A thinking General

If one equips more for the type of conflict we are actually having to fight, while significantly reducing investment in higher-end war-fighting capability, suddenly one can buy an impressive amount of "kit". So says General Sir David Richards, speaking to the IISS yesterday. He adds: "One can buy a lot of UAVs or Tucano aircraft for the cost of a few JSF and heavy tanks."

If I had a mind, I could link to all the pieces written on this blog, which said the same thing, going back many years – but try this, written in March 2007 and then again in April 2009 - when we specifically mentioned Tucanos, for the umpteenth time.

However, to have a CGS tell us that "hi-tech weapons platforms are not a good way to help stabilise tottering states" it is music to our ears, especially when he adds, "nor might their cost leave us any money to help in any other way - any more than they impress opponents equipped with weapons costing a fraction. We must get this balance right."

Despite our enthusiasm for a General who is finally talking our language, there is still though a sense of weariness when we read: "...too much emphasis is still placed on 'exquisite' and hugely expensive equipment." Been there, done, that one – a tired, somewhat disillusioned blogger. But now a General is saying it - years later - so it must be right.

Paraphrasing the man, and cutting out some of the impenetrable jargon that the military feel compelled to use, we then see him saying: "...the type of conflict we are fighting requires mass - numbers - whether 'boots on the ground', riverine and high speed littoral warships, or UAVs, transport aircraft and helicopters. And that must come at the expense of "high-end" kit.

We could argue with a little of that, but we won't. The point is that the right kit for the sort of wars we are fighting today is a lot cheaper than the high end kit, so we can afford much more. For the price of one JSF, we could have something like 16 Tucanos. For one FRES utility vehicle, we can have eight top-range MRAPs.

Richards, however, does not just talk about kit. He stresses the need for high quality, adaptable personnel and also talks about the nature of warfare. "Conflict today, is principally about and for people – hearts and minds on a ass scale," he says. "At the press of a button, an embittered diaspora can be inflamed with a mission and furnished with the knowledge of how to construct a cheap but hugely effective weapon."

We've aid that as well, pointing out how insurgents have converted the internet into a weapon of war. Richards seems now to recognise that - I'm not sure Dannatt even knew what the internet was.

Dealing with wars fought through internet proxies, the General says, requires a cultural shift in our understanding of and approach to conflict. We must, therefore, respond "more ruthlessly" to ensure that our armed forces are appropriate and relevant to the context in which they will operate rather than the one they might have expected to fight in previous eras.

Here, he is certainly right, but I'm not sure that the military could cope with the type of culture you need to take on the internet "bandits". The sort of person who could best fight that war is not the sort of person that would find a home in this man's Army. He may wish for a culture change, but he is unlikely to get it, and wouldn't like it if he did.

Even then, what he has said – for a CGS – is extremely daring. The blue jobs – dark and light – will already be plotting their counter-moves, while the defence industry will be sharpening up their lobbying, to make sure the big bucks keep coming their way.

Richards tries to head them off, pre-empting the squawks that will have it that this would leave us defenceless. "Can we take the risk?" he offers rhetorically. Well, he says, we have to take risk somewhere or run the far greater one of trying with inadequate resources to be all things to all conflicts and failing to succeed in any.

Good answer that – at least according to his nostrum, we have a chance of success in one of our ventures, which would make a change.

Nevertheless, Richards is not proposing that we get rid of all our more traditional military capability. It is still needed to deter a war fought by such means from becoming an asymmetric attraction to an enemy and because the requirement to fight and win hard battles will not disappear.

But what he does do is question the scale. Future wars of mass manoeuvre are more likely to be fought though the minds of millions looking at computer and television screens than on some modern equivalent of the Cold War's North German plain.

Thus, we have to prioritise and take perceived risk somewhere, says the man. We must move away from accepting today's defence budget, carved up broadly as it always has been, as a "norm" and establish what we need before we establish what we can afford. If, as is likely, there is a gap, we can then have this recognised as a risk which the government is – or is not - prepared to carry.

Then, in a necessary but nonetheless statement of the blindingly obvious, he tells us that, to determine what we need, we must firstly establish what UK interests are, how we can best protect those interests, and what we need to do so. These interests can be opportunities to exploit or threats to resist, he says.

Taking inter-service rivalry head-on, he asserts that this is not a matter of where the balance of investment should lie between the Services. Rather this is about ensuring we achieve a balance, across all three and with allies, between our ability to fight a traditional war of air, maritime and ground kinetic manoeuvre and being able to conduct a far more difficult one amongst, with and for the People.

This re-balancing could result in more ships, armoured vehicles and aircraft not less. But they will not necessarily be those we currently plan on. In sum, he tells us, we must find the vision and the resources needed to re-balance out of being prepared for old conflict and into being prepared for new.

Making these choices is the basis of command, says Richards. Whether as a platoon commander or chief of the Army, you can't have everything and will have to choose if you are to succeed.

On that, he is right. You can't please everyone, and you cannot – with our defence budget, or indeed any amount of money, prepare for every possible eventuality. But, with that speech, Richards is going to upset more than a few.

His primary audience, of course, is the incoming administration, which one assumes will be led by David Cameron. Whether there is anyone on his team with the brains to understand what Richards is saying, and with the determination and skill to take on the ranks of vested interests, is moot. But at least we have a General who is in part living up to the description on his tin – he was advertised as a "thinking general", and he is certainly that.

Give him a few more years and he might get round to understanding that, even with his bold ideas, he is still going to lose the war in Afghanistan. The answer to that lies in high politics, way above his pay grade, and beyond even the ken of our revered leader, Gordon Brown.

But, at least with General Richards at the helm, we might be spending less on obscenely expensive kit and, with more appropriate kit in theatre, we might lose a few less men before we have to pull out, proclaiming our "victory", the word "defeat" – as in Iraq – having been abolished. For that, at least, we should be grateful.

The pic, of course, is a Tucano. When we see a couple of squadrons of those flying in RAF colours, in Afghanistan, I'll know the General is winning his battle.

COMMENT THREAD

Village burning

At current rate of spending, General Sir David Richards has effectively committed us to an additional £20 billion in public expenditure – this being about the least we can get away with for the five more years he is expecting British troop numbers to remain at current levels in Afghanistan.

With the Labour administration expected to fall in the forthcoming general election, this of course is a sum that Mr Cameron's "modern" Conservatives are going to have to find, on top of the replacements they are going to have to fund as equipment wears out and is destroyed.

In a way, it is ironic that a political party which styles itself as "modern" – as against "new” Labour – is being committed to fighting a very old war. It is doubly so when the party is seeking a very old solution as well – that of progressively replacing expensive British soldiers with local troops and "levies", in order to reduce the costs.

Such issues were prominent in the late 1890s, when Winston Churchill found himself as a young subaltern of Horse, on the Northwest frontier, accompanying the Malakand Field Force into Waziristan to suppress the Pathan revolt – much as Pakistani forces are doing at present.

Writing in his book of the 1898 campaign, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, he then recorded that the great complaint was the expense of deploying extremely expensive cavalry regiments, although the overall parsimony of the Home Government was an object of much friction.

Having adopting what was then known as the "Forward Policy", 2nd Lt Churchill observed that "only one real objection" had been advanced against the plan – not without its similarities to the "take and hold" strategy currently proposed by Gen McChrystal. "But it is a crushing one," he wrote, "and it constitutes the most serious argument" against it: "It is this: we have neither the troops nor the money to carry it out".

At least in Churchill's day, the Government was spared the cost of the third of Gen McChrystal's components – the "build" stage where, after the troops have moved in to "protect the people", reconstruction and development is supposed to take place, better to demonstrate that the central government in Kabul cares for its citizens and is dedicated to furnishing them with a better life.

McChrystal's strategy is predicated on the assumption that the "insurgents" he is dealing with, labelled for convenience the "Taleban", are separate from the population and, as its oppressors, are the force which prevents the pacification of the areas. By providing security and then reconstruction (or, in many cases, construction ab initio) the theory is that the population "turns" from support of the Taleban, and sides with the government.

Interestingly, the forces ranged against the forefathers of the tribesmen currently causing havoc in the region adopted a slightly different approach. Having at great expense and some risk "taken" villages in contested areas, sappers were then employed to burn them to the ground – a process often hastened by the generous use of explosives – in a policy graphically and accurately described as "village burning".

With one MP "writing in the columns of his amusing weekly journal" of his concerns that such action was not only "barbarous" but "senseless", driving the displaced inhabitants into the arms of the enemy, 2nd Lt Churchill wrote that this reveals, perhaps, "the most remarkable misconception of the actual facts," thus noting:

The writer seemed to imagine that the tribesmen consisted of a regular army, who fought, and a peaceful, law-abiding population, who remained at their business, and perhaps protested against the excessive military expenditure from time to time. Whereas in reality, throughout these regions, every inhabitant is a soldier from the first day he is old enough to hurl a stone, till the last day he has strength to pull a trigger, after which he is probably murdered as an encumbrance to the community.

Thus, reasoned Churchill, when British troops were attacked and their assailants retired to the hills, "Thither it is impossible to follow them. They cannot be caught. They cannot be punished." Only one remedy remained - their property had to be destroyed. "Their villages are made hostages for their good behaviour. They are fully aware of this, and when they make an attack on a camp or convoy, they do it because they have considered the cost and think it worthwhile."

Of course, it is cruel and barbarous, as is everything else in war, Churchill added, "but it is only an unphilosophic mind that will hold it legitimate to take a man's life, and illegitimate to destroy his property."

None of such "philosophic" issues, however, need trouble Gen Richards, who is confident that, having spread peace and light throughout the land, to the applause of grateful villagers, British troop numbers will be able to fall significantly some time after 2014. However, he says, Afghan security forces will be much better able to take on Taleban insurgents within two or three years.

Through the period, he believes that the Army will see five years of declining violence "… and then we'll go into a supporting role." He adds: "If we get it right, our estimation is that by about 2011, 2012 you'll see an appreciable improvement. And by about 2014, we will ramp down our numbers as they ramp up and you'll start to reduce the overall risks of the operation."

It has to be said, though, that this time we aim to build rather than burn, but it remains to be seen whether that will make the difference.

The "build" strategy is based on the premise that the population and the "Taleban" are separate entities and the one can be detached from the other. A further assumption is that the population, on being treated kindly by the coalition forces will necessarily respond in kind. Yet, previous experience – albeit with the border tribes – does not support that assumption. And nor can it be assured that, after a period of peace and stability – should that happy situation ever arise – that it will be in any way permanent.

Churchill, for instance, noted that for two years after British troops had brought peace to the Swat Valley, trade had nearly doubled. "As the sun of civilisation rose above the hills, the fair flowers of commerce unfolded, and the streams of supply and demand, hitherto congealed by the frost of barbarism, were thawed," he wrote, adding:

Most of the native population were content to bask in the genial warmth and enjoy the new-found riches and comforts. For two years reliefs had gone to and from Chitral without a shot being fired. Not a post-bag had been stolen, not a messenger murdered. The political officers riding about freely among the fierce hill men were invited to settle many disputes, which would formerly have been left to armed force.

Yet this was the very area which was the epicentre of the uprising of 1898 and which, earlier this year – for the umpteenth time since that date – has been the focus of armed insurrection.

In further observations that may have considerable relevance to the current period, and the Islamic fundamentalism of the "Taleban", Churchill then noted that "a single class had viewed with quick intelligence and intense hostility the approach of the British power." This was the "priesthood", the Mullahs, who recognised that "Contact with civilisation assails the ignorance, and credulity," on which they depend for their wealth and influence.

The very blessings that Gen Richards and his troops wish to bestow on the villagers of Helmand, therefore, are exactly those which will invite the greatest hostility in the most powerful and influential group in the land. And the better he succeeds, the more hostility he will invoke, as he confronts the hitherto unvanquished combination of tribalism and self-serving militant Islam.

Earlier this year, the general had been suggesting that Britain might have to support Afghanistan for another 40 years to deliver stability in the country, although he never specified the nature of that support.

Given that the British during the colonial period were attempting to subdue the tribes in the region for over hundred years, without success, he might have been closer to the mark with those 40 years, to which he could add another sixty – when we could still be no further forward. Perhaps Richards ought to think about a bit of village burning ... at least it would be cheaper.

COMMENT THREAD

The narrative prevails

The "shock resignation" Maj-Gen Andrew MacKay has triggered intense speculation as to the reasons for his departure, with the media deciding that the main factor was his disillusionment over the Afghan strategy – or variations on that theme.

Elevating the speculation into certainty is The Daily Mail which has the general's resignation highlighting "the growing rift between military leaders and the Government over the conduct of the campaign", while The Daily Telegraph casts any doubt aside with the headline: "Afghanistan general quits over disillusionment with government strategy".

Certainly, MacKay – the "hero" of the re-taking of Musa Qala in December 2007 - is a known critic of certain aspects of the conduct of the campaign, but it is well over a year since he was in theatre.

Since then, he has been awarded the CBE for his services in the campaign and in June was promoted to Major General and General Officer Commanding of the Army's 2nd Division (Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland). That he accepted both award and promotion, and took on a new post, is not a sign of a dissident, burning with indignation at the way the Afghan campaign is being fought.

For another "agenda", however, one does not have to look very far – no further in fact than The Times, which cites Clive Fairweather, a former CO of the King's Own Scottish Borderers and a close friend of MacKay.

One reason he gives is that the Army is in the process of rationalising the command structure and, in the not too distant future, MacKay's post is to disappear. With rumours of another job in the offing, at the age of 52, Mackay is making the break now, rather than wait until the market is flooded with a surge of redundant generals, with whom he would have to compete.

This rationalisation is part of the Future Army Structure (Next Steps), announced by General Dannatt in early 2008 and, with General Richards now in post, it is probable that the "new broom" is determined to "sweep clean".

Recognising the reality that the Division is no longer the building block of modern armies, and that the effective operational unit has become the Brigade, Richards will be seeking to disband the current Divisional structure, clearing out much of the dead wood in the process.

Earlier this month, it is "understood" that MacKay had a meeting with Richards, following which he was given "formal leave to retire". With The Scotsman reporting that MacKay is said to be "dissatisfied" with plans to restructure the Army, it requires no great leap of imagination to conclude that it was made clear to MacKay that he had no long-term future in the Army, making his public announcement a mere formality. Furthermore, as the restructuring proceeds, we can expect more high-level resignations.

Doubtless, there is considerable unease in the Army about where the Afghan campaign is going, but in this case, speculation that this was the reason – or even the main reason – for MacKay's precipitate departure seems less than well-founded.

However, since it fits the narrative, the media has run with the Afghan dimension, and played down other possibilities. Says The Daily Express, "He [MacKay] is the most senior in a growing line of officers to quit over conduct of the war," leaving Liam Fox to declare: "His anger is the tip of the iceberg. People cannot trust Labour to give our troops all they need."

The "narrative" is everything. Truth is not an issue.

COMMENT THREAD

Rebalancing

If our opposition politicians had been listening last night – which is doubtful – they might have learnt something from General Sir David Richards, the new Chief of the General Staff.

Prominent in his speech to Chatham House he made a declaration which would have shocked the purists, had they noticed, telling us that we must "rebalance our investment in Defence". Furthermore, he said, we must rebalance, "not from one service to another but from one type of conflict to another, for we simply can't afford to retain a full suite of capability for all eventualities."

All professional groups have their secret languages – their jargon, which serves to mark them out as different from the rest of the herd – with its own special vocabulary, where ordinary-sounding word have very special meanings, not immediately apparent to the outsider.

"Balance" is one of those words, as is "rebalance". For General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former CGS, "balance" was one of his favourite words, applied in the context of "balanced force".

Cracking the code, this means an Army which maintains a full range of capabilities, able to fight a full-blooded conventional war against a technologically advanced enemy, as well as the "lesser" tasks of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency.

Even in early August, when delivering his, valedictory speech, Dannat was pitching for his "balanced force", capable of fighting his "future wars" – battles of mass manoeuvre on some unspecified plains, involving huge mechanised armies, fielding tanks, guns and all the high-tech weaponry which comprises the inventories of modern forces.

But if that thinking held back the reshaping of the Army to deal with the insurgencies in Iraq and then Afghanistan, Richards is a breath of fresh air. He wants to "rebalance", based on the idea that the character of warfare is fundamentally changing.

Globalisation, he says, is increasing the likelihood of conflict with non-state and failed state actors, and reducing the likelihood of state-on-state (i.e., conventional) warfare. It will not disappear – but its character will change, becoming more asymmetrical, complex and mosaic.

Thus says Richards, our armed forces and other national security instruments across government must get better at tackling the challenges of this new security environment. This includes re-engineering non-military means to be relevant and effective security tools and, he adds, "Ensuring our armed forces are relevant to emerging security challenges and the increasingly sophisticated adversaries we will face."

Once you have cracked the code, this is heady stuff – amounting to nothing less than a revolution in thinking at the highest level of the cobweb-infested Army.

Successful armed forces adapt and transform at a pace faster than their potential adversaries, Richards observes. Cromwell, as an example, unlocked the synergy of discipline, training, new equipment and new tactics in a manner that left the Royalists looking like barely gifted amateurs. This process can be found throughout history although rarely is it accelerated with the vision and drive of a Cromwell.

Borrowing from his earlier speech, where he warned that the Army was facing another of those "horse and tank" moments, Richards noted that, "although not yet culturally internalised," there has been a radical change in the way wars are fought.

We cannot, he said, go back to operating as we might have done even 10 years ago when it was still tanks, fast jets and fleet escorts that dominated the doctrine of our three services. Instead, we have to face up to such "non-kinetic" requirements as "counter-IED, information dominance, counter-piracy, and cyber attack and defence".

Soldiers had to operate in a "complex combat, joint, interagency and multinational environment in which success is measured in terms of securing people's confidence instead of how many tanks, ships or aircraft are destroyed."

Then, straight out of the Gates book of procurement, Richards declares that the pace of technological change has left every nation's mainstream procurement process struggling to deliver equipment that will remain relevant against more agile opponents satisfied with cheap and ever-evolving 80 percent solutions.

Too often, he says, we still strive for hugely expensive 100 percent solutions – "exquisite solutions" as Secretary Gates calls them – relevant only in a traditional hi-tech state on state war but that risk being out of date before they are brought into service.

In sum, he adds, tactical, operational and strategic level success in today's environment is beyond that of a military that draws its inspiration from visions of traditional state on state war, however hi-tech in nature.

Much later in his speech, Richards returns to this theme, telling us that those who seek to continue investment in traditional forms of conflict at the expense of the new fail to understand the degree to which inter-state dynamics have changed since the Cold War era.

The asymmetric war, he says, is the war of the future and countries like the UK need only possess a deterrent scale of traditional warfighting capability - one that reflects our stated policy of only going to war as part of the NATO alliance or, in a regional context, with the USA.

He is not advocating the scrapping of all our aircraft and tanks to the point that traditional mass armoured operations, for example, become an attractive asymmetric option to a potential enemy. But ensuring tactical level dominance in regional intervention operations or enduring stabilisation operations and to deter is going to be achieved with allies, not by ourselves.

Accepting this logic will free up resources needed for investment in other more likely forms of conflict. It will also go a long way to finding the money needed to allow our armed forces to contribute to important stabilising activity in fragile and failed states as well as to that Cinderella activity of peace-keeping.

And that is what he means by "rebalancing" – spending less on the expensive "toys", accepting that we can no longer afford a capability for autonomous "high-end" warfare and tailoring our resources so that we can work alongside allies to common effect. If this "horse and tank moment" is not gripped, our armed forces will try, with inadequate resources, to be all things to all conflicts and perhaps fail to succeed properly in any.

Yet the only newspaper really to have got the point was The Guardian, which was the only one to report the speech properly. Even then, it missed the political dynamic – Richards, on the face of it – is at odds with the world view expressed by Liam Fox. We are in for some interesting times.

COMMENT THREAD

A nation at war

Of more than usual importance, given his high public profile and the state of flux in the Afghan campaign, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, gave his valedictory speech last week.

By tradition, the speech is actually written in close consultation with the successor, in this case General Sir David Richards, and his senior advisors, in order to maintain continuity and to avoid "poisoning the well" for the incomer. Thus, while Dannatt's offering has a personal component, it is also a reflection of the "Army view" of the current defence situation, of events past and of its aspirations.

It was, said Dannatt, a contribution to the defence debate and, as a shot across the bows to the media, he warns that "defence of the realm must be the stuff of considered debate and not just of catchy headlines." That debate, he adds, must be conducted in such a way that "prevents some comments being taken out of context, and becoming tomorrow's headline."

Since the main preoccupation of the media is precisely to look for the rounded "sound bite" in order to craft a catchy and preferably controversial headline – for want of which nothing gets reported – Dannatt is immediately on a loser here. And the likes of the Daily Mail do not disappoint, demonstrating that the MSM are not – and are not about to become – serious players in the defence debate.

That said, the speech is complex and full of detail and it would be impossible within the framework of the contemporary media to do it justice. In days gone by, the likes of The Times might have published the whole thing, following which there would have been weeks of discourse in the letter columns. As it is, the speech is already yesterday's news, the content largely ignored and unappreciated.

Nor indeed, by its very nature, can this blog do justice to the speech – a full review would be unreadable, and thus unread. Nevertheless, we hope it will invite an ongoing debate on the forum, and we will undoubtedly return to the issues raised.

What leaps out though is something about which we have been vaguely aware, but on which we have never really focused specifically, which explains a great deal about why we are in our present predicament.

This comes early in the speech when Dannatt takes a backwards look at the New World Order post the Cold War and Blair's concept of liberal intervention. There was, says Dannatt, a belief that this could be conducted on the basis of "Go Fast, Go First, Go Home". After all, he says, it seemed to work in Sierra Leone, East Timor, a small intervention in Macedonia, and even after 9/11 with our first experience in Kabul.

If there was anything which pre-conditioned the lack of preparedness in Iraq, perhaps it was that, where the idea was that, after the successful (from the military point of view) invasion, the troops could pack up and go home, leaving the grateful Iraqis to rebuild their country in the absence of dictator Saddam, with the assistance of civilian agencies and generous foreign aid. There was no military planning for the occupation because, under the doctrine of "Go Fast, Go First, Go Home", there was no need.

This also explains the Army obsession with FRES and the air-mobile rapid reaction forces which were very much in the vogue, these being the physical assets which were needed to implement the doctrine. The whole idea of the "long war" seems to have been discarded in favour of this new paradigm.

That Dannatt – and by no means him alone – then misread the signs is revealed by a later passage in his speech, when he declares that, "... with the Iraq campaign seeming to be progressing well in the early years, in the south at least ... Tony Blair announced in the middle of 2004 that we would return to Afghanistan in greater numbers in 2006 - a strategic move to assist our senior partner in the coalition."

"This," says Dannatt, "was a very reasonable decision at the time, but its strategic and operational consequences proved to be considerable." The "Go First, Go Fast, Go Home" as a mantra became history. The current decade has been characterised not by short, sharp interventions but by protracted campaigning in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That, effectively, is now what the current debate is about. Having been locked into a flawed "mantra" – as even Dannatt admits it was - the armed forces geared to be able to deliver on this basis, now to find that they are faced with "long wars” for which they are neither equipped nor trained – nor fully understand.

To all intents and purposes, that is the core what amounts to a confession. Dannatt, in a highly coded form, is admitting that the entire defence and political establishment got the post-Cold War paradigm wrong, and are now having to go through the process of a defence review in order to re-orientate the thinking to meet the realities of warfare, which actually have not changed that much since the Second World War. The "long war", then as now, is still the predominant mode of conflict.

To deal with that says Dannatt: "We should be under no illusion: we are at war and if we want to succeed, which we must, we must get onto a war-like footing - and as I said to the Officer Cadets being commissioned from Sandhurst last Christmas 'you enter an Army that is at war - even if not everyone in our nation realises that'".

It is certainly the case that we are a nation at war and, if any comfort can be drawn from what Dannatt says, it is perhaps that, at last, the Army seems to realise this, and may be beginning to gear up for it - the war that actually exists. Whether the MoD has quite caught up remains to be seen.

COMMENT THREAD

That's journalism!

As another British soldier is reported killed in Afghanistan, two investigative sleuths from The Daily Mail, Tim Shipman and Matthew Hickley, breathlessly tell us that the announcement came "as Lt Col Richardson revealed that American, Dutch and even Australian helicopters are being used to launch British combat operations in Afghanistan." UK forces have used coalition aircraft to "seize areas of ground" from the Taliban, said the Colonel.

The Daily Telegraph goes one further as star reporter Rosa Prince scribes these immortal words:

The Daily Telegraph understands that American Chinooks were used for a combat mission as part of the Panther's Claw operation within the last month. Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand confirmed that UK forces were forced to rely on foreign helicopters.

These fearless hacks can however, shelve their dreams for nominations for the next Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting. The MoD Website for 23 June – nearly a month ago – blandly informs us that:

More than 350 soldiers from The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), have launched an airborne assault into one of the last Taliban strongholds.

Twelve Chinook helicopters, supported by 13 other aircraft including Apache and Black Hawk helicopter gunships, a Spectre gunship, Harrier jets and unmanned drones, dropped the British soldiers into Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, just before midnight on Friday 19 June 2009.

Not only did we rely on helicopters (with the MoD thoughtfully providing a pic – see above), we were "forced" to rely on a USAF Spectre gunship, Harriers (USMC – ours have gone home) and probably US Predator UAVs. Since 90 percent – or thereabouts – close air support is provided by US assets, we are routinely "forced" to rely on F-15s, F-16s, B-1 Lancers, A-10s ...

And then, of course, on the ground, we are "forced" to rely on Danish Leopard II tanks, on their APCs, on Estonian APCs and even the Ex-MoD Mamba mine protected vehicles which we sold off for a song.

But Hey! This is a coalition effort. We are not alone ... and have not been for some time. But then, here's another "scoop". During WWII, the US stripped out the armour from its one and only armoured division and sent the Shermans to the 8th Army. To win the battle of el Alamein, we were "forced" to rely on foreign tanks.

Shock! Hold the front page!

COMMENT THREAD

The wrong debate

See also: Time to get this sorted

With its unerring instinct for getting it wrong, the BBC – in the persona of its defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt – is framing the debate over the use of the Viking and the deaths of Lt-Col Thorneloe and Tpr Joshua Hammond as one of "armour versus mobility", suggesting that there is "a fine balance."

To be fair, she is not the only one to get it wrong. This is the way much of the British military thinks, thus channelling the argument into a sterile comparison between the merits of the heavy but well-protected Mastiff and the lighter, more mobile vehicles such as the Viking and the Jackal.

As the military would have it - enunciated by Amyas Godfrey to the BBC and also to The Guardian - the choice of which armoured vehicle to use in any campaign is a question of balancing risks and benefits.

"It is all about getting the balance right between the need for armour and the need to be light and flexible, with the ability to go off-road," says Godfrey. "Mobility is a form of protection in itself, and with heavier armour, you sacrifice mobility for greater protection."

At that entirely superficial level, there is some merit in Godfrey's assertions. Roads are a natural target for terrorists and, as that picture above shows, one particular weak point is the culvert bomb, which is fiendishly dangerous and requires a great deal of manpower and other resource to thwart. The ability to transit an area avoiding the roads – and such devices – is therefore an obvious advantage.

However, one almost gets tired of the repetition here, having yet again to draw the distinction between design and weight. Godfrey, in common with so many of his ilk, equates protection with "heavier armour".

Such are the constraints on their own thinking that they seem incapable of understanding that mine/IED protection is not primarily a function of weight of armour but of design – the principles of which we elaborated recently. It is this complete failure of the military establishment to understand these fundamentals which lies at the heart of this sterile debate.

To that extent, as we have so often observed, mobility and protection are not mutually exclusive. It is only the sterile thinking of the British military which makes it so. It would be perfectly feasible – by design - to produce a tracked vehicle with the mobility of the Viking, yet with the inherent protection of a Mastiff. This should not add significantly to the weight or, more particularly, hamper mobility.

Those proponents of the Viking, who argue that its mobility has saved more lives than its lack of protection have lost, are therefore arguing from a false premise. Mobility and protection are not mutually exclusive – it is possible to have both.

There are, however, other issues to address, where the whole argument on off-road mobility falls apart. One of those is the "pinch" or "choke" point problem, which we have also discussed. No matter how good a vehicle's off-road performance might be, there are natural features in any terrain which restrict and funnel movement into predictable areas, and it is there that ambushes are so often mounted.

Even in wide open spaces, there are constraints. As Tom Coughlan writes in The Times of the Viking, "in the heavily irrigated fields along the Helmand river, room for manoeuvre is more limited, and churning up farmers' fields with its tracks will not help to win the support of the local populace."

This then leads to a paradox, where designers optimise for off-road performance and then, to deal with the occasional but deadly ambush, add armour to their vehicles. They end up – as they did with the Vector – compromising performance without significantly improving protection. The outcome is an off-road vehicle with less performance than a custom-design protected vehicle, from which stems the mantra that you cannot keep increasing weight.

Locked into this trap – yet under pressure to reduce casualties - they have nowhere to go but to develop bigger and stronger vehicles in order to carry more armour. This is precisely the line adopted with the Viking, where it is to be replaced by the Warthog – a vehicle with heavier armour but sharing the same design flaws.

However, Major-General Julian Thompson, who commanded 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines in the Falklands conflict in 1982, makes a different point. He tells The Times - undoubtedly based on his experience in Aden and then Northern Ireland: "The question is not whether one vehicle or another is sufficiently armoured, it's about the lack of helicopters. We need more helicopters in Afghanistan to ferry troops in high-risk areas."


This is a good point. The ultimate mine protected vehicle is the helicopter. Unfortunately, as we pointed out earlier, the option of relying on helicopters is not available to the coalition forces, and not entirely because there is a shortage.

Unlike Northern Ireland, where the security forces were the main target of the terrorists, in Afghanistan the population in general is being attacked, particularly on the roads, which are needed to move large quantities of supplies. They are used heavily by Afghan security forces and civilians.

To abandon those roads to an enemy which is indiscriminately slaughtering civilians as well as the security forces is also to abandon any attempt at winning "hearts and minds". The military must maintain a strong presence on the roads and, therefore, will always be exposed to a risk that cannot be mitigated by the greater use of helicopters.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to the amount of protection that can be afforded, even in the best designed vehicle. To make that point - or something akin to it - Caroline Wyatt calls in aid the spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lt-Col Nick Richardson.

He insists the Viking remains an excellent vehicle, telling us that, "Armour is the last resort in terms of defeating the threat. It is much better to be able to avoid the threat than to have to rely on the armour defeating the threat when it is initiated. He then states: "It doesn't matter how much armour you have - it can always be overcome if you make the charge big enough."

The "bigger bomb" threat is overstated, an issue we have promised to address in a separate post, and neither should "armour" (more properly, protection) be considered the last resort.

In their Bush War between 1962 and 1980, the Rhodesian Army found that it was impossible to ensure that the thousands of miles of unpaved roads were kept clear of mines and IEDs. Therefore, vehicle protection was treated as a routine precaution. (See this study by Franz J Gayl - 147 pages, pdf).


That notwithstanding, protection is by no means the only precaution. Route clearance – using basic devices such as mine rollers (pictured above) plus more sophisticated technical aids, and even sniffer dogs - route proving, surveillance, routine patrolling to deter activity, intelligence, interdiction of supplies and disrupting the bomb-makers are all part of the armoury which must be deployed to defeat the joint threat of the mine and the IED.

To distil the argument down to one of "armour versus mobility", therefore, is as facile as arguing that either armour or mobility is the answer. But there is no more facile an argument than to assert that "armour" – i.e., protection – must be sacrificed to mobility. That is the wrong debate.

COMMENT THREAD

Narratives

It is Max Hasting's turn in The Daily Mail to pick up on General Richards' speech – and much else – using the topical hook of Armed Forces Day which is being celebrated today for the first time.

However, in common with most of the commentariat, Hastings distils complex arguments into a "biff-bam" knockabout routine about shortage of resources and underfunding, laying the entire blame at the door of Gordon Brown as the source of all ills.

It is very much these personality politics which blight the entire defence debate, as they neglect entirely the role of the military top brass in defining the shape of the armed forces and their equipment. Thus in the world inhabited by the likes of Hastings, the politicians are always the villains and the military the blameless victims.

This was the line taken by Patrick Mercer and embraced enthusiastically by James Forsyth, web editor of The Spectator. Commenting on Gen Dannatt's speech but relying exclusively on a report in The Times as his source, he writes on the Coffee House blog with his own views.

There, he gleefully picks on but one issue highlighted by Dannatt, declaring that "Dannatt makes clear that the reason the British operation failed in the south was that there were not an adequate number of troops on the ground." And, on that slender basis does this intellectual giant conclude that:

... we either properly fund and equip our armed forces or we retreat from our role on the world stage. If the Conservative party believes that this country should be more than just a peace-keeping nation, then it will have to be prepared to increase defence spending. The problems in Iraq demonstrate that fighting wars on peacetime budgets is not sustainable.

As it happens, we agree that the original occupation force in southern Iraq was undermanned, but it is not necessarily the case that more "boots on the ground" would have improved matters. As Dannatt himself said on a different occasion, specifically of Basra, "It's a city of huge size, however many British troops or coalition troops have been there we would never have been able to impose a regime and we had no intention of doing that."

Bearing in mind that US forces further north had considerably higher manpower levels, and were no more successful in the initial stages in containing the insurgency, Dannatt does have a point. More British troops might simply have led to more conflict and a higher casualty rate.

What must be remembered, of course, is that when the US finally mounted the surge, the extra troops operated in a different political environment, with new, theatre-specific equipment and to an entirely revised doctrine. Without those changes, it is arguable that the surge would not have succeeded and, as none of those preconditions were present in the early phases of the British occupation, the chances are that more troops would have had no measurable effect.

Here, one must again recall the observations of US General John Craddock, who noted – albeit in respect of Afghanistan - that the priority was the provision of transport (particularly helicopters and mine-protected vehicles), intelligence and medical capabilities. "Too often," he said, "the forces there now are relatively fixed, because we don't have adequate tactical mobility to move them around to be able to do the jobs we need them to do."

There, was the singular problem with the British in Iraq. With the absence of the right kit, they lost tactical mobility and, even with the troops strengths that they had maintained, ceased to be effective. Yet, when US forces came to the rescue in aiding the Iraqi forces recover al Amarah, they fielded only a fraction of the forces then available to the British.

Despite this, on the rare occasion that sites such as ToryDiary take on the issue of defence, the same trite agenda prevails. We get pleas for more funding (or the protection of current funding levels), with the charge here that Brown and Blair sent our armed forces to war on a peacetime budget, again calling in aid the same superficial analysis of Dannatt's speech, using The Times as the source.

So it is that "underfunding" is locked into the narrative, with not the faintest recognition that, in blocking new equipment for Iraq, Dannatt was in fact protecting a funding allocation of £16 billion for his pet project, FRES – to say nothing of the Future Lynx helicopter. Money was never the problem. What mattered was the way it was spent.

What makes all this so topical and important though is the expectation of a new Conservative administration within a year, which will be confronting exactly the same problems with which the Labour administration had to struggle.

It is Hastings in his Daily Mail piece, however, who puts his finger on a problem of which too many are painfully aware. "There is a deafening political silence about defence, because the Tories do not think the issue wins votes," he writes, adding that: "They have notably failed to hammer the Government as it deserves about its disgraceful treatment of the Armed Forces."

The nostrum about votes should be taken with a pinch of salt. Defence invariably attracts more electoral support that is given credit by the politicians. More likely, the reluctance to engage on defence stems from David Cameron's efforts to re-brand the Conservatives as a "caring" party, hence his determination to avoid hard-edged "macho" issues such as Armed Forces equipment.

But, if in the absence of such engagement, the Tories stand by the narrative of "underspending" – all in the context of Cameron admitting that he cannot realistically plan to increase defence spending when in office - then the option of cutting some big ticket projects begins to look extremely attractive.

Hastings targets the Trident nuclear deterrent, oblivious to the fact that this does not come out of core defence funding. Scrapping this would not necessarily increase the flow of cash to other defence projects.

Whether Trident, or some other project, the big problems will come if the Tories see the liberation of funds by this means as the answer to the current problems in the Armed Forces. We need a much more sophisticated and comprehensive narrative if we are to emerge from the strategic defence review that the Tories are promising with anything like effective Armed Forces.

COMMENT THREAD

Let battle commence

Recalling the recent defence debate in the Commons, when, at one time there were only twelve MPs in the chamber of which only one was a Labour backbencher, it is encouraging to note that the much-needed debate on our defence capabilities is nevertheless under way.

In this respect, The Daily Telegraph is to be applauded for leading the way, with a long feature by Thomas Harding, responding to the speech by General Sir David Richards at RUSI this week.

With defence affairs on the cusp, and the campaign in Afghanistan very much in the balance, a wide-ranging debate is both timely and necessary, rendering the contribution of the incoming CGS of considerable importance. It is of some significance, therefore, that The Telegraph remains the only newspaper of substance to take on board and develop his views. And, taking the political blogs at their own estimation of their value, their silence on this intensely political issue should not escape attention.

That is not to say that the media as a whole is silent on defence issues, with The Times also offering a lengthy opinion piece today. Unfortunately, this paper has chosen for its author Patrick Mercer, former infantry officer and currently Conservative MP for Newark & Retford.

In writing on defence issues, Mercer tends to be a one-trick horse, beating the drum for more resources and more "boots on the ground". His arguments tend to be one-dimensional, lacking the depth of strategic thinking that we see, for instance, in Richards' recent speech. It is a measure of the poverty of the general debate, therefore, that The Times believes his views are worth publishing.

Similarly, The Guardian has an offering, this one by Simon Jenkins , one of such unremitting negativity that it encompasses just one idea – that the US and British forces should quit Afghanistan.

In the real world, however, we are committed to Afghanistan and will remain so for the foreseeable future. And since the best outcome is to succeed in creating a stable, prosperous nation, capable of governing itself without external intervention, then the task at hand is to determine how we can achieve this, with minimum cost and bloodshed, all within the constraints of our own budgetary limitations and broader defence requirements. The debate, therefore, should be on how to win – an issue neither Mercer nor Jenkins address.

It is here that Harding, in his Telegraph piece is actually different and welcome. Whatever its limitations – and nothing short of a lengthy book could ever do justice to the topic – the theme is that the nature of modern conflict means our Armed Forces urgently need a major overhaul.

Harding thus "anticipates a battle in which the Army must triumph." There is a campaign that needs to be fought, he writes, not against the Taliban, but between the dinosaurs and Young Turks in the military. The outcome will determine whether the Armed Forces are left burnt out in the wadis of Helmand or evolve into a sharpened and highly effective tool to fight the wars of the future.

As a healthy antidote to the leaden mantras of "overstretch" and “under-resourcing" that have so far dominated the defence debate, the piece starts with a recognition of the reality: "It is becoming clear that there is simply not enough money available to fulfill the separate aspirations of all three Services." This relies on the views of Gen Richards, who articulates that reality, paraphrased as "we can do many things inadequately or a few things well, but to try both will end in failure."

Thus has Richards "adroitly opened the debate on the future of our Armed Forces", this occurring at a time when both major political parties appear bankrupt of defence policies. And, in getting to this point, he has gathered around him some of the most dynamic military thinkers (and not just from the Army) to thrash out the immediate future of defence. They know that its experience in Iraq has left the Army shattered in body and mind and that Afghanistan could prove more burdensome still.

It is no exaggeration to suggest that we are, in dealing with the counter-insurgency battles of the kind being fought in Afghanistan, facing that "horse and tank moment, where it is clearly evident that existing structures, strategy, tactics and equipment are not working. We need a revolution in our thinking, the seeds of which, writes Harding, first appeared in the US earlier this year.

This was the famous episode when US defence secretary Robert Gates announced that the modernisation of non-nuclear forces "should be tied to the capabilities of known future adversaries – not by what might be technologically feasible for a potential adversary, given unlimited time and resources".

The message to the Pentagon was clear: fight today's war, not one against some imaginary enemy of the future and, if the speech was poorly reported over here, it has nonetheless lodged heavily in the thoughts of some strategic thinkers, Richards amongst them.

This, of course, opens up the tri-service debate, where each of the Services have their own views of what is necessary for the defence of the realm, a taste of which is to be found in the letters column of The Daily Telegraph, and in particular from Major-General Julian Thompson, victor of the Falklands. He writes:

Britain is an island, reliant on importing goods by sea. With fewer warships (report, June 25), our trade would be vulnerable to the type of attacks being mounted by pirates in the Indian Ocean. The war in Afghanistan is important, but the bottom line is that after only a few weeks without imported oil supplies and food, we would starve.

Richards, in fact, addresses that issue noting that any future operations of any significance are going to be conducted as part of an alliance – not least in dealing with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where we have operated as part of a combined Nato force and (unfortunately) within an EU detachment.

Here we confront that other reality. The UK is no longer a global power and the Royal Navy does not rule the seas. In the Far East, where the Navy once maintained a powerful fleet, the US Navy roams free while Australia and India are important regional powers, developing substantial navies of their own. We protect our interests now not by flying the White Ensign but by diplomacy and forging alliances, as partners rather than rulers. Thus, while opinions vary – and there are strongly-held views on such matters – inconvenient questions must be asked and honest answers given.

But, writes Harding, where does this new mindset leave the three Services in Britain? Unfortunately, with a limited pool of cash the laws of survival apply, and the Services have reverted to unhelpful tribalism. The RAF will not give up its attachment to strategic bombing and the Royal Navy ardently clings to its aircraft carriers, advanced destroyers and fighter wing. There are many unglamorous parts of the Air Force that quietly go about achieving a great deal – from air transport to helicopters and surveillance. But those leading the RAF are fighter pilots who are loath to yield to the realities in front of them.

Then we address some of the detail. It's a big ask, adds Harding, but the idea of putting fighter pilots in a single engine, turbo-prop aircraft such as the Super Tucano has to be contemplated. Aircraft like the Tucano are cheap, low-tech and highly effective, as many South American drug barons have discovered. They provide surveillance, along with an armament of bombs and machine guns and an ability to loiter overhead for a long time, and they are also easy to maintain.

It will take courage for someone in the RAF hierarchy to advocate using the Tucano (cost £6 million) over the Eurofighter Typhoon (cost £65 million) but it is the type of thinking now required. The problem today is the RAF's attachment to fast jets. Either it goes for the Typhoon or for the US-made Joint Strike Fighter, but the defence budget cannot sustain both.

Harding raises many other such issues – very many of them having been discussed on this blog - and while neither he nor I could pretend to have explored them fully, much less come up with definitive answers, the very fact that they are being discussed is an advance on the previous sterility of the defence debate.

The ultimate problem though, which Harding identifies, is the "bed blockers" at the top of the MoD and in the military establishment, who do not seem to recognise the need for change. Perhaps more optimistically than we would allow for, Harding concludes that, "once they are removed and once a new government is persuaded that the Ministry of Defence is aiming to fight the wars of today, we are likely to see major changes in the configuration of our Armed Forces."

We hope that is the case. The current paradigm cannot continue and now is the time to face reality and decide honestly, clearly and with candour, what it is we want our Armed Forces to do, and then to make the changes necessary to ensure that they can succeed in what we ask of them.

COMMENT THREAD

A "horse and tank" moment

Following on from General Sir Richard Dannatt, the incoming CGS, General Sir David Richards has now taken the podium at the RUSI Land Warfare conference which ends today.

It says something of the media that the only newspaper so far to recognise the importance of his speech is The Daily Telegraph in a piece written by Thomas Harding. There, the message is summed us as "Army must change or risk failure, warns future chief."

Richards starts off by alluding to the apocryphal tale of armies historically preparing to fight the last war rather than the next. Successful armed forces, he declares, adapt and transform at a pace faster than their potential adversaries. With an eye to history, he cites Cromwell as an example who "unlocked the synergy of discipline, training, new equipment and new tactics in a manner that left the Royalists looking like barely gifted amateurs."

Richards immediate strikes a chord with that framing, as it is precisely that dynamic which drove the US forces to such success as they achieved in Iraq, the lack of which led to the British failure. The Americans learned lessons. The British did not – or not enough of them, fast enough. Those readers who have struggled through Ministry of Defeat will have seen this spelt out in some detail.

In a useful reminder, Richards also tells us of the struggles of Basil Liddell Hart and "Boney" Fuller in seeking to persuade soldiers everywhere that the era of the horse had been replaced by that of the tank and aircraft. But it was Dannatt in his own speech who had reminded the audience of Liddell Hart's rueful comment that "there is only one thing harder than getting a new idea into the military’s mind and that is getting an old one out."

Our incoming CGS says he is determined not fall into that trap and tells us that the Army is adapting to the challenges of war in Afghanistan, although the transformation is still localised and small in scale. The "often subtle and certainly hi-tech ways of fighting" taken for granted in places like Helmand have not yet been imported into the core of the Armed Forces. US forces are doing better.

Crucially, Richards asserts that there has been a radical change in the way wars are fought. We cannot go back to operating as we might have done even ten years ago when it was still tanks, fast jets and fleet escorts that dominated the doctrine of our three services, he says. The lexicon of today is non-kinetic effects teams, precision attack teams, Counter-IED, combat logistic patrols, information dominance, counter-piracy, and cyber attack and defence.

Then says Richards, the pace of technological change is bewildering. It has left every nations mainstream procurement process struggling to deliver equipment that will remain relevant against more agile opponents satisfied with cheap and ever-evolving eighty per cent solutions. Too often, he adds, we still strive for hugely expensive 100 per cent solutions – "exquisite solutions" as US defence secretary Gates calls them – relevant only in a hi-tech state on state war but that risk being out of date before they are brought into service.

In sum, tactical, operational and strategic level success in today's environment is beyond that of a military that draws its inspiration from visions of traditional state on state war, however hi-tech in nature.

As to Afghanistan, should we be content for NATO to be seen to fail on its first ground combat operation, Richards asks. If we do not succeed conspicuously in Afghanistan, and vitally by extension in and with Pakistan, then we risk losing the war against terrorism globally. Furthermore, the reputation of our armed forces is in itself a grand strategic issue. For many years, they have given the UK influence internationally, defeated our nation's enemies while deterring others and been an institution of which the British people are proud. And we would lose this at our peril.

Afghanistan, therefore, is to be our top priority and the key here is that this is not a traditional inter-state war, where success is easily defined. And, if the Afghani type of warfare was to be the norm (rather than aberrant, as some still think) then our generation is in the midst of a paradigm shift, facing its own "horse and tank" moment. If this is correct, then:

... those charged with the design and equipping of our armed forces need to do three things. Firstly to decide whether they believe conflicts with dissatisfied and violent non-state actors are here for the long term or are an historical aberration? Secondly do they believe that, despite globalisation and greater mutual inter-dependence, state on state warfare remains something for which they must prepare? And thirdly ... if it is decided that our armed forces need to be capable of succeeding in both, would not the two types of conflict look surprisingly similar in practise?

On this basis, Richards is asserting that our armed forces need to become better at fighting non-state actors. Not least, on an inter-agency basis, non-military activities must be given much greater weight and properly integrated into strategy. But the paradigm which has inter-state and non-state conflicts looking similar, would allow our armed forces to focus, albeit not exclusively, on a single version of conflict, developing common skill sets and weapon systems

There is though the argument that we cannot afford the ultimate risk of a return to traditional state-on-state conflict; that our capability and military culture should be primarily based on such a possibility, remaining firmly and conspicuously in the "big boys" league, while seeking to build a capability in new areas too.

Mercifully – and here we are seeing a glimmer of sense – Richards argues that this is "simply not affordable". In trying to do a bit of everything, we risk future failure across the board because, on the day, we will have insufficient of what is needed. Furthermore, even in inter-state conflict, traditional combat power can readily be made irrelevant through the adoption of asymmetric tactics or technology.

Nevertheless, Richards is not advocating the scrapping of all our aircraft and tanks to the point that traditional mass armoured operations, for example, become an attractive asymmetric option to a potential enemy. With our allies, he says, we need to retain sufficient conventional air, land and maritime forces to ensure tactical level dominance in regional intervention operations or enduring stabilisation operations.

The key point though is that the scale of employment and the context in which conventional weapons systems may be used in the future will be quite different to what may have been the case in the twentieth century. Should traditional inter-state conflict again become a serious possibility, we do not need to plan on winning these things by ourselves. Our contribution can prudently reflect better what our allies will bring to the party.

Then, if we ruthlessly apply our own policy that we will only undertake traditional state-on-state war with powerful allies, we can achieve savings in this hugely expensive area that will free up the resources needed for investment in other more likely forms of conflict.

To conclude, Richards then notes that our forces are still designed primarily to conduct short duration conventional war fighting operations. In these, one compensates absolutely correctly for what historically would be viewed as a shortage of troops with huge firepower, hence the bias of the equipment programme towards these capabilities over the last sixty years.

In wars amongst the people, however, if you are using a lot of firepower - often delivered from the air in extremis as a result of insufficient manpower - you are almost certainly losing. One must have enough troops firstly to retain the tactical initiative and, secondly, to provide the enduring routine security without which the population will not have the confidence to reject the insurgent or spoiler. They can, and ideally should, be indigenous forces, but you also need sufficient people to train them quickly and efficiently in the first place. Thus he ruminates:

So are our Armed Forces geared up properly for future conflict? In one sense I am not as concerned as perhaps I have given the impression. The essence of a good navy, army or air force is that they have fighting spirit, and can impose their will on a skilled, cunning and violent enemy. Armed forces of this quality, with the agile and innovative leaders they breed naturally, can with good training turn their hand to any type of conflict relatively quickly. I am in no doubt at all that our navy, army and air force is very firmly in this league. If you do not possess such fighting spirit, however good or hi-tech your equipment, you will not win against opponents who do, whether they are part of another states' army or Taliban style insurgents, and however shoddy or out of date their equipment.

Thus we see Richards saying that, from one key perspective, our fight in Afghanistan is the best possible preparation for any future conflict, whatever its nature. He thus is aiming to contribute to the case for a fundamental re-think of the way we prepare and equip our armed forces for the twenty-first century.

All three services have a vital role to play in it but we need to agree the essential character of future conflict. Much of what we need for the future is in today’s inventory, but the scale and context in which it may be required must be rigorously examined.

If our generation's horse and tank moment is not gripped our armed forces will try, with inadequate resources, to be all things to all conflicts and perhaps fail to succeed properly in any. The risks of such an approach are too serious for this any longer to be an acceptable course, if ever it has been.

There is much to think about in this speech. In many ways, Richards is putting down a marker for the forthcoming strategic defence review, which the Conservatives have pledged, and the issues he discusses will provide the basis for what is bound to be a closely fought debate. As a starter for ten, however, this is very encouraging indeed. We will return to it, I suspect, many times.

COMMENT THREAD

Yet another triumph

The report that British soldiers have launched a major airborne assault on a Taleban stronghold in southern Afghanistan should, on the face of it, be good news.

The operation, codenamed Panther's Claw, involved more than 350 troops from the Black Watch who were dropped into Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, just after midnight local time on Friday. Twelve Chinook helicopters were deployed, backed by a formidable array of airpower, including Apaches, a Spectre gunship, Harriers and UAVs.

The aim is to secure a number of canal and river crossings in the area to establish a permanent ISAF presence in what was previously a Taleban stronghold. Royal Engineers are now constructing checkpoints on the main routes in and out of the area, to be occupied by the Afghan National Police, established to hinder movement by insurgents.

The MoD is describing the operation as "one of the largest air operations in modern times" but whether it is the "Triumph for Brits" that the Daily Mirror is claiming remains to be seen.

Lt-Col Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, is less extravagant, declaring simply that the operation has been achieved due to the arrival of extra US, which has provided ISAF with a massive increase in capability "which we believe will significantly change the balance in the province."

Nevertheless, such optimism were have heard before and a jaundiced eye therefore turns to an editorial in the New York Times headed "Afghanistan's Failing Forces". That piece certainly provides an antidote to the hyperbole of The Mirror, starting off with the bald statement, "The news from Afghanistan is grim."

Rehearsing recent events, it reminds us that, in the first week of June, there were more than 400 attacks in Afghanistan, a level not seen since late 2001. It applauds Obama's decision to send more troops and then observes that there can be no lasting security until Afghanistan has a functioning army and national police.

This happy situation, the paper notes, is very far from coming, setting out a catalogue of failure which is stark and damning. Washington, it says, has already spent 7½ years and more than $15 billion on failed training programs.

There have never been enough trainers, Afghan soldiers have not been paid a living wage, making it easy for Taliban and drug lords to outbid them for the country's unemployed young men, and there has been no proper control of weapons supplied to the Afghan forces. Tens of thousands have disappeared, sold to the highest bidders and, in some cases, used against American soldiers.

Perhaps most fundamentally, American war planners never seemed to understand that a more effective Afghan Army and a more honest and competent police force could help persuade civilians that the war against the Taleban was more their own fight and not just an American war being fought on their territory.

After all these years, therefore, so little progress has been made that the national police force needs to be rebuilt almost from scratch, a task hampered by unremitting corruption in Kabul's central government, reflected at local level where the police are equally part of the problem.

Leaving the paper to conclude with a statement of the obvious, that building an effective Afghan Army and police is critical to the war effort, with the injunction that there is no more time to waste, we move on to a report by AP which asserts that, in these recession-hit times, the Taleban and al-Qaida are bucking the trend.

Through a combination of extortion, crime and drugs, plus an inflow of money from new recruits, increasingly large donations from sympathisers and Islamic charities, as well as a cut of profits from honey dealers in Yemen and Pakistan, the insurgents' finances are considerably healthier than those of the coalition nations.

A significant proportion of the cash inflow comes from taxation of the opium trade, estimated to yield upwards of $300 million annually, enabling the Taleban to pay foot soldiers $100 and commanders $350 a month, far more than their security force equivalents in either Afghanistan of neighbouring Pakistan. On the other hand, they are paying bargain-basement prices for their IEDs which typically cost less than $100 each to make.

Clearly, the major task here is to deal with the drugs trade – which perhaps accounts for 90 percent of Taleban income. For a workable strategy, Allison Brown in Small Wars Journal is a good a source as any. But she offers no more than we set out last year, principles enunciated by so many scholars, and experts yet ignored by those who purport to be restoring this benighted country.

So, instead of progress, we get the Black Watch descending from the skies in phalanxes of Chinooks and thundering over the terrain, while the Mirror applauds another "triumph". Maybe it is, but not for common sense.

COMMENT THREAD

The shadow of Iraq

In a piece written by Kim Sengupta, the paper's defence correspondent, The Independent has picked up a fragment on the ongoing "dialogue" between the Army and its political masters over the enhancement of troop levels in Afghanistan.

Under the heading, "Army fury at refusal to bolster Afghan campaign", with the strap, "Senior commanders warn British strategic alliance with United States is being put at risk", we are told that Britain's "most senior military commanders" have warned Gordon Brown that unless he sends more troops to Afghanistan, Britain will lose credibility with its American allies.

This has been going on since April (and before) when we learned that prime minister Gordon Brown had refused to sanction additional troops for the theatre, but it has now evolved into a "warning" that the reputation of the armed forces will suffer in the eyes of senior American commanders unless an autumn surge is authorised. Our "senior commanders" are saying that such a surge would signal Britain's intent to "pull its weight".

To add to the pressure, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has also intervened in a speech to Chatham House, declaring that: "Britain's calculation has long been that maintaining military strategic 'partner-of-choice' status with the United States offers a degree of influence and security that has been pivotal to our foreign and defence policy. But this relationship can only be sustained if it is founded on a certain 'military credibility threshold'."

He went on to say: "Credibility with the US is earned by being an ally that can be relied on to state clearly what it will do and then does it effectively. And credibility is also linked to the vital currency of reputation." He added that "unfairly or not" British performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has already been called into question by some in the US administration.

"In this respect there is recognition that our national and military reputation and credibility, unfairly or not, have been called into question at several levels in the eyes of our most important ally as a result of some aspects of the Iraq campaign," he said. "Taking steps to restore this credibility will be pivotal, and Afghanistan provides an opportunity."

That, of course, is the real issue. This is not a question that the Army might lose credibility in Afghanistan. It has already lost credibility, through its failures in Iraq and is now looking to recover the situation by beefing up its weight, to match the current and expected US input of 10,000 troops in Helmand province.

As always though, there is more to this than meets the eye. When the level of US troops is at the planned level, they will significantly outnumber the British forces. Already, US forces are taking over most of the contested areas and, with better, more capable equipment, the risk – as the "senior military commanders" see it – the Americans will start calling the shots in Helmand, reducing the British to the status of supporting elements, conforming to US strategy and direction.

The call for more troops, therefore, is as much a ploy to enable our own "senior military commanders" to maintain an element of autonomy in the province, and with it freedom to dictate their own strategic direction, independently of the Americans. The give-away is the argument that reinforcements are essential to maintain the "British footprint" on the ground.

Perversely, it is their very insistence on seeking to retain operational autonomy that is giving rise to the reluctance to commit more troops. At a political level, the campaign is seen more clearly as a coalition effort, with an awareness that, to be effective, all the disparate forces must work to a single, coherent plan rather than plough their own national furrows.

So far, all the "senior military commanders" have been able to do is make the case for retaining national autonomy, without offering any very clear ideas for their employment. To that extent, the additional troops are being seen more as a means of bolstering military egos than adding real capability.

Furthermore, given what happened last time the British were given complete autonomy – in southern Iraq – there is strong resistance to giving the British their head, especially as Gen David Petraeus is keen to give his own strategy an airing. Against all that, the credibility of Gen Dannatt and his merry little band of commanders is not considered of vital importance.

As always, therefore, the Army is "briefing" in public, hoping to force the issue through media pressure, knowing that if the right buttons are pressed, the very real strategic reservations can be turned into the usual shallow pastiche of that nasty Mr Brown not giving the Army what it needs. Things may change after Gen Sir David Richards takes over as CGS in August – and comes up with a coherent plan that meshes with US operations - but, for the time being, the shadow of Iraq looms. Dannatt looks like being disappointed.

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A crisis of indifference

There is too much happening in this damn world for any one individual even to be able to start giving a coherent picture. That makes our masthead statement rather forlorn, where we offer to "discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world".

Inevitably, therefore, choices have to be made and, with limited resources, we can do only so much. Thus when things are being covered elsewhere, we tend to leave them, unless we have something to say which we feel adds value. Instead, we often try to focus on issue we believe important which are not getting the coverage they should.

For that reason, we return again to the subject of Afghanistan. It is not the only important issue in the world or the UK, and it is not the most important. But it is fair to say that, relative to its actual importance – both internationally and domestically – the coverage of the issues is dangerously slight. In our own limited way, therefore, we feel the need to redress the balance.

Of particular concern is one issue pointed out on our forum, in relation to yesterday's Dispatches programme, and the comments by our soon to be Chief of the General Staff, Gen David Richards about our ability to admit our mistakes and learn from them.

Asked by Stephen Grey why Americans speak so candidly about things that go wrong, but in Britain "every operation... seems to be a success", Richards suggests that the Americans "have the confidence and resources, to correct the errors that they identify." In the British camp, however, Richards admits that he is "not certain we always feel that we're going to, so we tend to plug on and hope that we'll find a way through our problems."

This, from such a senior military officer is a startling admission which, with the other responses from Stirrup and Dannatt, suggest that there are institutional failings within the military which far transcend the individual errors that we have seen and reported.

One of the major problems here, though, is the contemporary media and political narrative, which positions the military as the "heroes", with the gallant generals – Dannatt in particular – standing up for "Our Boys" against the venal and incompetent politicians, who are also charged with "lacking military experience".

In the general context of personality politics, therefore, we have a scenario where every failing or shortcoming – real or perceived – is laid at the door of the politicians, and most often at the figurehead, prime minister Blair and now Gordon Brown.

We would not even begin to suggest that either and both of these did not bear a very great responsibility for the disasters we are experiencing. However, this one-dimensional narrative enables the Service Chiefs to float serenely above the fray. They can thus make blunder after blunder, in the certain knowledge that their political masters will take the flak, leaving them free to repeat the same mistakes or invent new ones – completely unchallenged.

One slight sign that perception is changing comes from, of all people, Con Couglin in his blog, not that you would not guess this from the title of the piece, which proclaims "Government incompetence is destroying the British Army's reputation." The sting is in the tail though, where Coughlin writes:

It's not just that we don't have enough "force enablers" - armoured vehicles and helicopters, the government has also failed to provide sufficient force levels to adequately secure the southern Afghan province. As a consequence the Americans - as happened in Iraq - are now having to send their own troops to help bail us out. As a result the proud reputation of our military for delivering results on the battlefield lies in tatters. All those responsible for this appalling state of affairs, whether in the government or the military, should hang their heads in shame.

It is that phrase, "whether in the government or the military" which is the key point. As many of the mistakes have been made in the military as in the government. And many that have been made by the government have not been corrected by the military or – as important – have not been disputed.

On the other hand, some of the things which the politicians have done have been in the teeth of military opposition, and have been the right things – the MRAP/protected vehicle programme being one of them. We keep having to say – and in the context of the Dispatches programme, this is all the more relevant – that the purchase of the Vector was a military decision. The procurement of the Mastiff was a political decision. And there is no doubt now as to which one was right.

Interestingly, exactly the same dynamics are happening across the Atlantic. In the US, it was Robert Gates's decision to kick-start the MRAP programme which rescued the Iraqi campaign and that was also a political decision, in the face of prevarication by the military, which had been sitting on the programme for ten years

This comes over in an important budget speech made by Gates, which we will review in detail later, but it is briefly reported in The Washington Post today, with the headline, "Gates proposal reveals his alienation from procurement system." In calling yesterday for "a dramatic change in the way we acquire military equipment," the report says:

… Gates showed his slow but palpable alienation from the so-called iron triangle of defense contractors, lawmakers and military service executives that has long promoted building the best weapons systems, no matter what the price. In the future, he said, weapons should be engineered to counter "the actual and prospective capabilities of known future adversaries," not what a potential adversary might create with "unlimited time and resources."

Here in this country, we have the same issues and many more. But, as we remarked in our earlier piece, they are not being discussed.

This is the bigger problem. In days gone by, systemic weaknesses in our military, a procession of failures and the prospect of an even bigger failure as we lose the war in Afghanistan, would have been news. These would have been matters of concern, the subject of debate, issues to be resolved. Instead, there is near silence and a complete absence of debate. People – and especially the political claque – do not want to know.

What we have here is a crisis of indifference. And a nation that no longer cares deserves to lose – as indeed we have done before.

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