Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
GENERAL SIR
MIKE JACKSON
KCB CBE DSO ADC GEN
Q360 Mike Gapes: But it might require
a funding decision within the MoD to reallocate resources to keep
that minimum size of the Army at the cost of a number of Typhoons
or some other—
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sorry, forgive me, I now understand precisely the balance of your
question.
Q361 Mr Havard: Does that £23
million I mentioned earlier come back again?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
it would be wrong of me to come here and plead in a selfish way
that I want all the money from the Royal Air Force and the Royal
Navy.
Q362 Mike Gapes: No, I am not asking
you to be selfish, I am talking about equipment costs and capabilities.
General Sir Mike Jackson: There
is no doubt for the Navy and the Air Force, since they are platform-based
services, it is the quality of the platforms as well as the people
in them which has huge importance, but these platforms are, as
we see, becoming extremely expensive and these are difficult judgments.
For the Army, it is less so, because we have a lot of small platforms,
relatively inexpensive, and of course the platform above all others
is the soldier himself. Getting this balance between technology,
between personnel, between land, sea and air, is a difficult judgment,
and there is a system within the MoD, which I am sure you have
taken evidence on many times, which comes to a view, and that
is what comes out of it. For example, the future Army of 102,000.
I could say I would like 202,000, but that is not really sensible,
is it?
Q363 Mike Gapes: No, because we have
already discussed the question of that, but is 102,000 pretty
much down to the minimum?
General Sir Mike Jackson: It is
just enough to man the force structure which has emerged from
the defence planning assumptions.
Q364 Mike Gapes: And you would not
wish it to go lower, even if it meant you had more sophisticated
equipment and more platforms?
General Sir Mike Jackson: It would
depend on the equipment. There are some hypothetical questions
here. If some piece of equipment came in which only takes two
people to man as opposed to six, you have a manpower saving.
Q365 Mike Gapes: But that would not
give you the people walking the streets of Pristina.
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
example is not about people walking the streets, because that
is an absolute. The so-called boots on the ground is an irreducible
at the end of the day, you must be able to do that.
Q366 Chairman: 25,000 is irreducible?
General Sir Mike Jackson: What?
Infantry?
Q367 Chairman: Yes.
General Sir Mike Jackson: We cannot
work in absolute figures, because you can just put a wet finger
in the wind and think of almost any number you want to. There
has to be some sort of intellectual yardstick against which the
defence effort is judged, and that stems of course from the defence
planning assumptions with which I know you are very familiar.
You may not agree with them, that is another matter, but it is
from those assumptions that the force structure is calculated
as laid out at the back of the White Paper.
Q368 Richard Ottaway: You wrote in
Nations and Partners for Peace about FIST, that it "promises
to offer up to a 50% improvement in the ability of our forces
to conduct dismounted close combat over the current capability".
Can you give me specific examples of the sort of improvements
you could expect there? Will this result in a reduction in the
requirement for dismounted close combat troops?
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
I do not see that at all, to deal with the latter point.
Q369 Richard Ottaway: So it is productivity?
General Sir Mike Jackson: We have
just dealt with boots on the ground, and you heard me say much
earlier that at the end of the day, conflict being a human activity,
your decisive point is probably going to be on land where human
beings live, and that is where the decisive point will be. This
is not about numbers of boots on the ground, or a reduction in
that sense, it is to enable them better to do their job.
Q370 Richard Ottaway: It is an improvement
in productivity?
General Sir Mike Jackson: It is
an improvement. FIST will give better protection to the soldier,
it will give better situational awareness, it will give him better
visibility at night and in fog. All of that. It is to enable him
better to do his job, it is not some sort of infantry-cutting
device.
Q371 Richard Ottaway: Is the infantryman
going to have to carry any extra equipment here?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
load on the infantryman is one of life's eternal problems, and
anything which can be done to cut it down is obviously a good
thing. FIST is still very much under development, but I can assure
you that the weight of any equipment given to the infantry soldier
will be looked at very carefully indeed.
Q372 Richard Ottaway: So it is possibly
yes?
General Sir Mike Jackson: It could
be. Again, that is a judgment, is the improvement in that soldier's
ability given by that extra weight worth the extra weight? These
are judgments to be made and trials to be done.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q373 Mr Havard: I have got FRES again,
and FRES is a medium-weight component. Presumably the in-service
date is still 2009? There has been much talk about that, or "end
of the decade" as it is now being described, so I presume
it is still this decade.
General Sir Mike Jackson: That
is the target, but there is a lot of water to flow under this
particular bridge between now and the in-service date.
Q374 Mr Havard: Absolutely. We have
two concerns and we have voiced them before. The planning assumption
for FRES is to introduce then, so what medium-weight capability
will the UK have until it comes along? What risks are presented
by that?
General Sir Mike Jackson: We will
have the existing capability in the mechanised brigades. It is
as simple as that. The Warrior armoured infantry battalions will
continue in those brigades, and Saxon—not the most ideal
vehicle but it is what we have—until FRES starts to come
on line.
Q375 Mr Havard: Saxon did some interesting
things in Afghanistan, it is not totally redundant.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I did
not say that, but it is not perfect.
Q376 Mr Havard: That is right, exactly.
I asked this question of the CDS and what he said basically was
that he could make the changes in the armoured brigades irrespective
of whether or not they had FRES, so the change we have got in
the formation is not necessarily dependent on FRES coming in.
If you are going to stand down a whole series of Challenger tanks,
there is a potential gap before FRES comes in. There is a concern
about this, and I have expressed this concern before, I have had
some answers back but I wondered if you shared those concerns
because there seems to be this gap.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I know
this is a concern, but I can assure you it is not mine. It is
interesting, the US Army has announced their main battle tank,
the Abrams, will be in service until 2032, a very precise date.
We have no doubt whatsoever that the Challenger 2 is with us for
another generation, 25 years, a similar sort of time frame. I
have no doubt about that. The main battle tank is still the beast
that it is, and if technology one day can produce the fire-power,
mobility and protection of the main battle tank but weighs 20
tonnes and it goes in the back of a Hercules, that will be quite
something; we are certainly not there yet. Until then, the main
battle tank without doubt has its place on the battlefield. So
we are not getting rid of a capability before its successor comes
in, because FRES is certainly an issue, and the main battle tank
will be a complementary system. One does not replace the other.
Does that, I hope, reassure you on that point?
Mr Havard: Yes, thank you very much.
Q377 Mr Cran: We are on to helicopters
and I will be brief, and I guess you would like to be brief too
because you have been here a long time. You are aware that the
document, Future Capabilities, states that £3 billion
will be spent on helicopter platforms over the next ten years
"to replace and enhance our existing capability", but
then it goes on to say that the MoD "aim to report progress
in the next few months". Could you outline for us how this
investment is going with particular reference to Lynx, Puma and
Sea King?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I do
not think I am your best witness here. This is very much a procurement
issue. I have my views about future helicopter capability but
I think you are asking me a question which, frankly, is best placed
within the procurement sector.
Q378 Mr Cran: Although I may have
disagreed with you over the regimental restructuring, I have to
say, Chairman, I rather agree with that answer now, so there is
a whole raft of other questions on this subject which I do not
think are applicable. I think we should go to the Defence Procurement
Agency. What I would like to hear from you though is an outline
of those views you have on helicopter capability.
General Sir Mike Jackson: We have
Apache now coming into front-line service and it will be very
interesting to see the degree to which that remarkable aircraft
is going to increase our capability, and I think it is rather
more than we may yet imagine, but they are in relatively small
numbers. What will be very important will be to have an aircraft
which can find the targets—Apache can do it itself but,
as I say, there will not be many. We need a battlefield reconnaissance
helicopter, whatever that may look like and whoever may eventually
make it, as I say, I am not your expert witness there, but I am
quite clear about that role. If it has a small utility aspect
to it as well, ie it is big enough to carry a small command group,
that is a great help. Without doubt, the Army in the field needs
lift—how much lift and the way in which that lift will be
delivered and which aircraft will do it, again these are procurement
decisions, but in terms of making the land component work, that
is how I see the helicopter requirement.
Q379 Mr Cran: How does what you have
just said fit into this proposition: you probably are aware—and
I am reading now—in April 2004 the National Audit Office
reported that there was an overall shortfall in helicopter capability
of 38% in the provision of battlefield helicopters. Is that something
you recognise at operational level from where you look at things?
How are you dealing with it and will the investment planned rectify
it?
General Sir Mike Jackson: My understanding
of that NAO figure of 38%—I think it is.
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