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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 381-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE DEFENCE COMMITTEE
UK DEFENCE: COMMITMENTS AND RESOURCES
Tuesday 13 March 2007 PROFESSOR SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR BRIAN BURRIDGE VICE ADMIRAL SIR TIM McCLEMENT and MAJOR GENERAL A RITCHIE
MR M CODNER and PROFESSOR K HARTLEY Evidence heard in Public Questions 157 - 285
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Defence Committee on Tuesday 13 March 2007 Members present James Arbuthnot, in the Chair Mr David Crausby Linda Gilroy Mr Dai Havard Mr Adam Holloway Mr Bernard Jenkin Mr Kevan Jones Robert Key John Smith ________________ Witness: Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, gave evidence. Q157 Chairman: This is the second evidence session of our inquiry into UK defence commitments and resources. The purpose of the inquiry is to look at the assumptions made in the Government's Strategic Defence Review and also the Future Capabilities White Paper in 2004, to work out whether those remain assumptions and whether the current commitments are sustainable without an increase in resources. Sir Lawrence, I understand that you must be away by 10 o'clock. Do you think that the strategy set out in the Strategic Defence Review in 1998, as amended by the 2003 White Paper, still holds good and, if so, do you think it will continue to do so in 10 or 20 years' time? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think the amendment was quite important. In a way, this must be seen as work in progress, beginning with a look at the defence commitments under Tom King after the end of the cold war in 1991. The 1998 Strategic Defence Review was part-right; it recognised that we could not have a preoccupation with big wars against big enemies to the exclusion of the things that seemed to be going on around us. In a number of cases one had serious humanitarian distress of one sort or another and objectionable practices by particular governments where it seemed that force was a possible response to these dilemmas, as obviously happened under the previous government in Bosnia. It started very cautiously with the commitment in Bosnia but it was gradually ratcheted up even before this Government came to power. I think it was building on that sense of humanitarian intervention as a problem that we had to be prepared to address and it provided a serious rationale for contemporary western armed forces at a time when the previous rationale of dealing with a great power threat no longer seemed so pressing. What has changed since then has not been that basic analysis but those humanitarian interventions were seen to be reasonably discretionary: you could or could not do them depending on whether you thought there was a realistic prospect of making a difference, how difficult they appeared to be, the nature of public support and so on. There was a variety of reasons why one might or might not choose to do so. What has changed since then is that there are important strategic interests of the United Kingdom at stake. One can argue that they may be served better by not getting involved, but one way or another they are important strategic interests. That requires a degree of commitment that may not have been there before and the stakes have become much higher. The British as opposed to the Americans probably understood from the mid-1990s that these were very demanding in terms of manpower. You need troops on the ground but there is a limit to what you can do from the air with these sorts of commitments. I think that has provided an additional push. To sum up, you are seeing two developments from 2008: the first is a sense of strategic imperative that there are important national interests at stake. We are not just doing good; there are reasons that we may wish to become involved which mean that we can suddenly decide that it has not been a good idea and walk away from it. Second, these are very demanding long-term commitments that cannot be done on the cheap or just with a small amount of force. If you are to do them they are really quite demanding. I think that is one of the reasons why we have the pressures on the defence budget that we now see. Q158 Chairman: Do you think that the demanding nature of these strategies in terms of manpower that you have just mentioned was fully understood in 1998? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think the principle that what matters are people on the ground was understood. One can probably find chapter and verse to demonstrate that. Bosnia had been very important in demonstrating one could not do these things by penny packets of soldiers dotted around. If one is to put troops in harm's way one must give them the support and numbers they need. Those things were understood. I do not think anybody would have anticipated in 1998 that we would find ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan in the way we are now. They are not small countries with small populations; they are countries with difficult terrain and large populations, part hostile and part not. This is very different from the scale that we looked at beforehand. Therefore, the question of scale has been very notable. Q159 Mr Holloway: In a sense is it not also a philosophical question? In Bosnia we have very limited objectives: we would never save every Bosnian Muslim. Now we have reports like Delivering Security in a Changing World and we have hugely ambitious things to do, such as turning southern Iraq or Helmand province into Surrey. Is it not a wholly different way of thinking? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think that these days there is greater realism about whether one can project beacons of enlightenment into some of these places that might have been part of the rhetoric of a few years ago. There is a greater understanding since that you have to work more with the grain of local politics than try to put Surrey into Helmand province. If you look at some of the rhetoric around Bosnia or Kosovo, I do not think that at that time you would necessarily have found that difference. I think there is now greater realisation that these are long hauls and what the military can do in these situations is at best to create the conditions where local politics can work. The longer it takes to do that the longer the military is stuck there. The problems of local politics are intense and in some ways have proved to be more so in Iraq than in Afghanistan. Until one has gets the local politics right one cannot move on with economic and social reconstruction which creates the wider conditions in which it is easier to get the troops out feeling that they have done a successful job. Our ambitions have been scaled down but realising those more limited ambitions still turns out to be pretty difficult. Chairman: You mentioned the difference between the United Kingdom and United States approach earlier. We will move to that now. Q160 Mr Jenkin: How does US strategic thinking affect UK defence planning, and do you expect it to change over the next decade? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I do. I believe that there has been an important shift in American strategic thinking over the past year or so. During the 1990s the general view of the Clinton Administration was that there was very little to be gained by putting US troops in harm's way in any conflict. That was reinforced by the Somalia experience in 1994. In Bosnia and Kosovo the US commitment was limited to escort. That role was substantial and should not be trivialised; it made all the difference, but they were very reliant on air power. In 2001 in Afghanistan they took the view that they could work pretty well with special forces and indigenous armies and initially that seemed to work quite well. In Iraq in 2003 they looked at it in terms of a conventional battle against a conventional army which with modern technology, tactics and doctrine they would be able to crush quite easily. What they did not have was a developed doctrine for long-term commitments against an insurgency and they were in Iraq for a long time before they recognised and acknowledged the nature of the insurgency. Many Americans would argue that the broad policy as well as some of the tactics undermined the effectiveness of their force. I think there has been a steep and difficult learning curve, but most people who are aware of the work that General Petraus, for example, and others have been doing realise that the American Army in particular now appreciates that it cannot adopt the stance taken in the past, that it is a big war army and that is all it should be used for, not for counter-insurgency, peace-keeping or anything like that; that is all a diversion from its main effort. The change that has taken place at the top since 2003 has been to recognise that it has to give itself to those new demands. That will take a long time to work through. It is a major shift in priorities, doctrine, training and so on. In a way, one hopes that the experience of the past few years will not be the experience of the next 10 or 20, but if it is I think there is more ground for optimism that US forces will be better geared to it than in the past. I think that would make it easier for the UK forces to work with them in these sorts of operations. There will still be differences in national styles, cultures and so on in these matters, but I do not think that there will be as large a gap as before. Q161 Mr Jenkin: What you have described is the way that British tactical thinking has educated American tactical thinking, but in terms of how the United States defence policy affects our strategic thinking there is much talk at the moment of creating more distance and more independence of thought in UK strategic thinkers. How do you believe that will develop, or are we inextricably linked? Are our interests too closely entwined and our outlook on the world almost identical in so many respects that we are foolish to think we should develop strategic priorities that are different from American strategic priorities? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think we have to have our sense of national priorities and there will be things in which the Americans have no interest; certainly, there are things the Americans do in which we have no interest, for example how we work with our European partners, and so on. But to the extent that we will be engaging in active combat, frankly there are not many countries, as we have seen in Afghanistan, in which we are likely to be working with the US. There are such countries but there are not that many. It may be that we and the United States will decide in this context to use armed force less, and that may be one conclusion to which both countries come after the experience of the past few years, but to the extent that we get engaged and both have capable forces we are bound to work with them. Even when our thinking is by no means identical and we have a different sense of the way to do things we find ourselves working together and sometimes it produces difficult results. All I am saying is that at that level it may be easier. I am not saying that they are following the British model - they would say they have their own ideas - but they are developing a greater appreciation of what we would call "hearts and minds" than was there before. Q162 Mr Crausby: Do you accept that our Armed Forces have been operating consistently above the scale of effort predicted in the 2004 Future Capabilities White Paper? Effectively, does it mean that the MoD's planning assumptions have been wrong? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think it was pretty clear by 2004 that we were in a new stage - obviously, we were already in Iraq - and it would require working our forces very intensively, and so we have been. Sometimes it is hard to disentangle developments in public debate and things that people have noticed, like the general sense of the covenant with our Armed Forces. If we are asking them to make these sacrifices and do these things are we looking after them or their families properly? That has become an aspect of the debate that I hope a lot of people were aware of earlier in the decade and has become much more prominent in recent public debate. The biggest difficulty is the question of how much we continue to prepare for larger war scenarios and how much we accept that the intermediate type of warfare in which we are engaged at the moment is likely to be the pattern of the future. If it is the case that one is geared to these intermediate areas which are very tough, last a long time and, although of high intensity, do not require some of the big kit items that one would have expected for previous wars, how much does that affect our planning and procurement? There remains a strong view in the MoD and the Armed Forces that it goes too far to assume that we will not be engaged in the bigger scenarios. If that is the case - because it is quite expensive - how much do you have to gear yourself for that? Obviously, the carrier debate is an important aspect of that. One can make a case for the carriers that is wholly geared to the sort of scenarios we are facing at the moment about mobile air and so on, but it is an expensive way of doing it. I think that is why that particular side of the debate is becoming more difficult. Q163 Mr Crausby: We are operating in the hope that our present level of commitments will be reduced? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: Yes. Q164 Mr Crausby: Do you feel that confident? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: It is clear that we will be running down our forces one way or the other in Iraq over the next couple of years, hopefully in an orderly fashion, because I think that is what will be happening with the Americans as well. I believe that Afghanistan is a long-term commitment, simply because in some ways we are taking a lead there. I think our forces have performed very impressively so far. There is a lot to play for politically in Afghanistan. I see that being a difficult commitment to run down for some time. One does not know whether something else will blow up, as it has a habit of doing. At the moment I think it would be very difficult for us to take on any new commitment. To have that lack of reserve capacity is not surprising but it is a little disturbing. Q165 Mr Jones: In taking on these commitments, what is your view - we tried to elicit it last week from CDS - of the relationship between senior Army, Navy and RAF figures in terms of saying to politicians on occasions "no" to possible operations which politically may be advantageous? One of the indications we get is that if you ask the Army, Air Force of Navy whether they can do something they will say they can and that leads perhaps to overstretch or over-commitments. Have you any thoughts on that matter and perhaps how more difficult it will become in future? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think that the experience of the past few years will have an effect on politicians if they become over-enthusiastic about new commitments because they can see where they may lead. There are commitments and commitments. At one point we were often quite clever in devoting small numbers to demonstrate an involvement and that gave us access to some of the decision-making but did not put a great strain on anything. One example from a long time ago is the multi-national force in Beirut to which we sent 100 people. We did not send many to East Timor but we can claim to be involved in that area. There is always that sort of thing. But I believe the general view at the moment is that we simply could not take on anything that required land forces in any numbers. I think the Armed Forces would have to say that they do not have the capacity. In a number of years' time, when hopefully we are not in Iraq any more but perhaps still have a major commitment in Afghanistan, the forces would still say that historically they are pretty committed but there is a little spare capacity. That will be the testing time for that sort of situation. I believe that a lot will depend on the extent to which we see the involvement of real strategic interests. One of the ways that these things could be looked at in the past is to regard them as a discretionary aspect. A very good example of that is Rwanda in 1994. Looking back, it is an enormous shame that more was not done, but nobody felt that the national interest was directly involved. There seemed to be very little enthusiasm amongst anybody else to do anything so we did not either. I am not sure that we will be in situations in the foreseeable future where there is enormous enthusiasm even among the Americans for these sorts of things. Whether or not there are more Sierra Leones where, as it happened, we could do it by ourselves I am not sure. If there is a lack of interest among other countries then there are not that many cases one can imagine where the British can seriously enter any more of these conflicts by themselves. Q166 Mr Holloway: How would you characterise the threats and challenges that the UK defence policy now faces? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: There are two ways to look at threats. The basic point is that the defence policy should support foreign policy and foreign policy at the moment involves demonstrating our commitment to help countries predominantly in the Islamic world to maintain moderate, sensible policies and not fall under the sway of those that would be harmful to them and possibly us. That is a broad strategic concept. That is not to say that there are not other things around that may surprise us, like a more assertive Russia in the Caucasus where perhaps difficulties can be foreseen. But I do not think that Britain would expect to be doing vast amounts by itself in situations like that. I believe that Afghanistan has become quite an important test of our ability to be part of that. The important point about this sort of threat is that it is not one that is soluble by military means. The military has a part to play but it cannot solve it, so unless it is working with the right political, economic and social policies the problem is that it is the military which is left coping with situations that are not getting any better, and I believe that over time that is de-motivating and demoralising. The challenge for all western countries is to find better ways than they have found in the past to integrate political and military strategies. The problem for the Armed Forces is that if that is not done they are still left in the middle. Q167 Mr Holloway: Do you believe that the current focus on operations means that we are neglecting other threats? For example, would it not be the perfect time to invade the Falkland Islands? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: This is a story close to my heart for obvious reasons, that on the 25th anniversary I have been discussing this with people. I think that it would be much harder for Argentina to do what it did in 1982. One must remember that the Argentine Government, though very nationalistic, is not pro-military. Q168 Mr Holloway: My point was directed more to our capacity rather than that of the Argentine? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: The problem with the Falklands would be much more one of skirmishes on the high seas than a full-scale invasion. There is always a risk when one is preoccupied with one problem that somebody will seize the opportunity. Go back to Suez and Hungary. There would have been a different response possibly to the Soviet invasion of Hungary if we had not been preoccupied with Suez. We are a smallish country with a limited capacity and when we are totally preoccupied with hard fighting in one or two countries there will always be a problem somewhere else. This was worse when we had a far-flung empire where there were many points where we might be embarrassed. Fortunately, there are not so many now. Q169 Mr Havard: Last week we asked CDS about his assessment. He said that the assessment was going on, that obviously lessons had been learned and there were activities, predictions and decisions about future equipment. This is happening but all these things collectively do not make a strategy. We have had a government review, a new chapter and so on. In the nature of government what happens is that there is a re-evaluation at certain times. Do you believe that essentially from what we see at the moment a re-evaluation is taking place but it is doing so as I describe with a democratic deficit rather than as a real strategic assessment because effectively it is going on within the MoD with manufacturers and the interests involved but not in the context of a political debate? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: The option is there for a political debate. It seems to me that one of the problems is the forward procurement programme which is very heavy and appears to have a lot of delays in it and that is creating real problems in terms of budgetary pressures, plus the fact that current operations are expensive. There is budgetary pressure which reduces flexibility at a time when you need greater flexibility. I think there is a problem of integrating the political with military strategy. I do not believe that that is unique to the United Kingdom. We have a better sense now than we did five years ago of the nature of the conflict in which we are engaged, its ramifications and who is likely to get involved, but that better understanding does not make it easier; it demonstrates how it is really rather complicated and the limits of what armed force can do for you within it. It requires armed force but that can take one only so far. That is a difficult thing for governments to articulate. When one is dealing with even one country like Afghanistan there are so many different aspects of what the strategy should involve. There are different strands to it: the question of what other allies are doing, how it relates to aid agencies, the question of what we are doing in Helmand and what others are doing elsewhere in the country. Even within that one setting it is quite difficult to find a way of articulating it, especially if one wants to do it in a reasonably positive way. I do not believe that Afghanistan is a bad story, but if you want to do it in a reasonably positive way it is not half as interesting as just shouting doom and gloom about it. I have some sympathy with the problems of government. I believe that at the moment we are caught rather badly by some large procurement programmes that reduce the flexibility that the MoD needs at a time of severe operational demand. Q170 Robert Key: If the spending review resulted in nil growth in the defence budget what would have to change? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: One would have to look at one of the big programmes. I should preface my remarks by saying that academics should be very careful about arguing for spending in one area or the other; all they should really try to do is possibly explain the consequences of policies rather than advocate them. I think that if you ask our forces to engage in what they are engaged in at the moment and you cannot properly support them that is not acceptable. If there is no spending increase then something else has to give and you come back to these big procurement processes. I cannot see the carrier programme proceeding as many would like it to proceed if you do not have more scope in the budget for it to do so. Incidentally, I do not think that Trident is an answer to this problem either because the real hit of that programme will not arise until much later. You are looking at some of the more immediate matters. The debate on the carriers has been going on for the lifetime of this Government. Q171 Robert Key: Would you like to see an increase in defence spending? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think that at the moment there should be. Given the nature of our commitments it is hard to see how we can cope otherwise. I would also like to see an increase in higher education spending! Q172 Robert Key: But do you think there is public acceptability for more defence spending given the unpopularity of the Iraq war? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I think there is public acceptance of the need that when we have our troops in harm's way they should be properly supported. I am sure that there is a large chunk of public opinion that would be more than happy to see us coming out of Iraq, but for the British Armed Forces Afghanistan is now more important. I do not think that that is as unpopular and it is a difficult but more promising setting for our operations. It would be tragic if having done what we have done there - our forces have performed quite impressively in difficult circumstances - we were unable to sustain that sort of effort. Q173 Robert Key: In the European Union there are now only two nations, France and the United Kingdom, pulling their weight or spending anything like enough on defence. In France it is assumed that both the presidential candidates have so over-committed their budgets that inevitably there will be a cut in the French budget. Will that put an extra burden on the British, and if there is no increase in the spending review what does that say about the whole concept of Europe defending itself? Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I believe that European countries have got to come to terms with this. There are others, the Dutch and so on, who are prepared to put forces in harm's way and accept the need to become engaged, but in Germany, which could contribute more, public opinion is strongly against doing almost anything, even sending Tornadoes to Afghanistan to help out. I think that that poses very good questions for the European Union, especially if we get further crises closer to home. There is an assumption that a lot of security problems these days are of American manufacture and bother only the Americans, but a lot of these problems are much closer to Europe than North America. If the Europeans cannot provide more themselves to cope we shall be in conditions similar to those in the Falkands where again we looked over the Atlantic for help. Chairman: On that important note, thank you very much. We are grateful to you for coming to give us your expertise. Witnesses: Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, Vice Admiral Sir Tim McClement and Major General Andrew Ritchie, gave evidence. Q174 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to help us in our inquiry. I have not asked Professor Freedman to introduce himself because he has been an adviser to this Committee. Perhaps you would introduce yourselves and give us your backgrounds. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I am Brian Burridge. I was Commander-in-Chief Strike Command until January 2006. I did that for three years. I was a deputy for 18 months before that. I left the Royal Air Force in January last year and I now work for Finmeccanica. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I am Tim McClement. My last job in the Navy was as Deputy Commander-in-Chief Fleet responsible for the day-to-day running and particularly the training of the fleet, and before that I was Assistant Chief of Naval Staff on the Navy Board. I left the Navy in December of last year. I now work as a consultant for Accenture. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I am Andrew Ritchie. My last job was Commandant of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Before that I commanded the usual things that soldiers command. I am now running a postgraduate college in Bloomsbury where the students are very similar to those at Sandhurst except that they do not salute me so well. Q175 Chairman: Last week we heard the Chief of Defence Staff tell us that the Armed Forces were very stretched. We are unlikely to be told by a serving member of the Armed Forces, a current civil servant or minister that the Armed Forces are overstretched. Do you think this is a semantic issue? How would you comment on the issue of stretch in the Armed Forces? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I can speak only for the Royal Air Force. I am not in day-to-day contact with the figures and degree of commitment on individuals, but in general terms there are significant pockets of the Royal Air Force which are probably working at their sustainable limit. I would put those as the Royal Air Force Regiment field squadrons, the support helicopter force and the air transport force, both aircrew and ground crew. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: In the Royal Navy the stretch is not caused by so many commitments but by the lack of support in the way of stores. What happened after 2004 when our commitments went down from six to four - the fleet-ready escort, the Gulf, the Falkland Islands and NATO - was that we were asked to go back into the Caribbean and put a second frigate east of Suez. We are trying to do more with less. Major General Andrew Ritchie: In very broad terms, the Army is being asked to do almost double what it was expected to do under the defence planning assumptions. The issue is really genuinely pinching. There are questions as to how long it is sustainable. The way I see that manifesting itself now from the outside looking in is that there is a significant amount of robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes to topping up units to go on operations, which has a very deleterious effect long term with the cannibalisation of kit, of which I can speak only anecdotally but which I am sure is going on to a very unhealthy extent, and in the way in which our training - you may wish to return to this - for war in a general sense is being really impacted. Places like BATUS are not being used because we are so focused on training for a particular war or operational theatre. I think that we are very overstretched in the Army. Q176 Chairman: Is it important to distinguish between stretch and overstretch, or is that just a matter of words? Major General Andrew Ritchie: I read the discussion last week with CDS and I am very conscious that for about as long as I have been in the Army there has been a debate about whether it is being asked to do too much and yet time and time again it seems to cope. I think that last week "crying wolf" was suggested. I would point only to these indicators. I was not aware in the 34 years of my time in the Army that we were doing so little all arms training at the war-fighting level. I am not aware of there being so much robbing Peter to pay Paul around the Army as there is at the moment. Other than in Gulf One, I am not aware of the degree of cannibalisation that is going on. I believe that those are three tangible examples of where we are genuinely at a very high level of deployment, and the words "stretch" and "overstretch" are not necessarily helpful because they have been used so often before. I think that the shoe is certainly pinching very significantly. Q177 Chairman: Sir Brian, can you comment on cannibalisation in the helicopter fleets? Have you had any such experience? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I can do so only generally because the position will change from day to day and my knowledge is at least 15 months out of date. It is true that generally when one is operating fleets of aircraft at surge rates one would be very fortunate if one's spares planning was precisely matched to the consumption and the point at which the consumption took place. Invariably, one is faced with robbing components from other aircraft which is a deeply inefficient way of doing things, but it is a fact of life when one runs fleets at high rates. Q178 Chairman: When does "surge" become "long term over-commitment"? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: The definition of "overstretch" which I as a commander-in-chief used was that if I was asked to do something and had to say that we could do it for 12 weeks at a certain rate and then we must stop, that would indicate that I would be going over my sustainable surge level. Q179 Mr Jones: In terms of being asked by a politician whether one can do something, were you ever aware of situations where the top brass turned round and said that they could not do it because they did not have the people? There is a lot of moaning now going on in the Army, Air Force and others about commitments to this, that and the other, but the obvious thing is to turn round to politicians and say that it cannot be done because the people are not there to do it. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I have never experienced a situation where there is a requirement to go over capacity. I have experienced a situation where strategically it might have been an attractive idea to be in a particular configuration in, say, the Balkans and we would feel that the military risk at the sort of levels suggested was too great, but that is a different issue. I believe that the CDS attempted to explain this, in that the way in which a potential commitment is treated is iterative; it is not as though it arrives at the situation where the Secretary of State or Minister will say he wants a commander-in-chief to do something and the response is that he will not do it. It is an iterative process about what is the strategic objective and what is therefore required in terms of force levels to match it. One arrives at a situation well before one gets the head-to-head that you might be suggesting where one recognises collaboratively the art of the possible. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: At one point when I was Assistant Chief of Naval Staff there was a possibility of another firemen's strike. The chiefs did say that if they continued their current commitments they would not be able to stand in fire-fighting; they would have to stop doing something to fire fight if that was what government wanted. That is another version of what Sir Brian said. Q180 Chairman: Therefore, it is not a question of saying they will not do it but making sure that the request does not come? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: Or to say that if government prioritises it in such a way we have to stop doing something else. We did not have the spare capacity left to do fire-fighting as well as the current commitments. Mr Jones: I find this strange. The current narrative is that, if one believes what people are saying, these nasty politicians are asking the poor Armed Forces to do x, y and z but they cannot do it. From the other perspective, why is not the Army top brass saying that they cannot do a certain thing? Chairman: It is always the Army. Q181 Mr Jones: It is the Army at the moment because it is whingeing like hell, is it not? Major General Andrew Ritchie: Having been in the Army and seen it at the top table - I am a sprog here in not having been at the top table - my perception is that the chiefs of staff argue very robustly in private and if they do not get their way they have two options: to turn to the right, salute and say, "I will do your bidding"; the other is to resign and then speak out. That seems to me to have been the traditional line. The fact that senior officers have been speaking out is an indication of their worry. But I believe that there is a real issue here to do with the Civil Service. More often, senior commanders do not say they cannot do it but the implications of doing it and its impact on other things will be x, y and z. That impact statement is all too often blandified by the Civil Service, genuinely so, so that the performance reports are presented in such a way as not to frighten the horses, frankly. When something does happen and ministers ask whey they were not told the response is that it was in a report but expressed in a very benign way. I believe that is a real issue. Q182 Chairman: Moving on to reductions in commitments, there seems to be a general assumption that we shall be reducing our commitments before 2008. Is that a fair assumption? What would happen if that reduction did not come about? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I believe that it is a fair assumption based on the theatres as we see them today. If that reduction did not come about it would maintain a level of stretch particularly in the force elements outlined in the Royal Air Force and the secondary effects would become prominent, such as retention and the ability to maintain capability across the sphere of likely operations because training suffers. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I think that for the Navy it is exactly the same. I believe that is a fair assumption from what I have heard and read, if we do not make any more commitment to the Armed Forces. For example, when we were in the Caribbean we accepted that the destroyer last in could do its job which was primarily disaster relief and drug-busting, but it had only three of its four diesel engines; it did not have an air defence radar or a gun control system or sonar. That was fine for the job but for its secondary role as air defence in the Falklands it could not do and that was because of the stores support. If we continue the current commitments and do not invest more money in support and stores then if the government requires the forces in five years' time for whatever it may be in the case of the Navy it may not be able to deliver. Q183 Chairman: The lack of sonar sounds quite scary. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: It was not required, so because of the reduction in sonar spares we were quite happy to say that we would not repair it. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I mentioned the manifestations of the high level of over-commitment at the moment. I believe that those would be exacerbated in a year's time. In addition, I mention retention. I know CDS said that retention was holding up reasonably well. I believe there is a real distinction between quantitative and qualitative retention. Q184 Chairman: We shall come to retention in a moment. You referred to bland reports. Is there a general over-optimism in the planning that comes out of the Ministry of Defence, which is something that the Chief of the Defence Staff recognised last week as a danger? Major General Andrew Ritchie: I think there is. The irony is that in some senses it occurs for laudable reasons. The wilco or can do attitude of the Armed Forces is so well known that the number of occasions ministers have visited troops in theatre and, having been briefed that they would be told how dreadful morale or equipment was, come back to beat up the senior officer for talking rubbish is fantastic. It is a real dilemma. We are a wilco organisation, but I believe that it becomes irresponsible at the top end, and I have to say that it is more than a conspiracy of optimism amongst civil servants. I think there is a culture of dumbing down criticism which is dangerous. Q185 Mr Jones: I do not necessarily disagree with what you have just said, but the senior people representing the three Services are not shrinking violets; they are not scared to say things robustly within planning meetings. Sir Tim, going back to what you described if you were in a company and allowed that to happen and you were supposed to manage it you would not last very long. Why is it being allowed to happen? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: Simply because there is not enough money. In 2004 when the commitments were seen by the Defence Management Board primarily to support the Army and those who were flying £300 million was taken out of the store support to the Navy because it did not have enough money. The Defence Management Board had to make a difficult decision, and I believe that it was the right one to make faced with the commitments that it had. The plan was to put the money back into the stores, but it has not happened. Q186 Mr Havard: It is not the case that there is not enough money; it is just not well used and it is lost in bad procurement. That is a rhetorical question! Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: To add to the previous point, there is a tendency in the Ministry of Defence to talk about risk management. Ninety per cent of the sort of risk management that it talks about is business risk, ie finance etc, but for a commander-in-chief it is all operational risk. Whatever decisions are made about resources then the likes of Sir Tim and I had to manage that and make it work on the ground. Therefore, our perceptions of risk are different. Q187 Chairman: Except that you also have control of the finances, do you not? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: As a commander-in-chief one has control of the finances that one is given. Q188 Mr Jenkin: General Ritchie, if you had been marking a staff college exam and had seen the initial deployment to Helmand mapped out as it was would you have given it 10 out of 10? Does it not reflect some wishful thinking? Major General Andrew Ritchie: Yes; I think it was wildly optimistic, but I was not there; I was sitting at Sandhurst. Anecdotally, I understand that commanders were keen on higher force levels than were in reality given to them. I would not necessarily give the estimate of the frontline commander General Richards anything other than eight or nine out of 10, but back in the Ministry of Defence with its management of risk I believe that the risk matured in a way that was wholly expected. Q189 Chairman: In the previous half hour we heard Professor Freedman say that in Bosnia it was understood that things could not be done in penny packets. Do you think we understand that in Afghanistan? Major General Andrew Ritchie: It is such a complicated business with burden-sharing and so forth. Certainly, I do not think that the force levels were high enough at the outset and there was an over-optimistic assumption that maybe there would not be many shots fired. There have been reinforcements. I do not believe that it has been done in penny packets, but in force projection you have to bring in the Tri-Service context and air power is doing a fantastic job out there. I do not believe that it is just boots on the ground. I do not say that it is penny packets; it is just de minimis and it has been found wanting. Q190 Linda Gilroy: Is there ever an element of concern that by speaking out you put the people at the front line at risk? One wonders whether some of the things that are said are fully weighed up. In assessing how these things are done and look from the inside, in the time you were responsible did any of these people speak out at any time in that way that caused you concern? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Certainly, when I was commanding British forces in Iraq during the war the degree to which imperfections in some kit was given headline treatment day after day, rightly or wrongly, would be extremely harmful when faced with a sophisticated enemy, say, in the old days of the Soviet Union. Q191 Linda Gilroy: Do you suggest that the enemy is not sufficiently sophisticated? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Not in such a way as to take advantage of, say, the shortcomings in the Challenger 2 fire control system, but the enemy is extremely sophisticated in understanding force protection and things like that, as we well know. Q192 Mr Jenkin: As shadow secretary of state at the time I refused to do kit stories during the conflict because I thought it unhelpful. General Ritchie, the Harmony Guidelines have never been met by the Army since they were introduced. Can you describe what effect this has on personnel in the Army? Major General Andrew Ritchie: There are various levels. At one level they are just not taken seriously by soldiers on the ground; for some they have not been met for as long as they have been in the Army. At another level I think they are recognised as a benchmark to which they should aspire, but nobody is in any doubt that they will not be achieved for ages. At the same time, there is not a soldier of whom I am aware who having been to Iraq does not say that he really wants to get to Afghanistan now. It is not just medal-seeking; it is born out of self-respect and self-esteem and a desire to be where the action is. Many battalions and gunner regiments have done six-month tours every year for the past three or four years, which is at least double what they should be doing. The key issue is that it has a long-term effect in terms of retention and in other ways in terms of training and equipment. I do not believe that soldiers are going to bed at night saying they cannot wait until their Harmony Guidelines are met. That is not how soldiers think; and they do not like the term. I believe that we inherited it from the other two Services, and we hate it. We do not understand the term. What we understand are 24-month tours; what we do not understand is "Harmony Guidelines". Q193 Mr Jenkin: We will stop using it. You mentioned retention in particular. I address my question to all three witnesses. How close are we to the crisis point of retention? Major General Andrew Ritchie: I am really worried about the qualitative retention. It is all very well for the CDS to say that the retention figures are holding up reasonably well, which I believe they are, but really good young captains, majors, sergeants and corporals are leaving the Army. Those are the people whom we cannot afford to do without. Sitting at Sandhurst where the very best captains will come for a rest, apart from anything else, too many of them are leaving the Army. Part of the reason is to do with "been there, done that", but at a deeper level too many operations makes them really fatigued and they need a break. It is not like in the second world war when people went away for up to six years. The level of intensity is much greater spread over six years. Perhaps that is not a good parallel, but for those six months they work really hard and if they do too many such tours they get jaded. Another point is that wives do not marry soldiers to see them constantly away. They have families and careers of their own. Certainly, among the officer corps graduate officers who marry graduate wives are told, "It's me or the Army", and all too often, probably rightly, it is the Army that suffers. Q194 Mr Jenkin: Therefore, we are losing the people in whom we have invested most at the point when we are about to get the most out of them? Major General Andrew Ritchie: I would not say there are absolutes but if there was a way to address qualitative retention - I am not sure that is ever done - as opposed to the numbers game that would be very interesting, and also worrying. Q195 Mr Jenkin: Is that paralleled in the other Services? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: If I were in command now I would certainly be worried about the RAF Regiment. I am told that the field squadron's retention is on a downward slope. I would probably want to fix that with a retention incentive, because I believe that it is fixable at this time. I would worry about aircrew retention because of the buoyant civilian market at the moment for airline pilots. Our people are regarded as highly prized in that sense. We have previous experience. The Royal Air Force flew over northern and southern Iraq between 1991 and 2003 day in and day out. The Tornado force in particular was based at Ali Al Salem in Kuwait in not very good circumstances. We found that morale and retention, coupled with the fact that there was huge turbulence as a result of coming out of Germany, really suffered, whereas those at well-found bases such at Incirlik in southern Turkey did not experience the same problem. Inevitably, when people get on a treadmill that they can see continuing almost ad infinitum, which was perhaps one of the problems with the no-fly zones and containment in Iraq, it is very difficult for them to understand why it is worth doing year in year out. Q196 Mr Jenkin: If you cannot keep sand out of your sleeping bag it is very depressing. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Quite. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: In the Navy the qualitative issue is the same. The figures for retention are quite good, but when people decide to go the good ones go first, and that is a worry. We will not recognise that we are at the brink until it is too late and then too many will have gone. Q197 Linda Gilroy: In terms of family welfare issues mentioned just now, in the Navy traditionally there has been separation for greater periods of time. I do not know whether you have been following it, but there appears to have been a move to harmonise the welfare package in various respects. Is that appropriate in the circumstances? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I think it is important that the separation of both the families and individuals is looked at very carefully. If we can harmonise those things that are common that is appropriate, but they should not all be common because the three Services deploy in very different ways. Q198 Mr Jones: One matter that has been raised with me a couple of times on visits to the Royal Navy is the idea that because of privatisation and contractorisation on shore there are not jobs for the people who are rotated on and off ship. Do you have any comments or observations on that? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: The traditional reason why the more senior people - chief petty officers and petty officers - went ashore and got shore time with their families, because they did not have rotation on board ship unlike junior rates, was to enable them to go into training establishments. With the disappearance of those training jobs there is great concern about how they will get their shore time. What the Navy will have to do is look in a very different way at how it deploys people. At the moment with the reductions and efficiencies that the Navy has to meet it must get rid of a lot of shore jobs. How they will get the sea-shore balance right will be very difficult and will require innovation. Q199 Mr Jones: One area raised with me was the retention of cooks and chefs, for example. Is that your experience? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: Yes - cooks, chefs and medical assistants. But it is the training jobs that go, particularly for those who have their homes in Portsmouth, say, at Collingwood or Sultan. With defence training rationalisation all of that will change, so the Navy is trying to work out how it will retain people and give them this work-life balance, which will not be easy. Q200 John Smith: In the autumn performance review under-manning was identified in all three Services and there appears to be a downward trend. Very briefly, what does that level of under-manning mean for the three Services? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: For the Air Force, it depends where it is and in what trades. I have already mentioned the pinch point in the regiment, support helicopters and air transport. Generally, given that the largest trades are the aircraft technicians etc if there is under-manning it will mean gapping on squadrons and people, therefore, they would deploy more frequently and would not get the opportunity for personal development-type training courses and those sorts of things. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: It is the same for the Navy, but we do not gap the ships in the front line. Therefore, the ships in the Gulf have full complements, but it means taking them out of other ships. There are also pinch points, for example gun controllers and some of the chief petty officers who look after the radars. We have to take them off ships where we do not need the guns, radar or sonar, as in the Caribbean, and they will be put into the Gulf. They are almost appointed from ship to ship. It makes it tough on particular niche skills. Major General Andrew Ritchie: In the Army under-manning is focused largely on the infantry, artillery and armoured corps. I believe that it has an operational impact when one has to put a company from battalion x into theatre with battalion y. It has a training impact when you send people into operations and are not able to provide, for example, enemy forces for training for brigades and so on. It has a quality of life and welfare impact because of the gapping of posts. It has a very serious effect particularly in commitment terms when we are running pretty hot. Q201 John Smith: I
welcome this opportunity to speak to three former senior military personnel
from each of the Services. Am I right to believe that if the three Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I just need to check. Do you suggest that the Armed Forces are discriminatory? Q202 John Smith: I fear - I know that it is a topical issue - that the real problem of the Armed Forces is institutional racism. I will tell you why. I do not for the love of me understand why we have failed to increase our recruitment of ethnic minorities. It has been a serious government failure in the past 10 years. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I wholeheartedly reject that. Q203 John Smith: Tell me why. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I spend my weekends working with cadets of the Air Training Corps. We fly squadrons from a segment of the UK ranging from the soft underbelly of the South East round the M25 through Southall, West Drayton and those sorts of areas. A significant number of cadets in the Air Training Corps, both male and female, are Muslim, for example. Their parents feel, therefore, that the cadet organisations are good youth organisations that are worthy of their membership, but can you pull them through into the Royal Air Force? That is a different matter. Much of that is to do with a perception perhaps born over generations that the UK's Armed Forces are in some way - I use shorthand - a white middle-class dinner party. Q204 John Smith: So, it is their fault? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: No. It is a question of perception, and both sets of perceptions have to move, and ultimately they will. Q205 John Smith: They are moving in the wrong direction. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I disagree. Q206 John Smith: I have the figures in front of me. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: In terms of the way in which the Armed Forces present themselves they are moving in the right direction. The Armed Forces, certainly the Royal Air Force, are a meritocracy and anybody can move through in competition with anybody else. I believe that that is improving and it is being made more obvious. Therefore, the Royal Air Force anyway is moving in a positive direction. The degree to which we can alter the views of society, both first and second generation immigrants and our own society, is not wholly in the gift of the Armed Forces. John Smith: Chairman, this is a very important point. Chairman: It is a very important point, but we will go into it in our inquiry into the report and accounts later on this year. We specifically flagged this up as being probably one of the most important topics. Q207 John Smith: I do not want to defer this; it is a failure in recruitment. I should like to hear an explanation from the other two Service representatives. What I asked for was an explanation as to why in the UK we fail to do this given the background of discrimination against ethnic minorities, whereas if you look at it objectively in society in general you should see more ethnic recruits in the Armed Forces, not fewer, than in the population at large. Why is it that in America they double the number of recruits and in Britain it is half? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I cannot articulate the Royal Navy's case better than Sir Brian has for the RAF. We are the same. Everyone has the same right to go to the top based on ability. I visited sea cadets unit as well. In trying to pull them through into the Royal Navy there appears to be a barrier to joining; they think it is not for them. Q208 John Smith: It is their fault? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: No. John Smith: It is institutional racism. Q209 Chairman: That was not what Sir Tim said. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I am not saying it at all. You have your view, I have mine. What I am trying to say is that the Royal Navy spends a huge amount of time in the recruiting field with ethnic minorities as part of the recruiting effort to try to improve the figures. We would like them to come in and reflect societies. I agree that we are failing but it is not through want of effort. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I think that in the United States, in whatever wonderful way it happened, it was seen as the way into acceptability in the middle class, or whatever. In this country we have not managed that yet. We do not get it right; we are very clumsy on occasions and from time to time people make extremely unhelpful remarks which stir the pot. We make mistakes, but emphatically we are not institutionally racist. At Sandhurst every year we have a large group of gate-keepers from the British minority ethic groups and we discuss this. The issue very briefly is that for so many the key to success for children is to get into a profession and they do not see the Armed Forces in the way they see the law and medicine as professions. I am not saying that it is their fault. We need to work on those perceptions, but that is what we keep being told. Q210 Linda Gilroy: We have challenged the permanent secretary to do something about this, and it is one he has accepted. What advice would you offer him if he is to do something about it? Major General Andrew Ritchie: On one occasion General Guthrie said that we ought positively to discriminate. Q211 John Smith: Which is what the Americans do? Major General Andrew Ritchie: Yes. At some stage if we do not manage to break through - we are trying our damnedest, believe it or believe it not, and we are emphatically not institutionally racist - then positive discrimination is an option we should pursue, and I think that most people would see why. Q212 Linda Gilroy: Do the other witnesses agree with that? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: No. There are initiatives in reaching out to those areas that need to understand what the Armed Forces are and what they are like. Certainly, the Royal Air Force recruiting organisation spends a good deal of time talking to the gate-keepers of various ethnic minorities about having youth days at places like Haltonand Cosford where large numbers of school children come just to see what the Armed Forces are like. You cannot overdo the effort in that area. A continuous, long-term effort is required, but it must be done. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: It needs more resources. When 18 months ago the Royal Marines were not deployed because they were being re-equipped with Viking and they were in barracks training for 12 months we had resources to send marines round. We used small groups of marines to go round to their own towns and schools and talk to the kids, and recruitment went up. If you put the people face to face with their mates from the same school - that takes a huge amount of effort, time and money - that is one way to improve it. Then the kids will see their mates, so it is a matter of education. Q213 Linda Gilroy: Therefore, even with all the pressures on the budget that is an area that should not be cut. Do you think that the manning requirement needs to be adjusted upwards to take into account the persistently high levels of operational deployment? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Clearly, in the case of RAF Regiment field squadrons whose role is the defence of air fields in theatres - Basra, Kandahar, etc - it is the case that to get them close to the target of four months deployed and 16 months away they need more. Q214 Linda Gilroy: Since the Strategic Defence Review have the commitments reduced commensurately? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: No. The number of field squadrons has not reduced. The size of the RAF Regiment as a whole has gone down but the number of field squadron tasks has increased. Q215 Linda Gilroy: Are force levels enough to meet commitment? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Not in the case of the RAF Regiment. We are in danger of going round force element by force element. If all posts were manned all the time I judge - I point out that I am 15 months out of date - that the support helicopter force would still find it difficult. Major General Andrew Ritchie: Emphatically, we need a bigger Army. Our principal allies, the United States, Australia and Canada, are moving in that direction. One of the other bugbears of some soldiers is the way in which the Ministry of Defence - again, I mean civil servants - catches us by the tail. They say that we are not fully manned so there is no earthly point in our aspiring to have a bigger manpower ceiling. It is a point but it is not the whole point. If one resourced recruitment and retention better I suspect that one could achieve that. In my judgment we do need more people. I do not believe that we need more battalions per se, which is a distracting line; we need bigger battalions. There are real problems of robbing Peter to pay Paul because battalion establishments have been cut to the bone. We need bigger platoons and bigger companies so we do not have to rob one to help another. As to the rare breeds or specialist areas with which you will be familiar, we need to target them. In particular, EOD and dog-handlers are not very sexy but without them you will not achieve the mission. I believe that the Army needs to be 3,000 bigger. Q216 Linda Gilroy: In some areas, for example the marines and special services, there have been increases, but you say that there are other areas that need to be increased as well. Have you made any assessment in your own mind of how much? Major General Andrew Ritchie: Being retired, one can be broad-brush. I have just referred to an increase of 3,000. I cannot possibly substantiate that in terms. When I say "each battalion" I mean "each regiment". Therefore, each armoured corps regiment and gunner regiments needs to be bigger. I think that to throw six people at it per battalion of 650 is pointless: we should throw 50 people at it. If you also make the rare breeds more sustainable I believe that 3,000 is a very respectable figure given that according to what is envisaged under the defence planning assumptions we are doing almost double what is expected, and that is looking to go forward. Q217 Linda Gilroy: How close does the Royal Navy believe it is to minimum force levels? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: We
are about the right size but in the wrong places, so we have more in some
branches and less in others in the dark blue side of the Navy. Q218 Linda Gilroy: How does that impact on meeting our international obligations? You referred earlier to deployment in the Caribbean and our maritime patrol tasks. Can we do that with fewer ships? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: Not with fewer ships. You can have one ship only in one place at one time. No one knows, but if one is looking at two medium-scale and one small-scale in the future the concern, going back to General Ritchie's point, is the bland comment "hollowing out" which means not having enough support spares to support the ships. Another phrase which I hated was "capability holiday", which means tying ships alongside for a year. If you do not support them and train the people and give them what they need to deliver then my worst case scenario, on which I briefed the Minister to the Armed Forces in my last job, was that if we were called upon in future we might not deliver for the first time in centuries, because by then it would be too late. Q219 Linda Gilroy: You described ships in the Caribbean not having the kit to do the full range of things they can do but having the kit to do what they are doing at the moment. In terms of their readiness is there a gap? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: Yes, there is. At one stage last year we had one diesel in the pipeline as a replacement, so we are really pushing the limits of being able to sustain a force if we need to. We are taking equipment out of one ship that is in refit to put in one that is operational. Q220 Linda Gilroy: How does that relate to likely deployments given that we are told by ministers and the people who currently support them that we have the biggest ship-building programme ever? They point to expeditionary and amphibious vessels being available in an appropriate way. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: HMS Albion, Bulwark and Ocean have been working non-stop since they became operational, and they are very good assets and the marines in them are very good. But we are taking risks with the destroyers and frigates which are the workhorses in the Gulf and Indian Ocean and support NATO in the Mediterranean and South Atlantic. They are not properly manned and supported with spares and they are not able to remain on task for the full time. Q221 Chairman: In each of the three Services what proportion of the people who go into initial training come out at the end of it and are deployed to units? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I do not know that. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I do not know. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I can give you the figures for Sandhurst. The wastage rate for Sandhurst is about 10 per cent; in other words, of those who arrive 90 per cent go into the Service. Q222 Linda Gilroy: We have already discussed some aspects of readiness. You will have noted our discussion with CDS last week about the way in which the performance statistics in the autumn performance report showed a downward trend. What are the practical consequences for each Service of reduced readiness beyond what we have already discussed? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: As to the practical consequences in terms of the ability to support current operations, again the two forces that are working at their limit are helicopters and air transport. There is just no margin left. The fast jet forces are in an interesting situation because they are in transition with Typhoon that is coming and Tornado, F3 and Jaguar going out, so in my view there needs to be reliance on the Tornado GR4 as the only one that is in a steady state given that the Harrier is converting to the GR7 to the GR9 and the Harrier is committed in Afghanistan. As a commander-in-chief I felt that the Tornado GR4 was our insurance policy, and I would watch very carefully the external factors that would influence the readiness of that force. If things did occur to undermine the readiness of that force, whatever it might be - a resource problem in supporting it or the inability to train enough pilots or navigators - that would be worrying. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: We take the risk in areas that are not at the front end of war fighting and the ability to train is hugely important for those who are going into theatre, so in the Gulf the ships and crew are trained properly. It takes about 3.7 frigates to produce one on station 365 days a year. That is the priority. If we cannot do it for every ship then the ones that are going to the Caribbean will get their training in disaster relief and drug-busting but not in all war fighting, so they will be trained for the task that they are going to perform. But it means a gradual erosion of people's capability. Q223 Linda Gilroy: We have already discussed in terms of the Navy other ways in which readiness is affected. Are there any other non-training issues that you believe are affected? You said that manning basically was probably about right, so perhaps for the Navy that is not so much of an issue. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I am not terribly good on readiness. As I understand it, if we are very heavily committed on operations as we are we are not available to go somewhere else. Ready or not, we ain't there, as it were. In that sense we are rather different from the other two services with contingency forces. I cannot tell you the extent to which we have troops at readiness. I am sure that we have the equivalent of Spearhead and so on, but it seems to me that it is our heavy level of commitment that is the issue and if a new commitment came up for manpower and equipment reasons it would be very difficult to do it. In terms of impact one key element of readiness that I have not mentioned in operational training is all-arms training. Q224 Linda Gilroy: My colleague will be asking about that. I believe that last week we were told that readiness was a measure which when we were operationally deployed really became a matter of stretch. Major General Andrew Ritchie: We are ready and willing and doing operations. I do not think we have much more left in the locker to go elsewhere. Q225 Chairman: General Ritchie, a key element is training. What sort of training has been cut and is not going on at the moment? Major General Andrew Ritchie: The training that soldiers receive for the operations that they are conducting is first class and I think that the proof of that is in the brilliant performance of our soldiers on operations. Therefore, the operational training of OPTAG and so on is great, but that is training for a specific theatre and war. As I am sure you have already heard, it is the generic training for war, as opposed to a war, which is a real problem at the moment. BATUS in Canada is not being utilised properly. There is very little all-arms training. It is not just the sort of thing that commanders like to do. Unless the tanks, guns and infantry genuinely operate together in a way that they do not in Iraq or Afghanistan - it is war fighting of a sort but it is not, except in extreme circumstances, genuine all-arms war fighting - then at least the Army, using the Prime Minister's term "hard and soft power" - is losing an enormously important hard capability. One particular manifestation of that is that there is a whole generation of fairly junior commanders who have never commanded at sub-unit level in an all-arms environment, so we have artillery battery commanders who will become commanding officers and are expected to train their regiments in the profession of artillery and they have never done it at the next level down because they have been busy on their feet in Afghanistan. I think that in the Ministry of Defence it is referred to as "seed corn", which is another funny expression. I believe that that is a genuine concern. Q226 Chairman: Sir Tim, what training has been cut and what consequences has it had? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: As General Ritchie said, if they go to the front line the training they do is first rate because we are preparing them for a war situation, but to do that some of the ships that go off individually do not have the whole teams together, so to work up that ship you have to work it up again. If it comes from the Caribbean, to use that as an example, and you suddenly want it to go to the Gulf it will not be ready because it will not have the stores and equipment or been trained as a unit. We would have to train it and then put together groups of ships to train them as tasks groups. One of the things that has fallen off is the joint training that we do with the Army and Air Force. We still try to do it off Scotland but not on a grand scale, and the big exercises that would allow us to do Gulf Three, God forbid, is not happening because it keeps being deferred by the Ministry of Defence. The Army are fighting and the key elements of the RAF - helicopters and the like - cannot be there to do a big joint exercise. Q227 Chairman: What do you say, Sir Brian? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I make three points on training. First, operations themselves represent very good training for new aircrew not only in terms of the sub-set of the role that they are performing but, being in a war fighting environment, in terms of the whole tempo of flying under an air command and control umbrella, flying with allies, working with people on the ground etc. Second, that said it is only a sub-set of a force's capability and training in those other aspects to maintain capability and readiness across the breadth of it, for example what the Tornado GR4 can do, is very challenging. Third, without large-scale joint exercises of the like of Saif Sarea we lose a lot of our intellectual property or received wisdom. Without a doubt the logistic performance in moving the force out in 2003 owed a lot to what we had done in Saif Sarea only 18 months earlier. Q228 Chairman: Turning to equipment, you heard Professor Freedman say that we had a very heavy forward programme and we were creating pressures and reducing flexibility. What do you believe are the consequences? What should we do about it? Do you expect to see this having a knock-on effect on further cuts in stock levels? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: To deal first with the cost of the current operations, in accounting terms Iraq is about £1 billion a year and Afghanistan is about £3/4 billion. The degree to which that represents full cost and the degree to which the contingency fund pays inevitably puts a squeeze on running costs and will affect support in other areas. In terms of capital expenditure, it seems to me that certainly from about 2012 onwards the programme is pretty heated. I assume that the CDS and others right now are considering two ways of managing it: either continually to move programmes to the right, or slow down the rate of delivery of aircraft or whatever, to reduce the year-on-year expenditure, but accept that it goes on for a longer period or say that there is an anticipated capability here that is now becoming unaffordable. The focus is on carriers. If it is possible for the industrial consortium to drive down the price to what is regarded as acceptable at a rate of expenditure that is containable, fine; if not, we reach the point where carrier air power is a good thing but not at any price. Similarly, as one moves into the JSF era and the later end of the Typhoon there is a potential to do a balance of investment against the number of Typhoon, JSF and potentially the number of Tornado GR4s and maybe introduce uninhabited combat air vehicles early. I assume that those sorts of large questions will be the ones that are circulating now. Major General Andrew Ritchie: As I understand it, there is a big gap in the defence budget this year which is causing headaches and it is due mainly, as ever, to the growth of expenditure on the equipment side and that can only get worse in future. It seems to me that there is a very distorting effect on the defence budget of major capital projects which are - this is not a criticism but reality - mainly in the other two Services. The Army with its infantry footprint or whatever does not cost a lot of money but it is often taken out of the programme just because there is no visibility. It is very real to the infantrymen. Forget the infantry footprint. For that one can read body armour or whatever. I should say, however, I have been told that the new body armour is excellent. My first point is that there is a real distorting effect. It also seems to me that having made the decision to go for these large capital projects unless the circumstances have changed they need to be funded and not at the expense of personnel. All too often it is the people side that suffers because the regulators, as the cry has it, get hit. In the case of the Army I understand that the equipment it is now getting in theatre is terrific, be it the new body armour, the new vehicles, grenade launchers and so on. Almost all of it has been brought in through urgent operational requirements. In a sense, that is an indictment of the system. We could not prove that we needed it before we went to theatre and now we can. For some I guess that it is special to theatre, but very often they are things that we should have had but got only through the UOR ticket. My final point is that there are no UORs for people, as far as I know, and it is the people aspect which does not get picked up through urgent operational requirements. It is picked up only very exceptionally with things like the operational welfare package which was brought through under that ticket. It is all very well to re-tool or re-engine the 432 series, but I believe that it first saw service in Germany in the late 1950s, and FRES is still a long way away. We need our major capital programme and I am not sure where FRES is. Q229 Chairman: Sir Tim, it looks as if your carriers are under attack. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: I cannot add much to my colleagues on either side. I think they have put the case for defence, not individual Services, very well. The bottom line is that if the Government wants the expeditionary capability of all three Services it has to pay for it. One can have a debate about whether or not it is managed or profiled correctly, but at the end of the day it costs money to have a joint defence force that will do what the Government wants and can win. Q230 Mr Jenkin: You are telling us what we already know. The real question is: how long can the Government carry on putting off the evil day when they have to come up with the money or cancel programmes? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: That is a good question. Q231 Chairman: Is it a new question? Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: No; it has been going on for years. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: It is the way that the capital programme has always been managed, and we know that better than you do. Q232 Mr Jenkin: So there is no evil day? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: Not necessarily. You can always put off the evil day until you reach the point where perhaps an industrial consortium says that it has spent £60 million or whatever preparing the bid and there is no signature and it is now walking away. That becomes the evil day when the only acquisition route is, say, through an onshore consortium. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: What they do is say that the price is going up. Q233 Mr Jones: You say that it has always been done that way, but do you not think that a bigger spotlight has been put on it because the operational tempo is now higher? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I think there are two contemporary factors. One is the cost of supporting current operations and in a sense the necessary shift to solve today's operational problems, whereas generally in the past the equipment programme has looked at the horizon. The second factor is that we are in the year of a comprehensive spending review. When one gets those every nine years a greater degree of visibility is bound to be given to individual programmes of large magnitude. Q234 Robert Key: A new battlefield and theatre phenomenon is the advent of personal communications - mobile telephones and other equipment - carried by forces of both sides which can provide instant imaging to either the enemy or the public back home. How should the Chain of Command and ministers respond to this new way of effectively sidelining the traditional Chain of Command discipline? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: The first point is acceptance that it exists. There is no point in denying the nature of that phenomenon. That sounds disarmingly simple but it is not easy for people to accept it. The second point is to ensure that the truth of a situation is published and publicised appropriately as soon as possible. This Committee knows my mantra that I expect the media to deal with military operations on the basis of fact, knowledge and balance, and I am still waiting. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: That is absolutely right. One has to accept that it is here to stay. When mobile phones first arrived in the Navy personnel were told that they could not use them unless the captain told them. That does not engender trust and respect from a ship's company. One very quickly changed it to, "You can use them whenever you like, apart from times when I explain that it is not a good moment to use them. Will you accept that and trust me?" They are here and we just have to manage it. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I absolutely agree with that. I just emphasise that we must respond more quickly. All too often the military or MoD are on the back foot. It breeds a sort of cover up. The default setting is to say that the MoD is covering up when almost universally it is a cock-up, not a conspiracy. The cock-up may simply mean that the right people do not have the right information yet. We have to be quicker on our feet in recognising that communications now in every way are faster, not least between the individual serviceman or woman and his or her family. Q235 Mr Jones: To go back to balance and the media not understanding but just going for the headlines, do you believe that there is a real problem in the MoD in that it has not accommodated itself to the new 24-hour media age? The problem is that, contrary to what General Ritchie just said, it tends to go to a defensive mode straight away rather than perhaps to admit sometimes that things have gone wrong which would defuse a lot of stories. Do you have any comment? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I think that the capacity of any ministry of defence whose forces are in harm's way to deal with a 24-hour international media is vastly in excess of anything we have thought appropriate in the past, and probably anything that we will likely consider in future. The visual management of the images that come back from a theatre of war now takes almost as much effort as commanding the war itself if you want to do it properly. Q236 Robert Key: The advent of a large number of websites to which people on both sides can refer has had an impact on morale, has it not? Major General Andrew Ritchie: Not just an adverse impact. The army rumour service (ARRSE) is a very useful safety valve in a sense. I would look at it from time to time at Sandhurst and see what the cadets were saying and act accordingly. But it is much more useful with the senior NCOs and so on. It is a good safety valve. It is pretty crude but I do not think that these days there are many Army commanders who do not look at it. We need to embrace it rather than see it as a threat; it is a reality. Q237 Robert Key: I should like to pursue the very important line that the military is finding it increasingly hard to cope with the Civil Service in the Ministry of Defence. Do you believe that ministers are being told it as it really is, or are we in rather dangerous territory where service chiefs have to speak out in a way they have not before whilst in office rather than wait until they have retired? Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge: I am 15 months out of date, and people change. The chiefs have ample opportunity to say to ministers whatever they like behind closed doors, both formally in the service executive committees and on an informal basis. I do not think that you need worry too much that the Civil Service may feel that it can preach one gospel and not have it refuted if it is not accurate. My experience, which is perhaps somewhat different from others, is that when life is getting dangerous the Civil Service is a very good ally. We do cohere very well. Only once in my senior command experience did a civil servant accuse me of being emotional, which to me is the acid test. There is no doubt that in a post-Iraq environment anybody, be he in the military or a civilian, is inclined to transmit less than the plain, unvarnished truth. Vice Admiral Sir Tim Clement: When I was in the Ministry of Defence three years ago as assistant chief my chief never had any problem going along to ministers and telling them or ministers listening very carefully to what they were told both at the Admiralty Board or if there was something important going on. There were times, however, when you would put up a report and, according to the Ministry of Defence way of doing it - not just civil servants - it would go through the plans division and programmes division. If people said that they wanted more money here they would be told that they did not understand the bigger picture. People's views were toned down, so that is a fair statement. But it did not stop the real message getting through from the chiefs if they felt that it had not got through. Major General Andrew Ritchie: I disagree with the Air Marshal, although he is a four-star and I am a two-star. I do not have it in for civil servants and I genuinely believe that the vast majority do a great job. I have it in slightly for senior civil servants in the Ministry of Defence. How many times have we heard when looking for a genuinely well-argued enhancement that we have to find a compensating reduction? To me, that seems daft if you have argued the case. Of course, the MoD has a history of waste and one must rigorously scrutinise it, but just to ask as the default setting where the compensating reduction is to be found is not in the real world. That is the way that senior civil servants in the MoD seem to think. General Jackson was no shrinking violet; he was quite capable of standing up to anybody, but there is an attritional effect in the way so much has become centralised in the MoD. I was director of public relations three or four years ago. That post no longer exists and the three Services lost their one star to a central amorphous mob, which incidentally is far too small to be dealing with today's media. Estates including the medical side are now all centralised. I think it was General Jackson who said that the chiefs had responsibility without power. That is a genuine issue. That is not to say that we should go back to silos. I believe that the centralisation, blandification and incessant looking for compensating reductions have a very pernicious effect on the military and leave senior officers with very little option but to bite the bullet and crack on, resign or do what one or two have been doing recently out of genuine worry that the message is not getting through. Chairman: The evidence that all three of you have given is most helpful and I know that the Committee is extremely grateful. It has been genuinely fascinating to listen to people of your experience talking about these important issues. Thank you very much. Memoranda submitted by Mr Michael Codner and Professor Keith Hartley Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Michael Codner and Professor Keith Hartley gave evidence. Q238 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to give evidence. It has been a fascinating morning. Perhaps you would introduce yourselves for the record. Mr Codner: I am Michael Codner, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. Some 11 years ago I was a naval person, but my remit within the institute is not specifically to push the naval case. Professor Hartley: I am Keith Hartley, director of the Centre for Defence Economics at the University of York. I am a defence economist. I was one of the fortunate breed who was born at a time that allowed me to miss national services. I have no service experience, but as a volunteer at the age of 16 I played in a military band. My first involvement with this Committee was in 1985. At that stage you were studying - guess what? - defence commitments and resources. Q239 Chairman: When you played in the military band do you remember how many such bands there were? Professor Hartley: I played the saxophone. There were quite a lot. This was a TA military band. Shortly afterwards we were asked to sign up or the band would be disbanded. I think that insufficient numbers signed up and so it was disbanded. Q240 Chairman: We must do an inquiry into military bands. We thank both of you for your memoranda on this issue. It appears you think that the Strategic Defence Review of 1998 was always going to be unaffordable and has since become more so. That is perhaps a grotesque reading of your memorandum, but do you believe that the assumptions in the Strategic Defence Review need to be reassessed? Do you think they ever held good, or do you think they will hold good in 10 or 20 years' time? Mr Codner: I do not believe that it was my view in particular but the Committee itself felt there were concerns about affordability, particularly in relation to the major equipment programmes. We had the rebuild of the core capabilities of the Navy with the carriers as part of that and there are quite a lot of legacy programmes such as Typhoon. It was a very ambitious programme which, bearing in mind the inevitable rise in unit costs against inflation, appeared to be a very close run thing. There were predictions that it would probably come home to roost in nine or 10 years, which is where we are now. As to the basic assumptions and affordability, one point in my memorandum is that there is a strong aspect of discretionary or elective operations and you can build a capability around certain premises. If you then use that capability more than you expect to in discretionary operations there will be consequences and that is where we are now, not so much on the issue of affordability but certainly on the issue of overstretch. Affordability runs on in any event, but if you are to employ forces further than expectation and beyond what was costed - that is not because the Strategic Defence Review was wrong; it is just that government wishes to do things and the service chiefs comply with those wishes - there is a bill to be paid. Q241 Chairman: Do you think that current force levels should be rethought? Mr Codner: There is a problem here. Dealing with the immediate challenge of Iraq and Afghanistan - there are prospects of reductions in force levels certain in Iraq - and looking slightly further ahead at the evolution of defence policy and military strategy, if one increases one's force levels, particularly those on the ground, one provides options for more discretionary interventions and the problem does not necessarily go away. One is not looking at a safer future that we can somehow meet with our force levels. The question is what the nation's contribution should be to international security and how this meets both the national interest and the greater good of mankind. Professor Hartley: I believe there is a general question about how well and how good the Armed Forces are about adjusting to change. During the cold war there was a set enemy and geographical distribution of forces and we did not really have to adapt and adjust to change. Since the end of the cold war we really have had to adjust and adapt to change and I am not certain they are quite up to speed in terms of making appropriate adjustments to new threats. I compare it with the private sector where there is a set of incentives for continuous change: profits, competition and the capital market. Therefore, we have lots of change frequently. We do not have those sorts of mechanisms in the Armed Forces, nor throughout the public sector. It takes a long time for our Armed Forces and other parts of the public sector, including universities, to adjust to change. Certainly, they are faced not just with the usual changes - fighting the last war, the last war but one or the last terrorist threat but one - but adapting and equipping themselves for unknown and uncertain threats that will occur some time in future, bearing in mind that the starting point in the future is unknown. No one can forecast it accurately. Q242 Chairman: What about structures? We heard earlier about the hollowing out of units. Do you believe we need to rethink the structures to avoid that sort of phenomenon? Mr Codner: I accept what Professor Hartley says, but we have been in a process of pretty rapid evolution since the Strategic Defence Review, and indeed before, and the force structure envisaged by that review will not be realised fully until 2013. That has already gone somewhat further to the right. There was a great deal to be done and we are still not there or anything like it. Professor Hartley: The problem I have with the question and whole inquiry is that it is a complex matter. It is a question to which there are no easy answers, particularly with the problems we have in getting information in the public domain. I believe that to deal with this you need in-depth research, but as an academic I would say that. The reason why I say that we have a problem with force structures is that the Strategic Defence Review and Future Capabilities identified the commitment of a military capability to fight either one large-scale conflict or two or three small to medium-scale conflicts, but we do not know what these capabilities really mean. Are we talking about the capability of fighting just within the Middle East or worldwide, and for how long? I find the notions of small and medium-scale commitments very vague. They are certainly better than the situation we had before. Before the SDR we had simply a 40 squadron air force, a 40 warship navy and 30 infantry regiments. That is the wrong question. We are now focusing on inputs rather than outputs and capabilities. As an economist I welcome the move towards capabilities, but I still think it is very vague in terms of what these capabilities really mean. Q243 Mr Jenkin: Mr Codner, under "Affordability" in your paper you write: "Increasing the numbers of ground forces would not ease overstretch; it would increase the opportunities for commitment and the friction of war will do the rest." You seem to be saying that however much we spend in the present strategic environment we will just use it to the limit and beyond because that is the world we live in. Is this a hopeless situation, or have I misunderstood what you are saying? Mr Codner: Since the end of the cold war the issue of overstretch has appeared regularly. I do not suggest in any sense that the situation is not worse now than perhaps it was during the Bosnia assignment. Certainly, overstretch was constantly being presented. The issue is that if you increase the size of the Army and Royal Marines together that provides government with more opportunities and it will take them up. Certainly, governments since the cold war have been very ready to embark on elective operations for some very good causes. We mention some that did not happen, such as Rwanda. The problem is one of defining the scale of force for elective operations without a clear basis for operations of obligation to fall back on. You could say that what you need is a force which will cope with the operational obligations - defending the homeland, dependent territories and various other things like evacuation, which is very much understated - and that is the force which, when it is not being used for those things, provides a contingent capability to be used for noble causes. But that is not the way the force has been structured; it has been structured more on the basis of how small an expeditionary force we can get away with which will be big enough to meet certain measures of strategic significance, because that is the only way one can interpret the Strategic Defence Review where it sets aside the obligatory requirements and focuses very much on the elective options. Professor Hartley: As an economist, if we want a worldwide role - that is debatable - it does not come cheaply; it will cost us. We can see that by looking at international comparisons of defence spending, that is, our level of defence spending as a share of GDP and national output with, say, that of our NATO allies who do not have a worldwide role. One is talking probably of the order of a half to one per cent of GDP as the cost of a worldwide role. Q244 Mr Havard: In the memorandum you say that land forces in particular need to be more specialist in their expeditionary capabilities along the lines of the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines rather than more numerous. You then go on to talk about the Navy in the sense of it projecting force onto land as much as it does the sea. Therefore, is it right that the structures of the Navy and the equipment that it may have must be jigged around to look like that rather than what they currently look like? Mr Codner: As to specialisation of ground forces, I believe that this was an implication of the Strategic Defence Review. In some ways it was stated that British ground forces had some very specific roles compared with other European nations in particular, setting aside the French, for early engagements in operations and the self-perception of particular skills in the early stages of stabilisation. In both situations one needs highly agile ground forces which move more in the direction of specialist forces. What one cannot do is build huge special forces - SAS and SBS - because they need to draw on the ground forces that one has and take people with special skills out of them. One needs a basis for that and there is a limit to what one can get. There is another level down - a sort of rangers level - which meets these particular criteria. This would appear to serve what SDR requires, that is, the ability to operate in these particular circumstances. If one ends up in the situation of regular garrison-type operations and long-term commitments with a presence in theatre these particular skills are not quite so necessary, although one can argue that they certainly are at the moment in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But this was the shift in SDR and I commend that shift be maintained in future and that the United Kingdom in particular contributes these skills to a coalition force. We are talking principally about coalition operations at the moment. Q245 Mr Havard: But is not the difficulty that effectively one gets into a situation where a lot of your people who are trained to be agile do become garrison-type forces, peace-keepers and carabinieri-type personnel and assist in that activity rather than something else? Your assumption is that we structure our forces to have this particular niche capability, as it were, to contribute to coalition activities, whether they be European, US or whatever, and so we concentrate on building our forces specifically to fit that part of the activity. Others, the Germans or whatever, will have other garrison-type forces so we can go in and come out and they go in. Is that the idea? Mr Codner: I would say that is the idea, and it was certainly the trend after the cold war in the types of intervention that we have seen. In Bosnia British forces went in early. I know that there was quite a long period of indecision and doom and gloom about Bosnia, but in the end there was some sort of resolution and British forces were replaced by other European forces. We have the same thing in Kosovo. In Afghanistan British forces were involved and then withdrew. The difference is that now we face the consequences of the removal of two regimes and to that extent obligations of occupation and the consequences of trying to move out of that situation. That brings with it a whole set of obligations which were not planned for. If we are not to go down that line in future - I imagine there will be a national reluctance to do so - we will not necessarily see repeats of the need to occupy nations and the obligation of a long-term presence. Professor Hartley: This raises an interesting aspect which we ought not to ignore. To go back to force structures, there is a notion of what I call substitution. For example, in Northern Ireland where peace was increasingly restored we used police forces to replace our Army. We could increasingly think in terms of the problems we face with defence expenditure and defence policy at the moment of reserves replacing regulars and outsourcing in the sense of civilians to replace military personnel. We are making massive investments in equipment. In the private sector one would expect that to lead to major labour savings and the substitution of capital for labour. It may well be that we have to think carefully about how far we can use the acquisition of sophisticated and costly equipment for the Air Force to replace some of our land forces. I am not saying that they are perfect replacements, but we could, say, use Typhoons to replace some of our land and sea forces at the margin. It may well be we can think increasingly of the use of a very cheap nuclear deterrence rather than the strategic nuclear deterrent that we are thinking about for the replacement of Trident. It may well be that a tactical system is so much cheaper that it is thought worthwhile. Q246 Chairman: Unfortunately, you have a lot of persuading to do. Professor Hartley: I appreciate that. The principle of substitution is one that people do not like. Q247 Mr Holloway: Do you think that the current focus on Iraq and Afghanistan is detracting from the need to address other threats? Mr Codner: I certainly think that dealing with the immediate problems may be distorting the longer-term vision as to where the nation wants to do be and what challenges will have to be faced in future. Professor Hartley: On the other hand, that is what the military is about, is it not? The hope is that it does not have to fight but it keeps the peace and achieves security, but insofar as the military or society fails in that and gets involved in conflicts it is about the successful completion of a conflict, is it not? Therefore, war fighting is not something that should be alien to our Ministry of Defence. Mr Codner: But these are elective operations. Professor Hartley: I appreciate that, but nonetheless we put a lot of resources into our military - £30 billion-odd a year - and know little about how efficient the military is in terms of how well we convert those expenditures into military capabilities. But as a last resort one of the purposes of the military is to fight and it should not come as a surprise if it is involved in conflict. Q248 Mr Holloway: What are the threats that you think we may be missing, and what sort of capability or equipment should we be focusing upon in order to deal with them? Professor Hartley: It is difficult for me to say what sort of threats they are. You as politicians might make some judgment upon that. I simply make the point that the threats that face us are quite uncertain. As I see it, we have to structure our Armed Forces to meet a set of unforeseen and unforeseeable threats that could arise over the next 20 to 25 years, because inevitably with the equipment we are buying it is so costly that we cannot replace it every other year; we have to fight with what we have. We are talking about the capability of fighting for up to 20 to 25 years. Q249 Mr Holloway: That is what Trident is all about. Professor Hartley: Quite a lot of it is to do with what Typhoon is about which we cannot afford ever to replace. Typhoon will have to operate until probably 2050. Q250 Linda Gilroy: Is there another issue here? Part of what prompted this inquiry is the Prime Minister's speech in HMS Albion in which he made the distinction between hard and soft power and war fighting. Is not the point of war fighting and people putting themselves in harm's way to create the space in which peace-keeping and nation-building can take place? Since the Strategic Defence Review was published is it not the case that in the peace stabilisation part of the equation we also appear to be playing a very significant role? Mr Codner: Yes, but we are playing a distinct role to a large extent through choice. In relation to this particular issue it is not so much the war fighting but the ability to resort to violence if necessary that gives the military, in particular an expeditionary force, the ability to put the lid on escalation to allow other things to happen. That is what one tries to achieve. Q251 Linda Gilroy: To put the question in a different way, is it not the interface between that bit and the bit that follows and the protracted nature of it that appears to put more pressure on resources than perhaps was anticipated in 1998? Professor Hartley: Yes. One of the problems in terms of looking at a conflict like Iraq is: how do you estimate its costs? The war fighting part of it is a relatively small part of the total cost; it is like the tip of an iceberg. Substantial costs have been incurred by the UK since then in terms of peace-keeping and keeping our forces there, but the war itself was probably of the order of £1.5 billion. Since then our peace-keeping costs have been over £3 billion in total, so the war-fighting was a third of the total cost of the operation to date. The peace-keeping costs are becoming greater by the minute. Mr Codner: There are two problems with Iraq. One is that it was unusual in that it was a war that did not have full international assent and co-operation which then makes it extremely difficult to have an international response to the issue of stabilisation and what one does afterwards, quite apart from the fact that the figure for stabilisation is hugely greater if one is to remove a government than was available, comparing it with Kosovo or even Bosnia for example in terms of population. One cannot do it in any sense with those small numbers. The other issue is that if one is involved in the war fighting and occupying a country and removing a regime in the first place it is then extremely difficult to remain in theatre as the military that is to patch things up. That is one of the fundamental problems of using a military instrument and its association with violence, particularly if one has to go beyond constabulary operations and into full-scale war fighting. However one hopes to manage perceptions with a large part of the community one will be tarred with this particular brush unless one really has rescued a nation à la Kuwait, France in the second world war etc. Q252 John Smith: We hear about the division of labour between hard power and soft power, that is, war fighting and peace-keeping capabilities. Can you envisage a different type of division of labour given the huge cost not only of equipment programmes in the West in particular but the cost of putting a soldier into the field becoming so much greater? Do you envisage a division of labour in the future with coalition actions where one has, say, labour-intensive war fighting and capital-intensive war fighting; in other words, we contract out some of that war fighting to countries that can put troops into theatre much more cheaply? Professor Hartley: One possible reply to that may be envisaging a different international division of labour, for example, within Europe or NATO. Let us look just at Europe at the moment since it is very rarely looked at. It could well be that we have specialisation, with the Brits and French perhaps providing nuclear deterrent - we will not argue about that for the moment - and the Germans providing armoured or tank units. Depending on Turkey's position, it might well provide the infantry. I could certainly envisage an international division of labour. The Dutch might provide escorts for any carriers that Britain and France might have. Q253 Robert Key: To move on to funding, Professor Hartley, a very long time ago I taught economics. Could we have a cosy little chat about lies, damned lies and statistics? In paragraph 14 you point out that there has been a general reduction in frontline forces, and in your very helpful table 1 showing UK defence spending you indicate that we have got back to where we were in about 1990/91, but if it is not going on frontline forces where is all this money going? Professor Hartley: We in the public domain know very little about the efficiency of our Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces - in other words, the ability with which they convert the defence expenditure to these military capabilities - and I do not know how well we compare with, for example, other nations. There could be some international comparisons which provide useful insight. For example, to go back to an issue raised this morning, apparently we need almost four frigates to maintain one on station for one year. I do not know how other nations cope with that. Do they need the same sort of ratio to maintain one warship on station? My general reply is that we know very little about the efficiency of our Armed Forces and the ability to convert expenditure into military capabilities. Q254 Robert Key: I am sure that is right, but we also have a problem with Ministry of Defence statistics, do we not? We have seen the change from cash to resource-based accounting in 2001/02. Therefore, even within your own figures if we take the latest figure of £33.2 billion for 2005/06 we can say that £1.3 billion of that includes operations and another £3.1 billion was the non-cash cost of capital charges. Professor Hartley: I have assumed that in these defence budget figures the cost of operations are borne by the Treasury reserve, but I am not sure that it is shown in that figure. Q255 Robert Key: That is exactly my point: we do not know. Professor Hartley: The total budget is then £33.2 billion plus of the order of £1.75 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq, according to MoD's figures. Q256 Robert Key: Politicians love bandying figures about and think it is important to know whether they have gone up or down. We should not take anything at face value from any politicians if we cannot get the figures right. Professor Hartley: You are right. There was a change in the series from cash to resource base which makes it very difficult to make meaningful comparisons over time. That is why in my memorandum I resort to the current spending review's commitment to raise defence spending by 1.4 per cent per annum. The problem is that one knows very little about the productivity of some of the equipment. I give an example that I obtained from RUSI's Journal of Defence Systems about the way in which one or two stealth bombers can replace a huge force of 100-plus B17s. The problem is that in the public domain we do not have decent output indicators to give an insight to tell us the improved productivity of our defence. Clearly, we know that a Typhoon is better than a Tornado F3, but how much better? It may be that because the threat has become more demanding - it is relative change - the improvement is not much. Q257 Robert Key: Do you believe that those figures exist, or is it just that we do not have them? Professor Hartley: I think they exist but they are not available in the public domain. Q258 Robert Key: Does the Treasury have them as well as the MoD? Professor Hartley: I think the MoD has them. Q259 Robert Key: Not even the Treasury? Professor Hartley: I am not certain that the Treasury has them, but the MoD ought to have them. Robert Key: This is obviously a line of future inquiry. Chairman: Certainly it is a challenge for the Treasury. Q260 Mr Jenkin: Professor Hartley, in your paper you say that the previous system of programme budgeting or functional costing provided more useful data than resource allocation budgeting. What lesson should we draw from that? Professor Hartley: It is a hobbyhorse of mine. Being an economist, I am interest in cost benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses. I believe that the original functional costing budget, which to use a more technical term is programme budgeting, gave us as economists and presumably you as politicians far more useful information to assess the efficiency of defence spending. One had line items which showed, for example, the cost of an air force squadron, the cost of a frigate force and, incidentally, the cost of the strategic nuclear deterrent force. One cannot get that line item any more. One could then say in Parliament that the implications of reducing defence spending by £1 billion might be, say, the loss of half the Navy's surface fleet or half the research and development programme. Q261 Mr Jenkin: One of our recommendations might be that in order to have a proper debate about resources and commitments the Government should start to produce this information again alongside whatever they want for their own accounting purposes? Professor Hartley: They should produce decent reliable information to allow you to have a sensible debate about what economists call trade-offs. Q262 Robert Key: That is not to undervalue resource allocation budgeting, is it? Professor Hartley: No. All I would say is that an important resource that is always neglected in the resource allocation RAB system is human resources. If one has a football club the value is in one's players, not really the ground. Q263 Linda Gilroy: As to efficiency, to what extent is the whole move towards through life capability and the merging of the DLO to be welcomed? How does it affect what you have just been saying? We cannot go back to where we were, so what are the things that we have to look out for in future to make sure we know that we are getting value for money when we are procuring whole capabilities? Professor Hartley: In terms of value for money, the question I raised earlier remains: how good are we at converting expenditures into outputs? You have to tease that out yourselves as far as you can. Perhaps the people who can tell you a bit more about it are retired military experts, but certainly as an economist I cannot. I can raise the question and know how to go about answering it but I do not have the data. I might try to answer it by making international comparisons, but I think you could move a bit further forward. It may well be you can say that the Israeli air force is very good compared with the Royal Air Force in terms of inputs required for a frontline squadron. Q264 Linda Gilroy: I do not know whether Mr Codner wants to comment on that and the impact of through life capability. We have talked a lot about gain share. Is that measuring value for money? What can we expect of DIS? It seems to me that the whole resource issue and trying to find out whether we are getting value for money is very much a moving target at the moment. Professor Hartley: In terms of through life costing the important issue is that society needs the information about whole systems. In the note that I gave the Committee I focused purely on the equipment programme as costed from the UK defence statistics, that is, the costs of development and production. It did not include the total life cycle costs, for example the costs of supporting, maintaining and operating and the costs of midlife updates and so on. That information would be very useful for particular systems. Q265 Linda Gilroy: But does that not illustrate exactly what I am saying? If you look at the nuclear deterrent at the moment we are on the verge of perhaps seeing the formation of something called Subco which will have the potentially dramatically to reduce the through life costs which are 80 per cent of the cost of that particular capability? Yet we are talking about old-style, traditional methods of trying to examine these things. We need to know what tools we shall need in future. Professor Hartley: Yes. Mr Codner: From the work we have done the business of through-life costing is not particularly mature in the Ministry of Defence, nor is it uniform. I entirely agree with Professor Hartley that this is the right way in which to go. The other problem is that when one is trying to predict - this is not such a problem for the nuclear deterrent because the requirements are pretty clear and are likely to remain the same throughout its life - there are changing requirements and a need to adapt capabilities to meet those requirements. One thing that is certain is that when one builds a major capability in 10, 15 or 20 years' time it will not be doing precisely the same thing that it did when built. How on earth can one predict that? Changes through UORs or whatever else and incremental effects will reflect a change in the security environment that one cannot predict. That is a fundamental problem particularly when one is looking at IT-based systems etc. Professor Hartley: Certainly, if one had information in the public domain about through life costing one could make a more informed estimate of the pressures on the forward equipment budget. Q266 Linda Gilroy: When we looked at frontline capability we were very exercised by how robust gain share would be in standing the test of time. If it does presumably that information ought to be, if not available, capable of being accessed, but the concern is that if you put things in the hands of a monopoly you know how monopolies behave. Professor Hartley: If by "gain share" you simply mean the way in which profits and cost overruns and underruns are shared between the Ministry of Defence and the contractor - that is my interpretation of it - you are right. Q267 Linda Gilroy: It is the other way round, is it not: it is to try to incentivise the contractor to produce gain that is then shared? Professor Hartley: Yes; it is a target cost and incentive fee contract, but again we know very little about how successful are the outcomes of such contracts. Q268 Chairman: Professor Hartley, I want to talk about the issue of under-funding. In your paper you say there is evidence that there is a £1.2 billion under-funding and if the whole of the equipment programme is taken into account it will be a lot more. How much more do you think it would be if the whole of the equipment programme was taken into account, and on what do you base that? Professor Hartley: To go back to your first question, the guess I made about the £1.2 billion, which from the air marshal's answer this morning could well be £1.75 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq, is based simply on the notion that here we are fighting a war. Clearly, it is not a cost on the MoD budget; it is being borne by the special reserve. That might be a possible indicator of the extent of under-funding, bearing in mind that what I tried to do in the memorandum was distinguish analysis and evidence from special pleading. There is a lot of special pleading in this area and there is no doubt that like any other part of the public sector the Armed Forces will always say they have too little and need more. That was how I derived the £1.25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan based on public information from MoD. I was not quite satisfied. The way in which I had approached the question of equipment was to say that to reinforce the pressure on the equipment budget with previous defence budgets one major programme had always been supported, be it a Trident or a Typhoon. Typhoon is about £20 billion. Incidentally, the costings of that programme do not appear to have been reported in the recent UK defence statistics, which is interesting. We have always supported one major programme. It looks as though our current plans are to support more than one major programme for equipment. It looks as if we will have a Trident replacement that could well cost £20 billion, and also a carrier programme, by which I mean carriers, joint strike fighters and airborne early warning. The carrier programme and the associated joint strike fighter could well be of the order of £12 billion just for acquisition. It looks as if we will ask our forward equipment programme and defence budget to fund not just one major programme, which we have just about managed in recent years - it has been a close run thing and the standard trick is to move it to the right when faced with pressure - but nearly two major programmes. That will be a demanding challenge. Mr Codner: The carrier and Trident should in the major cost be sequential, if the carrier main gate decision is taken forward. The main Trident replacement investment would occur in the middle of the next decade. We are meant to be spending main gate money now on the carriers. In that context I try to indicate in my memorandum that although the most obvious and apparent savings could be made in the naval budgets thought should be given to the wider context and longer term and what options are excluded from defence policy and the capabilities that one wants to take into the longer term if one begins to hack away at these. These give governments a huge amount of flexibility in delivering its responsibilities in security that one does not necessarily get with other types of capability. Q269 Mr Jenkin: What do other countries do with their defence inflation rates? Do they have different rates as opposed to a general GDP deflator? Professor Hartley: When I first advised this Committee in 1985 for a period of time the Ministry of Defence had produced defence-specific price indices for equipment and non-equipment which were published regularly as part of the defence estimates. Then came Smart acquisition and, almost like King Canute economics, it was assumed that from then on defence inflation did not, would not and could not exist and everything would be adjusted on the basis of the GDP deflator. What I do not know is whether or not MoD still collects and produces data on defence-specific price indices. Q270 Mr Jenkin: Perhaps that is another recommendation we will considering making. Professor Hartley: Certainly, that evidence exists. Other countries have defence-specific inflation indices and the USA and Canada are certainly examples of that. The indices do differ and sometimes are above the GDP deflator adjustment. Q271 Mr Jenkin: They obviously differ. Professor Hartley, your paper suggests that we are unlikely to get an increase in defence spending, so what choice does that leave us? Professor Hartley: There are two things. In terms of what the future budget may be, at the very best I see a small increase in real terms, which is probably a bit optimistic, of the order of one to 1.4 per cent as we have had for the current Comprehensive Spending Review. Probably what we need in terms of under-funding may be a repeat of the NATO commitment to raise defence spending in real terms by about three per cent per annum for about five years. That may be the best we might look for. In the absence of any increase, even with a small increase in real terms, we will be faced with very difficult choices. It may well be that we will have to think about reducing our capabilities from the ability to fight two or three small to medium-scale operations to, say, two. That may be the choice as the Air Marshal said. The big major spending programmes are coming up and therefore in principle the ones that become vulnerable are the carrier programme and after that the Trident replacement. One has to think very carefully. It may well be that in terms of substitution we think increasingly of whether we need, say, two maritime capabilities, one being the Nimrod MR4 and the other being naval frigates. It may well be that in future we have to rely on one of them and cannot have both. Those are the sorts of choices that we will have to make. Mr Codner: In the context of seeing British capabilities in the wider context of some form of strategic role specialisation, which I addressed in my paper, there seems to be an inevitability that the specialisation in the longer term will be within a European context. If we are to refine our capabilities in specific areas and meet our perception of the UK role etc we need to look to where we will be in the long term in making any short or medium-term cuts and what our contribution would be to a more integrated Europe in that respect. I am not talking here about common forces but having capabilities that specifically Britain contributes. Q272 Mr Jenkin: You say in your paper that it makes no sense for the UK to design its forces to complement the US when this will merely build redundancy and dependency to no one's advantage. That sounds quite a radical thing to say. Is it? Mr Codner: I do not believe so. The United Kingdom is trying to decide what capabilities it needs. What we are not trying to say is that these are things that the United States does not have and we can provide them. There are certain skills which they may not do well, but which I will not go into those, that we may provide in the short term. They do things differently; special forces operate differently etc. But if Britain has a capability, apart from just expanding scale a bit, in certain types of operation which the United States does not have the US will acquire that capability. There is not much point trying to create some dependency in the United States on us that makes us essential by having capabilities that they will not have because they will replace them. In the European context the British role is very different; it is a framework nation; it has a maritime role and it has specialist army capabilities, etc, etc which are not generally available and which are important to any operation in a European context with or without the United States. Q273 Mr Holloway: What things does the US do less well? Professor Hartley: Probably "less well" is the wrong expression; it should be "differently". In the earlier session there was quite a long discussion about the United States learning from the United Kingdom in stabilisation operations. To some extent I think this is overstated. The United Kingdom certainly came with a level of experience in certain types of operations in the context of emergencies which the US Army in particular had not really focused upon and did not particularly want to. But one needs to bear in mind that the idea of a three-bloc war comes from General Krulak who was the United States marine commandant. The US marines have thought in these ways for a very long time. Whereas the United States has no doubt learned from the British in its use of ground forces since the end of the fighting phase of the Gulf War, at the same time senior generals have said that the British have learnt that occasionally you need to use violence in these complex operations in a way that we have traditionally avoided because it is necessary to make a point in certain situations. If you do not do that you put yourself very much at risk. There was no wonderful model that Britain brought to all of this which the United States then followed; it was a bit of both and a lot of learning on both sides, and I do not believe that any soldier would disagree with that. Q274 Linda Gilroy: I should like to return to the implications of through life capability and the greater complexity of trying to assess these things. One matter that we have referred to in previous inquiries somewhat light-heartedly, if not almost jokingly, is the emergence of mini-monopolies, if not a major monopoly, over a period of time. In your view is there a case for having something at arm's length from government to help us grapple with some of the issues that we have been talking about this morning? We have referred to it as an Ofwat or Ofgen-type regulatory body. It would not necessarily be exactly like that, but it would help the MoD, ourselves and others to try to ensure that we get continuous value for money out of these things. Professor Hartley: I think that with the defence industrial strategy we now have a clear commitment to support UK defence industrial capabilities, and effectively it means that BAE, for example, will be the recipient of quite a lot of guaranteed business. One has to think very carefully about how to provide incentives - we have gain share - for a firm like BAE which is a major monopoly to be efficient and respond to change, produce new ideas and provide "good value for money". Q275 Linda Gilroy: To your knowledge, is that talked about in defence commentator circles? Professor Hartley: I am probably one of the few people who mention it. The argument then is: should we treat firms like BAE as regulated entities? The options are to treat them as private monopolies subject to regulation with regulatory agencies equivalent to the ones we have for the privatised utilities or to nationalise them. I am not saying that we should nationalise it; I am talking about the logical options to deal with a monopoly. Q276 Mr Havard: I am someone who thinks that that is probably not a bad idea, but that is a debate for another day. I should like to pick up Mr Jenkin's question. Professor Hartley, your paper talks about 1.4 per cent in real terms but in reality we need four per cent. What used to be an inflation index has disappeared but you say that the GDP deflator is really what is happening. How do you make that trick work beyond getting more efficiencies in the way that new equipment is bought and used? That is Linda Gilroy's "through life" point, because the aspect of gain share will perform that trick, will it not? Is not the Ministry of Defence relying on those efficiencies to take place to make up the deficiency between the 1.4 and four per cent? Professor Hartley: I am not that optimistic that gain sharing will produce massive efficiency savings sufficient to solve the problem of funding that the defence budget now poses. Q277 Mr Havard: But is that not what the MoD is relying on? Professor Hartley: It might be relying partly on that, but I think it is relying on a whole lot of other things, as it always has, one of which was quoted many years ago by your Committee, namely a defence review by stealth. Effectively, you shift the new equipment programme to the right, do not equip and there is not enough training and so on. Q278 Linda Gilroy: That will not be good enough in the more complex situation that we have just been talking about, will it? Professor Hartley: At some stage it does produce a problem for the Armed Forces in effectively coping with what their political masters and governments require them to do. I think that in his evidence the Chief of the Defence Staff hinted that we were all right at the moment but if this operational tempo continued for much longer we could well be faced with problems. Q279 Linda Gilroy: Professor Hartley, in relation to service pay your paper says that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body Report 2007 recommended an increase in pay. It has been widely welcomed. What are the implications for the defence budget? Will it lead to reductions? Professor Hartley: If it is fully funded by the Government there are no immediate implications. The problem is that if it was not fully funded by the Government something else in the defence budget would have to go. I assume that it has been fully funded by the Government. In terms of the report of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, I refer in my memorandum to recruitment, retention, quits and so on. It is a further indicator of possible under-funding. There is clear evidence from the National Audit Office and the Armed Forces Pay Review Body of shortages in key areas and major manning problems. I think that is a clear statement. Q280 Linda Gilroy: Is this a one-off or does it need to be followed up by incremental increases? Professor Hartley: The Armed Forces Pay Review Body has to take a view about recruitment, retention and manning problems. It negotiates, agrees and recommends a pay award which reflects the problems of recruitment and retention, including a move towards the controversial notion of an x factor to compensate the Armed Forces for the net disadvantages of losing one's life. The fact is that one has to go where one is told without the chance to go home and consult one's husband, wife, partner or family; one does not have a trade union representative, and, by the way, one may never come back. Mr Codner: When looks at civilian comparators and the leaching away of the skill groups that the previous witnesses referred to - the bright young captains, etc - now that most of them have university degrees the salaries make the x factor a bit of a joke. The same applies to the bright sergeants and so on. That is the reason why there is leaching at that level. Q281 Linda Gilroy: Is the pay review body fit for purpose if we are talking of a very different set of circumstances from what most pay review bodies have to deal with? Professor Hartley: I would say that it is fit for purpose. I have not thought about whether there might be a better one. It is better than not having one, if for no other reason than it publishes its evidence and the basis on which it makes its recommendations. It provides information that is useful for a body like this Committee which picks out the manpower trends in recruitment and retention, pinch points and the Harmony Guidelines problems that face the Armed Forces. That is a signal as to whether or not one may have an under-funding problem. Q282 Chairman: But it does not deal with the issue of quality? Professor Hartley: It does not. Q283 Mr Jenkin: Professor Hartley, right at the beginning of your paper you say that the question of whether defence needs more money is an answer that needs "detailed research, involving a multi-disciplinary team", etc. Is that something that only the Ministry of Defence itself can do? Professor Hartley: No. In relation to one of the previous questions about information and so on, I think it can be done by independent bodies. You could commission people. Compared with the US Congress, you do not have a congressional budget office. Q284 Mr Jenkin: But we do not have a RAND Corporation? Professor Hartley: You do not have a RAND Corporation that can undertake independent analysis of very good quality. Q285 Mr Jenkin: We need the money to do it. How do you think we could do it, if we chose to do it? Professor Hartley: You could create the equivalent of a RAND Corporation in the UK. That would bring together the sort of team I talk about in my memorandum. It would certainly include economists, but, heaven forbid, it would not be dominated wholly and solely by them. That would begin to cost different options and it would publish its results. RAND has published quite a lot of very useful information about the performance and efficiency of the UK warship and nuclear submarine building industry. It is a pity that that had to come through RAND rather than a UK-based equivalent. Chairman: Thank you both very much. This brings to an end our evidence on this matter. We are most grateful. You have added a different dimension to the whole fascinating debate during our two evidence sessions. |