UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 479-iHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREDEFENCE COMMITTEE
ISTAR
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This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Defence Committee
on
Members present
Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair
Mr David Crausby
Linda Gilroy
Mr David Hamilton
Mr Mike Hancock
Mr Dai Havard
Mr Bernard Jenkin
Mr Brian Jenkins
Robert Key
Richard Younger-Ross
________________
Witnesses: Air Vice-Marshal Carl Dixon OBE, Capability Manager (Information Superiority), Air Commodore N J Gordon MBE, Air Officer ISTAR in Headquarters 2 Group, Brigadier Kevin Abraham, Director Joint Capability, Ministry of Defence, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence to this session in our inquiry into the contribution of ISTAR to operations. Can I ask you please to begin by introducing yourselves and telling us briefly, in a sentence or so, what you do, and then we will start in on the questions properly?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Good morning, Chairman. Thank you very much for inviting the MoD today. My name is Air Vice-Marshal Carl Dixon. I work in the Equipment Staffs in the main building in MoD and I have the self-motivating title of Director of Information Superiority. I sit on an organisation called the Joint Capabilities Board that looks at the whole span of our defence equipment requirement.
Air Commodore Gordon: Air Commodore Gordon. I am currently the air officer for ISTAR and Search and Rescue in Headquarters 2 Group within Air Command, but I was formerly the Head of Capability for ISTAR in MoD, working for Air Marshal Dixon.
Brigadier Abraham: Good morning. I am Brigadier Kevin Abraham. I am the head of Joint Capability in the MoD, a post I have held for just under a year. My job specification is to shape, evaluate, arbitrate and advise on the provision of joint capabilities for current and future operations.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you. ISTAR capability - what would you say were your or the MoD's top three priorities for developing ISTAR capability?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: We have got many priorities, Chairman, for ISTAR.
Q3 Chairman: Only the top three.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The one that is overridingly dominating our thinking now is success on current operations. It transcends all other considerations in our thinking, but in the narrow sense of ISTAR technically it is the perennial challenge of distributing our ISTAR product efficiently that is key and if I were to look at an investment vector it would be there. With regard to the people that underpin our ISTAR capability, you know from previous evidence sessions that we have a perennial difficulty in acquiring and retaining the detailed technical trades that underpin the capability, so specialists in that people dimension are a priority to try and sort out perennially. My third one would be to try and map into our defence programme a mechanism for keeping up with the extraordinary pace of technological change in this area. Our defence programme processes only move so fast and in many areas I think ISTAR and the exploitation of ISTAR is moving at a challenging pace and we need to make sure that our MoD processes are keeping in step with that change. Those are the three.
Q4 Chairman: Amongst those three top priorities would you say that distributing the ISTAR product, being the first one, is way out in front or merely a little bit ahead?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I think a little bit ahead. Inevitably in life there is a balance to strike and, as you well know in this Committee, we have started to engineer MoD processes to look across all of our defence lines of development in delivering a programme. Distribution of ISTAR is often set against platforms and platform numbers and that is to simplify the debate probably a little too much but I think it is fair to say that in the past we have probably focused too much on platforms and platform numbers as opposed to distribution. We now have the technology and I think the instinct driven by operational lessons learned to put the necessary emphasis on distribution, but it has come from behind, I think, relative to platforms over a period of years. I think we are getting into balance better now but going forward I think distribution is the biggest challenge technically, to keep that distribution thing going, particularly in a coalition context.
Chairman: Yes, I think this Committee made that mistake last year when we concentrated on UAVs, and during that inquiry we came to appreciate that it was the distribution, things like bandwidth and stuff like that, that was a more important aspect of ISTAR than the platforms themselves.
Q5 Robert Key: Quite clearly the surveillance and reconnaissance bits of ISTAR depend very heavily on all kinds of technology but it seems to me that both the intelligence and the target acquisition parts of ISTAR have a very important human interface too. Can you explain that interface? In other words, at what point does human intelligence hand over to the rest of the ISTAR operation? In terms of value for money would it be better to concentrate on the human side of intelligence and target acquisition for intelligence gathering rather than this immensely complex and enormous range of highly expensive technology which you are engaged in with the ISTAR project?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Mr Key, I will start answering your question because it is very topical and then I will doubtless get some support from my colleagues. The simple answer to your question is that we need both. Human intelligence is an absolutely vital component of our suite of intelligence strands, never more so than now in our current operational challenges, but, if you will forgive me for being slightly mechanistic, human intelligence is a sensor in the sense that we think about ISTAR. It is a cut on the problem space. It is no secret that getting human intelligence in some of the foreign places we work in now is extraordinarily difficult. It is difficult at any time to get deep penetration with human intelligence in any space but where there are clearly big cultural differences, where, for example, in Afghanistan or Iraq there is an extended cousinage which surrounds the people we might want to learn more about, penetration with human beings into that space is very difficult and it is necessarily a very specialist role. As we have pinch trades in ISTAR technically, the intelligence agencies across our coalition probably have similar pinch trades in that domain. The truth is we need as much data on the battle space as we can possibly get, and human intelligence is absolutely key but I would not characterise it in the way your question implies, which is that there is a choice to make. It is a balance. I am pretty clear that we need the capabilities of all of our current ISTAR investments and plans but I would completely acknowledge as well that anything we can do better on the human intelligence side would be very welcome.
Brigadier Abraham: You are correct, of course, that surveillance and reconnaissance can be very platform-centric and that those can be expensive, but, just to correct the balance a little bit, surveillance and reconnaissance can also be very people-intensive. A very simple example is that Task Force Helmand has every day a reconnaissance force, about a company size of people. The principal means of doing reconnaissance is getting out and amongst the people and reporting what they see, and, of course, they have some sensors and things to help them see at night and so on. At battle groups - and this is true of all battle groups and certainly true of Task Force Helmand - each one will have its own dedicated close reconnaissance platoon as well, and similar things apply to surveillance. Across the range of ISTAR there is always a mix between the people-heavy bit and often the platform as well, although it varies at times.
Q6 Mr
Hancock: To what extent do UK ISTAR platforms in
operation in
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Once again, if I may, Mr Hancock, I will start that answer and I am sure other people will add some comments. Cross-cueing and layering of ISTAR is absolutely key to the overall capability and we do that with greater or lesser effectiveness depending on where we start the analysis.
Q7 Chairman: Can you begin by explaining what cross-cueing and layering is, please?
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: Yes.
Let us take a hypothetical example.
If the UK Armed Forces were invited to get into a new campaign where we
knew nothing of the detail of the terrain or the context, plainly we would do a
pre-deployment assessment as best we could, but then when we finally rolled our
forces out into this new theatre we would need some wider area surveillance to
find out what was going on. For example,
in the opening stages of the campaign in
Q8 Mr Hancock: How often are all of those assets available to enable that to be done, and how often is it that, because they are not all available, you do not get the whole picture or that clearly defined picture which shows the closeness of civilians to a potential target?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: It depends on the circumstances. In the context of current operations we must remember that we are in a coalition operation and the ISTAR contribution to that coalition operation is a multinational issue. As you well know in this Committee, we have made certain arrangements with allocations of our own ISTAR capabilities to the coalition and the command and control processes that go with that are necessarily coalition ones. The first thing to understand, and I am sure the Brigadier will come in on the detailed operational side of it, is that the number of ISTAR platforms that are allocated to a particular operation is a command function before the operation is initiated. Plainly there are operationally owned ISTARs, as in the sense of operational level, the bigger, more expensive, less numerous platforms. The logical way to command and control those in an operation is to hold the command and control at a fairly high level to allow apportionment to be done sensibly across regions, but plainly there are also tactical ISTAR capabilities that properly belong to sub-units, and make sure that all the assets line up around one operation as a command function. There is a beauty competition, if I can put it like that, to win at the tasking stage before the operation is committed that is important, so, having established where the ISTAR allocation is, you then make the cross-cueing and layering leverage that I talked about earlier.
Brigadier Abraham: In terms of what they might in theatre called deliberate operations, such as the one going on, clearly this will have been planned for some time and there will have been a great deal of deliberation in having it at the right readiness at the right place and the right time with the relevant ISTAR assets. In that sense you can maximise when you know well ahead that you are going to do something because you have to move people, platforms and so on to get the right focus. At other times, in hot contacts that were not expected, of course, the extent and range over which that operation takes place is (a) not known beforehand and (b) might be very limited geographically, so you will always seek to provide ISTAR in support, not least to improve situation awareness for many reasons, including the avoidance of damage to civilians, but it will not normally be on such a full basis as for a deliberate operation.
Q9 Mr
Hancock: So what steps are we taking to work towards
improving that system to avoid this civilian collateral damage which is so
frequently the rub of the administration in
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The biggest technical thing we are doing is improving our ability to connect our ISTAR imagery and products together in the planning and analysis wavelength. Hitherto we have grown our ISTAR requirements in stovepipes. Individual units, individual services, have really thought of ISTAR as just an extension of their normal platform kind of focus, but over the last few years in their crucible of operations we have realised that the real energy needs to be put into the sharing of information. I think the collateral damage thing is about layering in the end because plainly, at the planning stage of an operation, to take the current example again, it is a matter of public record that the coalition commanding general in theatre, General McChrystal, is re-focusing the campaign to make sure the coalition do not overdo the kinetic side of things to the exclusion of progress in the hearts and minds campaign. That flavour of command intent can be actuated in the ISTAR planning by making sure that battle damage assessment, weapon selection and target analysis are all done with that objective in mind. That is exactly what is going on now and it has been enabled by the technology we have put into theatre.
Q10 Mr
Hancock: What difference then would Airborne Stand-off
Radar make to coalition operations, particularly in
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: It has already made a massively important difference for the better. The aircraft is in theatre now. I do not want to get into detail about what it is doing in an open session, for reasons I am sure you will understand, but we deployed the aircraft ahead of its initial operational capability date at the back end of last year for a trial with the Royal Marine Commandoes as the land force. That trial hugely exceeded our expectations at that early point of the aircraft's career and the sensors that it has on board, which is again a matter of public record, are SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and a ground-moving target indication radar working together with the range and capability of the aircraft, and they proved to be hugely useful in the operational context of the deployment. We redeployed the aircraft earlier this year for an additional trial and the aircraft is in theatre now for the third time and will remain so, certainly until the end of the year on current plans and probably longer going forward. It is a very big wide-area surveillance capability that has been hugely useful and I will happily give you some vignettes in a closed session later.
Q11 Mr Hancock: I listened to the colonel of 4-2 Commando on the radio last night commenting about his deployment with his unit and saying how they were able to be much more flexible and free-moving in what they were doing. Is that as a direct result of the contribution of ASTOR to that operation? Does it give the commander on the ground greater flexibility of movement?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The open session answer to that is yes, it does, in a very powerful way because of the purview the sensor has over the battle space. I cannot get into detailed vignettes in an open session but I would be very happy to share with the Committee some interesting insights into ASTOR offline.
Mr Hancock: Thank you very much indeed.
Chairman: That may well be at the end of this session something that we decide to take you up on.
Q12 Richard Younger-Ross: You have talked about the platforms. How far is the direct processing and dissemination aspect still the poor relation of the funding we are putting into the platforms?
Air Commodore Gordon: If I may take that one, I do not think it is the poor relation. I think we have to recognise that historically there has perhaps been a focus on collection and legacy stovepipe platforms, but, as technology has enabled us to join up those platforms better, we have increasingly invested in that very important space of direct process and dissemination. Certainly from my experience as Head of Capability for ISTAR, the balance of investment was in the region of 50 per cent on that collection piste and 50 per cent on the direct process and dissemination piste, so it is, I would suggest, a high priority and one that is now attracting the correct balance of investment.
Q13 Richard Younger-Ross: DABINETT - there are concerns that it is not going to be fully funded and it will be cut.
Air Commodore Gordon: It is probably worth putting DABINETT in context. There are essentially two elements to it. There is the direct process and disseminating piste that you have already spoken of and there is the collection piste focused on deep and persistent collection assets. In terms of the deep and persistent, we have previously agreed with the Treasury to bring forward money from the DABINETT programme, and indeed it was that which contributed to the procurement of the initial REAPER UAVs. In terms of the direct process and disseminate elements of that, we are still very much in the concept phase and should be moving to an initial operating capability in 2012 for that initial phase of direct process and disseminate, but we are already, through the UOR, process investing in the improvements to the processing and dissemination which are much needed.
Q14 Richard Younger-Ross: Are you getting the funding you want for it or is it going to be cut?
Air Commodore Gordon: As far as I am concerned we have sufficient money currently in the programme to deliver the direct process and dissemination.
Q15 Richard Younger-Ross: And the funding streams will provide for the completion of the project?
Air Commodore Gordon: As currently envisaged there is sufficient money in the programme.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: There is no attempt at evasion here. He has been out of the office for three weeks. I can tell you as of today that there is sufficient money in the DABINETT programme to do what we want. I would never bet against changes in programme balance of investments across the piste in the future. All parties have signed up to a defence review. I would hope that that whole endeavour of C4ISTAR in the round gets a good belt of wind in a defence review. As things currently stand before that review, and, let us face it, all the bets are off until we have done one, DABINETT is properly funded with all the right things in it.
Q16 Mr Hancock: It takes a brave man to say that, Air Vice-Marshall, but that is why you are here. What about the manpower training and resources needed? As these developments go on and they become increasingly accurate and viable, what about the training of the personnel who have to interpret the information that is coming back? Are you satisfied that the manpower side of this, the training side of the people to interpret this information, is keeping pace with the technology advances?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The last question was related to DABINETT, which, as the Air Commodore said, is a future programme currently in concept phase. In the case of DABINETT we will address the manpower defence line of development alongside all of the others, the equipment and support ones, to make sure that we do have that balance struck correctly, ie, we will not seek to take into the inventory equipment and capability that we simply cannot operate for the lack of trained resource to do that. Stepping back from DABINETT into the current space, we would be the first to acknowledge here that we have some difficulty in the pinch point trades in C4ISTAR, partly because we are coming of age in ISTAR as a Ministry of Defence. There has always been an ISTAR component in warfare right the way back to the very beginning, but I think it has now reached a point where its cross-cutting value has become so important that we are now on the front foot with it. It is as important a capability as any other platform consideration that the MoD has and each of the three Services and an awful lot of non-Service people who belong to defence are in the process of thinking out how they are going to stand up to the plate in this technical area. It is not just ISTAR. I could point to a number of other areas where these technical issues are really key. There is no absolute answer to your question other than to say that we are absolutely clear that we are going to introduce new kit, new capability, as a capability spanning not just equipment and support but also people and training, and that within the overall budgetary envelope we are operating within we will try to address all of those things to the necessary extent.
Q17 Mr Hancock: Is it a problem at the moment to get the right personnel to do this because it is a career in itself now, is it not?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Yes.
Q18 Mr Hancock: And it will be a lifetime commitment in the military now in this sector, will it not?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Yes, and because in some cases there are relatively small numbers of people in specialist trades, image analysts, for example. At the moment the requirement does not make a whole service, so one of the issues is to try to make meaningful career structures for people because people want to grow in their job, they want to be promoted in their job. This is not just the military but the Ministry and the people that belong to it, so there is an issue about branch and trade coherence and making sure that career opportunity is there for people. Because there are specialists in each of the three Services, clearly there is a cross-cutting issue as well. That is a recognised problem and it is a problem that is evident in any pinch trade, not just ISTAR.
Brigadier Abraham: We have introduced a number
of measures to try and target money at pinch point trades - transfer bonuses,
rejoining bounties, golden hellos and so on, in order to increase the
attractiveness of certain trades in the ISTAR and other arenas where we have
not got enough people against those which we need. If I can just add a little bit on training,
at the collective training level when you train all of the elements of a force
before it deploys, usually called training and mission rehearsal exercising, we
do have challenges in training per some of the ISTAR aspects of it - the
low-tech bits, the bits I mentioned, for example, in response to Mr Key's
question earlier. That is not a problem,
but, for example, in the
Q19 Chairman: You said you had not got enough people. How serious is that problem? What is the percentage shortfall of people?
Brigadier Abraham: I could give you a long list which I will not read out.
Q20 Chairman: No, we do not want that.
Brigadier Abraham: You do not? How serious is it? You can mitigate part of that problem by deploying and using your smaller force more often than is desirable. In other words, you have to break Harmony on occasions and there are many pinch point trades where people deploy more frequently than the Harmony rules, which I think we have talked about before, would ideally dictate. That is one of the ways to mitigate. The second way is to try and address your manning shortfall, hence the answer to Mr Hancock's question. How serious is it? If the manning does not get better you have to push the existing force harder for longer.
Q21 Chairman: Which in itself creates shortfalls because it puts pressure on people to leave?
Brigadier Abraham: Exactly. You cannot predict the future. I think we would all take our hats off in tribute to some of the tour intervals that certain people in the ISTAR and other arenas do. This is really humbling devotion to duty. You cannot predict how long an individual will continue to be able to do that because you are asking more of him than you would normally require him to do. How serious is it? I cannot put a discrete value on it. It is a serious challenge which we are trying to mitigate by a number of targeted manning measures.
Q22 Robert Key: Why is it particularly difficult to recruit image analysts and to keep them?
Air Commodore Gordon: I do not think that is necessarily true, that it is difficult to recruit and keep. If I may just step back one, my colleagues are quite right to highlight the pinch trades here, and indeed image analysts is one of them, but you have to look at it in the context of the growth of ISTAR capability that we have delivered to theatre over recent years. We are now far better placed in terms of our ability to see what is happening in that very complex battle space, and that growth in capability has perhaps not been matched by the recruitment in IAs, so absolutely right, it is an area of concern. What are we doing about it? We have a number of initiatives on the people side, but we are also looking to technology: how can we make the image analysts' life easier to reduce the workload so that they can do more with less? It would be very easy to say things are bad and, yes, we acknowledge that there are difficulties, but equally we should at look what we are actually delivering as a capability these days.
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: I
think the answer to Mr Key's question has another dimension as well, and it
comes down to small trade-itis. There is
a danger perennially with small trades that they become backwaters where there
is not a career progression, and it is a lesson for us, I think, out of our
ISTAR experience now and it is a thing that our Service secretaries are very
alert to, to manage this small trade-itis problem. If you are in the flying branch in the Royal
Air Force, thank God, there are still enough aeroplanes to make a career out of
being a pilot in the Air Force, but if these are very small trades we have to
imagine pulling these people through a full career, so that is part of the
problem and, as I said earlier, there is a Tri-Service component issue with
this as well that we need to manage. All
I would say is that we are alert to the issue.
There is one other thing I would say, which is that the game never stops
changing. You picked out image analysts
but if you had said interpreters, and I know the Committee has an interest in
that which we have explored before, just the move from one theatre to another
has fundamentally changed the requirement for interpreters and the balance of
languages that we need to train. You can
never rule out a contingent operation growing up into a pretty permanent
commitment and we have had many examples of that in our time - the
Q23 Mr Jenkins: What we are talking about now is a problem which we have had for a while but it is compounded by this stovepipe approach we have had, and this is not a criticism because historically these programmes were based on different Services. Without the DABINETT programme I thought we were always going to be in a position where we had one platform collecting the information and another one re-collecting the information and it being sent down to two or three different bases and being analysed by three different crews and the same information was being re-analysed. How do we get over that if we have not got this collection point where all the information is fed in and duplication is taken out, and how much progress have we made to reduce this duplication of the collection and analysis and the workload placed on these very important people?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I clearly recognise the issue you have just referred to. To some extent we are a prisoner of our past in this, of course. I said earlier that traditionally, before we really got moving with ISTAR and understanding its cross-cutting power, these ISTAR systems have grown up in single Services, often in sub-formations below single Services, and we have rather seen the ISTAR issue in the vertical where crudely there has been a collector asset, a bloke on the ground looking at a terminal who was generating the product that the stovepipe folks wanted to hear and listen to. We have made a very significant investment, currently under urgent operational requirement in theatre, to connect the whole network of ISTAR assets at the operator level, so where these platforms come down through technical stovepipes because of the legacy equipment the folks on the ground who are looking at all these individual products hitherto could not speak and collaborate with each other very readily. We have made an investment in theatre, which I will happily give details of in a closed session, which has hugely improved that interconnectivity, and that lesson, which we have been required to make in a fairly speedy way around current operations, is absolutely the heart of our DABINETT programme, to understand the need for that at the outset, and the DPD, the sequencing of DABINETT, is all about creating the infrastructure for that collaborative environment from the very beginning.
Q24 Mr Hancock: What are the problems about interoperability between our assets and other coalition assets in this field?
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: That is a mixed picture but it is quite a good
picture in theatre currently with the obvious example of total interoperability
when we see the interoperability thing in three layers. There is absolute interoperability where it
is absolutely seamless, interoperability between platforms, there is
operability that can be generated by a cut-out but nonetheless which is
working, and then, frankly, there is stuff that is totally not interoperable
but that we try to de-conflict one way or the other. At the absolutely totally interoperable end we
have things like REAPER. We bought
REAPER from the
Q25 Mr Hancock: So how big a problem is it then that there is a lack of an international downlink standard to disseminating the information that comes in across the coalition forces? If there is not a common downlink is that not a serious problem?
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: I
think not, actually, tactically, because, as I say, it is the value of the
sensor that really drives this. If the
value of the sensor is so great you make provision for making sure that that
sensor's data gets plugged into the right ears and eyes, and we have done that. We can spend a great deal of money making
these platforms talk to each other electrically and I think the
Air Commodore Gordon: I think we should be quite positive in some areas here as well. Clearly, we are not at that stage where we have integrated systems that merge seamlessly. What we do have, however, is a large number of compatible systems that interact, and in this sense I do not think we should underestimate the longer term benefits that we have had from NATO in terms of standardisation agreements. Link 16, that is used widely across theatre as the common data link, is an interoperable system, so I absolutely agree with you, sir, that we could be doing better but I think there are very few instances where we cannot at least interact with our coalition allies, making use of the people to make the systems operate.
Q26 Mr Hancock: So would you say then, the two of you who have just spoken on that, that the MoD is doing a lot to improve interoperability and what you have described, Air Vice-Marshall, is the biggest step forward in achieving that interoperability?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Yes, exactly that. It has absolutely been on the front burner for current operations to improve interoperability. As I say, we have instant platform interoperability when we have bought into things like REAPER, but our DABINETT programme is another opportunity. I think the Air Commodore is quite right. We have been very good at this in the air and I think it is probably true in the maritime domain as well. That has been because of the NATO background to what we have been doing. There has been a multinational component in our thinking for very many years. That has evolved through the equipment programmes of a number of different countries. I think putting the whole thing together, under the pressure with the enemy voting in both theatres now, has driven further requirements. We are being informed all the time by lessons learned. The UOR work we have put in theatre now has been very successful already and I will happily talk about that in detail later, but the key thing for the future for us is to make sure that our DABINETT investment is absolutely at the DPD interoperability kind of wavelength from the beginning, and it is.
Q27 Chairman: What is the timescale for what you were talking about in the defence information infrastructure and getting this interoperability as good as you would like it to be?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I do not think there is ever an end to the curve of improvement in this business. We will always be chasing a higher target; it is just the nature of the business. The DII issue is just where we are going. We have a unitary network coming into play; it is already rolling out around our headquarters, it is very substantially rolled out already. It is going into the deployed space next year. We have in the interim invested in a project called OVERTASK in Afghanistan, which is the UK-funded component of a wider NATO architecture which is funded through the coalition, and we are in the process of evolving a new deployed technical architecture to replace the early rollout of OVERTASK which will use DII compatible capability, so we already have an eye to this unitary network being an enduring requirement in theatre. The other thing I would say is that we recognise as well that the user community in theatre are now very comfortable with working at that NATO classified level and that we need to do quite a lot about the accreditation and management of our network to make sure that we do not bedevil progress in future with eyes-only issues that relate to the ownership of intelligence products in the UK or in less than the full NATO coalition. We are on that case as a department very firmly. We have just appointed, as you probably know, a new Chief Information Officer for the first time in UK MoD and the operational staffs in PGHQ who deal with signals and communications are collaborating with us in London under the Chief Information Officer's chairmanship to make sure we grip the "deploy technical architecture" thing to deliver that unitary network. The answer to the Chairman's question in detail is that it is a bit of a moving feast, Chairman. The DII programme is a little bit ahead still in terms of the deployed piste but we are bridging between now and then with a unitary network in which we have invested UOR money. In the end I think that once DII future deployed is fully installed and working we will have that unitary network and then be able to capitalise very heavily upon it and add to it as well in emergency.
Q28 Mr Hancock: So what would you say the actual impact has been of the urgent operational requirements process in developing ISTAR and bringing it forward and giving the right procurement process in line?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I will start the answer to this. Urgent operational requirements, plainly, in the context of our current operations been hugely important but they have in the past as well. The truth is that there is a place for the urgent operational requirement process alongside what I would call a more conventional planning process. Often, I think rather naïvely, some people think there is a choice to make between the two. It is not really - although it is only my judgment - like that. Part of the pleasure of an urgent operational requirement is that quite a lot of rules that would normally apply to things like competition are set aside in the interests of getting the equipment into service quickly, but, quite obviously, over a period of time if you just relied on a UOR process you would end up depriving yourself of the pleasures of competition in terms of cost effectiveness, so my own instinct is that the equipment programme and the programme more broadly should be used for bedrock capability and we should be trying to build architectures, particularly in ISTAR and in communications, out of the equipment programme which give a robust base level capability across the whole span of our endeavour. We should always recognise that we are going to have to put icing on the cake in a number of areas because the enemy is voting uniquely in one place or there is some particular technical challenge that emerges. The UOR process is perfect for getting on to that really quickly, analysing the problem and actually skipping all of the usual MoD stuff that tends to slow our processes down and actually getting to the heart of the problem, but I do not see the two really as mutually exclusive. You need both and the MoD is actually quite good at managing that balance - that is a personal view - particularly in light of current operations.
Q29 Mr Hancock: What is the time frame from somebody requesting this through Urgent Operational Requirements to it actually being delivered?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: There is not a hard and fast set rule. In broad terms, as you are aware, the Treasury pay for UOR capabilities, it does not come from the defence budget. The working rule is that it must be deliverable within 18 months of the requirement being raised; if it is beyond that then it is not in the game of being urgent. There is a degree of flexibility in that and sometimes they are delivered faster, but 18 months is about the working time frame as to whether it fits the UOR category or not.
Air Commodore Gordon: Can I perhaps highlight by way of example the success of the Hermes
450 unmanned air vehicle, which of course is a huge success in theatre. That took seven months from the requirement
reaching the desk to it being fielded in
Q30 Chairman: Thank you. Some good news stories; would you forgive me if I came on to some bad news stories? On 1 June there were reports in the Telegraph and The Times that Soothsayer, a ground-based electronic warfare system, may be abandoned, that Project EAGLE, a sensor upgrade to the Sentry Airborne Early Warning Aircraft is being postponed saving £400 million, that the REAPER UAVs acquired under the UOR process will not become permanent assets, and Defence News has suggested that the order for Nimrod MRA 4s will be reduced from twelve to nine - and I would remind you that the original order was 21 - and that will save a lot of money. It was also reported that the decision on whether to procure a replacement for the Nimrod R 1 will be delayed indefinitely, saving something like £400 million. Do you want to comment on those reports and, if ISTAR is so important, why are there so many reports suggesting that ISTAR programmes are to be cancelled, delayed or cut out entirely?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I know quite a bit about all of those programmes, as you might imagine, and I do not think it would be helpful to get into too much detail about some of them for reasons that are plain, but let us pick them off in roughly the order you enumerated them there. I am not able to talk about Soothsayer for commercial reasons; we are in commercial discussions with a legal component with the company about that and I am not at liberty to talk about that now, but I can confirm that we have cancelled the Soothsayer programme. The thing I would just say parenthetically about that is that we are not doing that, as was reported in the press, to the detriment of current operations, we are entirely satisfied that we have analogous capability provided by a different platform in theatre doing what it needs to do for our folks currently. The issue about Soothsayer is that there will clearly be a debrief moment for the Committee in due time, but I am not able to talk about that.
Q31 Chairman: Are you able to say when?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: No, I am not. The elaborations of those negotiations I am not personally party to, that is a DE and S issue with the Chief of Defence Materiel in play now, but because of the sums of money that have been expended through the UOR I am sure there will be an outing of the issues, but not yet. On all kinds of Nimrod - let me deal with the Nimrod R1 capability first of all. I know that has been reported in the press as well but we are still in assessment phase for the replacement of the capability and the only thing I would say in the public session - I am happy to elaborate a little bit in the private session - is that we have no intention of gapping that capability, i.e. we still have a very clear requirement for a manned capability which Nimrod R 1 provides for the UK. It is very important to our current operational model that we have that capability and we wish to retain that capability in some form in the future. We are looking at a number of different approaches to delivering it; it is no secret that one of those is a potential for BAES to do something to the aircraft as an upgrade to the Nimrod R 1. One of the other ideas that is being examined is to buy into an American programme called Rivet Joint, but either way we require the capability, we are crystal clear on that. On the other Nimrod axis which is largely to do with our antisubmarine warfare capability the actual numbers have gone down, as you say, over a period of years from 21, from recollection, down to the numbers now. We have an extant contract with BAES for nine aircraft and are considering but have not yet committed to a potential for a further three aircraft above those. The actual deliberation about what is enough capability in that area has been a moving feast for, certainly to my recollection, some years. I am personally pretty new to this business - I have been in my post just less than a year - but as of now I am satisfied looking at the likely range of missions and tasks for that capability that we are going to be able to cope with enough of the tasking set.
Q32 Chairman: Is it because the number of Russian submarines in our waters has gone down?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: It is fair to say that the perspective of range and task for that capability has varied over the time because of perceptions of threat globally. That is part and parcel of it.
Q33 Chairman: Do we ignore the recent Russian announcement about increasing the number of ballistic nuclear submarines in their Northern Fleet?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Like every other threat assessment across the planet we keep it under review. There is probably, going through time, no absolutely right mix for any of that. As I say, we are still in discussion about whether we are going to increase beyond our current programme for nine aircraft and the international threat assessment and the range of missions and tasks will be one deliberation to get into.
Q34 Chairman: Do you think if you spend less money on a threat that reduces the threat?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: No, I do not think that, I just think that these things have to be kept under review. As things stand today we are probably buying into a fleet that will do all that is required of it. That is not to say that you cannot use more aeroplanes if you get them, but we are into absolute territory here.
Air Commodore Gordon: There is also a danger of focusing on the platform, the collector. Clearly as technology moves forward the sensor capability that you can put on those platforms improves so it is potentially possible to do more with less platforms and that wide balance has to be factored into any debate when you start considering pure platform numbers.
Q35 Chairman: Let us move on to Project EAGLE and the REAPER UAVs.
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: Project EAGLE and the detail of it you
can speak to. All I would say about
EAGLE is that in the current issue, that capability is essentially in a
contingent area. It is a matter of
record that we have not had a major air campaign to fight peer on peer narrowly
around
Q36 Chairman: Do you think all of this will have an impact on our capability in ISTAR terms - the reduction in the number of platforms, the reduction in the amount of money that is being spent on these issues?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The Air Commodore has already elaborated - and I did earlier myself - on this balance of investment you need to make between platform numbers and DPD. Plainly there eventually comes a point where the platform numbers reduce to a point where you cannot cover the ground - that is the absurd situation. It is a question of balance though in all things. I would never say we have had too many platforms in the past and we are a prisoner of our past in that sense, but there is further investment to make, as I have said we will make in DABINETT, to improve the DPD component of that and, in the end, the numbers of platforms that are going to be on the inventory will steady down. There is probably in the end going to be a ratio that we will arrive at, but I would not like the platform numbers to reduce endlessly because clearly we are going to end up in trouble if that happens, but we can still increase the leverage of individual platforms by some careful investment in DPD - I think that is what the message is and I am not sure we have reached that sweet spot yet. I am therefore not yet able to say to you that we have reached the bottom line on platform numbers.
Air Commodore Gordon: The media reports of what was almost described as large-scale cancellations of ISTAR projects have perhaps been misinterpreted or perhaps not reflected truly. As the Air Marshal says, the requirement for manned, airborne electronic surveillance remains and that programme will move forward. Similarly, the ASW capability of MRA 4 is being delivered in terms of the airborne early warning that was to have been provided by EAGLE. That programme continues but we are just approaching it from a slightly different procurement strategy and that has to be set in terms of what are the priorities in support of current operations and are there contingent capabilities that we can perhaps move slightly further out.
Q37 Chairman: I will tell you what worries me about this, and that is the gradual reduction in the number of platforms. Each new platform that goes - yes, you cannot say that it will make a huge difference but as gradually it goes down you do not notice the fact that a major capability is actually being affected. I am not getting the impression from you that you know where to stop - do you know where to stop?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: The first thing I would say is that we are not on some preordained agenda to keep reducing - I am certainly not. In the end the arguments that my staff will advance - we will see where we go; I advance an argument and other people will conclude upon it. If I think there is a requirement for a minimum number of platforms I shall say so quite openly and our business case submissions are flavoured with that all the time. There is always a balance to strike between the absolute capability of any particular platform and the number of them; there is a ubiquity issue for air platforms. For example, it is a fact that a Nimrod cannot be in two places at once so, you know, foolish games played with attributions to say that that Nimrod could be in four theatres at once are plainly stupid, and we would say that in our business case. There is always, and properly should be, a tension between a bloke like me in an RAF uniform asking for umpteen Nimrods and the overall cost to defence, and there is a balance that rests between the two. That is a healthy tension which I am certainly very comfortable to make my pitch in, but there is no agenda to continuously reduce the number of ISTAR platforms - in actual fact the number of ISTAR platforms has increased overall. We are talking about future plans with Nimrod; we were where we were with Nimrod MR 2 and MR 1 because of the Cold War world we were working in; it is a different world now. Plainly the number at the end of the Cold War could have reduced, decently so, and we have done that. I do not think there is anything wrong with that, but if we ever needed to go up again I would be very happy to argue for more numbers.
Q38 Mr Havard: Could you just answer the question about REAPER in particular? The report is that it is not going to become a permanent asset.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: That is really to do with thinking about what our long term objectives are for DABINETT and what we need of a core asset in our core programme. We are committing ourselves a bit if we put REAPER in the core programme to either a future that, should we wish to increase the number of those kinds of assets, is more REAPER or if we chose for example to do anything in either a UK or European or other collaborative perspective we would end up foisting upon ourselves more than one platform, potentially bedevilling our support organisation with a requirement to fly two birds for one job.
Q39 Chairman: I am sorry, I did not understand that, you are either committing yourselves to one or you are committing yourselves to more than one. I understand that, but you are going to have to do one of them, are you not?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Let me elaborate my answer because I do not want to confuse the Committee at all. I said earlier that we have yet to start our assessment phase for DABINETT. I think we will go to initial gate and commit to assessment phase in the New Year - we are still in concept phase for DABINETT now. I want the assessment phase in DABINETT to home in on this very issue. I explained earlier that one of the components of our DABINETT programme is a new unmanned air system to do what we call a deep and persistent collect capability and we see that unmanned air system even at this early point, even in concept phase and not yet confirmed by assessment phase, as a medium altitude long endurance unmanned air system. REAPER is one potential candidate to meet that commitment but there are others - not least we have a research and development programme ongoing currently with BAES on a programme called MANTIS, so there are choices to make in the end about what we want to do onshore. There is an industrial component to it for sure and, in the end, there is a functionality component, there is a range and payload component and there is an issue as well about whether we want an aircraft that can just operate in unregulated airspace because of the safety case it has or maybe the potential to try and find an aeroplane and a system that can operate in more regulated airspace. Either way, between those two - and probably more choices as well - we need to elaborate the choice carefully in the assessment phase, so we are not going to put REAPER into the core programme lightly now because I do not want to saddle us with a decision that I might want to unpick in an assessment phase for DABINETT. In a sense I am playing for time here; we will look at that whole issue in the assessment phase for DABINETT in detail and I do not foreclose any choice out of it, including taking REAPER into the core programme.
Q40 Mr Havard: Can I ask you two questions related to that then: to what extent is the fact that REAPER is a weaponised system and you are talking about intelligence-gathering - those two things mixed together, is that a component in your thinking, that currently it is a weapons system as much as it is an intelligence system? You may of course want simply an intelligence system, and in building all of those things to what extent is the scarce commodity and the expensive commodity bandwidth a feature in doing all of these different things?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I will start the answer because we are where we are with REAPER. REAPER started its gestation as an intelligence-gathering aircraft only and then, subsequently, through a number of evolutions, it became a multi-role aeroplane, and it is part of our instinct that multi-roling, particularly as a medium power as we are, is a good idea if you can do it without technical compromise. We have made no decisions at all yet about whether we are going to put a weapon on our medium altitude long endurance UAVs which we see ourselves buying as part of the DABINETT programme, and we will look at that whole dimension when we do the assessment phase. My own opinion - and it is a personal opinion - is that that genie is out of the bottle and if ever I advance an argument in the future that we probably would not at least wire up the aircraft for weaponisation, stand fast whether it would actually carry the weapons, people like you would probably be saying you are missing a trick.
Q41 Mr Havard: Where are you going to put the gun is the first question you are going to get.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I say that as a personal issue but, getting back to the assessment phase, there is a cost associated with doing it and, in the end, I am quite clear that the piece we need to secure for ISTAR is more about trying to package up a number of different sensors and interoperable sensors within a platform, rather than buying umpteen different platforms each with a specialist sensor. That is the real lesson for DABINETT and we have already started learning that lesson. To take a real world example, we went into theatre in Afghanistan with Hermes 450 which only carries a single sensor; we are about to go into theatre with our own WATCHKEEPER programme with a multiple sensor capability on one platform. That is a big lesson and we will take that lesson through the assessment phase, I am sure.
Q42 Mr Havard: What about bandwidth in all of that?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Bandwidth is a real issue and we constantly worry about bandwidth. I read on an American website this morning in preparing for this thing that the Americans four years ago reckoned that in five or six years their bandwidth requirement was going to go up eight times. We are very, very well aware of the bandwidth issue and demand for bandwidth is growing all the time. We have a number of programmes running in our C4 empire which are clearly not part of the detail today which will look at that whole thing - it might be something that the Committee wants to return to later but I have not got the right staff with me to give you detail on bandwidth. Is there enough bandwidth for our immediate plans? Yes. We have a major satellite programme, as you know, called Skynet 5. We have a requirement at the moment for less than a couple of those satellites' capability, but we have launched a third satellite that is in orbit as a spare and we are thinking about further satellite coverage as well. That is one example of where our instinct is, that we need to make provision for additional bandwidth, but it is a thing that we have constantly under review and the bandwidth requirements are going to be part of our normal auditing process for approvals. Whenever we take through any network enabled capability related activity through MoD, it is an absolutely essential prerequisite before approval that we have enough bandwidth covered.
Q43 Mr Havard: More commonality on bandwidth might be more important to you than sticking a weapon on a particular platform.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: To take that example, if I could not demonstrate to collective satisfaction that we have enough bandwidth I would not get my approval so, plainly, it becomes a self-limiting exercise.
Q44 Mr Havard: What is the sequence of timing between all of those considerations and the existing assets of REAPER and a decision about whether you are keeping it or not keeping it?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I am not sure I understand the question.
Q45 Mr Havard: You say the DABINETT thing is going to go forward and you are talking about how you are going to enter into this discussion you are going to have with various people about doing this. How does that fit with the decision about REAPER, both current stuff that you have got and any decision about buying new, replacing it or upgrading it?
Air Commodore Gordon: REAPER, without doubt, has been a huge success on current operations so in terms of meeting the current operational requirement it meets the need. The wider decisions on the operational UAV - yes, we have the requirement. Because of that wider industrial piece that the Air Marshal referred to I suspect it is something that will be tackled within any future Defence Review - I just cannot see that we are going to be able to move forward without that wider overlay. That would be my instinct.
Q46 Chairman: Can I get back to asking some people questions? To what extent do you rely on reservists to deliver ISTAR capabilities?
Brigadier Abraham: Shall I answer that one? As
you know the reservists make a vital contribution to deployed forces in
Q47 Chairman: Anther people question: you recently deployed some naval assets, Nimrod
MR 2A, Sea King MK 7 to
Air Commodore Gordon: We have to make clear the distinction between what are naval and
air assets. Clearly, in terms of the
Nimrod the primary task has to be the protection of the
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: If I may I also think that the Navy would be very irritated if I did not make absolutely plain to you that they are very involved in current operations themselves and those ISTAR assets that you referred to have been working very hard for them in the prosecution of their contribution to the campaign. For example, until we recovered the aircraft back to the UK for some repair and overhaul, until very recently we had a couple of Nimrod MR 2 aircraft - that is the normally Navy attributed RAF aircraft - working out of an Air Force base and largely prosecuting support for the Royal Navy in a deployed sense, so they are out on parade as well with their ships, submarines and other capabilities and our collective ISTAR assets are doing their thing for the Navy as much as they are for land forces.
Q48 Chairman: I have seen what the Sea Kings, for example, do around the coast of
this country and they are, I would expect, doing an extremely effective job in
the land environment of
Brigadier Abraham: Can I answer that? If we go back, please, to the recuperation session we had in February, without going through the areas we highlighted where we think there are significant risks against our contingent force structure we did make the point that we, defence, have been operating consistently above the planning assumptions for which defence is resourced, programmed etc. While that is mitigated by UOR, that does not cover all of it and we have described to you in the past where the more important risks we face are. Nevertheless, we are doing this against the criterion that success on operations is our driver although, as Air Commodore Gordon says, there are certain things that we will not take an absolute risk against, we will have to manage it.
Air Commodore Gordon: If I may just clarify because your question may suggest that you have a nervousness around the search and rescue force - is that a correct interpretation, sir?
Q49 Chairman: Actually, no, my nervousness is around the surveillance of vessels coming near the coast. The search and rescue force is a completely separate unit.
Air Commodore Gordon: Absolutely, I just wanted to clarify that.
Chairman: Before we get into the question of a single ISTAR command and control structure, David Hamilton.
Q50 Mr Hamilton: I have a people question. I was referring back to some of the notes and some of the answers that came earlier on and it puzzled me a wee bit. Apparently guidelines are being broken because people are being asked to work longer because of pinch points with personnel - you have not got enough personnel. Major companies, when they are going through a difficult time, subcontract work out. Is it not possible that with the new technology that is being brought in, some specialists are not brought through to try and alleviate that problem in the short term whilst also trying to resolve the longer term problem of maintaining personnel?
Air Commodore Gordon: There are quite a few areas where we have explored that already. The Hermes 450, by way of example, is largely a contractor-managed service; similarly, there are certain aspects of the linguistic skills again that we are looking to see whether we can contract, so it is an avenue well worth exploring and indeed we have explored that in a number of areas.
Q51 Mr Hamilton: As long as it is only meant on a short term basis because I do not think that would resolve the long tem issue.
Brigadier Abraham: Absolutely, that sort of thing tends to be a stopgap, a mitigating measure, rather than this is our preferred way.
Q52 Chairman: A question has arisen whether there should be a separate ISTAR command and control structure in theatre, in the operational theatre. What do you think of that, what would you make of such a suggestion? Would it have advantages, disadvantages or what?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I am going to let the Brigadier start the answer to this because it is only proper that the operational staffs kick this off, but I have got some views which I will put in at the end.
Brigadier Abraham: There is one commander in ISAF, General McChrystal. The way that he devolves command is clearly a combination of training, equipment and other things but the principle of unity of command is an important military one which I will stress here. A separate ISTAR chain of command, a rival or possibly divergent chain of command, is not something that we would envisage, it would not be workable.
Q53 Chairman: No, it would have to be under him.
Brigadier Abraham: In a sense you have that because responsibility for ISTAR is like responsibility for manoeuvre, it is a function of command, so commanders at the regional level and commanders at the taskforce or provincial level have to command the ISTAR assets that are organic to them and they also have to take part in a broader coalition - the ISAF-managed provision of ISTAR which is part of the ISAF pool rather than organic. As you know already we have some UK assets which are declared top ISAF and are, as it were, in the pool for tasking by the ISAF chain of command and there are others which are specifically for UK operations, so in a sense we have a chain of command and ISTAR is a core part of the responsibilities of the operational chain of command. There are delegations of responsibilities at each level of J2, ISTAR, Battle Space Management and other staffs, people who enable and support commanders in terms of that function, but those are supporters or enablers of a critical function of command, ISTAR.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: If I may, Chairman, what I would add is that this is a hot topic. This particular question is a hot topic at the moment.
Q54 Chairman: Why?
Air Vice-Marshal
Dixon: Because of the complexity in theatre, not
just of getting our joint story in the right shape but also the coalition story
in the right shape and recognising that these assets are held at different
levels as well makes, operationally, for quite a busy planning problem. The way that is addressed, certainly on the
air side, is pretty intelligently done in theatre. The stuff that is held at the operational
level, because it is very high value, wide area surveillance et cetera, is
managed through what is quite an elegant process in theatre with the Joint
Intelligence Operations Centre which is funded and largely led by the Americans
in Kabul, pulling together the big tasking requests for these high value assets
from across the whole country. The
assets are then allocated and once they are allocated for a particular
operation the command and control is then vested in the locals. That is a well-ordered and well-oiled process
on the air side that has not just been invented for
Q55 Chairman: Did you say in consultation with allies?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Yes.
Q56 Chairman: Actually this will be an American decision, will it not?
Brigadier Abraham: They will have the biggest share because they are the biggest providers.
Q57 Chairman: They will have the biggest say.
Brigadier Abraham: Yes.
Q58 Chairman: What is their view, if you can tell us?
Brigadier Abraham: Their view specifically on what?
Q59 Chairman: On a single ISTAR command and control structure in theatre under General McChrystal?
Brigadier Abraham: I am not aware of their view.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I think he has one, does he not?
Brigadier Abraham: As you appreciate, General McChrystal, relatively new in post, has been conducting what has been called a 60-Day Review, which is coming to an end now, and that is basically his assessment of the situation and how he wants to meet the challenges in that. That is something that might emerge quite soon, what his view is. As the Air Marshal mentioned, PJHQ are in any case doing this review of the UK's ISTAR contribution so it might be that that is a question worth posing again if you have another session in October when you have PJHQ representation here as to what has happened since then. A big driver in this now for the future, rather than what has happened, is what General McChrystal directs and requires out of his 60-Day Review.
Chairman: Okay, thank you. Brian Jenkins.
Q60 Mr Jenkins: I know this is covered, but just to get an assurance, I can understand the overall view being centralised across Afghanistan but when you have got units changing round and the technical commander in that particular area comes in, I am sure they have got a situation where they just come in and plug into the system and they are not going to start calling up for new images or new areas, they can review all the lessons learned. When I asked before the operators could talk to each other but I would like to make sure that the commanders can talk to each other across the piece as well at their technical level rather than the strategic level, if you know what I mean, so is it possible that they can come in and plug into the system automatically?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I just want to make sure I fully understand your question. Are you referring to the ability to plug and play in a communications sense in theatre or in an ISTAR sense?
Q61 Mr Jenkins: ISTAR.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: With the investment we have made - and as I say I will happily elaborate in detail offline if I may, Chairman - you can. We have made the necessary communications and IT connectivity to enable that to happen and it is not just at a national level, it is at a multinational level, because that is a NATO-wide area network that I am talking about.
Q62 Chairman: And people are trained on it before they go out to theatre are they?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: They are, and that is another big change that I would point to. We recognise that until pretty recently because of the way our room on Cadence was running we were getting people pretty much to the point of departure for theatre without really adequately addressing that issue, largely because the in-theatre infrastructure was changing so rapidly. We recognised that issue and we have made available out of the equipment programme a facility at Shrivenham which we have made available to PJHQ where we have effectively relocated the in-theatre IT network and we have also made provision to keep updating that too. Visiting that facility is part of the pre-deployment battle procedure work-up training that deploying brigades go through. That is working very well and that was a very good example, if I may say so, of a piece of the equipment/staff world rising to an occasion that needed very quick action, and that is working quite well. That is not to say it could not be improved and if I had to elaborate an improvement I would love to have that replicated network available in pretty much everybody's office space in all of the locations that the Army, the Navy and the Air Force operate. Plainly that is not yet possible, but it will be with the DII future that we have funded because we are already largely on the same page at the business space end of our business and, as I said earlier, we are going to have this deployed component of DII. When that is all running we can then host all of the operational applications - if you like the toolset for operations like you would use Microsoft Office at home and there are a number of other icons that exclusively belong to the military. We can host those icons and the applications on our unitary network and so, in effect, enable training anywhere in the MoD domain. Currently we are not quite there yet because DII is still rolling out.
Q63 Richard Younger-Ross: How does the MoD intend to measure the performance in achieving an overall effective ISTAR capability across the individual ISTAR platforms?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: If I may come in I will start. Measurement - we take soundings of how we are doing in a whole raft of places and try to build a collective picture. If I could start with programmes, as you would expect we have numbers of measures of effectiveness of our programme performance - as a programme rolls out we have a whole raft of management information that the IP teams and the folks in London put together so that we can manage effectively the process of first of all identifying our key user requirements, seeing the programme roll out and then check finally that our key user requirements are met before we then introduce a piece of kit into service. There are all kinds of programmatic measures that allow us to make an ongoing assessment of programme performance before stuff hits the operational streets. After stuff has hit the operational streets we are very much then dependent upon the advice of users as to how the kit has performed and we have made a pretty big science actually in defence now about our lessons learned process. To take some current examples, at the end of every tour interval for a deployed brigade in Operation Herrick, we get a very fulsome post-operational report from the command staffs in the brigade and the format for that report covers a whole raft of people, operational and technical issues including ISTAR and we are greatly informed by that. PJHQ, in the process of informing my staff on the equipment planning side, provide for us annually, as part of our annual planning process, a list of prioritised requirements which they would like to see evoked through the programme. That used to be call the JOPL.
Brigadier Abraham: The Joint Operational Priorities List.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: Joint Operational Priorities List, so that is heavily flavoured with the views that PJHQ senior staffs have taken from their own collection of operational reporting. That document is very influential in where we prioritise our equipment spending each year. The other thing is that he personally has a role to play in my world because he is the keeper of the flame in that there are a lot of operational threads to pull together in all of this story and there needs to be a little bit of cat herding to make sure that there is an intelligible stream of data coming in rather than white noise, and I look to his staff to actually provide mine with some insightful distillation of really what the lessons learned process is. The last thing I would say, before I hand over to him, is that we have an organisation within the MoD called the Directorate of Operational Capability - he is probably called the Head of Operational Capability now under the new post titling - and that is an organisation that was set up originally under the secretary of state to effectively do targeted audits of operational capability and, to take an ISTAR example, the Head of Operational Capability as recently as last Autumn, I believe, did an operational audit of ISTAR in theatre and produced a report which we have all read from cover to cover, so we have a number of ways of putting our finger on the pulse of how we are doing. In summary, programmatically through the normal business of programme evolution and then this very intricate web of operational reporting we get synthesised into a common picture through PJHQ at the senior level and through special audits we do with DOC.
Brigadier Abraham: If I might add a little bit more on the operational lessons reporting process, 30 days after taking command of Task Force Helmand the incoming brigade will submit a first impressions report. As the Air Marshal says, at the end of their tour- and these are considerable documents that are submitted - each unit and battle group will also do the same, so there is a lot of push of lessons identified. Where do they come to? They come into the Ministry of Defence at my level, my directorate, at the Permanent Joint Headquarters who are responsible for the operational level lessons and into each of the maritime land and air warfare centres who deal with things pertinent to each of those services. That is the big push. Those lessons identified then have to be addressed or assessed as being incapable of being addressed - this is the generic, not just the ISTAR process clearly - and they are periodically reviewed by two stars in the Ministry of Defence who are known as the gatekeepers for the whole process. This is an elaborate and constantly changing process to draw on operational experience. It has ISTAR flavour to it, of course, but that is the generic process.
Q64 Richard Younger-Ross: Under the Defence Technology Strategy 2006 we were told that they would put in place a plan to meet stakeholders' needs across the board. Do you have a clear definition of what the stakeholders' needs are for ISTAR to measure performance against?
Brigadier Abraham: Yes, and in the jargon of stakeholders and so on for the operation the principal stakeholder is the Permanent Joint Headquarters which articulates to the Ministry this is what we think you require in support of the operation, and they do that by a process called the Theatre Capability Review which runs every few months, involves extensive visits to theatre, analysis back there and then a recommendation to the operations and security policy staff in London which, depending on the nature of the recommendation, can either go to the Defence Board, the Secretary of State or is resolved at a lower level, so in terms of the big stakeholder for the operation in Afghanistan, that is how the Permanent Joint Headquarters deliver.
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: If I might add a little bit of MoD end colour to that, we have over a period of the last two or three years introduced a heartfelt concept called Through Life Capability Management - I know you are aware of these phrases in the Committee - and one of the things we have done in that TLCM process is we have invented a way of deliberating our collective ideas under a concept called "the unified customer". Whereas before we rather saw things in a frontline versus MoD staff sense and there was a polarity there which was not really helpful at the point of delivery, we now have arranged our management processes within the equipment staffs to draw together all of the components of the customer base from DE and S in the sense of buying equipment and generating the support system for the equipment and the frontline, both in a single service sense and also in a PJHQ sense and obviously the Brigadier's leadership of that team. Each Head of Capability for Equipment, of which Air Commodore Gordon was head of the ISTAR bit, has the chairmanship of a capability management group, planning groups and programme boards which actually pull this unified customer view right the way through what we do and think. For example, the capability management strategy for ISTAR which the Air Commodore wrote before he left has been rinsed out fully with all of that frontline community so they have a co-ownership of our future vector for investment which they never had in the past because they were not really properly consulted.
Q65 Richard Younger-Ross: Of the ISTAR capability what sort of percentage would you say the capability is compared with the potential for the platforms? Obviously we are not achieving because you still need DABINETT and you still have other programmes to improve the capability but of the existing platforms we have got how much use are we making of them? Are they 50 per cent effective or can we improve it?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: We have not got a measure that is going to give you an answer that I would be proud of to that question. The answer is we will always be able to do better with squeezing the last drop of capability out of everything. We have a big twist on that squeeze already with the investment we have made in UOR to connect our stuff together and, therefore, the productivity of the assets we have got has hugely increased as a result of that and it will continue to increase as we invest in DII and in the future. We are therefore on a journey of improving the productivity but we should not be too frightened of our own record historically. We have got huge value out of our ISTAR investments in the past. I think back to the Cold War and the Chairman's question earlier about Russian submarines; we were all over that issue with our legacy capabilities many years ago and we were pretty good at it - we were world-leading it in fact. It is not in the instinct of the military to underuse a capability in any sense, the issue is can the technology deliver further benefits? We have just reached a point in the evolution of technology where we are able to go another step ahead of where we have been in the past and that is really what we are talking about now.
Q66 Richard Younger-Ross: Is the tendency of the Treasury not to fund you the programmes like DABINETT to stop you realising that capability?
Air Vice-Marshal Dixon: I explained to you earlier that we have got funding. I will be the first to say internally if that DABINETT investment is imperilled to deliver the capability I want. You can trust me to do that internally.
Chairman: On various occasions you have said that there are things that you could tell us in private that you could not tell us in open session. Does the Committee agree that we should go into private session?
Mr Hamilton: Yes.
Mr Jenkins: Yes.
Mr Havard: Yes.
Chairman: The Committee will now move into private session.