Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2004
RT HON
GEOFF HOON
MP, SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG AND
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER
GCB CMG CBE ADC GEN
Q60 Mike Gapes: The Future Capabilities
document talks about further significant investment in this area
but the examples you give are only limited to improving deployable
port and maritime capabilities; and you talk about strengthening
logistic capability at brigade level, but I would be interested
to know how? Are we talking about more people or are we talking
about the system, and how can I be certain that in the next conflict
either you, because you have been a long-serving Defence Secretary
and are coming up to Dennis Healey's time soon, either you or
your successor, whenever that is, will not be facing exactly the
same questions and criticisms that we have raised in the past
and our previous committees have raised about this vital area?
Mr Hoon: I think that is a perfectly
fair observation, and it is consistent with the problems that
we have had in a sense since the end of the Cold War, because
we have all consistently failed to appreciate the kinds of challenges,
the break up, first of all, of the Warsaw Pact, disintegration
of countries like Yugoslavia, the challenge of intra-country conflict,
the global reach of terrorism—these are all challenges that
none of us have properly anticipated. None of the excellent work
that was done in preparation for the Strategic Defence Review
anticipated that there would be the kind of attack on the twin
towers and the Pentagon launched from a country like Afghanistan
which was completely off the international radar. What I am saying
to you is that, if we are to ensure some degree of preparation
for whatever changes are going to hit us in the years to come,
the kind of reorganisation, the kind of flexibility, the ability
to conduct a number of different operations simultaneously with
the necessary consequences for logisticians and others, all of
that seems to me to be absolutely going in the right direction.
Whether it is enough you will have to reconvene in five years'
or ten years' time and see, but I am absolutely confident that
this is the right direction. Whether it is sufficiently quick,
whether it is sufficient in numbers, as I say, we will have to
look at in the future.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Firstly, it
was not good enough. We said it was not good enough in our own
internal report. It was something which was a weakness that the
Department accepted, accepts and needs to do better in. It was
not because we were not looking at it. It was because we had a
solution which we proceeded with which proved to be too complex,
too expensive and we had to stop and take a different route. The
problem is not getting logistics to a theatre. That is fine; it
is good; it worked brilliantly. We got as much as we got in the
Gulf War in half the time to the theatre. The problem was getting
it out at the end into the actual deployed locations. You will
appreciate that is very tricky. There is no simple off-the-shelf
solution to that. Nobody else has to do that: supermarkets, civil
systems are all fixed points; we have to do them as deployed points.
You need several things. We had a choke point, by the way. We
were always going into one place. So we had a massive amount of
stuff going into one single location in a very short period of
time; not something we had expected, because we expected, by the
way, to be going in through Southern Turkey. So these are mitigating
circumstances—do not make too much of it—but there
was a system. The system was overwhelmed by the amount arriving
and the speed with which it had to turn around, and that is why
we talked about 'losing visibility'. What we are doing is putting
in place an in-transit visibility system to help us from the deployed
location to the front-line. We did introduce it at the end of
the operation and it made a huge change straightaway; so we know
it works. It is called TAV. It is an American system. We had TAV
Minus. We are now integrating this thing (TAV) into our existing
logistic systems and that is already proving to be a great help.
It does not cost a fortune. The software costs are not huge. I
think the full figure you have got probably there is around £17
million. We have already spent about half of that on this. But
you also need people who are trained to use it at both ends.
Q61 Mike Gapes: Is that like a bar-code
system?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is like a
bar-code system, but we have got those already. It is more a question
of having it on the screen so that you can link—
Q62 Mike Gapes: So it is asset-tracking?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is asset-tracking.
Q63 Mike Gapes: In the real sense?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: So that you
can link containers and you also know what is in the containers.
So you not only know that this is the container that they sent
you, but this is what is in the container and it corresponds to
what you are expecting. Those systems are now being fielded. We
also need trained people to help with the tracking of the logistics.
That is part of the 3,000 that will be added as a result of the
change in the four regiments, four battalions. We also need greater
effort on operational logistics, and we did make this appointment,
ACDS operational logistics two-star appointment. Again, as the
campaign more or less was going on that has proved to be a great
help. There are other factors as well, for example, sheer communications
capacity, which is about satellites and those sorts of things,
which would not be in these figures because it is part of the
overall infrastructure that we are trying to put in place, the
defence information structure, but that is also relevant to deployed
logistics because that it what enables people in tents in the
field to actually open their laptop and they can get a reading
because they have got a satellite link. So there are a lot of
other elements as well, but I do need to assure you, and I think
it is my responsibility, because frankly we did not do well enough,
that we are putting a lot of effort into this and it is getting
better, it is not just a question of how much money you are spending;
it is this total linkage of the various systems.
Q64 Mike Gapes: Is this for all three
Services working together?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Yes.
Q65 Mike Gapes: Would you say that
you are confident that you have got the ability at this point
for the three Services to work in the same integrated system or
at what point in the future will we hear that?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I am confident
that we will progressively be getting better between now and 2007.
Q66 Mike Gapes: You are saying that
by 2007 we will have a unified Tri-Service logistic system?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We have already
got a unified tri-service logistic system.
Q67 Mike Gapes: Which works?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The issue is
we have legacy IT systems that we have to put smart front-ends
on to pull them together and give everybody the same amount of
information.
Q68 Mike Gapes: Would you be confident
to say that by 2007 you will have a system based upon this American
technology that you referred to and everything else that would
in a sense enable you or other people at the centre to be able
to say, "We know where everything is, we know what container
it is in, we know which key, which lock fits that container and
we know which people are going to take this from there and put
it there"?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Three years
ago if you had asked me whether I would be confident about DSMS,
which was the previous system we had tried to bring in, I would
have said, "Yes". Now I have been in the job for six
years, I am not going to say "Yes" again. What I am
going to say is, you know, I stake a lot of my job on getting
this right and making sure it happens progressively and I will
continue to do so.
Q69 Mr Hancock: I have to say as
a starting point, I share a lot of your thoughts on the Army.
I think the Army will develop in the way you have described and
will move forward in a very successful way, but if I could say
as a last remark to Sir Kevin on his comments, one wonders with
the sophistication of your logistic system on computers now, about
the ability for someone to hack into that.[4]
That would be a real recipe for a disaster to emerge?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: And that is
one of the problems. They have to be secure.
Q70 Mr Hancock: I would be interested
to know at some stage how we are going to cope with the security
of that. Under the proposals the fleet of destroyers and frigates
will be reduced to 25 in 2006 and yet we are told that the first
Type 45 due to enter service in 2007 is probably going to be delayed,
it may be 10 years before the numbers of ships actually return
to their present levels, and yet in Future Capabilities
the suggestion is that for every one ship on deployment you need
at least three or four in support of that. What does this actually
do for the Navy and what does it do for our capabilities. The
First Sea Lord made it quite clear that a fleet of 25 took us
very close to the cusp when it came to our ability to serve the
priorities and the issues that the Government are giving the Navy
to cope with?
Mr Hoon: Can I again just qualify
slightly your premise. These changes are not predicated on the
availability of Type 45. Type 45 will enormously enhance our ability
once it comes into service, I suppose towards the end of the decade,
and will then replace what will be ageing Type 42s. We have done
the same with the Royal Navy as we have done with other parts
of the Armed Forces. We have looked at the kind of strategic environment
in which they operate, we have asked ourselves very difficult
and searching questions about the kinds of capabilities, the kinds
of effects that those capabilities are going to generate and what
force size is most appropriate in that context. I accept what
Crispin says, that inevitably that is in the context of a budgetary
settlement, and that is always the case. We have looked hard at
ships that we have available. Those that are more flexible and
more capable in dealing with the kinds of strategic environment
we face we will retain, those that are less flexible they will
have less a priority and we will not need them. It is not simply
either, the question of their age. We will keep some older platforms
because they have precisely the kind of flexibility that we require.
The three existing aircraft-carriers, for example, have proved
their worth time and time again in being able to deliver capabilities
at great distance.
Q71 Mr Hancock: If the reductions
of six ships are not really about the replacements of the Type
45s coming on board, the First Sea Lord, again, if you accept
what you have just said as being the political side of it, the
military side of it, he made it quite clear that the reductions
would need a commensurate reduction in military tasks. If I could
address that to the Chief of the Defence Staff. What does that
mean in terms of our deployable options? How did you take that
into the Defence Management Committee meeting?
Sir Michael Walker: We recognised
that with the smaller numbers clearly you would not be able to
have as many ships in as many places as you were with a large
number of ships, and we looked at the tasks around the world.
There are always as many tasks as you could dream up for military
forces and various things, but we have to cut our cloth at some
stage according to what we believe are the right levels of activity
and commitment. So we looked at the various commitments we had
around the world, whether they were patrol ships in the Caribbean,
whether it was in the South Atlantic, North Atlantic, our commitments
to NATO, and we came up with a judgment that said, "That
is a fair deal for a country of our size with Armed Forces of
our size. That is what we should be recommending to our Government
as to the sort of commitments we should undertake", and some
of them perhaps are no longer as relevant as they were.
Mr Hoon: Can I say this as well?
There is a temptation sometimes, I think, to see the Royal Navy
as somehow separate from the kinds of strategic changes that are
occurring in the world. When the First Sea Lord talks about reducing
commitments, it may well be that he is reducing commitments that
in a sense are no longer as relevant. Some of our standing commitments
historically, particularly those through NATO for example—NATO
also has to change in this environment. We have put a lot of effort,
as an important member of NATO, in getting NATO to recognise that
some of its traditional commitments and organisation still largely
determined, I think entirely wrongly by the Cold War, need to
change. So there are adjustments that are taking place at national
level but which also take place internationally and changing the
way in which our Royal Navy operates, and our Royal Navy will
be engaged in this expeditionary warfare in exactly the way that
the Army and the Royal Air Force will be; so it is supporting
that expeditionary flexible capability.
Q72 Mr Hancock: I think that is very
helpful, and I do not think any reasonable person would dissent
from that; but I think it would help us enormously if the suggested
reduction in the capabilities was actually spelt out in a more
explicit way rather than in the vague way that you describe, General.
I think it would help enormously if there was some meat on the
bones of what you have said, saying, "These are the ones
that are offered up as possibilities." HMS Richmond, doing
a first-class job in the Caribbean today, I think based on the
evidence that we have seen, would be an impossible commitment
to reduce because that on-going problem that they get and our
expectation to have a ship there will continue. So I think from
our point of view, looking at what we are trying to decide here
about the way in which this is going to work out for all of the
Forces, it would be helpful if we knew?
Mr Hoon: But that is a perfect
illustration of precisely what General Walker was saying. The
ship that happened to be available in the Caribbean, or the two
ships were there for a completely different task than the one
that they had engaged upon. We could put ships anywhere in the
world, we could find perfectly proper activities for them and
they would then be available for whatever natural disaster occurred
in whatever part of the world we are considering. That is not
a very sensible way to organise our armed forces.
Q73 Mr Hancock: No, you are taking
that the wrong way. I know very well that those ships in the Caribbean
are not there to protect islanders from the menace of hurricanes.
It is fortuitous that they have that capability. So you are being
a bit too cynical. I am looking for you to tell us, "Not
that one", I am looking for you to explain to us where is
the reduction in capabilities that the head of the Navy said would
have to happen by 2006 when these reductions start to bite in
the Navy's ability to deliver the same punch as they have got
at the present time; and that to me is a reasonable question to
ask?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Can I help to
answer that in terms of what we decided in the Defence Management
Board. The first thing is that we judged that the size of our
maritime task forces could be smaller than before. The reason
for that is partly because of reduced submarine threat and partly
because of—I hate to come onto high technology again because
I know the Chairman has expressed some scepticism about this—but
network enabled capability is genuinely networking ships more
effectively so they can link together, acquire targets effectively,
exchange information and engage targets. With that, again, we
are able to cover a wider sea area with fewer ships. So the size
of our task forces has been reduced under our planning assumptions.
I know you can never cater for every contingency, but we judged
that, broadly speaking, that did enable us to reduce the number
of destroyers and frigates; also the introduction of Sonar 2087
in Type 22 frigates, which gives a greatly increased capability
of surveillance and control. So it is a combination of new technology
coming in along with new types of vessel and judgments about changed
threats, and it was the balance of those that arrived at those
figures as well as a judgment that we could reduce certain tasks,
including participation in a particular standing NATO task.
Q74 Mr Hancock: I think it would
be very a interesting question for you to answer when you talked
about the Challengers, about the issue of may be storing the 40
out of service Challengers because the need might return. I do
not want to bring back old grief to the Navy, but HMS Nottingham
is the classic example where an accident occurs, a ship is out
of commission and a sizeable chunk of your deployable force is
out of commission. Other things happen in warfare as well. We
know in our lifetime, in recent times, we have lost ships in action,
so we know that that is a capable threat. What is there when you
are on the cusp that allows you to have any allowance for those
sorts of incidents to take place? If the First Sea Lord is right
that 25 ships takes you to the edge, what is there in a fall-back?
Will we rush to dispose of some of these quite new ships?
Mr Hoon: I think that is a perfectly
fair point, but the answer to that is that we make those judgments
in the light of what is available at the time, and, consistent
with the answer I gave you earlier which you did not like, the
truth is that, given the range of activities that we could engage
in, we have to make judgments about what we have available and
how we use that equipment. That will not change in the future,
but, as Kevin indicated to you, what we have available is far
more potent and far more capable than anything we have had in
the past, and that will go on improving as Type 45s and the carriers
become available in the future.
Q75 Mr Hancock: What it the latest
date we have now for the first Type 45? 2007 is a date which is
going out of the frame, is it not?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I think that
is the date that is familiar to me. Yes.
Q76 Mr Hancock: Still 2007?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Yes; and the
question of reducing the numbers of Type 45 is basically to do
with how many we produce, as it were, in the out years. It is
not about cutting the numbers that we need in the medium-term.
Q77 Mr Hancock: I think there is
a slight difference of opinion?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No, I think
we are just checking the date.
Q78 Rachel Squire: Once again declaring
my interest, this time, of course, with the dock yard, can I ask
you about the consequences for industry of your decisions on a
further reduction in the naval fleet, both ship-building, new-build
and maintenance work. As you have just mentioned, only eight Type
45 destroyers are now going to be required and there will be substantially
less refit/maintenance work as 12 ship or boats have been withdrawn
from service earlier than planned. Can you say what assessment
you have undertaken of how those decisions will affect the UK's
ship-building and refit/ maintenance industry?
Mr Hoon: If I can separate out
the question of ship-building from ship-repair and maintenance
because, though they are obviously connected, it is important
to make the distinction. First of all, as far as ship building
is concerned, I recognise that there is a risk that there will
be a huge demand from the Ministry of Defence during a relatively
limited period of time for ship-building in the United Kingdom
and after that a relatively difficult period for those companies
which supplied those ships, and that is why we have looked hard
at the best way of managing our demand, what the last Chief of
the Defence Staff when he was First Sea Lord described as the
most exciting warship building programme he had seen at any time
in his career in the Royal Navy. So I have no doubts of the excellence
of the programme. We have to ensure that we have a study looking
at the question of capacity in the industry. I am interested in
the capacity because I am also interested in the price, and if
we demand too much over a short period of time, necessarily we
will have to pay more. We are looking to find the right way of
ensuring that our warship building programme can be met across
the United Kingdom. Inevitably, and this is not just a question
of procuring fewer ships or having fewer ships, these ships are
more modern, more effective, they require less by way of maintenance
and refitting and that necessarily has industrial implications.
You know every bit as much about this subject as I do from long
years of experience in your constituency. It is something that
we have managed with the relevant yards. We had a programme of
allocating certain ships for a period, but thereafter, not least
because our requirement would reduce, we moved to a more competitive
environment. I recognise that there are challenges on both sides.
We need to retain a capability for repair and I recognise as well
that companies need a degree of predictability as to what is available.
Q79 Rachel Squire: I think, Secretary
of State, retaining the capability for repair and ship-building,
maintaining the skills that are necessary, is one of the key concerns.
Yes, you know, great promise, as you say, of the best warship
building programme for a very long time, but the concern that
in the short to medium-term there will not be sufficient work
to maintain the skills of the work forces in the various yards.
I would be interested in your comments on how much discussion
has been taken on trying to overcome that particular concern and
perhaps looking at the timing of future ship programmes being
changed to try and reduce the level of peaks and troughs?
Mr Hoon: That is really what I
was saying. We have this study for precisely that purpose. I recognise
that there are some short-term problems. There is, if you like,
a medium-term glut in terms of orders and there may be some difficulties
in the very long-term. We have to manage that process and we will
do so in discussion with industry.
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