Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2005
MINISTRY OF
DEFENCE
Q60 Mr Bacon: I am talking about
in the Air Force full stop actually. It would just be interesting
to know.
Air Vice-Marshal Leeson: For a
particular snapshot.
Q61 Mr Bacon: I take it that cannibalisation
gets worse at the time of a high operation presumably.
Air Vice-Marshal Leeson: Indeed
so.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Exactly so,
particularly in large scale, which is what this records.
Q62 Mr Bacon: It would be interesting
to know what it was like in TELIC and what it is like now.
Air Vice-Marshal Leeson: We could
dabble around in Tornado. At the moment, there are 142 aeroplanes
in the fleet, broadly 100 operate in the peacetime training fleet;
the remainder are either because of maintenance programmes or
they have been bought against the future rate at which aircraft
crash in a 30 or 40-year timescale, given production might stop.
We currently have eight deployed and I could probably usefully
predict that the number of aircraft out there at the moment which
have some spares removed to service other aeroplanes, either in
the deployed fleet or the current operating fleet would be in
the two handfuls, five through 10, because you are using this
as an opportunity not to hold very large high-price spares whose
arising rate of replacement is very low.
Q63 Mr Bacon: If you could send us
a note summarising it, that would be very helpful.
Air Vice-Marshal Leeson: Sure[3].
Sir Kevin Tebbit: But I hope this
will still be in the context that this is an action of last resort
in terms of value for money overall.
Q64 Mr Bacon: You can write on it
in big red letters, if you want: Mr Bacon, this is an action of
last resort. I shall not mind at all. I am just interested in
getting more of a global picture of what is going on both at the
TELIC moment, when obviously there is peak pressure, and at other
times.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The only point
I should make though is that a lot of this is fleeting. It is
very short-term stuff. We need it for this thing and it will change very
quickly. Even civil air operators do cannibalisation themselves.
Q65 Mr Bacon: So do car dealers.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: When they say
their aircraft has been delayed a little in take-off, they are
whipping something off something else.
Q66 Mr Bacon: Yes. I should just
like to know more about it and if you could send us some stuff,
I should be grateful. By the way, on the subject of cannibalisation,
do the Americans cannibalise?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Yes, everybody
does.
Q67 Mr Bacon: Cosi fan tutti.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: As far
as I am aware, all air forces in the world do. It is a terribly
pejorative term.
Q68 Mr Bacon: You prefer "robbery"
do you, like the Air Vice-Marshal?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No, I think
there is a very elegant term actually used by the NAO itself and
I am very grateful for it: redistribution for efficiency.
Mr Bacon: That is what happens when you
have 700 chartered accountants; they use much more elegant phrases.
Q69 Chairman: Are permanent secretaries
ever cannibalised?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That did worry
me, because at one point the Report did appear to refer to people
as well as to equipment in this phrase and I was rather worried
about what the NAO meant.
Q70 Mr Bacon: I should like to ask
you another question about the Americans. We are involved in a
peace-keeping operation in Afghanistan with the French and the
Germans, is that right?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Yes; and others.
Q71 Mr Bacon: Are our forces, British
forces involved in that peace-keeping operation available for
offensive operations in Afghanistan?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The answer is
yes and no, but General Fry can help.
Q72 Mr Bacon: That is a very good
answer.
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
There are two operations, as I am sure you are aware, which are
running in Afghanistan at the present time. One is commanded by
NATO and called the International Security Assistance Force and
the other one is an operation which the Americans term Operation
Enduring Freedom. The NATO operation is where most of our people
are at the present time; they are in the north of country, they
are also in Kabul. They are very much part of the NATO operation
which is about counter-insurgency and is about less overtly aggressive
operations than the Americans are involved in. We do however have
some elements of our forces, including the Harriers which are
currently based in Kandahar, which serve both the ISAF mission
and also OEF as well.
Q73 Mr Bacon: Can you just remind
me which is which?
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
ISAF is the NATO mission.
Q74 Mr Bacon: Which is the war-fighting
mission?
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
No.
Q75 Mr Bacon: The other way round.
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
It is essentially a humanitarian mission which also has implications
for expanding the writ of the Government of Afghanistan but fights
under rules of engagement which are about self-protection.
Q76 Mr Bacon: And the other one is
called?
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
Operation Enduring Freedom.
Q77 Mr Bacon: And that is the war-fighting
one.
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
That is the war-fighting part of it, yes.
Q78 Mr Bacon: And would you like
to be able to deploy the British forces you currently have in
the ISAF more actively into the war-fighting operation? Are they
available for that?
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
We have already said, the Prime Minister at the Istanbul summit
and the Secretary of State subsequently, that during the course
of the operation we would move our people from the north, where
they are at the present time, down to the south of Afghanistan
and we would take a provincial reconstruction team from the north
and place it in the south and we would need to put some other
forces there as well. We are still thinking about precisely the
size and shape of those forces. If we were to do that, necessarily
we should have to put it under the command of Operation Enduring
Freedom, because NATO would not be mature enough at the beginning
to be able to take command of that part of the operation. But
we also hope that NATO's command will expand over a far larger
part of the country and therefore, whilst we would begin with
Operation Enduring Freedom, we would eventually be subsumed within
NATO command when the conditions were right.
Q79 Mr Bacon: But would you not have
a problem with the French and the Germans, if you sought to do
that?
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Fry:
We could well have some problems with the French and Germans because
they have national sovereign positions that they will preserve.
It is interesting however that the French are operating under
Operation Enduring Freedom at the present time and they are therefore
fully involved in war-fighting operations. The Germans, as I am
sure you are aware, are operating in ISAF.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: What we are
thinking is eventually a single command structure which enables
both types of activity to go on. I think the Secretary of State
used the phrase synergy between the two types of activity, which
would make sense. The Afghan Government wants to deal with one
command structure rather than two separate organisations and a
commander needs the flexibility to move those forces prepared
and able to do both as necessary. The important thing is not to
lose either the French or indeed the United States.
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