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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:50 am Post subject: Full Speech Of General Dannatt - 21/09/07 |
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ADDRESS TO IISS - FRI 21 SEP 2007
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for your very kind words of introduction and indeed thank you to the Institute for allowing me the privilege and opportunity to address such a distinguished audience. And it is with my audience in mind – both those who are here, and those who might subsequently read the record of today’s discussions – that I will try to frame my comments, at least those comments and views that are on the record. I am also conscious that with so many illustrious practitioners of international relations, political affairs and strategy here – not to mention the media – that it would be perhaps over-adventurous of me to offer too wide a range of comments. After all, I am conscious of who I am and who I am not, and that as professional head of the Army I occupy a certain set of tramlines and not the whole town centre!
So what I aim to do is to outline the context in which I see the British Army operating, now and in the future, and I intend to keep it at that – an Army view, albeit in a Defence context because much of our strength comes from our ability to operate in a joint environment. I do not intend to make comments on policy, other than extant policy, but to explain where I would like to see the Army going in the long term - that direction of travel inevitably constrained and conditioned by what we are doing in the short, and perhaps the medium, term.
Equally inevitably, by looking at where I think we should be going requires me to at least glimpse at the recent past – after all everything starts with a legacy, and there are no blank sheets of paper. There is no point of dreaming about great ambitions and concepts that have no start point in reality. And my start point today is no utopian blue skies agenda, but a recognition that the Army’s future is being shaped now - significantly influenced by our hard-won experiences on the blood stained earth of Iraq and Afghanistan. I also want to add a few words about something that many know I feel strongly about – this is the relationship between the Army and the Nation it defends – the Military Covenant, as we call it.
THE PAST
CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
So where to start? It is dull and hackneyed – and wrong in my view – to begin discussion of the contemporary era from the end of the Cold War. Francis Fukuyama may have thought that the collapse of communism was the end of history, but I suggest that he failed to spot the beginning of the next chapter of our history, from a decade before the Cold War ended.
If he felt that the crumbling of Soviet Communism marked the “end of history”, I suggest he had forgotten to look back over his shoulder, where he might have noticed, amongst other things, a Crescent-shaped shadow – a shadow coming into focus when the Cold War still had a decade or so to run, and perhaps some two decades before that other apparently defining event – 9/11.
But, if I have difficulty with Fukuyama, I have considerably more sympathy with the suggestion that where the international environment is now, is not linked to, or a direct consequence of 11/9 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down or indeed of 9/11 2001 when the Twin Towers came down – but with the suggestion that current events owe their origins more to a date around 1979, when the Cold War still had ten years to run. Although that sounds pretty specific, my sympathy extends to the argument that in 1979 the Cold War became “expectant”, if you like, with the two problem children born when the Berlin Wall came down and when the Twin Towers fell.
And remaining specific, while there was no defining event in 1979 like the Twin Towers or the Berlin Wall, it was a year when many powerful forces began moving – the plates adjoining the fault lines became active. It was in that year, 1979, that:
- The then newly elected Polish Pope, John Paul II, began to suggest that religion and nationhood mattered more than Lenin or Stalin would have cared to admit.
- President Reagan sent shivers down European backs by calling the Soviet Union the “Empire of Evil”.
- Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran turned on the flamethrower of Islamic anger and jihad against the West.
- Teng Sia Ping began to bring China back into World politics, and, perhaps most critically, Osama Bin Laden, still a Saudi playboy until then, found, after the Mecca uprising in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that year, that he had found a vocation in promoting Holy War – and all that is, I suggest, a long way from the “end of history”.
So I suggest that what began a decade before the Wall came down, eventually led to the end of the stability of the old bi-polar World, and sowed the seeds of Global Terrorism – essentially an asymmetric response to a single Superpower, by the militarily dispossessed and the historically humiliated – and which was dramatically illustrated by the airliner attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. So my point is– and I know that I make a broad generalization here – that throughout the greater period of our lifetimes, events over a protracted period have been shaping the contemporary environment – the environment that will define much, not least for me, the next phase of the development of the British Army.
POST COLD WAR ARMY
So it is not surprising that as I look at the British Army that went into Iraq in 2003, we see an Army still largely equipped and shaped by the legacy of the Cold War. Indeed, even today we see an army that:
- Retains a keen interest in the future of the post-communist Balkans.
- Maintains close engagement in Post-Colonial Sierra Leone and the security of the Falkland Islands.
- Is well into a new and deadly Great Game in Afghanistan – only this time with a different adversary.
- And is now helping to salvage an Islamic state in the tinderbox that is Iraq in the face of extremism and jihad. And we are doing this in a region perched precariously above a large proportion of the World’s remaining supply of oil.
Doctrine and Concepts.
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But I come back again to that last decade of the Cold War after 1979, because contextually in another way, that decade is as important as that of the movement on the strategic stage which I have already outlined. Conceptually, in the 1980s, the Army – predominantly under the guidance of General, later Field Marshal Sir Nigel Bagnall – underwent an explosion of thinking and doctrinal development. Hitherto, the British Army had never been a huge advocate of doctrine nor of making an art form of joined-up thinking – with the exceptions, of course, of luminaries such as JFC Fuller, Basil Liddell Hart and, perhaps, Frank Kitson – and especially not talking about it, certainly not in public. Previously, to admit to such an interest in your profession was considered a fairly appalling crime, and a somewhat ungentlemanly expression of trying too hard – we, perhaps, overdid the Corinthian spirit of the gifted amateur. But by the late 1990s and certainly by the start of this decade, we had a full hand of doctrine and concepts, potentially a template for the less able to apply to every situation, but more usefully a framework of thought for the more imaginative.
Equipment.
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But, if our thinking had moved on, our equipment was still “legacy”, developed for the Northern German Plain and adapted latterly, and not without difficulty, for the deserts of the Middle East – after all, this was little more than a different scenario for the same type of war. Yes, the technology had improved and our ability to overmatch the enemy was increasing. But the British Army that crossed into Iraq in March 2003 was instantly recognisable to the generation that had gone before it, albeit far, far more capable, if not a whole lot smaller. But matched to this was a clear and common thought process, understood from top to bottom, reasonably based on our well-understood doctrine, underpinned by high levels of training and encouraged by previous successes and, in part, this explained why our initial military operations in Iraq were generally very successful – frankly, in the way that we anticipated.
THE PRESENT
But I can assert that the Army that crossed the Line of Departure on that morning in March 2003 has gone. We have adapted and reformed at an incredible pace in only four years and we are only at the start of a journey into the future that has been catapulted into focus by our current campaigns.
IRAQ
So it is our current campaigns that are both our start and defining points. First Iraq. Now, as I have said, what I am not going to do – neither here nor in questions – is to chew over future policy options. Some of my views are on the record from before, and my current views are known to those who are properly considering the future of that campaign, but I do believe that, in general terms, our role in the campaign – and our contribution to it - is going in the right direction. However I will comment on the tactical and operational level view of what we are doing and facing as an Army – or, put another way, enlarge on the character of the operations we are engaged in.
So, because as an Army we are enemy focussed, some words on our adversaries in southern Iraq. The militants (and I use the word deliberately because not all are insurgents, or terrorists, or criminals; they are a mixture of them all) are well armed – certainly with outside help, and probably from Iran. By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security – and the majority are not bad people. In amongst them, however, are a hard core of well trained, well motivated, ruthless individuals who have the capacity to organise and control a highly effective campaign, or perhaps better described as a matrix of campaigns, of violence and intimidation. They live amongst the people, are difficult to track and human intelligence, HUMINT, is difficult to obtain. They have the capacity to generate forces quickly, they will offer extreme violence against us in large urban areas through the use of complex ambushes and IEDs. They also offer violence against each other in the South, not just an account of any Sunni / Shia divide, but within the Shia community. We, meanwhile, are channelled in these urban areas, which makes the operational environment 3 dimensional, truly complex and challenging.
Against this backdrop, the military challenges remain to try to help bring about a much improved and reliable indigenous set of security forces that can help to underpin the generation of an economy and bring hope and security to the population. In the words of our current divisional commander, Graham Binns, our efforts can now be couched as focussed on Military Assistance, Reconstruction and Development. And, despite the periodic intensity of the fighting, the focus has remained on the majority who want to build a better life and not solely on the minority of militants for whom instability and insecurity provides an opportunity, and whose actions capture the headlines.
Let me try to give you more of a feel for the tactical environment our soldiers are working in. These words are taken straight from a commander in Iraq, not to the press, but to fellow soldiers – so they are a bit more raw:1
“We had 3 weeks to go before the battlegroup handed over the Palace and it was imperative to maintain the initiative and keep JAM on the back foot. The operation was a ‘non-kinetic strike’ – building on tribal rejection of JAM violence in an area in the very centre of Basra surrounded by militia strongholds. It was bloody hot – the humidity levels were off the scale, temperatures in armoured vehicles were 74°C and 18 crewmen had to be evacuated from heat exhaustion that night. The op had everything: accurate indirect fire as we left the Palace causing 2 casualties; a sniper engagement onto an IED team moving into position; 4 rounds fired, 3 enemy dead; an AH strafing run onto militia gunmen controlled by a Forward Air Controller; a Warrior driver in his hatch killed by an enemy sniper; 3 massive IEDs necessitating casevac and recovery under fire; and a 20-30 man JAM ambush on the extraction with small arms fire & RPGs, defeated by Warrior, Bulldog and a Javelin missile. But inside the cordon all was calm – the tribesmen welcomed our soldiers, distributed psyops leaflets for us and showed us numerous JAM hides, spitting their hatred of the militias.” So, whose hearts and whose minds?
But, what does this environment require of the Army and our commanders? Well conceptually our commanders have had to face problems from first principles. Our enduring tenets of mission command and the manoeuvrist approach hold good, but how do you apply a relevant doctrine if the character of the campaign you are involved is constantly evolving? Some elements will be Peace Support, some Warfighting and some COIN – but not just in the tactical sense of the 3 block war concept. Our commanders have had to develop a flexibility of mind at the very lowest levels that allows people to recognise the changing dynamics of the wider campaign and to adapt the way they operate rapidly to suit.
Additionally the equipment and capabilities being used by our troops now represent a quantum leap ahead and are what is needed. Our future transformation is an issue for now, not for some far off point on a planner’s wall – FRES – our medium weight vehicle programme - is a perfect example. It is simply a system that is just required for a future intervention, but it is a capability that we need in this extended campaign as soon as possible. Meanwhile, our UOR process has been one of our success stories. With flexible and innovative acquisition strategies, it has been possible to bring effective equipment into service rapidly. MASTIFF is one such success story. A 25 ton heavily protected but agile vehicle, it has taken less than a year to bring it into service and is already highly thought of by our troops – Lord Drayson and his team and industry can be justifiably proud of their achievement. And it is our current operations that are drawing us into the future. Line up a dismounted close combat unit - an infantry battalion by another name - of even only two years ago and compare it to one today and you would be surprised by the difference in personal equipment, weapons, vehicles, indeed their overall capability. Not only is there a step change in organic firepower but we have placed enormously complex systems right down to the very lowest level – a company commander might find himself controlling strategic level surveillance systems, joint fires, Attack Helicopter as well as dealing with Other Government Departments and Agencies – all concepts and capabilities that would have been the preserve of a Corps Commander only a few years ago. And there will be no going back from that level of capability?
But the work that the soldiers have been doing in Iraq is relentless. Be under no illusion, despite what some commentators have said – often expressing views formed after brief 24 hours visits – the British Army has not been defeated. In fact we are working to quite a long term plan that significantly pre-dates the current US surge policy. At the tactical, and also at the operational level in southern Iraq, we have been successful in increasing difficult circumstances – three of the four provinces we were responsible for have been handed over to Iraqi control, and we have not lost a significant tactical engagement - and the nation should take great pride in what has been achieved. But Basra is not Baghdad, and the South has very different characteristics to the Central, Northern and Western areas of Iraq. Basra remains very important to the future of Iraq with almost all of the country’s oil flowing from the south; itself the source of the majority of Iraq’s oil reserve. We have identified the problems that face us in the South and addressed them but there is real complexity at the heart of the intra-Shia struggle for power, and we have not held all the cards, especially the timetable. And, of course, time has a dynamic of its own. That’s a fact, not a complaint, and we have had to live with that, and will continue to do so.
AFGHANISTAN
In Afghanistan, we fight a rather different campaign. Again our adversaries are also quite complex and I would prefer to once more use the term militant and to be careful not to demonise the people we fight in Afghanistan. There is a lazy tendency for them all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”, but it is not as simple as that. Yes, there is a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of the people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons. So we must beware of tarring them all with the same brush, as I am sure that one day we will need to deal with and eventually reconcile the elected Government with the majority of these people. And the character of the people who oppose here is different to that of the people in Iraq. Afghans are a hardy people, who respect force and the warrior ethos. They are generally more impressed by a company of infantry, fighting bravely with bayonets fixed than by high tech ISTAR and offensive support. Their current choice is to fight in the cultivated areas where the visibility and fields of view can be measured in tens of metres, where basic skills, not technical prowess are most important. Indeed, it is a form of operation that our fathers would recognise from the Normandy bocage – indeed on their part it is clever, because we are denied the hi-tech advantages of stand off and range, but our training gives us the edge.
One of the key successes has been that of the Operational Mentoring, Liaison and Training Teams – the OMLTs, working with the Afghans. These small teams of British Officers and NCOs live, train and fight with the Afghan National Army. Operating on the same principles that our grandfathers and great uncles who worked in the tribal areas would understand, they share the same dangers and teach and lead by example. The bonds that have formed between British and Afghan soldiers through shedding blood together is immeasurably strong and is an important lesson from the past applied to the present and the future – a subject I will return to later.
Again, let me try to give you a flavour of the operations that are taking place. I quote from a report by a Captain who was mentoring an Afghan National Army Company in April this year; he wrote:
“The OMLT Company (of about 30 soldiers) had been working hard up to this point. We were informed prior to the Operation that we were to deploy for 10 days. 70 days later we were still on the ground…we had suffered a number of UK casualties over this period. One of the sergeants from the Fire Support Team had been killed, an Improvised Explosive Device badly wounded one of the Platoon Commanders and a suicide attack wounded five. These were just the more serious injuries. The ANA also had 4 Killed in Action and 16 Wounded in Action.
At 0620 the 2nd ANA Company sent to secure the Line of Departure came under effective enemy fire from a number of positions…the assault was launched after Close Air Support had collapsed the compound…….the OMLT had to lead the way and start clearing the rooms themselves….Two further positions were cleared before we took our first casualty. One of the UK platoon Commanders was engaged from a flank during the assault. He came over the radio very calmly stating: “Charlie, Charlie 1. I’ve just been shot in the upper left thigh, applying tourniquet. Out”.
Casualty evacuation now became the priority….under very heavy fire this was achieved by two exceptionally brave individuals. The platoon commander was very pale and very worried about the tourniquet on his leg. Reassurance was all that I could give.
The contact lasted for another two hours…the operation and the fighting continued for another five days. The resupply routes were so stretched that we did not even see our toothbrushes until we recovered on foot from the op. At the end of the “10 Day” op, we had spent 78 days on the ground. Out of the original 30 that had started only 17 remained.”
THE HOME DIMENSION
So that is the reality of the “away” dimension, but the present is also closely related to the home dimension, one aspect of which is a growing gap between the operations that we, as an Army, are conducting and the attitudes and understanding of our own people. Soldiers are genuinely concerned when they come back from Iraq to hear the population that sent them being occasionally dismissive or indifferent about their achievements, because if they ever did, they now no longer approve of the campaign – and of Afghanistan, they do not understand the campaign. We are in danger of sapping at our volunteer army’s willingness to serve in such an atmosphere again. As the Minister of State for the Armed Forces said a coupe of weeks ago, “There is not an appreciation or even an understanding among wide sections of the community of exactly what we ask our Armed Forces to do, and we’re asking an awful lot of them.” This is an area that I believe we must address in the future. But I digress……
THE FUTURE
GENERATION OF CONFLICT
So, where do we need to take the Army of the future? I strongly believe that the Army we are developing now has to be physically and mentally prepared to be engaged in this struggle against extremism for quite some time. If the Second World War defined its generation, then this will be the conflict that defines this generation. And it is being played out not only in Afghanistan, but also at home – as we know only too well. I think that success in Afghanistan is crucial to the national interest of the UK – it is central to the triangular security relationship between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UK. Afghanistan is a key front in the Away dimension of our domestic security, but we also need to support our allies in Pakistan in dealing with their dimension of it, too. The home and the away coincide here. I was fortunate enough to visit the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan recently, where I saw for myself the huge efforts they are making and the considerable sacrifices they are making.
And so, while we must view our efforts in Afghanistan not solely in relation to that country, but also in the context of Pakistan and the UK, so too must we not seek campaign resolution through military means alone. Military action merely provides the time and space to be able to allow other forms of regeneration and development to take place. What is sure is that any such campaign will involve all relevant government departments getting behind it, in terms of resources, effort and structuring ourselves for a protracted campaign. Within this comprehensive approach the Army is quite realistic that it can only contribute to overall success in campaign terms, but equally it knows that there cannot be good governance, the rule of law, development, education and jobs without security.
DARK FUTURES
Against this mammoth task, however, we cannot take our eye off the far future. There is still the potential for so-called “Dark Futures” and we would be foolish to rule out the possibility of some involvement in inter-state conflict at some point in the future. I think if you had been considering matters only 2-3 years ago you would have had a strong case for planning almost exclusively against fighting “amongst the people”. But today, although we can say that we will continue to fight amongst the people, we would be foolish to just look at such new ways of war and then, in a future changed strategic climate, be forced to rediscover the old ways of war. The role of the military is to be prepared for the unexpected and we must continue to work hard towards rebuilding our contingent capability and giving greater depth to our strategic reserves – and this will be expensive.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY
So how are we preparing for the challenges of the future?
First, we must continue to develop our doctrine, education and ethos to produce people who will thrive in being able to look at a problem from first principles. We need to further develop free thinking commanders who can recognise what kind of problems they face and then take original action to deal with them.
We also need to radically rethink the way that we think about our equipment. We need to start from the bottom by looking at equipping the man first and building the system around him. Too often we have been seduced by high technology, sometimes without really understanding what it can deliver or how it can improve our effectiveness. I would like to see us spend more programmed money in getting the very lowest level right – and, I have to say, we have made great improvements here recently. This will need to manifest itself in buying in bulk those capabilities that we now rely on in our medium scale operations. After all, which government is going to send its troops into harm’s way without the best equipment available? At the same time, we cannot uninvent all the innovation of the past 4 years in ISTAR, protection and firepower at the lowest level. These are capabilities that soldiers now understand and expect as the norm – and are essential to conducting complex operations and training for them. So we need to continue investing in this.
Another key requirement is to make far greater investment in our cultural understanding at all levels. After 15 years of engagement in the Balkans, we now have a good deal of Serbo-Croat speakers in the military but the focus has moved on. We need to look to current and future campaigns. Have we identified all those whom we should be cultivating as linguists – do we need to start training people now? How should we educate people in cultural understanding as part of their career progression? Perhaps there is a case for an officer or NCO spending significant periods of time with other government departments. Why not have a captain spending two years with DfiD before returning to a deployment in Afghanistan to work in reconstruction? Why not have a lieutenant who specialises in police mentoring deployed to Afghanistan for a two year period, with proper training and career progression? When you total these ideas up, it is possible that we might need to recruit and develop an entirely different type of officer and soldier for different roles, and perhaps among them we might find the successors to the Soldier Sahibs who worked in the Tribal Areas in a previous generation.
THE NATION
Now, as I have already alluded to, there is also one area that we need to change that is outwith the gift of the Army. I have become increasingly concerned about the growing gulf between the Army and the Nation. I am not talking about the support that we get from Her Majesty’s Government and to a large extent I am not talking about public finances. Rather, I am talking about how the Nation as a whole views the Army.
The people who make up that Army are all volunteers and they fully understand that they join to fight and if necessary to put themselves in harm’s way to get the job done and once again I salute the memory of those who have lost their lives on active service, or have suffered serious injury – we do not ask for sympathy when we are doing what we are paid to do. Now, a great deal has been made of the Military Covenant in recent weeks, mostly in terms of work load, equipment, accommodation and pay, and balance is required here - but the real covenant is with the population at large – the Nation. The covenant says that we do what we do in the Nation’s name that’s the way a democracy works – and so soldiers do not ask why; but they do ask for respect and honour for doing what they have been sent to do – which they do with courage and professionalism.
The men and women who go off to join the Army – or, indeed the other Services are not supermen. You would find it difficult to pick most of them out of a crowd of other teenagers – when they leave the camp gates they very rapidly blend in with their civilian peers. So how are they different and what pushes them to such acts of courage and selflessness? Well, I would put it down to the training that they receive, which is world class, and is underpinned the values and standards that set the Army apart from other organisations. We educate ourselves in our core values of selfless commitment, courage, discipline, integrity, loyalty and respect for others, and seek to live up to that standard, but even that is not enough.
Soldiers want to be understood and they want to be respected for their commitment. When a young soldier has been fighting in Basra or Helmand, he wants to know that the people in their local pub know and understand what he has been doing and why. In America, appreciation for the armed forces is outstanding and, frankly, I would like to be able to mirror some of that here. In the States, many companies offer military discounts for serving soldiers, sports teams give out free tickets, people in the street shake the hand of men in uniform. In Canada the route along which the bodies of servicemen killed in action are brought home has been titled the “Highway of Heroes”. Flip the coin and contrast that to the UK where – despite many public campaigns – we still have people objecting to a home for our wounded soldiers families, we still have a Nation that at time seems immune to homeless and psychologically damaged soldiers. One wonders how many people have given to Service Charities this year? And how many companies have offered discounts to soldiers? Yes, some football teams give tickets to their local Battalions and Regiments? But how many councils have written to their local Battalions to ask when they are coming back from Iraq and whether they can give them a homecoming parade? The answer, I fear, is not high – and I know that the Army is enormously grateful to those who do help.
The retort of some may be that such matters are the responsibility of the public purse – and in part they are. But this is not the British way. For centuries, the private and voluntary sectors have been fundamental in supporting our forces – one need only look to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, or the Erskine Hospitals in Scotland, the Royal British Legion, SSAFA or the Army Benevolent Fund for examples. And a new opportunity inviting “Help for Heroes” will be launched soon. But as our operational commitments have become more intense, so has the need for support from the Nation. We must move from being a society that uses the military as a political and media football – and more towards seeing the military for what it is – the instrument of foreign policy conducted by a democratically elected Government acting in the name of the people.
SUMMARY
So to conclude – and I accept that this has been rather a canter through a very wide subject. What I would like to leave you with is the thought that today’s challenges are the everyday reality for the Army and they are the start point that will drive tomorrow’s Army. Our transformation is starting from where we are now. I am not into setting “a blue skies” agenda or articulating a fanciful end-state. Our future direction is already being shaped by our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan – there is no blank sheet of paper of theoretical ideas, just a practical agenda of what we must do – because failure is not an option in our current campaigns or in the next ones – for the sake of our Nation or our professional reputation. The pace of change within the Army in terms of our thinking, our structures and our equipment has been conducted at an incredible speed. It has brought out a dynamic generation that is now used to change, a generation of soldiers that is combat experienced and one that is dedicated to its duty on behalf of the Nation. And against the uncertain tapestry of today’s security challenges, it is a generation that does not expect to be going back to Barracks anytime soon.
Thank you for listening and I look forward to your questions on those subjects that I have raised today. |
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