All Things to All Men - Blank Slates and the Armed Forces

The Guardian published an article today by Ian Keddie on what the UK armed forces could look like if they had a truly blank slate to renew and refresh themselves (HERE. The article put forward a number of ideas, many of which felt less original and innovative, more restatement of old ideas that have often been considered and discarded for good reasons.

The vision of the piece is built around the notion that a truly revamped British armed forces would look to let go of full spectrum capability and instead choose to become deeply specialised and of more relevance to NATO by losing some capabilities and instead focusing on a few niche areas. In the paper this is turned into a vision of a force which culls heavy armour and the Tornado, but buys more Typhoons, focuses on ASW and still keeps the carrier.

The fundamental problem that Humphrey has with the article is simple – the prescribed solution is neither innovative, nor genuinely specialised and seems to only consider the UK in adding its value to NATO and not whether the armed forces play a role in purely national defence.

From the outset the case is made that the UK armed forces if revamped would look a lot like the US Marine Corps, and comparisons are made to size and equipment totals. This is a common analogy, but one which does not stand up to serious scrutiny. For starters, the US Marine Corps may be a similar size to the UK armed forces, but it represents less than 20% of the US Armed Forces.

More importantly the USMC does not exist in isolation, it is very much part of the United States Navy and is not a stand alone organisation (in the same way that the Royal Marines are part of the Naval Service). Any credible comparison must consider that the USMC relies on the US Navy and other sealift capability to project power – provision of which requires thousands of extra personnel and ships, aircraft and capability to deliver.

The USMC also benefits from access to a joint logistics tail and support derived from the three Services, and does not work in isolation. To suggest that the UK armed forces should model themselves on the USMC is dangerous because the USMC relies on far more than the sum of its parts to be effective. Access to airlift, intelligence, communications ,logistics, airpower and so on – all of this can partly be provided internally, but in reality heavily draws on other services to provide.

To argue that the USMC delivers value for money at a similar cost to the UK defence budget is to completely miss the point that the only way it does this is by relying on a vastly larger defence budget spent elsewhere to assist.

 

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

NATO or beyond?

The article focuses on the assumption that the UK should specialise and thus become of more value to the NATO alliance by providing some form of deeply focused capability as this would improve the UK’s usefulness to NATO. The problem is firstly that it doesn’t suggest what these should be (potentially ASW and some form of air defence).

Were the UK to go down this path again, it would paradoxically significantly weaken NATO capability. Firstly by withdrawing assets that could be declared means other NATO nations need to spend more and do more to fill the gap – memories of the manner in which other allies have repeatedly sent Maritime Patrol Aircraft to cover the Nimrod gap spring to mind here.

It is all well and good saying that the UK will stop doing some activity, but what will this be, and which NATO nations will step up to fill it? Who has this capability and why should they prioritise it to defending the UK and not their own or other NATO nations?

It also misses the point that one of the reasons NATO works so well is because of the clear statement of intent made by members to commit to defending other nations. The UK is valued in NATO as a credible partner because it offers support across the majority of capability areas and theatres – from the newly reimagined ‘Eastern Central Front’ where the presence of UK personnel serves as a deterrent, to troops deploying to Norway to protect the arctic.

To walk away from even some of these commitments sends a signal that the UK does not believe as strongly in NATO as before, and that it places some members above others. This is a slippery slope to go down and would irrevocably weaken, not strengthen, the Alliance.

The argument then swerves rapidly from specialising in deep NATO capabilities to focusing more on investment in global reach. Apparently the RAF should delete its Tornados (which it is in the middle of doing, with the force in the very end of its life now), and focus more on airlift and Typhoons.

Why the RAF would want more Typhoons when it has F35 entering service, and when it already has 232 on order is not clear. More to the point, what would they actually do? A generous assessment of the QRA force commitment is that it supports 2 x UK QRA tasks, 1 x Falkland Islands task and potentially 2 x NATO QRA tasks in Eastern Europe. This is pushing the current force to the limits due to the lack of manpower, which is a far more pressing need to fix than more planes. Adding more kit only makes sense if you have the people to fly, maintain and support them properly.

The problem with investing in airlift in this scenario is the question about why would a UK which has committed to deep specialisation and commitment to NATO even remotely consider committing outside the NATO area for a global reach operation? The messaging to NATO in this scenario would seem to be ‘we can’t be bothered to pay for a proper commitment to the Alliance, so we’ll specialise in ASW and Air Defence and expect you to look after us more, but in the same time we’re going to spend far more money going gallivanting around the world to deliver global reach’.

NATO ASW Exercise

The article calls for a growth in frigates and destroyers, which is to be welcomed, but does not consider that this would take many years to deliver – not just from a hull construction perspective but from a manpower one too. More to the point, why will these ships exist, is it to deliver ASW in an area of high air threat? Or is it to deliver power ashore globally – what is the point of building an LPH replacement (as mooted) if you want to be a local power but don’t want to defend Norway?

This is incredibly inconsistent thinking – calling for more kit is fine, but why is it needed? If the intent is to deliver a credible ASW force, then the best start point is probably the 1981 Defence White Paper which had a vision of a force of about 50 primarily ASW based escorts, without GP capability, supported by helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft. The key point of this paper though was to invest heavily in a force of around 20 SSN’s to deliver a credible capability to counter Soviet submarines and surface ships.

By contrast a globally deployable navy requires a totally different investment pattern, and far more money into RFAs, presence and support to Carrier Groups and not as much investment in the deeply specialised ASW capability that is previously alluded too.  If you want to go down this road then this is actually a good start point to address the capability needs – instead this appears to be a wish list of cool ship types, vague references to politically contentious capability and not really explaining what purpose they serve.

It is hard to understand what benefit now is gained from reintroduction of conventional submarines and reducing nuclear submarines. SSN’s are the key tool for both global power projection and also ASW work. To reduce this force makes little sense for a defence policy which seems linked to delivering a specialised ASW force capable of light weight global deployment.

Introduction of an SSK capability would add time, cost and draw crew assets into the very costly introduction to service of a capability that is fine for coastal work, but not optimal for the sort of blue water work that the author seems to want the UK to deliver.

Reference is also made to the suggestion that CVF should have been CTOL – despite this being far more costly, far less effective in terms of the ability to keep carriers at sea with a credible airwing (primarily due to training constraints) and not really adding much benefit (and also with there only being one CVF in CTOL configuration, not the two that will be there in STOVL form).

Ironically the article suggests that CVF would offer greater flexibility if it were CTOL for interoperability, despite in the history of warfare only one incident of genuine cross decking occurring, for about 3 months in WW2 between the USN and the RN. The QUEEN ELIZABETH will be the first carrier in the world since WW2 to properly cross deck aircraft when the USMC embark soon.

Finally there is the suggestion that the Parachute Regiment and Marines should merge into one force for reasons of efficiency, without considering that to do so would fundamentally reduce global reach and capability (which seems to be the argument in favour of a blank slate). If the Army is gutted as envisaged to 70,000 or less, then this actually damages NATO by reducing forces available to it, but does not provide sufficient forces for UK national tasking or to support the US elsewhere.

Such a combination of proposals would have the result of creating a force which is less capable than now, and which would deliver less forces to support our wider allies, but also be able to contribute less to NATO operations. Why would this help our allies?

The Policy Context

What seems to have been missed here is the reminder that UK defence policy is not conducted purely within NATO. The armed forces exist to deliver national policy objectives too, which are not always in the interest of all NATO members, or even in the area of interest.  The paper also does not consider that the Armed Forces are a tool of national security policy and that any consideration on their structure and role should first ask the simple question ‘what strategic goals does the UK have, and how should it meet them using all the levers of policy delivery at its disposal’.

Instead what seems to have happened is a form of ‘wishlisting’ that looks at capabilities and what is or is not required without asking what it is that we fundamentally want to do with them.

Such a question applied here would look at whether the UK aspires to be a medium sized power focused on delivering a credible commitment to NATO and nothing else beyond a token ‘send a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter’ force, or is it a force capable of delivering both credible deterrence in NATO and in meeting purely national policy goals.

The findings of the paper seem at odds with each other and seems to involve creating a deeply specialised force reliant on NATO for protection that is simultaneously capable of global deployment to conduct operations. Such a force would seem to be like what we possess now, but smaller and less capable.

A genuinely blank slate would not look like this. It would instead, if thinking genuinely fresh starts, go back to first principals of what it is that the UK wishes to do, what the outcomes are and how do the armed forces support in meeting this goal. Only by making clear that everything is on the table for change or reform from a policy perspective does the UK set the conditions for a genuine ‘blank slate’ defence review.