Difficult Questions to Answer...

The latest August ‘silly season’ story has hit the media, in the form of a front page on The Sun (HERE) claiming that Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Defence (SofS) has been asking all manner of odd questions that suggest the UK armed forces should look to use old car ferries as amphibious craft, put guns on tractors and apparently create a medal. This in turn has led to frustrated military personnel to brief out against him, worrying about the impact of his antics.

Being a Secretary of State is not an easy job, and is one that often requires years of experience, usually derived from working your way up through Ministerial ranks to understand how being a Minister works, realising the very real limitations on Ministerial power (and in turn understanding what can be done that is powerful) and making enough mistakes to learn, but not be sacked. You do all this while also remaining a constituency MP and depending on your appetite for further power, forming alliances and networks to progress you ever further forward.

The appointment last November of Williamson came as a surprise, partly because he had no prior Ministerial experience, and yet found himself in charge of one of the most challenging departments in Whitehall – one that sucks up money, causes poor headlines, rarely wins votes (in the same way as health policy wins votes) and while great at saving Governments of the day from crises (self-inflicted or otherwise) is equally great at causing backbench political crises too.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

In post for barely 9 months, and with no prior defence experience to prepare himself for this task, it is perhaps not surprising that he has at times exposed the limits of his understanding. This is not a weakness, for far more dangerous is an individual who pretends to know what he is doing, refuses to ask questions for fear of looking silly, and then causes calamity as a result.

The first lesson that should be drawn is that in asking perfectly reasonable questions, SofS is not doing anything wrong. Its all part of the learning process – while some may feel that being appointed SofS means you automatically gain magical powers of omnipotence, it does not automatically convey immediate understanding of the many deeply detailed areas of work that SofS is responsible for.

Defence is a remarkably complicated business that can take a lifetime to even partially understand. You are expected to make decisions on issues where experts will set out problems that require solutions that are complex, expensive and with wide ranging ramifications. To be in the job for 9 months, even with a first rate civil service and military support team doing all they can to aid his understanding, there will still be natural gaps in knowledge and understanding. This should be a reason for support by the Department, not mockery and leaking to newspapers.

The next issue to consider is that he appears to be mocked for asking questions, without anyone asking the context in which those questions were asked. If in a meeting on equipment capability linked to amphibious shipping, it is natural, particularly if learning about a subject, to ask why you couldn’t use converted merchant ships rather than rely on expensive military shipbuilding. What is perhaps more important is not that these questions were asked, but what his response was on getting the answer – presumably it would be something like ‘thanks very much, that makes perfect sense’ and the issue never gets raised again.

It is worth noting that the issues he is being mocked on are areas where the UK armed forces have a long and proud history of improvisation and innovation. For instance, the worlds first aircraft carrier (HMS ARGUS) was born out of an Italian cruise liner (INFO HERE) that became converted whilst under construction during WW1. Similarly, her successor (RFA ARGUS) was originally an Italian container ship built in 1981 that was taken up from trade during the Falklands war, and has since been heavily converted to become one of the most vital ships in the modern Naval Service.

Likewise the RN has a long history of using ‘STUFT’ (Ships Taken Up From Trade) in a variety of roles that allows commercial vessels to be turned into warships or auxiliaries. In 1982 the RORO Ferry ‘MV Norland’ served as a key platform for the Falklands War – a good reminder that at one time RN planning for Norway focused on using RORO ferries to get 3 CDO Brigade out there in the event of WW3 happening.

  

This use of converted shipping is not new, nor unique to the UK. The US Navy has a converted SOF ‘mother ship’ known as the Cragside, which has been used in a variety of highly discrete operations to deliver SEAL capability ashore (ARTICLE HERE). Given the design is very similar to the UK’s own strategic RORO ferry force, perhaps SofS was wondering about the possibility of a conversion of one to fulfil a similar role for the UK? Finally Canada too has used such ships – such as their newly commissioned vessel ‘ASTERIX’ (HERE), a converted tanker that has entered service to provide essential support to the RCN. In other words, what SofS was asking is not novel, not contentious nor new – he was asking a perfectly sensible question (assuming he asked it of course!)

There was suggestions that he’d also asked about putting a gun on a tractor (something firmly denied). This sounds crazy on first glance, but isn’t actually an unreasonable question to ask. Many light weight artillery systems need to be mobile – there are plenty of systems in the UK that need replacement, and if one way of doing this is to put a heavy gun on a tractor (e.g. tracked or engine device) and deliver mobile firepower cheaply, then why not at least look at it? Its likely such a move has many good reasons why it can’t be done – but we should never be afraid of asking difficult or odd questions, because this may well have the genesis of a wider ‘good idea’ in it. In WW2 the Russians did just this – they took a tracked tractor engine, but a machine gun and light armour on it and used it to some effect in the early war period (information HERE).  

The final area he was attacked for was on using deception methods, such as, allegedly, coca cola trucks containing missiles to avoid detection. Again, easy to mock but worth considering there is more to this than meets the eye. Deception is a vital part of military warfare, and persuading the enemy to focus time and resources to find you, or destroy the wrong target is critical in helping secure victory (as discussed in earlier PSL blog HERE).

In one vein, Russia is looking to hide missiles in plain site, by developing anti-ship missiles that can be hidden in plain site. For instance, a battery of these parked among the Russian funded container facility in the Suez Canal industrial zone would be hard to spot and target and could easily maintain the element of surprise.HERE 

In the 1970s - 80s the US looked at a range of options for the Peacekeeper missile that would prevent this land based ICBM becoming vulnerable to Soviet strikes. So they looked at ideas including hiding the missiles in plain site on the US railway network, and also potentially in large container trucks on the road. (Lots of information HERE). The Russians went one step further and actually deployed trains with ICBMS based on them to make it harder to find and destroy the missile amidst all other trains (HERE). The idea of hiding capability in plain sight is not new (just look at Switzerland - HERE), and was deemed good enough for the US to consider, and Russia to deploy – so what is not unreasonable about asking whether it could be done by the UK too?

Artists impression of ICBM train in the US

The SofS appears to being attacked for trying to adopt the principle of innovation. There is nothing inherently wrong with asking questions that may seem odd or outlandish, but which serve a purpose in trying to see if things can be done differently or better. This is at the heart of the MDP statement that was made in Parliament in July (HERE) that discusses how innovation and doing things differently is central to the future for the MOD.

The irony is that the UK military have often won some of their most complex battles through innovation and thinking differently about a problem, or by having someone brave enough to go ‘why aren’t we doing this?’ in front of others. Ideas like Hobarts Funnies, the Mulberry Harbours Camouflage  Corps in WW1 and the ‘Man Who Never Was’ are all outlandish non traditional ideas that owe a lot to outsiders or returnees thinking differently about how to fix a problem. These ideas today are examples of genius thinking, not something to be mocked. Perhaps a lesson the regular military can draw from this is that there is a great deal of room for people who think differently – so-called ‘disruptors’ who may cause difficulty and chaos, but also who can be a powerful force for change. Rather than mock them, history has shown they should be embraced and engaged with, even if they do have sideburns and don’t know how to march properly.

Part of the problem here is that the military tend to deal in whispers, rumours and gossip. Stories change and blend over time and become so outlandish that they are not remotely true, yet the story teller will insist that its genuine. Humphrey has had very odd conversations with MOD civil servants who did not know he was ‘Humphrey’ and they were insistent that the reason the blog was stopped in 2014 was because he’d been personally fired from the MOD by the then PUS. Given Humphrey has never personally met or briefed any MOD PUS, and that he (then at least) still worked for the MOD, this news came as a bit of a surprise…

The reason this matters is because its entirely possible that this story is a bit of a storm in a teacup. People earnestly saying stuff that they genuinely believe to be true, yet which in fact is so far off the truth as to be ridiculous. Often when you work out what has been allegedly said, what was actually said and the context for saying it, then there is a very significant disparity.

Such a situation may account for the reported medals, which could in fact be as simple as wanting to establish some kind of Defence Secretary Commendation (similar to the Fleet Commander or Commander JFC commendation scheme), and not in fact anything to do with medals at all. Given the suggestion that its taken ‘thousands of hours’ to staff (which given he’s been in post 9 months, would suggest that four or five staff have literally done nothing every waking moment of the working day since his arrival but this issue), then one has to question how totally credible these claims are.

The biggest irony of course is that Gavin Williamson has been one of the most vocal and demanding champions of the military in Whitehall and has gone a long way to push for extra funding for Defence. Some of these reported attempts may not have landed well with colleagues or some in the military, perhaps uncomfortable with being dragged in to what they feel is a political battle to be the next lodger in No10. But given how often over the years military staff bemoan the lack of politicians willing to fight on principle for more defence funding, it seems strange to try and career assassinate someone who is fighting your case vociferously.

The last frustrating point is that these briefs clearly come, at least in part, from serving personnel inside the Department. It is disappointing to see that organisations that pride themselves on their impartiality and values of courage, discipline and integrity have seen fit to break them to make a nakedly political attack on their Minister. People do not have to like the person they work for, but to conduct themselves in a manner so utterly alien to the values and standards that they profess to hold dear is deeply inappropriate conduct, and makes a mockery of all they claim to believe in.