Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
REAR ADMIRAL
SIMON CHARLIER,
REAR ADMIRAL
TONY JOHNSTONE-BURT
OBE AND BRIGADIER
KEVIN ABRAHAM
2 JUNE 2009
Q100 Mr Holloway: It depends on how
much is going on and how much of the emphasis is on military matters.
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: If
by "how much" you are referring to the transport of
food or building material to help with the redevelopment of remote
areas, it is hardly any at all. We use a contractor to do that.
In terms of acting in a political sense it is about 20%. What
you are really getting at is how much humanitarian support operations
they are doing. Is that your question?
Q101 Mr Holloway: Yes—and the
key political connections that we probably would not want to talk
about.
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: It
is quite small.
Q102 Mr Crausby: Can you tell us
something about older helicopters? They have been operating in
quite a difficult environment, have they not? What do the Commanders
in the field feel about their performance?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Commanders
in the field are extremely pleased with their performance. All
the helicopters are performing extremely well considering the
very high temperature which is now over 40°C with a 6,000
ft density altitude. Serviceability rates range between 70 and
75%. However, the older helicopters find it harder work and more
of a challenge than the others, specifically the Sea Kings. We
knew that they would struggle in those temperatures. Therefore,
we fitted the Sea King Mk4 with Carson blades and a five-rotor
tail and that has improved lift considerably, but it means that
compared with the Chinook its capability is not as good as it
would have been in temperate temperatures. For example, the Sea
King Mk4 can take about six fully armed troops during the day
and about 10 at night. The Chinook and Apache are doing brilliantly
well.
Q103 Mr Crausby: Generally, is there
a good feeling about the older helicopters and everything is secure
in that sense?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Yes;
serviceability is very good indeed.
Q104 Mr Crausby: Is there a belief
that it might shorten their lives based on the present figures?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: No,
not at the moment.
Q105 Chairman: How many hours are
the Sea Kings being flown?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: I
am afraid we cannot give the number of hours flown.
Q106 Chairman: Am I right in thinking
that the philosophy about the Sea Kings has been to fly them for
a small number of hours in order to preserve their life for as
many decades as possible?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Not
at all. To try to help so it does not appear that I am evading
the question, clearly the aircraft themselves are fine and serviceability
rates are extremely high thanks to all the things I have talked
about with the Commander and the support we are getting there.
Because it is such an abrasive environment inevitably we get through
pieces of kit quicker, so rotor blades and leading edges can suffer
because sand and dust get everywhere. Inevitably, you will get
through component parts quicker, but the industry and integrated
project teams are very good in front-loading our stores support
system to make sure we get all the right bits at the right time.
In that sense we are getting through things.
Q107 Mr Crausby: We had problems
with rotor blades at one point, did we not, and those are now
resolved?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Yes,
we did and that is resolved. We now have the Carson blades for
the Sea King Mk4. This summer they will be available for the Sea
King Mk7s, so that will be better.
Q108 Mrs Moon: You have talked a
lot about how vital helicopters have become in theatre, in particular
with their current use for a variety of tasks: reconnaissance,
ISTAR and a whole range of movements since ground movement is
increasingly difficult and dangerous. What is your current manning
situation like? Do you have enough pilots across the three Services?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Yes
and no. The manning situation as a whole for all our crew—air
crew, ground crew and engineers—is okay and we are managing,
but we are at maximum stretch and there are hot spots in certain
areas depending on the fleet we are talking about. For example,
we could do with some more pilots for the Apache helicopter, and
I will tell you what we are doing about it. We could also do with
more engineering technicians. As to the Apache crews, at the moment
we have 40. We may go on to talk about Harmony, if you want me
to deal with that.
Q109 Mrs Moon: I do.
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: As
far as concerns Harmony, we act by a rule of five, so it is one
on four off. At the moment, to get a rule of five for our Apache
crews clearly we need 45 crews. We are now at 40. We shall be
at 44 by next March and we shall achieve 50 crews, which we are
budgeted for, by March 2011. We are also drawing on the Royal
Navy and Royal Air Force to help us with extra crews and instructors,
which they have very kindly been able to give us. I am boosting
the pipeline for pilots by 20%. We are also looking at ways to
retain our senior NCO air crew who are gold dust with massive
hours of experience and are fabulous pilots. We are looking at
ways to improve their pay scales and pension rights to encourage
them to stay on longer than they might otherwise. In terms of
the engineering shortages again we are looking across all three
services and all my fleets at the moment. It is interesting that
the Royal Navy and Air Force are overmanning us in terms of our
engineering support in order to enable us to cope with the gaps
and shortfalls, but that means drawing people from the rest of
their core area. As far as the Army Air Corps is concerned the
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers are helping us by doing
a review—the Apache, Lynx and also UAVs are our top priority—to
make sure we get them fully manned as best we can.
Q110 Mrs Moon: One of the suggestions
made during a presentation I heard in relation to helicopters
was that some of the Harmony issues were being disguised in that
people were being sent out with one unit and they returned and
went to another unit and were sent out again with that unit. Therefore,
perhaps the number of hours when people are required to spend
in theatre is not as simple as has been portrayed because of lack
of available crew. What would be your response to that? Are we
at a point where because of the vital role of helicopters especially
in the current theatre we are placing a disproportionate burden
on those helicopter crew and maintenance people in terms of the
hours they serve in theatre?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: I
say we are not because we are monitoring the situation carefully.
I have spent a lot of time on the Harmony of our people. The reason
I say "no" emphatically is that the Joint Helicopter
Command is completely integrated, so I am acutely aware of exactly
who is out when doing what. I have talked about the rule of five,
so it is one on four off. Our average deployment cycle is about
three months, so that gives us a 12-month gap between tours. That
is the rule of thumb we are using and it is working well in the
Chinook, Puma, Merlin and Lynx communities, so I am confident
that the points you make are covered in those crews. The areas
that I am not so happy about are the Sea King and Apache communities
where they are turning round the cycle faster. For the reasons
I mentioned earlier, the Harmony rate for the Apache air crew,
ground crew and engineers is about a rule of four, so one on three
off, which is taking its toll. I am enormously concerned about
that. Sea King crews are worse than that; they have a rule of
between three and four, so they are doing one on two and a half
off. That is something I monitor very carefully, not least because
I am concerned about families, decompression and their ability
to take stock and do what they all need to do when they come back
home, that is, readjust, do the training courses they need to
do, refresh their skills—aircrew, flying and technical skills—and
then start to build up for their next period of operations. The
12 months off sounds quite a long time, but it is not in the sense
they have all those other things to do. We also talk about nights
out of bed in the sense they have to do training which is not
necessarily at home; it could be elsewhere in the UK or abroad.
It is my top priority and greatest concern because the people
are the greatest single factor; without them we cannot proceed,
so it is a live issue that I monitor extremely carefully.
Q111 Mrs Moon: What impact does that
have on retention?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Retention
is not as bad as I thought it would be. At the moment, compared
with the service averages in the Army and Royal Air Force it is
very small. We talk about the Premature Voluntary Release (PVR)
rate; in other words, the rate at which people resign earlier
than they would otherwise. For the Army and RAF it is a fraction,
which is surprising. For the Navy it is slightly higher than the
average for officers and about average for the other ranks. I
do not want to use the present state of the economy to suggest
that people will not leave because the possibility of getting
other jobs is not as great as it was. I think that would be a
false premise. I am doing all I can to make sure we look after
our people and keep them because they are invaluable.
Q112 Chairman: You said that the
Harmony rate for Chinooks and Pumas was one in five, for Apache
one in four and for Sea Kings one in three or three and a half?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Yes.
Q113 Chairman: What is the fundamental
cause of the difference?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: It
is entirely manning.
Q114 Chairman: What is the fundamental
cause of the difference in that manning?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: The
Navy has a different scale of manning according to their Harmony
rules within the service itself. The rule of five that I mentioned
just now is a Joint Helicopter Command Harmony rate that I created
because it was sustainable and robust and I could guarantee that
with 20% on operations and 80% doing other things I could ensure
that was a robust, enduring capability at this tempo for the next
15 to 20 years. That was my yardstick. The Navy, Royal Air Force
and Army have different ratio criteria because their roles are
so different. In broad terms the Navy has a rule of three, one
on two off, because of the time spent at sea. You cannot join
the Navy and expect to be at home all the time. We have a one
third, two thirds, rule. As a consequence, our establishment—in
other words, the formula we use to work out the number of people
to man our stations etc—is a smaller proportion than it
is for the other two services.
Q115 Chairman: But looking at it
from your joint position all of this must seem to you very strange.
You must think that some of them have got it wrong. You can say
"yes".
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: It
depends on your perspective. If I was the First Sea Lord I would
say it is not wrong at all because that is how from the point
of view of the Navy he would cut his cloth. From my perspective
it is not ideal at all. You are absolutely right. I have no hesitation
in saying that I would like far more people in my Joint Helicopter
Command organisation to make sure I can do my rule of five, but
we do not have the people. Admiral Charlier may wish to speak
on the Navy's behalf because he is dealing with shortfalls elsewhere
as well, so it is not a binary choice.
Q116 Chairman: Admiral Charlier,
have you got it wrong?
Rear Admiral Charlier: No, I do
not think so, and certainly the First Sea Lord would shoot me
if I said we had. The Navy is configured against a set of parameters
that it has used for many years that usually rotate round a six-month
average deployment cycle at sea. We try to give the teams 12 months
off after that. That means that 660 days over a three-year rolling
period is the maximum time we can have people away. Those are
the terms and conditions of service in which people join the Navy.
They are very clear and we understand them. In a normal cycle
of deployment at sea—in surge operations we are content
to go outside those parameters and give more time when they come
back—that works adequately. What I have to do to support
the Joint Helicopter Command, quite rightly—we do the same
with the Harrier force—having now become heavily involved
in operations, is uplift the Royal Navy's manning to cope with
that particular circumstance at the time, which means I take the
hit elsewhere. I tend to take it on second line manning. To answer
your question, I do not think we have got it wrong at all; it
works perfectly adequately in the normal naval deployment cycle
we have generated historically of which we have a lot of experience.
When we have surge operations, particularly in this joint environment,
it is quite right to place a priority on that and take the hit
elsewhere in the Navy. The only other way to do that would be
to adopt a centralised Harmony regulation which in effect would
mean overmanning the Navy compared with what the Department wanted
of us in a normal circumstance, whether that was a training deployment
or operation. Personally, I do not believe that would be a good
use of taxpayers' money.
Q117 Chairman: Can you identify a
differentiation in premature voluntary release rates as between,
say, Chinook crews and Sea King crews, perhaps caused by the difference
in the Harmony guidelines?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: Not
at the moment. The numbers are lower, although I suspect for the
same reasons, because probably they are both going round the cycle
as often as each other.
Q118 Mr Havard: That is slightly
different from what I have been told in the brief. The brief seems
to suggest that the Sea King Mk4 fleet with Harmony is down to
one to 2.5 rather than one to four. I am told that that has a
particular effect on the retention of that group of people. Are
you saying that is no different from others?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: No,
I am not saying that. The Harmony ratio that I gave is correct;
it is one to two and a half.
Q119 Mr Havard: What effect does
that have on the retention of that particular group as distinct
from any other?
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt: As
I have just mentioned, it is not good; that was exactly what I
said.
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