Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the UK Chief of the Defence Staff, briefed the Royal United Services Institute in London, in December 2001, on Britain’s future steps in the global campaign.
If we are not to get trapped, we will have to be light on our feet, and we will have to get used to agile partnerships, in essence flexible, conditional arrangements that balance coalition needs, the common good and national interest. We will need to plan and act concurrently across the political, diplomatic, economic, military, legal and information spectrum. We will need to re-examine what we require to achieve, develop key capabilities and understand our strategic limits. In doing this we have to wrest the initiative back from the terrorist. We have to negate his advantage in striking at the place and time of his choosing, by restricting his space through legislation, military action, surveillance, diplomacy and deterrence, that will also impact his timing and tempo of operations. We should remember every terrorist organisation has its constituency, and an inability to prosecute its war aims reduces its appeal to its supporters. So information operations designed to support and influence are terribly important here.
Above all, what we do must be legal, or otherwise we jeopardise our legitimacy, but we must also beware of exporting the terrorist problem. It’s a bit like sitting on a partially filled waterbed. If you bear down too heavily on one part, then another part comes up. As for the key capabilities we require, well, we could have a lengthy discussion on each as subjects in their own right. But let me briefly mention some: precision guided munitions (PGMs) allow the focused application of combat power. It has been interesting to watch their use in asymmetric war, and it is clear that the US has learned from the less effective use of air power in Kosovo. At first it appeared that this essentially kinetic form of warfare was merely turning big rocks into smaller rocks. And there were all the normal targeting problems. However, the volume of kinetic targeting against the al-Qaida (AQ)/Taliban (effectively non-state actors) appears to have helped deliver strategic success in providing the Northern Alliance and opposition forces with the tactical mass required to overwhelm, or at least turn the Taliban.
I acknowledge that this really only applies against the conventional elements of the Taliban and AQ, but a study on the coercive effects of air power in the campaign so far will make a worthy project for those air power gurus in the audience. Strategic communications and force projection capabilities will also be vital, particularly strategic lift and expeditionary infrastructure. We will also have to concentrate on the establishment of secure lines of communication, basing and overflight rights. Of course, special forces are crucial, but they are at a premium at the moment, and we will need to ascertain how best to employ them. They have great use in direct action, but there is an attrition bill in that. But what about support and influence operations? We only have to look at the UK experience in Malaya and the Dhofar to see how effective these operations can be.
Intelligence assets and the move towards the use of information in the battlespace, sensor to decision maker to shooter cycles, and increasing the tempo of operations, are all of vital importance and are key capabilities that we will need to expand, but we must always bear in mind the relative tempo of the political decision-making cycle and the political requirement. What is the point of delivering the illusion of victory and a gone-to-ground Taliban/AQ, if the peace holds more threats?
Incidentally, I do think it is important to remember that capabilities are not just bits of kit or troops, not just PGMs, ships or battalions, but the combination of those means, with the ways to employ them to achieve the appropriate ends, plus the military, and more importantly, political will to use them effectively. Furthermore, those capabilities must be available, timely, and capable of integration into a particular operation.
I have spoken only broadly about strategic considerations in the current campaign against terrorism, but I hope I’ve left you with the idea that we have choices to make in all sorts of areas. From the UK’s point of view, this has not only been dictated by what has happened since 11 September, but also by what else has been going on around the world, where I can assure you that nothing has stopped. It is very much business as usual. So, we find our armed forces are deployed on or beneath most of the world’s oceans and in all continents, either on operations, exercises or in smaller training teams, in our overseas commands, in coalitions, with the UN, or by ourselves, in addition to garrisons in the Falkland Islands, Cyprus and Gibraltar.
•Royal Navy 41 combat units and support outside UK home waters today, personnel (just over 17 per cent), including Vanguard-boat on permanent patrol.
•Of the trained Army 20 per cent deployed/27 per cent committed to ops.
•Northern Ireland 13,000; Balkans 4,700; Sierra Leone 400; Operations Veritas/Fingal (Afghanistan) 1,800.
•RAF 6.6 per cent deployed/1,000 on Operations Resinate (Iraq no fly zones)/Veritas/Falklands/elsewhere.
•Training teams and military missions Nepal, Bangladesh, Bermuda and Antarctic.
•UN operations in Cyprus, Georgia, East Timor, DRC, Kuwait and Sierra Leone.
So we are busy, even before we think about [forces] currently committed to the Afghan campaign. What can we draw from this? Well, the thinking embodied in the strategic defence review (SDR), that added to our experience of these and previous operations around the world, has led us to address what we think the shape, form and conduct of future warfare will be, and what we think the British approach to military operations is.
At the heart of this approach, to remind you, we see our warfighting ethos (very much embodying being fit to fight), as central, and ready to be applied if the circumstances demand it. In peace support operations (PSOs), for example, it is what gives the UK’s armed forces the ability to establish a base of influence from which they and other agencies can operate. Joint, integrated and multinational operations are the means by which the UK’s full range of capabilities and attributes are brought to bear. Our armed forces operate together as a coherent entity to maximise their ability to deliver operational effect, and in doing this they are guided by the principles of war that are as applicable at the strategic level as they are at the tactical, and that are as relevant in PSOs as they are to warfighting.
The intelligent application of the principles of war is a fundamental element of the manoeuvrist approach, that in turn results in commanders being allowed, and encouraged, to prosecute their objectives using methods of their own choosing through a flexible and pragmatic state of mind. To do this they need the necessary means. By this is meant not only the physical means of men, equipment and other tangible resources, but also the conditions inherent in mission command that are conducive to seizing the initiative, obtaining the advantage of tempo and achieving surprise. These themes represent the core of the British approach to operations.
If we put current strategy through that rather doctrinal prism, we can see what and how the British military is likely to be addressing current events and where this is leading us in our developing thinking on SDR, in other words the next chapter. One of the main things we have done is to expand the definition of asymmetric warfare, that is not just international terrorism.
First, dissuading, and if necessary, preventing terrorists from using force, particularly mass effect, to achieve change in international affairs. Second, coercing states from launching asymmetric attacks, or acting in support of, or complicity with, terrorists, (while we take trouble to reinforce those combating terrorism). Third, contributing to the defence of the UK base and overseas territories from such attacks. The approaches the armed forces are considering include:
•Preventing the conditions that allow international terrorist organisations to operate, by helping less capable states build better capabilities to counter terrorism themselves through our conflict prevention and defence diplomacy activities.
•Deterring would-be attackers by making sure international terrorist groups, and those regimes that actively sponsor or harbour them, are aware of our range of military options, readiness and willingness to use them if provoked.
•Coercing regimes and states that harbour or support international terrorism with the threat, and ultimately, the use of military force in the event that diplomatic and other means fail.
•Actively disrupting the activities that support international terrorist groups, by targeting their sources and flows of material, finance and freedom of movement. Our armed forces may need to develop a more active role in stop-and-search missions on land, at sea, or in conducting search and destroy raids on key terrorist facilities.
•Acting to destroy terrorist cells with military action, and perhaps, in the last instance, acting against those regimes, such as the Taliban, that support, protect, nurture and direct terrorism.
We will also need to look carefully at the arrangements or agreements we may want in place in the areas where we wish to operate. Where forward deployment on land in a crisis is not possible, alternative basing arrangements will be required. In this context, the flexibility of the two new aircraft carriers we have planned is particularly important.
We need to give due attention to the requirements of home defence and security. We will review the arrangements and level of co-ordination between civil authorities and the armed forces in order to maximise the utility and suitability of responses to any future requests.
If 11 September did anything to our views, it was to confirm that the direction we took with SDR was the right one. Our intent now to move beyond SDR has been reinforced by our experiences around the world since 1998 and on Operation Veritas/Enduring Freedom.
As we develop, we will have to stay in balance. We cannot afford to take risks with capabilities and enablers. We must be lighter, more focused/precise and more flexible, and leave behind the inertia of the cold war for good.
There is a lot of room for new thinking, and for the reconsideration of old thought in world affairs at present, but if we can concentrate on those aspects that the British armed forces are and should be good at:
•Command and mission command
•Information and intelligence
•Fightability
•Sustainability and trainability
•A flair/penchant for coalition operations
And sound doctrine, what I like to call the interoperability of the mind. Then although we might not get it completely right, we won’t be far wrong.
