Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
Mr Andrew Mathewson, Professor Phil Sutton and Captain
Richard Stokes
29 NOVEMBER 2007
Q1Chairman: Mr
Mathewson, it is very good to be able to see you again today and
we are very pleased also to meet your colleagues, Professor Sutton
and Captain Stokes. As you know, we always like to see the Ministry
of Defence after the meetings in Brussels concerned with the European
Defence Agency and other defence matters, and I would be very
grateful if your colleagues could introduce themselves for the
record and then I will ask Admiral Boyce if he would ask the first
question. Could you introduce yourselves first?
Mr Mathewson: Lord Chairman, thank you very much.
It is, as ever, a pleasure to be here again. I am Andrew Mathewson;
I am the Director of the Policy Team in the MOD that deals with
international organisations. Before I pass the floor to my colleagues
to introduce themselves can I just thank you for the questions
which have been notified to us in advance? That was a great kindness
and has helped us to make sure that we do have the right people
here in order to, I hope, answer the questions you have posed
to us. Secondly, may I just apologise that the letter we sent
to you following the Steering Board arrived only fairly shortly
before this meeting. The issue clearly was that the meeting in
Brussels was only last week and you elected to have your examination
of us slightly closer to the event than previously, which left
us with a bit of a challenge in getting the letter out to you.
So I apologise for the fact that you had it only shortly before
this meeting.
Q2 Chairman: Could I say that in
the light of that there is one question on the release of the
extra €6 million which we will not be proceeding with because
it was answered very fully in the Minister's letter.
Mr Mathewson: Thank you.
Professor Sutton: My Lord Chairman, my name
is Phil Sutton and I am the Director General for Research and
Technology in the Ministry of Defence and as such I have responsibilities
for its research programme and, in particular, our relations with
our international allies in collaboration on research.
Captain Stokes: My Lord Chairman, I am Captain
Richard Stokes and I work in the area of the Equipment Capability
Customer in an organisation called Director of the Equipment Plan.
I am the military officer responsible for the ECC equipment capability
contribution to the European Defence Agency.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Lord Boyce.
Q3 Lord Boyce: Next year we see the
UK coming to the top of the EU's Battlegroup roster and I wonder
if you would like to say whether you think we are going to be
fully ready to deploy, given the fact that there are battalions
across the Army which are currently under strength, and we know
about the tempo of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. So are
we going to be ready to deploy at the drop of a hat or are we
going to be nominally at the top of the roster and rather hope
that we do not get caught out?
Mr Mathewson: The straightforward answer to
that is yes, we will be ready to deploy. We have identified where
the capability comes from and we will find our contribution to
the Battlegroup from within the Joint Reaction Force, primarily
focused on the capability within the JRF, known as the Small Scale
Focus Intervention Battlegroup, which is one of the short notice
standby capabilities within the JRF, and that battalion will provide
the core of the capability and the enablers package will be assembled
around it. So, yes, I think we will be ready; we have an exercise
rehearsal programme which we have notified to the EUMS, which
we have invited other Member States to come and witness. There
is a final certification exercise in May. So, yes is the straightforward
answer. The qualification I would make, though, is that clearly
if there are other contingencies then we will have to judge those
calls, and clearly we cannot rule out at the same time as we are
the lead Battlegroup nation in the second part of 2008 that there
would not be other national calls on the JRRF, and they would
have to be judged alongside the Battlegroup. So, yes, we will
be ready; but, yes we are aware of the fact of the risk of other
calls on our forces. There is, of course, a second Battlegroup
on the rota alongside us—it is a German-led Battlegroup
in the second half of 2008, so the EU has an additional capability.
Q4 Lord Boyce: If I may, Lord Chairman,
I think that we fully understand the contingency and of course
the national call that may have to take priority if there is a
conflicting demand at the same time, which could happen. Perhaps
you would like to comment rather in the same way as in your answer
to my first question, how is the process of making sure of the
standby Battlegroup is ready, if you like? Does it go through
the same process of preparation for that particular role in parallel
with the lead Battlegroup, or is it rather static? Is it further
back in notice terms should it be called upon because the lead
Battlegroup gets taken away by a national or other priority?
Mr Mathewson: In fact there is no identification
of one Battlegroup as lead and the other as standby; there are
two Battlegroups which are both available at the same time and
the Germans lead the other Battlegroup—the other Battlegroup,
I should call it, rather than the second Battlegroup. It is a
multinational Battlegroup with Germany, France and I think Belgium
participating in it. They will be going through their own preparation
certification and in principle the two Battlegroups should be
at equal states of readiness from 1 July.
Chairman: Lord Hannay.
Q5 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Could
I follow up this question to get a slightly better and wider perspective
of the EU Battlegroup performance? Has there ever been a deployment
of an EU Battlegroup up to now, or has that never taken place?
I cannot remember what exact status the deployment in the Democratic
Republic of Congo was. Secondly, following on from that, does
the Battlegroup mechanism enter into discussions when the EU undertakes
a peace operations mission like the one in Chad or Central African
Republic, or indeed in some aspects of the hybrid operation in
Darfur? Is consideration given to whether a Battlegroup could
be inserted at the beginning of an operation in order to provide
rapid deployment and then extract it when other troops who were
not in the Battlegroup are made available, because it had always
seemed to me, at any rate, that that was one of the purposes of
having these Battlegroups? Though obviously it does not work if
you cannot ever extract them once you have deployed them.
Mr Mathewson: In answer to your first question,
there has been no Battlegroup deployment as such—and I say
as such because I think elements of the German Battlegroup were
raided at the time of the DRC deployment last year in order to
generate some of the capacity for the DRC Mission. Also, the second
Battlegroup was identified as the reserve for the DRC Mission
last year. So there has been no formal deployment of the Battlegroup
in accordance with its concept so far. Just to remind you that
the concept reached full operational capability at the start of
this year, so we are only within the first year of the concept.
In answer to your second question, this is rather complex. Conceptually
I think what you have outlined is entirely possible, that if the
EU wanted to deploy rapidly it should look to its Battlegroup
for a rapid ability to intervene and at the same time be generating
the forces which are available for the follow-on force, so that
the Battlegroup is not fixed in place because of a failure to
generate forces. What we see in the case of the Chad Mission is
very great difficulties in generating forces. We have had three-force
generation conferences so far and there are still critical shortfalls
in generating the forces required to do the mission which the
EU thinks it should achieve. So conceptually one could have imagined
if the EU wanted to respond quickly taking the decision to deploy
the Battlegroup and then generating the forces for what comes
next. The risk in that is that you do not identify the forces
which come next and the Chad Mission has demonstrated the challenge
that the EU still has and the problems that the EU has with generating
what are, frankly, fairly modest sized forces—the EU is
trying to generate a force of around 4000. Personally I think
the risk is that the EU starts to look at the Battlegroup as almost
its default force generation position and sees the Battlegroup
as its first port of call when it is directing forces, whereas
really it should be looking to the Battlegroup as its rapid response
mechanism and calling on the forces which are, in theory, available
through the force catalogue for longer term, more substantial
missions.
Q6 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Presumably
you would agree that there is an equal risk that if the EU never
uses the Battlegroups for rapid reaction purposes they become
an ornament on the wall rather than something that can be used.
Mr Mathewson: Yes.
Q7 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: I have
no challenge with your saying that there is real risk if you used
it all the time as the default option, but the other risk is as
real, I would think.
Mr Mathewson: I think that is right; it is the
"you must not use it in case you might need it" argument.
Q8 Chairman: Can I ask one supplementary
to that? Is it possibly the case that countries have gone through
the process of fielding a Battlegroup like, for example, the Nordic
Battlegroup, which is going to be fielded in the first half of
next year, and having gone through it they will retain some capabilities
of deployability and therefore may be more ready to respond to
subsequent force generation? Could the Battlegroup be seen in
some ways as a training exercise or a transformation exercise
for Member States?
Mr Mathewson: It is an exercise which I think
raises the general level of deployable capability around the EU.
The Nordic Battlegroup I think is an interesting case; in order
to generate it they have done some investment in deployable equipment.
To generate the people, though, they have taken, as I understand
it, soldiers on special contract—this is the way Nordic
countries generate their forces in that they contract for the
forces specifically for that mission. So the personnel element
of a capability will waste away when the contracted group of personnel
run out of term on their contract. But the expertise, the understanding
of how to do a deployable mission, the material investment will
remain. So I would expect that in general the level of the Nordic
countries' ability to do this sort of thing will have been raised
by the experience of going through this.
Chairman: Lord Crickhowell.
Q9 Lord Crickhowell: That last answer
just began to touch on the question that I wanted to ask as I
still do not have a clear picture of these special groups. Up
to now we have talked about forces and I immediately wrote down
"lift capability". Only the other day in a rather different
context Lord Malloch-Brown sat there and told us about the worldwide
shortage of helicopters, and we had other evidence of that as
far as our own forces are concerned. You used the phrase "deployable
capability". Could you elaborate a little? Forces in terms
of people, we know we are overstretched and we have touched on
that; but if we did have the situation in a remote part where
deployment is difficult, what is the general situation about the
availability of the lift equipment and all the other essential
deployment equipment that would be needed to get the force there?
Mr Mathewson: If I look first of all at the
British situation we have a range of strategic deployable capabilities,
the C17s which are being bought, helicopters and sealift. We also
use the market fairly extensively and I think we would have to
assess the situation at the time: what are the demands on our
in-house capability? To what extent can we use that? To what extent
do we need to go to the airlift market, which we do very regularly
now, so it would not be a novel departure? I think the way to
see it would be that the in-house capability provides a base load
and we go to the market for the peaks. So we would have to look
at that and consider the extent to which we can use in-house capability
or the extent to which we need to go to the market for either
airlift or sealift for what is required on top of that. As to
others, I cannot honestly speak for how each country is planning
to meet its liabilities, but there are two initiatives to draw
to your attention. One is the Strategic Airlift Interim Solution
Consortium, which is a group of countries which includes the UK
at the moment, which have bought in advance preferred access to
some Ukrainian heavy lift aircraft, and there is an on-call contract,
which a group of countries have participated in, partly through
these liabilities. The second is the C17 initiative, which was
announced at the Riga Summit, where a group of countries, including
Sweden and I think Finland but others, have bought into a small
number of C17s—I think five C17s—and they have bought
a timeshare arrangement on those C17s. So these are ways in which
countries are predicting their requirements. I guess also they
would have to revert to the market, as we would.
Q10 Lord Crickhowell: You refer to
the market and we have heard that there is a worldwide shortage
of suitable helicopters in this other evidence that we have had.
Do you think that the market is adequate around the world to provide
for this sort of situation?
Mr Mathewson: There are different requirements.
I think the market is adequate for the generic heavy lift. Also
we are looking at options to provide helicopters to do normal
freight lift within Afghanistan. The real shortage is in helicopters
which are equipped with defensive aid suites, armour, night vision
capability, the ability to do tactical operations, and that is
where the shoe really pinches. But if you are looking at general
freighting capability then there is much more capacity on the
market for that; and certainly in Afghanistan we are looking at
whether we can use the market to supplement what we have in-house
to take on the freighting load to enable us to use our in-house
capability for the tactical purpose.
Q11 Chairman: Could you perhaps confirm,
Mr Mathewson, that those two initiatives, those cooperative initiatives
are available both for NATO and for EU missions and therefore
they have been designed for that purpose?
Mr Mathewson: Indeed, absolutely.
Chairman: Lord Swinfen.
Q12 Lord Swinfen: I think my questions
have mainly been answered, but what is the UK Battlegroup purpose
when it is not deployed on EU work? What is it doing and what
has it just done? Has it just come back from Afghanistan or somewhere
and so should be on a period of rest and training?
Mr Mathewson: I could write to you on the second
question; I do not know what the unit has just done. One of the
elements within the Joint Rapid Reaction Force will be one of
the three battalion size units which are held at readiness for
national contingencies. We normally have the spearhead lead element
and an airborne group, which are within the Joint Reaction Force
and available for short notice contingencies, and we would find
the Battlegroup capability from within this standby capability
which we hold in any event. But I could write to you on the question
of what the units—which will be on the rota this time next
year—will have done immediately before.
Q13 Lord Swinfen: It would be interesting
because the services are haemorrhaging with fairly senior people
but not with family upset.
Mr Mathewson: I think the qualification I would
make is that in a sense they are on standby anyway for national
requirements, that the requirement to be on standby for an EU
purpose is not an additional burden placed upon them. They will
be on standby because of a national requirement to be on standby
because they are found from within the forces which we have on
standby for national purposes. So they are not, as it were, additionally
on standby for the EU.
Chairman: Lord Jones.
Q14 Lord Jones: On deployability
it might be reasonable to ask you in terms of lift, the A400M
has it flown yet? How many might we in Britain have and is Europe,
the EU interested in purchasing that aircraft? Is it going to
fly; are we going to have it; is it going to be important in terms
of deployability?
Mr Mathewson: I do not think it has flown yet;
we are going to have it. I cannot remember the numbers—Richard
will tell you. A number of European countries are going to buy
it; I cannot remember the numbers, but in considerable numbers.
It will be important to us; it will replace an element of our
C130 fleet and provide additional capability beyond what that
portion of the C130 fleet currently provides us. Richard.
Captain Stokes: My Lord, we are planning to
buy 25 of the aircraft. I am not sure whether it has flown yet;
I cannot answer that but I can certainly find out and let the
Committee have a note. Other EU nations are procuring this; it
is going to be the mainstay of the air transport fleet, certainly
across Europe, for the foreseeable future. There is a proposal
by France and Germany that they have submitted through the EDA
to share basing and support of A400 aircraft. It is going to be
interesting to see how that is taken up by some of the other nations
because it will almost certainly offer benefits of scale, reductions
in the cost of servicing and operating those aircraft, and I think
it is an opportunity to which we should give time.
Q15 Lord Swinfen: It is not a paper
aircraft, we are going to buy it and you assess it as being first
rate and equal and superior to what is currently being used for
lifting?
Captain Stokes: The C130s that we currently
use are exceptionally capable aircraft—they are exceptionally
capable aircraft—and the newest versions of those, although
they have been in service in the US for some time, they are still
relatively new to us. But over the life of the A400 it will offer
us real benefits in the through-life cost of ownership I think,
certainly.
Q16 Lord Swinfen: Are our own people
looking forward to acquiring it and it is safe in terms of budget
constraints that we read about and debate about?
Captain Stokes: I am not in a position to comment
where we are in the planning round at the moment, my Lord.
Q17 Chairman: Perhaps I could ask
one final on this question, you mentioned in your reply to Lord
Boyce that there was going to be an exercise in May for the Battlegroup.
I was wondering where that will take place and if it was not too
far from London the Committee might ask if they could see it.
Mr Mathewson: I can tell you that it is called
Exercise Druid's Dance but I cannot tell you where it is, my Lord.
Chairman: Lord Anderson with the next question.
Q18 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Before
he retired on October 1 the outgoing Chief Executive, Nick Witney,
wrote a valedictory dispatch of the long term vision in which
he concluded as follows: "The EU is facing increased competition
from Asia and the US while its competitiveness is declining. The
upshot is that the EU's independence is at risk and its troops
are not getting the most technically advanced equipment,"
and yet the UK appears to view its role in terms of the budget
as totally minimalist as restraining others from doing things
within the EDA. We recall, for example, that the former French
Defence Minister, Miche"le Alliot-Marie, called our attempt
to reduce the budget last November a foolish one and put its position
as a joke, she said, and again we sought to exempt ourselves from
a series of initiatives in spite of that position in terms of
the increased competitiveness. In an article in RUSI the former
Director of Science and Technology at the MOD said that the relations
between the UK and the EDA have "soured dramatically".
This was written in June of this year. Why have relations soured
so dramatically?
Mr Mathewson: I do not know that I would necessarily
agree with that as a general characterisation. I think we have
a difficult relationship with the EDA over the budget, but I think
there are many areas of the relationship with the EDA on which
we are able to work very closely and very supportively with them.
So I would not accept that as a general characterisation, but
I would accept that there are difficult aspects of our relationship
and the budget is one of them. I think the background to this
is our determination to get the best value for money from the
investment we are able to make in capability.
Q19 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Is
it candle end stuff? Have we lost what the former Executive called
the long term vision of the challenge to Europe in terms of its
competitiveness?
Mr Mathewson: It is certainly fair to say that
the sums involved are relatively small, but the sums involved
have to come from someone's budget in the Ministry of Defence,
and if that requires a reduction in the capability within the
MOD to acquire a certain level of capability then that explains
our reluctance to, as it were, take a bit of a gamble on the EDA.
I think there is, to be frank, a difference in vision of the EDA
over the EDA between us and the French.
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