiefs of Staff Committee. When all of those indicators
go green the Commander knows and the Commanders know and the Chiefs
of Staff know that they have full operational capability, that
is to say they are signalling they are ready in all areas to discharge
the military task, they therefore say, 'when you want to take
a policy decision that is up to you but we are ready to go'. What
I can tell you is that all of that process was completed, that
a week before 20 March the National Contingent Commander signalled
to the Chief of Staff, I sit on that Committee so I know, that
he expected to be ready, he was waiting for one element and that
was for the uparmouring of the Challenger 2 tanks. He expected
that to be completed but until that was done his colour was amber
for equipment. Once that was done it went green.[287]
193. Mr Lee argued that it was a close run thing,
because it was a close run thing, and the British were ready when
they were ready which was by design when they had to go:
I just want to say that the background to all
this, of course, is that throughout this process of preparing
the UORs, which takes some months from the very first discussions
with industry, and so on, during that period we did not know what
the date would be on which the conflict would start and there
was great uncertainty about that right the way through. In a sense,
the date when the conflict started was when the forces were ready
for it to start, and being ready included having the various UORs
fitted. So, by definition, deliberately it was going to be a close-run
thing, because that was when it started, when we were ready for
it to start, it was a conflict which started at a time of our
choosing.[288]
The logic of this is, to say the least, somewhat
obscure. It also sidesteps the question of the American timetable
and how far the British were part of their calculations. It would
have been politically (and militarily for that matter) highly
embarrassing for the ground campaign to have begun without the
British component. While the initial Royal Marine assault on the
Al Faw peninsula may have been well within the readiness parameters
of the British force, it is not clear that this was the case for
the heavy armour of 1st (UK) Armoured Division. The
signalling of full operational capability represented commanders'
decisions that the forces were ready to begin operations, notwithstanding,
or in spite of, continuing equipment shortages and logistic problems.
It did not mean that risks were not being taken; rather it may
have indicated commanders' assessments that these risks could
be taken confident that the mission was still achievable. In the
end the decision to go to war before full preparations had been
completed was a political one, since from the military perspective
there were other windows, including the autumn of 2003, as Air
Marshal Burridge told us.
From planning to operations—what
was found
194. 3 Commando Brigade's mission to secure the oil
fields and associated infrastructure of the Al Faw peninsula was
crucial to the coalition's operational plan. It was also designed
to protect the mine counter measures group as it cleared the Khawr
Abd Allah waterway.[289]
Despite losing the Brigade Reconnaissance Force when a US CH-46
Sea Knight helicopter crashed (which led to the grounding of the
US helicopter force that 42 Commando was about to be delivered
by) the operations went ahead (albeit 6 hours late in the case
of 42 Commando) to great success. As noted in paragraph 90, the
US Navy Special Warfare group brought with it assets which the
Brigade commander would not normally expect to have co-located
with his headquarters, including Predator UAVs, AC130 gunships
and A10 tank buster aircraft.[290]
195. The port of Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep water
port, was opened on 28 March, when the RFA Sir Galahad brought
in the first shipment of humanitarian relief for the local population.
An intensive mine-clearing operation had been undertaken in the
Khawr Abd Allah waterway by the Royal Navy's Mine Counter Measures
Vessels and the Fleet Diving Group, in the days following 20 March
when the town of Umm Qasr had been taken. Though world leaders
in this field, the Royal Navy's experience and equipment was geared
to deep water operations, not shallow waters and rivers as found
in the waterway to Umm Qasr.[291]
The solution was to acquire two systems through the UOR process,
SWIMS and OSMDS, which filled this gap in shallow water capabilities.[292]
The operation represented 'one of the most advanced and tactically
challenging' mine clearances ever undertaken.[293]
The Committee congratulates the Royal Navy for the success
of this complex and demanding operation and urges the MoD to review,
as a matter of urgency, the capability of the Royal Navy to undertake
mine clearance operations in shallow and very shallow waters,
given the likely need for increasing amphibious operations in
the littoral.
196. A critical element in any operation is understanding
of and information on the enemy. Air Marshal Burridge's major
concern was about the combat power of the Iraqi armoured divisions
and on this, he said, the intelligence was fairly good.[294]
197. The Republican Guard had been of considerable
interest to the coalition and a great deal of effort went into
degrading their capability through air power. Their presence around
Basra was relatively small and their role appears principally
to have been to bolster and re-motivate the regular army:
they held their families hostage and invited
the regular army from 51 Division, which was the Basra division,
to get back into their equipment and face the enemy, that is us.
Ill disposed for doing that and you may remember an action south
of Basra where a column of tanks came out, not configured to fight
an all-arms battle, but came out into the face of our fire power.
That is the way we saw the Republican Guard being used.[295]
198. The Air Component Commander, however, was surprised
that the Iraqi air force did not fly at all:
We had a very robust air defence plan in anticipation
that they may fly. We also had a very robust plan to keep closed
those air fields from which we knew they were likely to operate
as well. They had also obviously been watching the way we had
been operating in the no-fly zones for 12 years, so they had a
good knowledge of our capability and they inevitably also knew
what we had brought into theatre as well.[296]
But once it was clear that they were not going to
fight as an air force, risks remained that they might use aircraft
in asymmetric attacks.[297]
199. The decision not to precede the ground campaign
with an air campaign worked well for the coalition, General Brims
argued, because it took the Iraqi forces by surprise and allowed
the coalition to get inside their decision-making cycle:
I think that the first key stage, the fact that
there was not a long air campaign in front of ground movement,…
was the case, I think that was rather crucial, because I think
it took everyone by surprise, and I think that worked very well
for us. I think that and a number of other things really got inside
their decision-making cycle. It had some downsides, because one
then had to catch up with some of the things that normally, with
your air campaign preceding your ground campaign, you would deny
to your opponents, and I am thinking particularly of communications
and the length of time that that was open, and that became quite
a frustration to us at a tactical level, although on another sphere
doing it that way round had big pay-offs.[298]
Overall whereas he had expected the Iraqi regular
forces to put up more of fight he was surprised by the numbers
and commitment of the irregulars:
I would say that his army, which was principally
what I was up against, fought less than it might have. I thought
his irregulars fought more venomously, and actually voluminously
in southern parts, than we had anticipated; take the two together,
not far off what I hoped would be the case, rather than what,
let us say, I anticipated.[299]
It appears from the available evidence that the coalition's
tactical intelligence picture of Iraq was not as robust as might
have been expected. Lack of access, in particular to human intelligence,
has been frequently mentioned to us.
The Approach to Basra
200. A number of press reports claimed that the patient
approach to taking Basra adopted by British forces frustrated
American commanders. Others suggested that the town would have
been ripe for an uprising if the British had moved in quickly.
General Brims told us, however, that he was prevented from entering
Basra until the American Land Component Commander allowed him
to do so:
Umm Qasr was the only urban area that I was required
to take itself, everywhere else, urban areas, eventually we would
have to get into, because to remove a regime you cannot leave
them in control of an urban area, but, with the Land Component
Commander's plan, Umm Qasr was the only place I had to get into,…
so to go into Basra, actually, I was not allowed to go into Basra
until the Land Component Commander agreed, because that was not
what his purpose was at that stage.[300]
201. General McKiernan told General Brims that he
did not want to take Basra until the regime had been isolated
and that entering Basra with its attendant risks could have undermined
the broader mission of avoiding any action which might have pushed
people into the arms of the Saddam regime and away from the coalition.[301]
This illustrates the effects-based approach of the plan, but also
the potential tension between tactical and strategic objectives.
As it turned out, in this campaign, the broader aims fitted in
with the approach that General Brims and his brigade commander
Brigadier Binns independently arrived at, as General Brims explained:
we were holding the bridges on the western outskirts
of Basra, we were coming under fire from its Armed Forces and
counter-attacks, and that situation lasted for about two weeks.
Around al Zubayr, with a population of about 100,000, we were
coming under attack from irregulars, who were operating in and
from al Zubayr, and we had taken some casualties…we
had to reconfigure ourselves to protect our softer targets, to
minimise the number of targets, and 7 Armoured Brigade, whose
area this was, did that very quickly…I talked to the Brigade
Commander…about four or five days into the thing…and
he said, 'I'm going to work out how we're going to take al Zubayr,'
and I said, 'Good, I'll go away and consider Basra.' And he said,
'I've got the most powerful Armoured Brigade the British Army's
ever put in the field, and I'll back-brief you on my bit, of al Zubayr,
tomorrow morning.' I arranged to see him first thing… and
he asked me to come aside of him for a short time, and he said
to me, 'I've worked out, we can't go into al Zubayr using
the most powerful force at my disposal, because that's what the
regime want; we'll inflict undue casualties, we'll take undue
casualties, we will hurt the civilians, we'll wreck the infrastructure,
and that's what he's after. We've got to do it in a more cunning
way.'…I said to him, 'Well, that's funny, because I've worked
out precisely the same thing for Basra.' .[302]
202. The policy adopted was to approach the towns
carefully, build up an intelligence picture and use the population
to provide information before moving on the regime elements within
the towns:
the way we did it was to build up an intelligence
picture, focussed raids, ground raids, air raids, mind raids…what
we were trying to do was destroy the regime and drive a wedge
between the regime and the ordinary people, bearing in mind that
the people in that southern part of Iraq…were Shia people,
who had actually been the victims of the regime for 20 years,
or more...Basra had never changed hands but Al Faw had, and
they suffered under the 1991 war, then they had their uprising
in 1991, which was brutally put down, and they were abused, and
I was aware of them continuing to be abused during the war…essentially,
they were ripe for being liberated, and part of the intelligence
success, done very much bottom-up, because these were people who
wanted us to come in, they wanted to be freed but they could not
do it themselves, they needed our support, and therefore actually
we had them helping us, and they were feeding us intelligence,
and accurate intelligence, worthy targets, and the system trusted
us and we were able to conduct these raids, and they had a very
significant effect.[303]
In the event Basra was taken with very few casualties
in a deliberate operation which drew on superior UK firepower
and the 'UK troops' resourceful determination.'[304]
Intense fighting was limited to a few areas where Baathist irregulars
fought with 'venom and fanaticism'. The operation was a significant
military achievement. One measure of its success—and in
the context of an effects-based operation an important one—was
that just one week later there were joint UK/Iraqi patrols.
270 Q 64 Back
271
Ev 393 Back
272
Q 65 Back
273
Q 104 Back
274
Q 257 Back
275
Q 259 Back
276
Q 553 Back
277
Interview with Lt Gen McKiernan, Channel Four, Invading Iraq:
How Britain and America Got It Wrong, 31 January 2004. Back
278
Q 949 Back
279
Q 949 Back
280
Q 1531 Back
281
Q 987 Back
282
Q 988 Back
283
Q 554 Back
284
Q 900 Back
285
Qq 561-2 Back
286
Interview with Brigadier Graham Binns, Channel Four, Invading
Iraq: How Britain and America Got It Wrong, 31 January 2004. Back
287
Committee of Public Accounts, Evidence Session 21 January 2004,
Ministry of Defence: Operation Telic-United Kingdom Military
Operations in Iraq, Q 141 Back
288
Q 950 Back
289
Ministry of Defence, Operations in Iraq-Lessons for the Future
(December 2003), p 11. Back
290
Q 1519 Back
291
Q1553 Back
292
See also para 178 Back
293
Ministry of Defence, Operations in Iraq-Lessons for the Future
(December 2003), pp 19-20. Back
294
Q 308 Back
295
Q 307 Back
296
Q 1270 Back
297
Q 299 Back
298
Q 621 Back
299
Q 623 Back
300
Q 629 Back
301
Q 637 Back
302
Q 635 Back
303
Q 635 Back
304
Ministry of Defence, Operations in Iraq-Lessons for the Future
(December 2003), p 26. Back
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