Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Military Power
Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era
Edited by
Andrew Dorman, Mike Smith and
Matthew Uttley
The Changing Face of Military Power
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The Changing Face of
Military Power
Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era
Edited by
Andrew Dorman
Lecturer in Defence Studies
Joint Services Command and Staff College
Mike Smith
Lecturer in War Studies
King’s College, London
and
Matthew Uttley
Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies
Joint Services Command and Staff College
Editorial matter and selection © Andrew Dorman, Mike Smith and
Matthew Uttley 2002
Chapter 1 © Mike Smith and Matthew Uttley 2002
Chapter 7 © Matthew Uttley 2002
Chapter 9 © Andrew Dorman 2002
Chapters 2–6, 8, 10 © Palgrave 2002
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the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2002 by
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The changing face of military power: joint warfare in an expeditionary
era / edited by Andrew Dorman, Mike Smith, and Matthew Uttley.
p. cm. – (Cormorant security studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–333–91892–4
1. Unified operations (Military science) 2. Combined operations (Military
science) 3. Great Britain–Armed Forces. 4. Great Britain–Military policy. I.
Dorman, Andrew M., 1966- II. Smith, M. L. R. (Michael Lawrence Rowan),
1963- III. Uttley, Matthew. IV. Series.
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Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
v
vi Contents
Index 217
List of Tables
vii
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Notes on the Contributors
ix
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List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1
2 The Changing Face of Military Power
conference was notable for being the first of its kind to assess the
trend towards what was known as ‘joint operations’, that is the
‘integration of significant elements of more than one armed service
in order that they function as a single unit’.2 In both conferences,
evolving patterns of military practice were examined against the
backdrop of the changed international setting that was increasingly
witnessing the deployment of armed forces in ‘out of area’ opera-
tions in peacekeeping and humanitarian roles.
It might seem short-sighted to admit, but the stimulus for these
conferences was the fact that six years after the end of the Cold War
understanding of the manifold changes and increased complexity of
the new multipolar world was still rudimentary. Analysts were, of
course, aware that a ‘radical change in the global security system’3
had been ushered in which was challenging the familiar parameters
of bipolarity and introducing us to the ‘New World Disorder’.
However, beyond the feeling that the ‘ground was shifting beneath
our feet’ there was little comprehension of where all this was leading.
The truth was that the 45-year Cold War had made planning
assumptions, to a remarkable degree, extraordinarily stable because
the principal deterrent function of Western armed forces was,
according to Admiral Paul D. Miller, ‘well-defined and understood’.4
International relations and strategic scholars were lulled by this sta-
bility, falling into line as supporting counsellors to the established
defence policy orthodoxy, seeing their role essentially to analyse and
nuance the rather narrow processes of deterrence thinking, rather
than to challenge official thinking or to anticipate change.
Come the end of the Cold War, scholars, as ever behind the times,
were caught out by the multiple disruptions that afflicted the world
order. These disruptions meant there was little time to reflect sys-
tematically on the nature and implications of the post-Cold War
era. The primary emphasis in defence circles was to contend with
the practical and operational imperatives brought about by the
sudden shift to a complex, multipolar environment that was in
some ways more unstable than the nuclear stand-off between the
superpower blocs during the Cold War. Concurrent with the disinte-
gration of the East European Communist bloc, the international
community had to contend with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990
and the subsequent coalition war in the Gulf in 1991. This was fol-
lowed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the violent breakup
Mike Smith and Matthew Uttley 3
effect. The post-colonial and post-Cold War eras had resulted in the
creation of many new states, which seemingly accentuated the
importance of sovereignty. Yet the new dispensation also gave rise
to an apparent willingness to intervene militarily in the internal
affairs of states, overriding traditional ideas of sovereign sanctity.
This was most graphically demonstrated by the NATO intervention
in the states of former Yugoslavia, particularly the province of
Kosovo. Was this, as some allege, indicative of neo-imperialism in a
post-colonial era? An additional twist was provided by the financial
stringency and cost-cutting in defence establishments in the expec-
tation of a ‘peace dividend’ at a time when the military forces of the
developed world had never been busier.
The early 1990s was therefore a time of uncertainty about what
armed services and military power were for.10 The post-Cold War era
had overturned many notions of traditional high intensity
warfighting upon which the defence policies in most developed
states had been predicated. Initially, scholars of strategy and inter-
national affairs did not read this situation well. Having failed to
predict the end of the Cold War, they were poorly placed to offer
any guidance for the post-Cold War world. Not that this inhibited
them from offering their misdiagnoses. Before 1989 leading scholars
had convinced themselves that it was the United States, not the
Soviet Union, that was in decline and suffering from ‘imperial over-
stretch’.11 As Wohlforth remarked: ‘The debate focused like a laser
beam on US decline, even when the Soviet Union was entering its
final stages of collapse.’12 Even after the dramatically swift collapse
of the East European Communist bloc, analysts were often reluctant
to let go of such certainties or else engaged in idle speculation, little
of which came to pass. Some said the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) had outlived its usefulness and would be
swept away. Others predicted a resurgence in German militarism.
Yet others clung to their belief in American declinism, arguing that
Japan, East Asia generally, and the putative European Union would
eclipse the United States in economic terms. Some were even moved
to warn that the US would find it heavy going using military power
against formidable opponents, like Iraq, warning before Operation
Desert Storm that the war would not be a ‘three day turkey shoot’.13
We now know, of course, that Japan plunged into a decade-long
recession, that the East Asian miracle was really a mirage, that
Mike Smith and Matthew Uttley 5
NATO not only hung together but outshone the hopelessly ineffec-
tive European Union (EU) in dealing with the violent convulsions in
south-eastern Europe and that the United States not only won a
turkey shoot in the deserts of Arabia but went on further to
entrench its leading position as the global economic and technolog-
ical hegemon. Being so detached from reality, and thereby having
so clearly got it wrong, some scholars retreated entirely from the
empirical scene into so-called ‘international theory’, usually of a
postmodern and rational choice provenance, the effect of which
has, in the words of James Kurth, made the study of international
relations ‘even more uninteresting and irrelevant’.14
Such analytical confusion was symptomatic of the early years of
the New World Order. Even books that did try to evaluate the appli-
cation of military power in a multipolar world, while cognisant of
the changing strategic landscape, often had a limited grasp of the
new, and old, kinds of military challenges that were presenting
themselves.15 Even though armed forces were being deployed all
over the globe in expeditionary roles, from the Persian Gulf and
central Africa to the Balkans it still took a relatively long time for
analysts to comprehend fully the implications. It was only towards
the mid and later 1990s that commentators began to discern the
confluence of factors, both tangible and intangible, that necessi-
tated the rethinking of the ways in which military power was both
applied and constrained.16 Up until this time, it was particularly
noticeable that little systematic attention had been paid to the
impact of these changes on the armed services of developed states,
especially in terms of the moves towards expeditionary warfare in
an era of budgetary constraints and greater inter-service collabora-
tion. What thought was given to these matters was largely done ‘in
house’ within the defence establishments themselves.17
It was a growing awareness of this gap in analytical attention that
provided the initial stimulus for both conferences in 1997. The con-
clusions at that time were inevitably tentative: that while much had
changed at the superficial level, the post-Cold War era had not pro-
pelled military thinking into innovative, ground breaking territory
but had often led to a shift in really quite traditional notions of mil-
itary activity. The task for the analyst was to monitor and investigate
the trend.18 Thus, five years on, there is a clear imperative to review
some of the key themes visited in 1997: the role of military power in
6 The Changing Face of Military Power
Conclusion
Notes
1. See J. Garnett, ‘The Role of the Military Power’, in J. Baylis, K. Booth, J.
Garnett and P. Williams, Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Policies
(New York: Holmes and Maier, 1987), pp. 74–6.
2. A. Dorman, M.L. Smith and M.R.H. Uttley, ‘Jointery and Combined
Operations in an Expeditionary Era: Defining the Issues’, Defense
Analysis Special Edition: Jointery and Combined Operations in an
Expeditionary Era, vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1998), p. 5.
3. G. Till, ‘Maritime Strategy and the Twenty-First Century’, Journal of
Strategic Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (March 1994), p. 166.
4. Admiral P.D. Miller, ‘Both Swords and Ploughshares: Military Roles in
the 1990s’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (April 1993), p. 13.
5. See J. Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 58.
6. D.M. Jones and M. Smith, ‘Identity Politics in Southeast Asia’, Jane’s
Intelligence Review, vo1. 12, no. 11 (November 2000), pp. 44–5.
7. For a discussion see J.R. Fitzsimonds and J.M. van Tol, ‘Revolution in
Military Affairs’, Joint Forces Quarterly (JFQ) (Spring 1994), pp. 24–31;
W.A. Owens, ‘JROC: Harnessing the Revolution in Military Affairs’, JFQ
(Summer 1994), pp. 55–7.
Mike Smith and Matthew Uttley 13
24. United Kingdom Doctrine for Joint and Combined Operations, Joint
Warfare Publication 0–10, 3rd Study Draft, 1997, p. 1-1.
25. The term ‘jointery’ is employed in the United Kingdom, whereas ‘joint-
ness’ is the term adopted in the United States. Both share the same
meaning and they are used interchangeably in this volume.
26. See, for example, R. Cobbold, ‘A Joint Maritime-based Expeditionary
Capability’, RUSI Journal (August 1997), pp. 23–30.
27. See, for example, R. Ross, ‘The Role of Amphibious Forces in a
Changing World’, RUSI Journal (April 1996), pp. 21–3.
28. Breemer, op. cit., p. 46.
29. See P. Hine, ‘Developments in Measures to Enhance Joint Operations’,
RUSI Journal (October 1996), pp. 28–30.
30. J. Slater, ‘A Fleet for the 90s’, RUSI Journal (February 1993), p. 8.
2
The Dimensions of Asymmetric
Warfare
Wyn Q. Bowen
The term ‘asymmetric warfare’ has been used with increasing regu-
larity in recent years in reference to the emerging strategic environ-
ment. Specifically, it has been used to analyse and describe how
future conflicts involving Western countries will be characterized by
significant dissimilarities between them and potential opponents.
The term has been used primarily in relation to the growing techno-
logical gap in conventional military capabilities between Western
countries – with the United States occupying a pre-eminent position
– and non-Western countries. This qualitative gap was illustrated
initially by the comprehensive military defeat of Iraq by the
American-led UN Coalition in 1991. More recently, it was demon-
strated by the less convincing but ultimately successful coercion of
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) by NATO in 1999.
Most work on asymmetry to date has focused on the ‘means’
through which potential adversaries might attempt to circumvent
Western conventional superiority in future conflicts. The term
‘asymmetric strategies’ has often been used to label approaches that
such opponents might employ to avoid direct military confronta-
tion and to focus instead on exploiting key political and military
vulnerabilities, such as the perceived Western sensitivity to casual-
ties and collateral damage. Examples of approaches cited through-
out the literature on asymmetry include: the threat or use of
nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons; threats or acts of
terrorism; the use of propaganda and disinformation; and informa-
tion attacks against military and civilian computer systems and
networks.
15
16 The Changing Face of Military Power
Since the end of the Cold War, external military threats to Western
countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States
Wyn Q. Bowen 17
one side’s vital interests are jeopardized that side is more likely to be
willing to resort to drastic measures to protect them. This is particu-
larly the case if a regime perceives it has no other option or nothing
left to lose. From a Western perspective, a lack of clearly identifiable
interests can be particularly problematical when Western states
attempt to coordinate their military responses under UN, NATO or
other multilateral auspices. This is because constituent members will
need to reconcile potentially divergent interests in order to develop
and sustain the political cohesion and unity of purpose necessary
for effective military action. When things go wrong militarily, or
political objectives are not met as quickly as initially hoped, such a
divergence can prove highly divisive in terms of alliance or coalition
politics.
NATO’s war against the FRY to stop Serb ethnic cleansing of
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo is an excellent example of a conflict
characterized by a significant imbalance of interests at stake
between the opponents. In the summer of 1998, the Serbian regime
under Slobodan Milosevic initiated a violent counter-insurgency
campaign in the Serbian province of Kosovo to end increasing
ethnic Albanian resistance to Serb rule mounted by the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA). This campaign prompted a humanitarian
crisis with many ethnic Albanians forced to flee their villages and
towns.3 The Milosevic regime had three core objectives in resorting
to force in Kosovo. First, increasing Albanian secessionism in the
province posed a challenge to the territorial integrity of the Serbian-
dominated FRY. Second, Albanian resistance exacerbated Serb
nationalism vis-à-vis Kosovo because several sites of historic and
religious significance to Serbian national identity are located in the
province. Third, Milosevic could not risk losing Kosovo for fear of
undermining his ‘domestic national credentials’ which were ‘often
doubted’ among his nationalist supporters. Consequently, if
Milosevic lost Kosovo his political survival would have been jeopar-
dized. When diplomatic attempts to resolve the crisis failed follow-
ing Belgrade’s rejection of the Rambouillet Accords in March 1999,
and NATO action looked increasingly imminent, these objectives
took on greater importance.4 Indeed, it has been argued that the
Milosevic regime rejected Rambouillet because of a perception that
any political agreement would have threatened the future freedom
of Serbia because of the potential for NATO supporting future seces-
sionist activity by other ethnic minorities.5 The stakes involved for
Wyn Q. Bowen 19
are Greece and Italy, both of which were geographically close to the
conflict and governed by administrations from the traditional left of
the political spectrum. In Italy, these factors interacted to under-
mine popular and political support for Allied Force. During the air
campaign the Italian Communist Party threatened to withdraw
from Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema’s centre-left coalition, and to
destabilize the Italian political system, if the bombing did not
stop.10 Moreover, D’Alema himself called for air strikes to be brief
and for a quick resumption of political negotiations. Traditional
pro-Serb feelings in Greece meant the Greek government refused to
make aircraft available or to send troops to the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).11 Indeed, poll ratings of 98 per
cent against air strikes were recorded in Greece during the conflict.12
Elsewhere within NATO, Germany’s Social Democrat-led coalition
government grew increasingly nervous about public opinion as the
campaign proceeded, because of collateral damage concerns but also
because the Luftwaffe’s participation in Allied Force marked the
country’s first offensive military action since the Second World
War.13 In contrast, the British and American governments appeared
relatively enthusiastic although both had to cope with domestic
opposition.
Differences in the level of popular and political support between
the NATO member states were exacerbated by the fact that humani-
tarian rather than vital interests were at stake. This was a significant
issue because the ultimate success of Allied Force was largely depen-
dent on sustaining the political cohesion and unity of purpose of
the 19 countries and other coalition members. Several months after
Allied Force, US Secretary of Defense William Cohen and Chairman
of the JCS Henry Shelton told the Senate Armed Services Committee
that, ‘without the direct support of our NATO allies and key coali-
tion partners, the campaign would not have been possible’.14
Indeed, although the United States provided the majority of opera-
tional capabilities, Allied Force was dependent on the airfields, mili-
tary bases, airspace and political and diplomatic support of other
key coalition members.15 This was particularly true for those coun-
tries in close proximity to the theatre of operations including
Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and the FYROM.16
Belgrade differed markedly from its NATO adversaries in political
terms. The pseudo-democratic governments of Serbia and the FRY
Wyn Q. Bowen 23
The final area where critical differences will exist between Western
countries and future non-Western opponents is conventional mili-
tary strength and capability. Western conventional forces currently
enjoy a vast qualitative superiority in areas such as precision-strike
munitions, surveillance, targeting, reconnaissance, intelligence and
command, control, communications and computers. The defeat of
Iraq’s armed forces in 1991 by the far more technologically-
advanced Coalition forces led by the United States is regularly cited
by military commentators as having demonstrated the gap between
the conventional capabilities of the developed and developing
24 The Changing Face of Military Power
Levels of conflict
Kosovo 1999
By making it clear at the outset that the use of ground forces was
out of the question, NATO effectively told Belgrade the Alliance did
not have the stomach for a prolonged fight or for taking significant
casualties.27 According to Klaus Naumann, NATO failed ‘to preserve
uncertainty in Belgrade’s mind regarding the consequences it might
face in the case of his [Milosevic] rejection of peaceful solutions’.
Naumann added that ‘some NATO nations began to rule out simul-
taneously options such as the use of ground forces and did so,
without any need, in public’, thus allowing Milosevic ‘to calculate
his risk and to speculate that there might be a chance for him to
ride the threat out and to hope that NATO would either be unable
to act at all or that the cohesion of the Alliance would melt away
under the public impression of punishing air strikes’.28
The air campaign was designed to ramp up pressure gradually on
Belgrade to end the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians and to
withdraw Serb forces from the province. It was evident that NATO
hoped Milosevic would return to the negotiating table after a few
days of minimal air strikes. However, the initial few days of the cam-
paign further solidified Belgrade’s resolve because it demonstrated
that the Alliance lacked the stomach for anything more than
limited operations. What followed was a 78-day air campaign that
progressed through several phases as Milosevic refused to give in as
quickly as at first hoped. The campaign focused initially on a limited
list of fixed targets associated with the air defence system through-
out the FRY. Once it was evident that Milosevic had not been
coerced and ethnic cleansing was continuing,29 NATO expanded the
campaign to include security forces infrastructure, the military in
Kosovo and reinforcement forces (for example, headquarters,
telecommunication installations, matériel and ammunition depots,
military barracks, oil terminals).30 Eventually, once it became appar-
ent that Belgrade had stepped up its campaign of ethnic cleansing,
the air campaign was expanded to include simultaneous attacks on a
broad range of targets of military significance throughout the entire
FRY, including individual tanks and positions in Kosovo, as well as
strategic civilian targets in Serbia itself (including bridges, factories,
party headquarters, TV transmitters, power stations).31 Since the end
of the conflict numerous analysts have argued that NATO should
have gone after strategic targets much earlier and with greater force.
According to Klaus Naumann, phase two should have focused ‘more
Wyn Q. Bowen 29
and earlier on those targets which hurt a ruler such as Milosevic and
which constitute the pillars on which his power rests’.32 However, in
political terms the expansion of the campaign to hit strategic targets
in Serbia was a highly controversial and divisive issue within the
Alliance. According to William Cohen and Henry Shelton, ‘for
selected categories of targets – for example, targets in downtown
Belgrade or targets likely to involve high collateral damage – NATO
reserved the approval for higher political authorities’.33 After the
conflict, General Michael Short, the NATO Joint Force Air
Component Commander, said the French government played the
red card so often on target choices that these restrictions made air
operations predictable and thus dangerous.
The political imperative of avoiding friendly casualties forced
NATO military planners to limit tactics to a medium-level bombing
campaign to protect pilots from Serbian air defences. The rationale
was to minimize the risk of losing Allied aircraft and air-crew
because of a perception that downed aircraft would provide the
Serbs with a propaganda victory and potentially turn Alliance public
opinion against NATO involvement.34 Consequently, the majority
of NATO aircraft operated above 15 000 feet for protection, espe-
cially against the most unpredictable threats posed by shoulder-
launched MANPADs (man portable air defence systems) and AAA
(anti-aircraft artillery).35 According to Michael Short, this ceiling
offered NATO’s ‘best opportunity to survive’ in association with
night attack and the use of precision-guided munitions.36 Approval
for weapons release and forward air control excursions below 15 000
feet was subsequently granted, however, after NATO aircraft hit a
convoy of civilians, generating the political need to avoid similar
events occurring again. This enabled NATO pilots to fly much lower
to see if targets were ‘tanks, tractors or buses’ and then return to a
safer altitude.37 The style of the air campaign ensured that only two
allied aircraft were lost to air defences in nearly 10 000 bombing
missions. As the air defence threat degraded, operating restrictions
on NATO aircraft were eased and some operated down to 6000
feet.38 However, the general reluctance to fly at low levels was not
conducive to engaging mobile tactical targets including the vehicles
and military personnel perpetuating the humanitarian conflict on
the ground. Moreover, Michael Short said that by seeking to reduce
civilian casualties, NATO placed its aircrews in danger. For example,
30 The Changing Face of Military Power
What the Serbs didn’t do: capability gaps and threshold perception
Ultimately, of course, the Alliance prevailed over Belgrade and there
has been much debate since regarding the key factors that brought
Milosevic to accept NATO’s ceasefire terms.76 Given NATO’s victory,
was there anything the Serbs could have done to avert defeat? This
question is potentially significant in terms of identifying capability
gaps and potential thresholds that Belgrade chose not to cross in its
counter-response.
An oft-cited asymmetric response is that of terrorism against civil-
ian and/or military targets. Belgrade did not consider, or chose not
to resort, to terrorist activity against NATO interests outside the
Kosovo theatre of operations. However, the threat of terrorism was
considered to be very real by several NATO governments. The
Italian government was concerned about possible revenge attacks
by Serb missiles or aircraft, or even acts of sabotage or terrorism,
because the majority of NATO warplanes were operating from
Italian bases.77 Similar concerns about terrorist acts were also
present in France. In late March 1999, media reports drew attention
to the potential vulnerability of Royal Air Force (RAF) personnel to
terrorist attacks in and around the NATO airbase at Gioia del Colle,
Italy. In response to these stories, an RAF spokesman was reported
as saying that if there had not been a terrorist threat before, there
‘bloody was one now’.78 Although terrorism outside Kosovo was not
a feature of the conflict in 1999, this does not mean future oppo-
nents will not resort to this approach. Indeed, future underdogs
might perceive the absence of this technique as a key failing of the
Serbian counter-campaign. This omission could have been the
result of the Serbian leadership’s perception that resorting to such
36 The Changing Face of Military Power
report claimed there was ‘a risk that Milosevic might order a hit-
and-run raid across the border by specialist troops to exploit opposi-
tion in Hungary to the bombing campaign and try to shatter NATO
unity’. One potential option singled out was ‘a raid on the nuclear
power station at Pecs in southern Hungary’.80 There were also
reported to be concerns in Hungary that Belgrade might conscript
men from the 300 000 ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina, Serbia, as a
reprisal for Hungary’s role in Allied Force including the provision of
bases and air space to NATO aircraft.81 However, any direct attack
on this new NATO member would have constituted an Article 5
aggression requiring all other member states to come to Hungary’s
assistance. If Belgrade did indeed contemplate this option, the
Article 5 issue could have been a sufficient deterrent.
Allied Force also drew attention to Serbia’s lack of a long-range
strike capability. It has been speculated that if Serbia possessed
‘long-range power projection’ capabilities such as ballistic or cruise
missiles this could have helped to deter NATO involvement or to
impose operational constraints on the Alliance. Such capabilities,
potentially married with chemical or biological weapons, could
have played on Western concerns about avoiding casualties. One
analysis asked the question: ‘if Serbia had possessed even the com-
paratively crude Scuds used by Iraq during the Gulf War, would
American and allied planes have operated from bases so conve-
niently close to the Yugoslav border?’82 Moreover, what if Serbia had
possessed the capability to hit Rome, Paris or London? Would
France, Italy and the UK have participated? Would US planes have
operated from bases so close to the border?83 These are hypothetical
questions in the case of the Kosovo conflict. However, they draw
attention to the strategic and operational leverage such capabilities
can potentially afford Western adversaries in future asymmetric
conflicts.
During Allied Force NATO expected the Serbs to launch informa-
tion attacks against military and civilian targets. Prior to the
conflict, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters
reportedly warned about the potential threat that Serbian computer
hackers posed to the UK’s critical information infrastructure in retal-
iation to the air campaign.84 According to a report in the Sunday
Times, the warnings took on greater urgency once Allied Force com-
menced. There was reported to be a particular concern about those
38 The Changing Face of Military Power
Conclusion
Notes
1. It should be noted that an open-source analysis of this type can in no
way be exhaustive and therefore will be open to debate.
2. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2020, Director for
Strategic Plans and Policy, J5, Strategy Division (Washington, DC:
USGPO, June 2000), p. 8.
3. B.R. Posen, ‘The War over Kosovo: Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy’,
International Security, vol. 24, no. 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 42–4.
4. Ibid., pp. 42–9.
5. Ibid., p. 48.
6. See: combined prepared statement of W. Clark, J. Ellis and M. Short of
the United States European Command before the Armed Services
Committee of the United States Senate, 21 October 1999, pp. 2–3; and
prepared statement of the Honourable W.S. Cohen to the Armed
Services Committee of the United States Senate, Hearing on Operations
in Kosovo, 20 July 1999, p. 3.
7. Statement of K. Naumann, German Army, former Chairman NATO
Military Committee, to the Senate Armed Services Committee,
3 November 1999, p. 2.
40 The Changing Face of Military Power
8. Ibid.
9. C.J. Dunlap, ‘Preliminary Observations: Asymmetrical Warfare and the
Western Mindset’, in Lloyd J. Matthews (ed.), Challenging the United
States Symmetrically and Asymmetrically: Can America be Defeated?
(Carlisle, PA: US Strategic Studies Institute, 1998), p. 2.
10. C. Bremner, ‘Waiting Game Puts Resolve to Test’, The Times, 1 April 1999.
11. M. Binyon, ‘How NATO Members Are Facing the Flak’, The Times,
27 March 1999.
12. A. Campbell, ‘Communications Lessons for NATO, the Military and
Media’, RUSI Journal, 144/4 (August 1999), pp. 31–6.
13. ‘Spinning for Victory’, Daily Telegraph, 16 October 1999.
14. Joint Statement of US Secretary of Defense W.S. Cohen and JCS
Chairman General H.H. Shelton to a hearing on the Kosovo After-
Action Review, Senate Armed Services Committee, US States Congress,
14 October 1999, p. 3.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid. See also Clark, Ellis and Short, op. cit., p. 4.
17. See US Department of State, ‘Background Notes: Serbia and
Montenegro’, Bureau of European Affairs, August 1999 (http://www.
state.gov/www/background_notes/serbia_9908_bgn.html); Naumann,
p. 4; and ‘Serbia and Montenegro’, US Central Intelligence Agency
(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sr.html).
18. W.S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense, ‘Report of the Quadrennial Defense
Review’, May 1997 (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr).
19. ‘Security Priorities in a Changing World’, Strategic Defence Review,
Ministry of Defence, London, July 1998, Chapter 2, para 34.
20. Joint Vision 2020, p . 6.
21. P.M. Hughes, Director US Defense Intelligence Agency, statement to the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 28 January 1998, ‘Global
Threats and Challenges: the Decade Ahead’.
22. Grand Strategy involves the application of a country’s, or an alliance’s,
entire resources in line with policy objectives. It involves bringing to
bear all elements of national or alliance power – economic, political,
diplomatic and military. See for example P. Paret, ‘Introduction’, in P.
Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 3. Military Strategy
involves the application of military resources to achieve Grand Strategic
objectives. Aims have to be identified and selected and then exposed to
critical examination of feasibility and likely enemy strategy and
reactions. K. Macksey and W. Wodehouse, The Penguin Encyclopaedia of
Modern Warfare (London: Viking, 1991), pp. 312–13.
23. See Clark, Ellis and Short, op. cit., p. 3; Cohen and Shelton, op. cit.,
p. 1; Statement of W.S. Cohen, Hearing on US Policy towards FRY,
House Armed Services Committee, 15 April 1999 (http://www.
house.gov/hasc/testimony).
Wyn Q. Bowen 41
In October 2000, the USS Cole, an 8600 ton Arleigh Burke class
destroyer was en route to join the Fifth Fleet for a deployment in
the Persian Gulf. As one of the world’s most modern warships, it
was equipped with a range of land-attack systems including
Tomahawk cruise missiles. In the event of a further crisis with Iraq
during its period of deployment, the Cole would have been one of
the warships likely to fire its weapons.
In the event, on 12 October the Cole was subject to a paramilitary
attack while at anchor in Aden harbour, when a small inflatable
boat packed with explosives came alongside and its two-man crew
detonated the charges, killing themselves and 17 sailors and injur-
ing 39 others. The damage to the ship was massive, with a 40-foot
by 20-foot hole in the side, and decks and bulkheads compressed
out from the point of explosion. By early January, the Cole had been
returned to the shipyard where it was built in Mississippi for repairs
estimated to cost $350 million.
The attack on the Cole was widely seen as a terrorist assault on the
United States, part of a general anti-American sentiment throughout
the Middle East. This may have been the case, but it is probably
more correctly seen as a direct military response to US intervention
in the Persian Gulf. As such, it is part of a line of attacks over recent
years, all of them either directly or indirectly linked to US action in
the region.
45
46 The Changing Face of Military Power
Structuring military forces for the uncertain decades ahead has been
a core concern for all four branches of the US military. The United
States Air Force (USAF) was relatively quick to adapt to the post-
Cold War era. While it lost about 40 per cent of its personnel during
the 1990s through the contraction of the service, it was able to
withdraw substantial forces from Europe and to reconfigure its
forces for global reach, utilizing a far smaller number of overseas
bases, mainly in secure locations such as Guam, Diego Garcia and
Britain.
The USAF has set out to develop two main forms of force pro-
jection to enable it to participate in overseas interventions in
pursuit of US interests. The first is to maintain a capability to
undertake air strikes anywhere in the world, either from the con-
tinental United States or with limited dependence on overseas
facilities. The first air raid of the 1991 Gulf War was an
air-launched cruise missile strike from B-52 strategic bombers
flying non-stop from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana 4 and
B-2 air raids on Serbia in 1999 were also staged direct from the
United States.
The second tactic is to reorganize the USAF into a number of Air
Expeditionary Wings, each comprising about 15 000 people with
up to 200 aircraft including strike aircraft, interceptors, tankers,
transports, reconnaissance and electronic counter-measures air-
craft. Two air expeditionary wings are to be on deployment readi-
ness at any one time, and are able to move rapidly to secure
overseas bases.5 Global reach, by either of these two main means,
is aided by an increasing reliance on stand-off weapons such as
conventionally-armed cruise missiles, and by the use of precision-
guided weapons delivered by stealthy aircraft such as the F-117A,
B-2 and, in the future, the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter.
50 The Changing Face of Military Power
The US Army faced the most substantial cuts in the 1990s. It has
faced up to a more volatile security dimension by placing more
emphasis on rapid deployment and the deployment of longer-range
mobile artillery systems such as the Army Tactical Missile System
(ATACMS). The army also forms a major part of the US Special
Operations Command (USSOCOM) and an indication of training
priorities within the US military is the increase in training available
to friendly regimes, especially in Latin America.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, US forces were involved in many
internal conflicts, most commonly aiding conservative governments
fighting left-wing rebels. Many of the conflicts were part of the Cold
War confrontation, opposing rebels aided on occasions from Cuba
and Eastern Europe, and many of the activities, including those of
the School of the Americas, were seen as controversial, not least
because of human rights abuses.
With the Cold War more than ten years distant, the training of
foreign armies, especially that involving US special operations
forces, has expanded. Much of it appears at first sight to be directed
at anti-narcotics action, but it all too commonly involves counter-
insurgency training in support of local elites. In 1998, some 2700
special operations troops were involved with training the armed
forces of every one of the 19 Latin American states and nine
Caribbean states, including armies in Guatemala, Colombia and
Suriname that have been widely criticized for human rights abuses.8
tate their forces to the south rather than the east, not least because of
political instability and migratory pressures from North Africa.
Even so, although the European members of NATO are collec-
tively larger than the United States, the capacity of these countries
to project military force is far smaller, not just individually, but even
collectively. They did not have the capability to intervene in Kosovo
without US involvement, and SFOR/IFOR/KFOR (NATO’s stabiliza-
tion force, implementation force and peace-enforcement force)
commitments have stretched the resources of several states. There is
a recognition of the need for closer Western European cooperation
and the establishment of collaborative force projection capabilities,
but there are political differences behind such developments.
The view from Washington is that, in the case of such collabora-
tive forces, ‘burden sharing’ is all that would be expected from
European allies, whereas in some European capitals, notably Paris,
the opinion is that cooperative European military forces could do
much more than this, providing Europe with a much-needed focus
of strategic influence. According to this view, Europe should not
only develop a defence identity that counterbalances US power and
influence within Europe, but it should also have some capability to
operate ‘out-of-area’, with a degree of military power that enables it
to curtail or at least limit US control of major military operations.
This is not a view shared by Washington and the underlying
tension is likely to persist well into the twenty-first century.
rich. The main engine of this inequality has been the post-colonial
trading system and its endemic imbalances, expressed most persis-
tently in the steadily deteriorating terms of trade borne by most ex-
colonial states in the 1950s and 1960s, but continuing through to
the 1990s with the brief exception of the commodities boom of the
early 1970s. More recently this situation has been exacerbated by
the debt crisis which remains a huge hindrance to the development
potential of most Southern states.
As well as endemic deep poverty, there is a steadily widening gap
between a rich minority of the world’s population, located primar-
ily, but not solely, in North America, Western Europe and Japan,
and most of the rest. One of the crudest measures is that the 300 or
so dollar billionaires in the world are collectively as wealthy as the
poorest 2.4 billion people. In 1960, the richest 20 per cent of the
world’s people had 70 per cent of the income; by 1991 their share
had risen to 85 per cent while the share of the poorest 20 per cent
had declined from 2.3 per cent to 1.7 per cent. It is also notable that
the rich/poor gap widened at a faster rate in the 1980s as free
market liberalization took hold. There are indications that there was
a further widening in the 1990s, a consequence of the severe eco-
nomic problems affecting first Southeast Asia and then South Asia,
Africa and Latin America.
This widening rich–poor divide contrasts markedly with an
implicit assumption of most current economic thinking that eco-
nomic growth is part of the worldwide phenomenon of globaliza-
tion that is delivering economic growth for all. This is not so. As
Cavanagh has remarked:
All the indications are that the increasing rich–poor divide will con-
tinue over the next 30 years and may even accelerate, with the
development of a trans-state global elite surging ahead of the rest.
This elite, of rather more than one billion people, a sixth of the
world’s population, lives mainly in the countries of the North
Atlantic community, Australia and parts of East Asia.
56 The Changing Face of Military Power
sessed rising out of the shanty towns to loot the shopping malls of
the rich. Mexico, Algeria, Peru and Indonesia are among the increas-
ing number of examples of anti-elite action and insurgencies that
look likely, on present trends, to spread to many other countries –
not so much a clash of civilizations, more an age of insurgencies.
dencies are often most pronounced in the most vulnerable and dis-
empowered populations within the recipient regions, with extremist
politicians ready to play on fears of unemployment, a trend appar-
ent in a number of European countries.
Responding to intervention
two relevant points to make. The first is that the Iraqi experience
with biological and chemical weapon deployments is of far greater
interest and significance than was generally recognized at the time
of the Gulf War. Following strong Western responses to the inva-
sion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq faced the prospect of large-scale inter-
vention and initiated a crash programme to weaponize its biological
warfare systems. By January 1991 it had deployed numerous missiles
and spray bombs to four sites in Iraq, pre-delegating launch author-
ity to regional commanders in the event of the destruction of
Baghdad. The broad details of this strategy were known to US intelli-
gence, and formed an important part of the Iraqi strategy of regime
survival which was so central to its war aims.15
The second point is that developments in weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) tend to go together with ballistic missile deliv-
ery systems – and, in the future, cruise missile systems as well. This,
in turn, is leading to an intense interest in theatre missile defence
(TMD) in countries such as Israel and the United States, resulting in
the need for states that are potentially subject to intervention to
invest in methods to counter TMD systems.
Missile options
damage and relatively few casualties. If the missiles had been fitted
with efficient sub-munitions warheads, the results might have been
much more devastating, but is also clear that the use of the missiles by
Iraq, crude though they were, did have a substantial political effect.
Within Israel, the 1991 attacks represented the first occasion for
some decades in which major Israeli cities had come under any kind
of attack from external forces. Israeli society already had some con-
siderable concerns about paramilitary groups operating within its
borders, but the impact of any external power being able to attack
Israeli cities caused huge concern. Similarly, missile attacks on civil
targets in Saudi Arabia had political effects, and coalition responses
included the emergency deployment of Patriot anti-missile systems
and the diversion of a large proportion of coalition air power in the
so-called ‘Scud-hunts’.
Although the Iraqi missiles were crude and inaccurate, they had a
military as well as a political impact. The most substantial US losses
in the entire Gulf War were incurred towards the end of the war, on
25 February 1991, when a missile hit a storage and billeting depot in
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 people. Another Scud incident, a
few days earlier and not made public at the time, came close to
being a much greater disaster for US forces. On 16 February, a
missile narrowly missed a large pier complex in the Saudi port of Al
Jubayl. The missile landed in the sea some 300 yards from the US
Navy’s aviation support ship Wright and close to the large amphibi-
ous warship Tarawa, both of which were moored alongside the pier
complex which included a large ammunition storage dump and a
petrol tanker parking area.16
A substantial effect of the Gulf War, especially for Israel and the
United States, has been intensive research, development and
deployment of a range of theatre missile defences. For Israel this has
focused on the Israeli-American Arrow anti-missile system and for
the United States there has been the PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced
Capability) system, the Theatre High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) system and a number of other initiatives. All are designed
to guard against Scud upgrades and related missiles, but they are
made more difficult by the need to guard against warheads carrying
sub-munitions, especially those capable of dispersing these muni-
tions early in the flight path of the missile.
Boost-phase interception is inherently more difficult than
terminal-phase or even mid-course interception. Even so, concern
Paul Rogers 65
The experience of the Gulf War was that only the most heavily pro-
tected shelters, deep underground, were impervious to coalition
attack. Since then, in addition to constructing even deeper shelters,
some states have opted for deep tunnelling through rock in moun-
tainous regions, producing shelters which are invulnerable to con-
ventional attack. In response, the United States is investing in
detection systems to help them plot the location of such facilities,
together with advanced conventional earth-penetrating warheads to
‘dig deep’ against underground systems. There has also been heavy
investment in systems designed to map the many entrances to
tunnel complexes – if the tunnels themselves are too deeply buried,
the other option is to block the entrances.
This ‘dig/bomb’ race continues, and there remain many questions
concerning Western capabilities to destroy deeply buried hardened
structures. This has led the United States to modify its standard tac-
tical nuclear bomb with a hardened case and fusing to produce a
new variant, the B61-11, specifically intended for the earth-penetrat-
ing role18 with delivery platforms including the B-2 stealth bomber.
In addition to hardening and dispersal, one of the most effective
responses to intervention is the deployment of protective systems
such as land mines and sea mines, and the deployment of dispersed
offensive systems aimed specifically at launch platforms. Thus, anti-
ship missiles, deployed on warships or, more likely, merchant ships
or shore-based sites, would represent problems for intervening
forces, and any kind of system that could affect forward-based facili-
ties including air bases and ports, would have the effect of being a
force multiplier. Such a system might include crude UCAVs, but
could also involve appropriately equipped paramilitary units, espe-
cially if operating in an adjacent state that had been prepared to
offer forward-based facilities to the intervening state.
One example of this was, in all probability, the attack on the
Khobar Towers barracks complex at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia in June
1996, when a crude bomb hidden in a sewage truck killed 19 and
injured over 500. The US Air Force subsequently relocated its key air
assets to a new air base in a remote part of Saudi Arabia at a cost of
68 The Changing Face of Military Power
$500 million. It is still not clear who was responsible for this attack,
but there are suspicions of direct or indirect Iraqi involvement.
Although not directly involving a state, a further example is the
militia attack on the US Marine Corps barracks at Beirut Airport in
October 1983, killing 241 people and hastening US withdrawal from
Lebanon. Although this, and the Khobar Towers attack are tradition-
ally seen as ‘terrorist’ actions, it is much more appropriate to see
them as surrogate responses to Western intervention.
that had allowed it to operate there for several years. There was less
analysis and understanding of the complex political, social and eco-
nomic issues existing in south-west Asia that had engendered substan-
tial support for the network
Conclusion
What this chapter has sought to show is that there are a number of
strategies and tactics that can be used in response to Western
intervention, that these may involve the conventional use of con-
ventional military technologies but that they may also involve
unconventional responses. As Western capabilities for intervention
improve, not least with the development of long-range stand-off
weapons, hard-target kill vehicles, UCAVs and even directed energy
weapons, it is possible that the balance of conventional force and
counter-force will tend to move in favour of Western states.
This is by no means certain, and traditional tactics of dispersal, hard-
ening and camouflage may make intervention uncertain, as in Serbia
in 1999, with this leading to a propensity to use economic targeting. In
either circumstance, however, if the balance does move in favour of
Western states, then the expected response should be one of uncon-
ventional tactics, not least with an increasing use of paramilitary forces.
Given the experience of the past ten years, it would appear that there
is considerable potential for action in response to Western intervention
using conventional systems, and even various forms of weapons of
mass destruction. Thus the uncertain and volatile world that seems to
be evolving may involve considerable risks for elite Western states as
they seek to maintain control. It might therefore be sensible to ques-
tion whether such a security paradigm represents the wisest cause of
action, or whether it might be more appropriate to put greater empha-
sis on analysing the underlying causes of potential conflict. It might be
the case that there are more fundamental responses to insecurity that
may make intervention itself less necessary, though those responses
might lie well outside conventional strategic thinking.20
Notes
1. Statement by J. Woolsey at Senate Hearings, Washington, DC,
February 1993.
Paul Rogers 71
73
74 The Changing Face of Military Power
Urbanization
Demographers, the World Bank, the United Nations, the CIA, and
experts from urban studies and disaster management all suggest that
future tension points will be found in urban areas, primarily in
cities.3 In fact urbanization already shapes contemporary conflict,
with many of the most notable operations of recent years taking
place in an urban environment. Events in Mogadishu, Belfast,
Srebrenica, Mitrovica and Ramallah also illustrate the stress and frus-
tration felt by military forces, especially those with strong
warfighting capabilities, in the face of politically restrained opera-
tions. Not surprisingly a recent MOD essay on ‘The Future Strategic
Context for Defence’ suggests that we should expect future opera-
tions to take place in urban areas in which it will be difficult to
balance military objectives with the desire for minimal collateral
damage and casualties.4
The resultant analytical and moral challenges of urban operations
are many, not least because much depends on the concerns of the
individual or organization identifying them, but three general con-
cerns can be identified. The first is the lack of a theoretical frame-
work for understanding urban operations. This is important because
success in such operations is rarely an isolated technical process; it is
not enough, for example, to say that social trends determine the
technology used, when the trends result from the interaction of
physical, social and structural continuities. The second is that urban
operations present their greatest challenges at the levels of strategy
and policy, not least because operations will probably be conducted
differently in 2020. Linked to this is the third challenge, which is
that the central question confronting political and military leaders
about military operations in an urbanized world is less about predic-
tion than about reconciling an increasingly restrictive legal and
moral framework with what we already know of the nature of urban
operations.
Alice Hills 75
Analytical challenges
Theoretical challenges
from this move. Policy goals now represent a central core, framed by
strategic direction, while the operational dimension includes the
tactical capabilities needed to achieve the stated goals. Thus success
at the tactical level translates into operational impact and strategic
significance. Typical investigations based on a contextual under-
standing might as a result focus on the analysis of how military
operations interact with trends such as the diffusion of new tech-
nologies, worldwide economic restructuring and integration, and
reconfigurations of political authority in geopolitically critical cities.
Adopting a wider perspective will facilitate the identification of
the myths and misconceptions of urban operations and open up
new questions and new areas for research. It will encourage con-
sideration of the unexpected or exceptional events that might
compel us to change the focus of our attention. Such flexibility is
especially important for urban operations because cities are not
neutral environments; they can act as catalysts through which
conflict is exacerbated or ameliorated because they introduce ‘a
set of characteristics – proximate ethnic neighbourhoods, territo-
riality, economic interdependency, symbolism, and centrality –
not present to such an extent on wider geographic scales’. 10 This
can bend or distort the conventional linkages on which our
understanding of cities – and thus urban operations – is based. It
is for such reasons that we need to review the narrow range of
assumptions on which current expectations about urban opera-
tions are built.
Strategic challenges
Moral challenges
Conclusion
The Future Strategic Context for Defence’s conclusion that ‘The require-
ment to engender and foster fighting spirit is enduring’ may be
more controversial but escalation dominance remains as necessary
as ever, as events in Mogadishu and Srebrenica made clear.
Attempts to reconcile what we know of the nature of urban opera-
tions with the increasingly restrictive legal and moral framework of
contemporary Western operations have advanced little over the last
ten years. Many of the analytical challenges of urban operations are
now receiving attention but the more intractable moral challenges
are not. This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, not the least of
which is the accompanying analytical ambiguity and operational
implications of restrictive ROE. Meanwhile the current emphasis on
targeting for (allied) casualty avoidance and the continued impor-
tance of discretionary intervention (to ‘correct’ abuses of human
rights within states), combined with an insistence on the military
being a force for good, merely emphasize the complexity of the
moral challenge.
Two significant points emerge. The first is that future urban oper-
ations will force liberal democracies to confront their own values;
operations will continue to represent a battlespace and civilians will
invariably be used as obstacles and sanctuaries to shape that battle-
space, if not by us then by our enemies. And our enemies will be
well aware that public and political perceptions demand that success
must be achieved in a short period of time and involve few casual-
ties. The second point is related to the political need to reconcile the
reality of dismounted close action, especially combat, with the
desire for zero casualties.33 This will be notable in the low-level
conflicts in which civilian casualties are high relative to combatants.
As current conflicts between Israel and Palestine, and India and
Pakistan make clear, ‘technology will count for less, and large,
youthful and motivated populations for more’ in such scenarios.34
This in turn links the challenges of such moral strength into the
analytical challenge of understanding the human systems underpin-
ning politico-military success in cities.
86 The Changing Face of Military Power
Notes
An earlier version of this chapter was given at a panel on civil-military rela-
tions and warfighting, (American) International Studies Association annual
convention, Chicago 2001. The support of the British Academy is gratefully
acknowledged.
1. Ministry of Defence, The Future Strategic Context for Defence (London:
HMSO, 2001), para. 102. www.mod.uk/index.php3?page2449.
Downloaded 8 Feb 2001. ‘Warfighting’ is still used to characterize force-
on-force operations against well-equipped, technologically-developed
opponents and implies engagement with an identifiable enemy across a
range of military capabilities. The defeat of such an enemy requires the
ability to apply the full range of military capabilities.
2. Sir Charles Guthrie, then Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) said in an
interview in August 2000 that ‘too many humanitarian missions could
turn the professional British Army into a ‘‘touchy-feely’’ organization,
more concerned with widows and orphans than fighting’. The quote
may misrepresent the general thrust of the interview but the cautionary
nature of the comments are undoubtedly widely shared; according to
The Times, ‘other senior officers’ echoed his comments, arguing that too
great an emphasis on peace support operations will result in British
forces becoming a peacekeeping gendarmerie with a diminished reputa-
tion for fighting. ‘Kindly soldiers ‘‘losing their killer instinct’’’, The
Times, 11 August 2000.
3. The World Bank’s definition of cities is used here. The terms cities and
urban areas are interchangeable:
The formal definition of urban areas describes them as concentra-
tions of nonagricultural workers and nonagricultural production
sectors. Most countries call settlements with 2,500–25,000 people
urban areas. The definition varies from country to country and has
changed over time. If the criteria China used in its 1980 census had
Alice Hills 87
been applied to its 1990 census, the country’s urbanization rate for
the 1980s would have been more than 50 per cent – far more than
the 26 per cent produced by the more rigorous approach used in
1990. A city has a certain legal status (granted by the national or
provincial government) that is generally associated with specific
administrative or local government structures. In most countries
large urban areas are referred to as metropolitan areas because they
encompass a geographic area of human settlement (that may
include legally defined cities) within which residents share employ-
ment opportunities and sets of economic relations.
World Bank, World Development Report 1999/2000 (New York: World
Bank, 1999), p. 127.
4. Ministry of Defence, The Future Strategic Context for Defence, para 20.
5. For example, how should the slowed tempo of urban operations be con-
ceptualized in relation to manoeuvrist warfare? How should the
manoeuvrist approach be understood when rubble, generating military
and civilian casualties, dramatically slows tempo?
6. Addressed respectively by S. Edwards, Mars Unmasked: the Changing Face
of Military Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000); R. Glenn, Heavy
Matter: Urban Operations’ Density of Challenges (Santa Monica, CA:
RAND, 2000); M. Waxman, International Law and the Politics of Urban Air
Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000); http://www.rand.org/
publications/.
7. See G. Demarest, ‘Geopolitics and Urban Armed Conflict in Latin
America’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 6, no. 1 (1995), pp. 44–67.
8. For example, the military will focus on physical variables whereas urban
studies tend to marginalize them as a variable. The presence of toxic
chemicals in water supplies during operations may seem a civilian
problem but the potential for litigation inherent in discretionary opera-
tions suggests otherwise. The lawsuits brought against the MOD by
British paratroopers contracting malaria in Sierra Leone emphasize the
continuing importance of ‘duty of care’ considerations. BBC, Today,
Radio 4, 5 February 2001.
9. Director of Infantry, Future Infantry … The route to 2020 (January
2000), p. 7.
10. S.A. Bollens, On Narrow Ground: Urban Policy and Ethnic Conflict in
Jerusalem and Belfast (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000).
11. Operational trends suggest a future scenario of simultaneous or transi-
tional operations, ranging from policing and terrorism, humanitarian
relief and peace enforcement, to force-on-force, within a confined city
area. The idea is encapsulated by the US Marine Corps’s work on three-
block operations.
12. T. Thomas, ‘The Battle of Grozny: Deadly Classroom for Urban
Combat’, Parameters (Summer 1999), p. 93.
13. Economic losses caused by the earthquake are estimated at more than
US$92 billion. Financial Times, 30 December 1996. Hurricane Andrew had
88 The Changing Face of Military Power
the same effect on Greater Miami. See also S. Sassen, The Global City: New
York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
14. World Bank, op. cit., p. 127.
15. This might also emphasize the need for the British military to develop a
specific security perspective, reaching beyond ‘defence diplomacy’, on
the Labour government’s development agenda.
16. Information about the spatial parameters of cities (their populations,
physical organization and activities), for example, is a fundamental
theme in urban and security research but there are no coherent pro-
grammes addressing the topic across government departments in either
the UK or the USA.
17. The Gulf War Al Firdos bunker incident of February 1991 starkly
emphasized the problems associated with separating military and civil-
ian targets. US F-117 strikes destroyed the bunker as a command and
control facility. On the night it was destroyed it actually housed fami-
lies of government officials in its upper levels.
18. Previous Israeli claims of precision weapons worked against them. The
United Nations commission investigating the incident concluded that
the shelling of the UN compound was most unlikely to have been the
result of technical or procedural errors. F. van Kaplan, Report of the
Secretary General’s Military Adviser Concerning the Shelling of the UN
Compound at Qana on 18 April 1996 with Addendum (New York: United
Nations Secretariat, 1996).
19. As Adam Roberts has argued, such damage is ‘a salutary reminder’ that
there are moral (and environmental) problems with the whole idea of
the low-risk waging of war. A. Roberts, ‘NATO’s “Humanitarian War”
over Kosovo’, Survival, vol. 41, no. 3 (1999), pp. 102–23. The most dis-
turbing lesson of the air campaign for Roberts is that its most effective
aspect involved hurting Serbia proper, including its population, rather
than directly attacking Serb forces in Kosovo. This has implications for
proxy actions in an urban environment.
20. BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_
594000/594779.stm (8 January 2000).
21. The acceptability of flame in a shantytown of timber or corrugated tin
buildings is one such example.
22. Jary and Carbuncle, ‘In the Jungle of the Cities. Operations in Built up
Areas’, British Army Review, vol. 121 (April 1999), pp. 61–8.
23. Some American analysts judge that the most important equipment
development in the third battle of Grozny was the fuel air-explosive.
See T. Thomas and L. Grau, ‘Russian Lessons Learned from the Battles
for Grozny’, Marine Corps Gazette (April 2000), pp. 45–8. Collateral
damage was not a problem in Chechnya; the Russians believe that
urban combat requires deliberate reduction. It is worth noting that light
anti-tank weapons were used by both British and German forces as anti-
personnel flame throwers to clear buildings in 1945.
24. ‘Britain Works on Grenade that Goes through Walls’, Daily Telegraph, 5
January 2001.
Alice Hills 89
Introduction
91
92 The Changing Face of Military Power
over its territories and forces. It has seen the awesome power of
the air offensive – and the near impossibility of defending against
it. It has seen a demonstration of the validity of strategic attack
theory. It has seen a war waged primarily against things but one
that produced remarkably few casualties, especially considering
the outcome. For the next two decades – and perhaps for much
longer – an American commander, whether the president in
Washington or a general in the field, will turn first to air power,
just as did President George Bush and Gen Norman Schwarzkopf.
We have moved from the age of the horse and the sail through
the age of the battleship and the tank to the age of the airplane.
Like its illustrious ancestors, the airplane will have its day in the
sun, and then it too shall be replaced. Sic transit gloria mundi.1
The world in which air power now operates differs very considerably
from that during its formative years in the early and mid-twentieth
Philip Sabin 93
century. Some changes are linked to the end of the Cold War a
decade ago, while others stem from longer-term shifts. Not every-
thing has changed, and even those trends which I will highlight are
often shifts of emphasis as much as complete transformations, but
the changes are important nonetheless. The trends fall into three
broad areas, as follows.
The three trends which I have highlighted are by no means the only
ones affecting the use of air power by NATO nations today, but they
are among the most important. I will now discuss some of the con-
sequences for Western air strategy, under four broad headings.
nation, rather than killing his hostage outright and so losing any
potential leverage gained. However, for air theorists, this logic has
become anathema. They tend to see the psychological shock of a
rapid, unrestrained air attack as having much more coercive poten-
tial, by giving the adversary no time to adapt, and so inducing help-
less panic.10 Theodore Roosevelt earlier encapsulated this point of
view in his aphorism, ‘Don’t hit at all if it is honourably possible to
avoid hitting; but never hit soft!’
At first sight, air power history over the past four decades supports
this preference very clearly. Restrained and graduated bombard-
ments like Rolling Thunder in Vietnam, the sporadic strikes on Iraq
since the Gulf War, the ‘tank plinking’ during Deny Flight, and the
first phase of the Kosovo air operation, did indeed have very disap-
pointing results, whereas Linebacker II, Instant Thunder, Deliberate
Force and the later Kosovo bombing seemed to produce a much
more decisive outcome. Small wonder that airmen tend to advocate
in future taking the gloves off from the outset, and striking hard
against a target system like electrical power to bring the adversary
rapidly to his knees.
However, several factors suggest that this image of rapid aerial
triumph will probably remain a dream, and not necessarily even a
beautiful dream. For one thing, intra-war deterrence is likely to
remain a key consideration, as the ability grows for adversaries to
strike back with anything ranging from information warfare to bio-
logical or nuclear weapons, if they feel they have nothing left to
lose. Even more significantly, the proactive use of force by liberal
democracies is a highly contentious affair and is always, in circum-
stances other than life or death struggles like World War II, the
product of intense arguments between ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’, with the
mean position adopted by the polity as a whole shifting only slowly
over time. Democracies simply do not transition overnight from
peace to all-out attack, as Germany did against the USSR and as
Japan did against the USA and others in 1941. They tend to enter
war slowly and reluctantly, with many warnings and limitations,
and only when their initial efforts are frustrated and reverses suf-
fered do they become committed to uncompromising crusades like
that against the Axis powers in World War II.
Ignoring this inherent democratic preference for initial constraint
and gradualism could be particularly damaging and counter-
productive given the trends discussed earlier. With the emphasis
100 The Changing Face of Military Power
Conclusion
Notes
1. J. Warden, ‘Employing Air Power in the Twenty-first Century’, in R.
Shultz and R. Pfaltzgraff (eds), The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of
the Gulf War (Maxwell, Alabama: Air University Press, 1992), pp. 81–2.
2. See L. Freedman and E. Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–1991 (London:
Faber and Faber, 1993), pp. 280–2.
Philip Sabin 109
25. ‘Clinton Backs Low-flying Air Campaign’, The Times, 6 May 1999.
26. On the increasing threat to Western aerial invulnerability from surface-
based defences, see Tony Mason, ‘Rethinking the Conceptual
Framework’, in Peter Gray (ed.), Air Power 21: Challenges for the New
Century (London: HMSO, 2000), pp. 209–36; and ‘Serbs Help to Boost
Baghdad’s Firepower’, The Times, 17 February 2001.
6
Britain and the Revolution in
Military Affairs
Lawrence Freedman
111
112 The Changing Face of Military Power
only in miniature. In size and shape, the UK armed services are just
about comparable to the US Marine Corps.
The issue is, therefore, whether Britain can make a deliberate deci-
sion to follow the Revolution in Military Affairs or whether it must
accept that in certain areas it will inevitably fall behind the United
States, with a consequent loss of inter-operability and scope for
combined operations.
Asymmetric war
Most of these methods were tried, but they failed because Iraq
lacked the political and military capacity to make them work.
Saddam had left himself with little freedom of manoeuvre in negoti-
ating a political settlement and his Arab opponents knew better
than to be distracted by their dispute with Israel. Furthermore,
Saddam was fearful of either American or Israeli retaliation when
considering his main weapons of mass destruction – chemical muni-
tions – and the means of delivery were poor. His nuclear programme
had yet to be completed. He lacked the organization for an effective
terror campaign, though the mere thought that he might resort to
such methods had a dire effect on air travel in the West.11 Most suc-
cessful were Iraq’s attempts to inflict environmental damage, with
the Gulf itself saved from terrible pollution only by an American
operation to close oil pipes that had been left open and cap oil-wells
deliberately set on fire.
Saddam’s Plan B offers a natural menu for a Plan A for any other
country that expects to confront American power. This brings us to
what has been described as ‘asymmetric war’, that is, when two
combatants are so different in their characters, and in their areas of
comparative strategic advantage, that a confrontation between them
comes to turn on one side’s ability to force the other to fight on
their own terms. Vietnam was a classic example of asymmetric war.
116 The Changing Face of Military Power
the Cold War. Just because a capability is not used does not render it
irrelevant. The deterrent function remains important. The develop-
ment of the RMA may extend the range of wars that are now
unlikely to take place, and for that we may well be grateful. The
issue is whether the over-energetic pursuit of the RMA could weaken
the capacity to cope with the sort of wars with which Western states
may still have to contend. To develop this argument it is necessary
to examine more closely the ideas associated with the RMA.
the same hope that by reducing the size of the active ground units it
might prove possible to reduce dependence upon logistics.
Dependence upon non-organic firepower will always appear as
running unnecessary risks. The amelioration of such risks requires
reliable communications systems, a responsive command structure
and available weapons. Moreover, to the extent that contemporary
conflicts are about the ownership of land, then ‘presence’ remains a
high priority for armed forces. The insertion of large numbers of
troops capable of holding their ground into critical positions
remains a vital military task. This is never a prospect that appeals to
politicians because they dislike putting troops into exposed settings
which they may have to occupy for a long time. It is also a task
upon which new technologies may have little impact. Sheer
numbers and raw military power can be valuable precisely because
they are conspicuous.
Furthermore, the need to think about substantial forces based in a
particular area over an extended period requires an acute apprecia-
tion of logistics. This is still the limiting factor for the more ambi-
tious schemes. Technology has taken us a long way. We can collect,
process and transmit vital information in nanoseconds, respond
almost instantaneously and a missile will be on its way in seconds.
We have yet, however, to crack the problem of instantaneous logis-
tics. It is true that with ever-extending ranges and lift capabilities, air
power is less reliant on overseas bases than ever before and that
ships can stay longer at sea without visiting port. But getting troops
and their equipment to the right place still takes time.
Information inflation
It may make perfect sense for the United States to develop the logic
of the RMA as far as it can be taken, but that does not mean that it
will make equal sense for Britain, let alone other Europeans, to
follow. Again, the considerations might be quite similar to those
associated with nuclear weapons. The pursuit of the RMA might be
essentially for deterrent purposes, to persuade others that there is
little point in confronting the United States in an ‘ideal type’ con-
ventional battle, just as the nuclear threat was once used to con-
vince potential adversaries that it would be foolish to engage the
United States in total war. As with the nuclear threat, the question
then becomes whether allies are able to draw upon this deterrent
effect when they find themselves facing an enemy with great con-
ventional strength. With extended nuclear deterrence the problem
was always the suicidal implications of such a policy. With extended
conventional deterrence this problem need not be so severe, because
the continental United States is not at risk in a conventional war.
Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that the United States is reluctant
to tolerate even modest amounts of battlefield casualties. This intol-
Lawrence Freedman 123
We can assume that British foreign policy will still be tied to the
United States and, like the Americans, will follow a line of limited
liability but without lapsing into isolationism. If the Americans
intervene in a particular conflict, it will be difficult for Britain to
remain a spectator (although it may still opt for minimal participa-
tion). If the Americans decline to get involved, this is more of an
option for Britain. Britain also follows the United States in the reten-
tion of a nuclear option which could, in principle, deter opponents
from moving to weapons of mass destruction in the course of an
‘asymmetric war’. As in the past, Britain’s force structure will be
designed to find the minimum level sufficient to ensure access to
high-level American decision-making.
There is clear evidence that British policy-makers have been
heavily influenced by the RMA concept, although they rarely take it
as far as the American proponents. The reasoning tends to be that
information technology will inexorably have an increasing
influence on all aspects of armed conflict, and that Britain dare not
fall too far behind the United States in this regard. Thus the 1998
Strategic Defence Review’s essay on ‘The Impact of Technology’
supported the view that ‘information technologies will lead to
significant improvements in military capability’.20 It looked forward
to a single battlespace in which distinctions between sea, air and
land decline in importance, and sensors, weapons, platforms and
logistics are all somehow integrated together. Since the review, and
in the light of such operations as Kosovo and Sierra Leone, senior
military officers have been anxious to stress that it would be inap-
propriate for British forces to be configured purely for low-intensity,
peace support operations, and that Britain must be prepared for
high-tech, high-intensity warfare.21 All this adds to the general pres-
sure to stay in touch with American developments. One analyst has
even suggested that ‘ensuring that there is no technology gap
between U.S. and British forces has become a de facto goal of UK
defense policy’.22 This even extends to working with the Americans
on aspects such as cyber-terrorism and net warfare.23
The 1999 Kosovo war indicated just how far there was to go. While
the Defence Committee in its substantial report, generally took the
view that the conflict did not ‘have a great deal to teach us about the
performance of weapons and their platforms in the most taxing cir-
cumstances or about joint and combined operations involving air,
Lawrence Freedman 125
land and sea forces’,24 it drew attention to the distance that has to be
travelled before the full military benefits of the information age are
enjoyed by British forces. Problems were caused by reliance upon an
obsolete communications system, as a result of failure of the
Bowman integrated voice and data communication programme,
insecure radios that could be intercepted by Yugoslav scanners, and
the Americans pressing on with the employment of more secure
radios that were unavailable to their allies. Britain has a programme
for the ‘Joint Digitization of the Battlespace’, concerned with how
best to handle vast amounts of battlefield information. The
Committee was told that there were good prospects that the pro-
gramme would succeed but those for its introduction were less clear:
We have already got large parts of the Forces where digital infor-
mation is exchanged on high-data rate links both amongst our
own Forces and with other forces of other nations. The maritime
area is one and the air is another, but the land side has always
been much more difficult … It is a pretty demanding task.25
Even in areas where the problems lie with organization and con-
cepts as much as technology, such as handling the media, there
were clear deficiencies. Two other conclusions might be drawn.
First, although there were a number of examples of attacks on Web
sites and other Internet campaigns, and these achieved considerable
publicity, they were generally marginal in their impact and at most
were morale boosters.26 The second is that whatever the limits on
British forces other European countries faced even more difficulties.
In practice, and with the defence budget still modest, substantial
resources cannot be devoted to the more imaginative versions of the
RMA. Immediate operational requirements will keep the country
focused on the infantry and Special Forces as well as seeing through
established programmes, such as the Eurofighter, with future
demands dominated by power projection, including airlift and the
possibility of a new generation of carriers, and whether the forces
have the right mix of firepower. Do armoured divisions still play a
role? Will there be any point in purchasing a new generation of
long-range strike aircraft? The pressing issues for British forces
involve potential overstretch on manpower and shortages of
firepower. Information systems should be less problematic. This is in
126 The Changing Face of Military Power
Conclusion
Notes
1. A number of ‘military revolutions’ have been proclaimed in military
and strategic historiography. The phrase found its most prominent
expression in the debate over the transformation of war from the late
medieval to the early modern period in European history. The term, as
it is often used today, is most commonly attributed to Marshal Nicolai
Ogarkov of the Soviet Union who in 1984 argued that developments in
military technology, particularly in US integrated battlefield systems,
amounted to ‘revolution in warfare’. See B.E. Trainor, ‘War by
Miscalculation’, in J. Nye and R. Smith (eds), After the Storm: Lessons
from the Gulf War (Lanham, MD: Madison Books and the Aspen Strategy
Group, 1992), p. 217. For a discussion on the background to Soviet mil-
itary thinking on the issue see J. Erickson, ‘The Development of Soviet
Military Doctrine’, in J. Gooch (ed.), ‘The Origins of Contemporary
Doctrine’, The Occasional, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 30
September 1997, pp. 81–112, esp. pp. 101–6.
Lawrence Freedman 127
21. See the robust interview with C. Guthrie, Chief of Defence Staff, Daily
Telegraph, 10 August 2000.
22. A. Richter, ‘The American Revolution? The Response of Advanced
Western States to the Revolution in Military Affairs’, National Security
Studies Quarterly (Autumn 1999), p. 9. He cites MOD’s director for oper-
ational requirements in a Jane’s interview stressing the importance of
harnessing ‘new technology more quickly and efficiently if we are to
continue to maintain our significant role’ alongside the US. ‘Sea
Change’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, vol. 30, no. 19 (11 November 1998).
23. An Anglo-American exercise in June 1998 reportedly began with an
attack by computer hackers on Britain’s power grid, causing a huge
blackout, to be followed by a ‘complex scenario’ involving a ‘a combi-
nation of state and non-state adversaries’, including money launderers
and terrorists. ‘Britain Fights US in Cyber War Game’, Sunday Times,
7 June 1998
24. Fourteenth Report of the House of Commons Defence Committee,
Lessons of Kosovo, 24 October 2000, para 4. The government’s analysis
of Kosovo is found in Ministry of Defence, Kosovo: Lessons from the
Crisis, Cmnd 4724 (London: HMSO, June 2000).
25. Ibid., para 160
26. The same conclusion might be drawn from the 2000 Palestinian
intafada.
7
Equipping Britain’s Armed Forces:
Continuity and Change in
Defence Procurement and
Industrial Policy
Matthew Uttley
Introduction
The 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR)1 contains the most recent and
comprehensive statement of Britain’s defence equipment priorities
and plans for the period to 2015. Marking the culmination of Britain’s
shift from its Cold War posture, the SDR and associated policy docu-
ments explain how UK forces are to be equipped with a flexible expe-
ditionary warfare capability and outline supporting defence-industrial
policies. This chapter evaluates the new equipment programme and
the defence-industrial issues it generates. The first section analyses the
major defence platforms that make up the SDR vision and the mili-
tary capabilities they are intended to provide. Though the SDR and
supporting initiatives are presented as policy ‘solutions’ to long-term
future British defence acquisition, the Blair administration continues
to confront challenges that previous governments have had to
address which arise from the inherent complexity of managing major
equipment programmes and the difficult choices in formulating
appropriate defence-industrial policies. The second section outlines
these challenges and the third section reviews the ‘solutions’ that the
current administration has chosen to adopt. The concluding section
considers the difficult decisions that subsequent administrations will
have to make if the SDR vision is to be achieved in full.
129
130 The Changing Face of Military Power
During the Cold War Britain’s armed forces were structured primar-
ily to deal with the perceived Soviet threat. In many respects, the
apogee of Cold War thinking was the equipment programme that
emerged from the 1981 Nott defence review. By the mid-1990s,
however, British policy-makers had concluded that the demise of
bipolar confrontation and the diminished military threat posed by
the former Soviet Union served to eliminate the short-warning
threat of a large-scale offensive in Central Europe.2 At the same
time, planners recognized that the Cold War certainties provided by
bipolar stability had been replaced by a more diffuse set of risks on a
global scale.3 This reappraisal of threats and risks has had funda-
mental implications for British force planning. The response, con-
solidated in the SDR, has been to look for ways to configure forces
in terms of expeditionary capabilities capable of projecting power to
meet the spectrum of new global risks. This shift in thinking has
had a major impact on equipment requirements as Britain seeks to
project power from the sea in littoral areas and deploy expedi-
tionary forces that are supported by air elements, as a means to
meet contingencies on a global scale.4
Against this backdrop, the SDR implies four objectives that under-
pin the current equipment programme: acquisition of explicitly
expeditionary platforms designed to augment the capability of the
Joint Rapid Reaction Forces (JRRF); obtaining equipment to support
balanced forces across a spectrum of national, alliance and multi-
national coalition contingencies, rather than any overt shift towards
role specialization; purchase of flexible weapons platforms that can
operate across the spectrum of conflict types; and acquisition of plat-
forms that will maximize synergy in joint and combined operations.
Given current budget estimates, the SDR procurement plans to
meet these objectives are intended to provide an appropriate balance
of capabilities to maximize the UK’s ability to operate independently
and meet foreseeable alliance and multinational coalition needs,
drawing on both weapons projects initiated during the Cold War
and various new purchases. If SDR plans are fully implemented, the
Royal Navy (RN) will have the capacity for power projection from
two relatively large carriers with associated ASW assets, a brigade-
level amphibious assault capability and nuclear-powered attack sub-
marines equipped with cruise missiles for deterrence and coercion.
Matthew Uttley 131
RAF Harrier forces – the UK will acquire a truly joint force able to
operate either from land bases or aircraft carriers. While the RAF
have accepted a cut of 36 aircraft from front-line strength, the new
projects and purchases outlined in the SDR are likely to improve
overall effectiveness of UK forces in a range of national, alliance and
coalition contingencies because of the enhanced offensive and lift
capabilities the UK will acquire.
Finally, ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA)-related technologies
also feature prominently in the SDR. Plans to procure the airborne
stand-off radar (ASTOR) surveillance system, long-range airborne
systems including the Brimstone, Storm Shadow and Hellfire mis-
siles, and the Joint Digitization initiative, will significantly increase
UK military capabilities. Evidence suggests that the UK is currently
evaluating the optimum acquisition as between European and US
sourcing for RMA-related systems and assessing the compatibility of
the UK programme with US and NATO developments.
If the programme outlined in SDR is implemented in full, the UK
should acquire equipment to support a flexible joint national capa-
bility. The planned programme will support a spectrum of indepen-
dent, alliance and multinational operational contingencies in which
Britain should not be ‘dependent on the resources of another nation
as a condition of British participation in an operation’.10 However,
given the long lead times associated with key programmes, notably
the aircraft carrier replacement and the LPDs, a ‘capability gap’
exists before these items enter service that may undermine UK oper-
ational effectiveness in the short to medium term.
Conclusions
Notes
1. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review, Cm 3999 (London:
HMSO, 1998).
2. For a more detailed analysis of this point, see A. Dorman, M.L. Smith
and M.R.H. Uttley, ‘Jointery and Combined Operations in an
Expeditionary Era: Defining the Issues’, Defense Analysis, vol. 14, no. 1
(1998), pp. 1–8; and S.E. Airey, ‘Does Russian Seapower Have a Future?’,
RUSI Journal (December 1995), pp. 15–22.
3. See, for example, V. Gray, ‘Beyond Bosnia: Ethno-National Diasporas
and Security in Europe’, Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 17, no. 1
(April 1996), pp. 146–73.
4. Dorman et al., op. cit., p. 3.
5. The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine, BR1806 (London: HMSO,
1995).
6. For a more detailed discussion see Chapter 9.
7. See, for example, M. Edmonds, ‘Navy Procurement, Industrial Strategy and
the Future Carrier’, in M. Edmonds (ed.), British Naval Aviation in the 21st
Century, Bailrigg Memorandum No. 25 (Lancaster: CDISS, 1997), p. 29.
Matthew Uttley 147
26. See, for example, K. Hartley, ‘Development Time Scales for British and
American Military Aircraft’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy,
vol. XIX, no. 2 (June 1972), pp. 115–34.
27. L. Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 56.
28. See K. Hartley, NATO Arms Co-operation: a Study in Economics and Politics
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1983).
29. SIPRI Yearbook 1998, p. 294.
30. See, for example, S. Martin, ‘The Subsidy Savings from Reducing UK Arms
Exports’, Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 (1999), pp. 15–37.
31. Strategic Defence Review, p. 43.
32. For an extended discussion and a summary of the literature, see
C. Catrina, Arms Transfers and Dependence (London: Taylor and
Francis, 1988), pp. 70–3.
33. Ibid., p. 71.
34. See House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, Support for Defence
Exports: Minutes of Evidence, 26 April 1989 (London: HMSO, 1989).
35. See S. Martin, op. cit.
36. See, for example, P. Eavis and O. Sprague, ‘Does Britain Need to Sell
Weapons?’, in J. Gittings and I. Davis (eds), Britain in the 21st Century: Re-
thinking Defence and Foreign Policy (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1996), p. 128.
37. See: D. Miller, ‘The Scott Report and the Future of British Defense Sales’,
Defense Analysis, vol. 12, no. 3 (1996), pp. 359–69; and, D. Miller, Export
or Die: Britain’s Defence Trade with Iraq (London: Cassell, 1986).
38. Eavis and Sprague, op. cit.
39. Ibid., p. 129.
40. T. Taylor and K. Hayward, The Defence Industrial Base: Development and
Future Policy Options (London: Brassey’s, 1989), p. 73.
41. W. Walker and P. Gummett, ‘Britain and the European Armaments
Market’, International Affairs, vol. 65 (1989), p. 421.
42. For a general discussion of these assumptions, see Taylor and Hayward,
op. cit., pp. 70–89.
43. Ibid., p. 74.
44. See: M.J. Rawlinson, ‘Government Defence Factories and Dockyards:
the Defence Implications of Privatization’, Defence Force
(January/February 1989), pp. 27–35; and House of Commons Defence
Committee, First Report from the Defence Committee Session
1985–1986, Further Observations on the Future of the Royal Dockyards
(London: HMSO, 1985).
45. See P. Levene, ‘Competition and Collaboration: UK Defence
Procurement Policy’, RUSI Journal (June 1987), pp. 3-6.
46. P. Gummett, ‘Civil and Military Aircraft in the UK’, in J. Krige (ed.),
Choosing Big Technologies (Reading: Harwood, 1993), p. 214.
47. J. Bourn, ‘Securing Value for Money in Defence Procurement’,
Whitehall Paper no. 25 (London: RUSI, 1994), p. 22.
48. House of Commons Defence Committee, The Procurement of Major Defence
Equipment, 5th Report, Session 1987-88, HCP 431 (London: HMSO, 1988).
Matthew Uttley 149
151
152 The Changing Face of Military Power
Defence management
Management science
The third element, management science, has had the most lasting
impact on UK defence management. The United Kingdom was the
first, in 1964, to plan defence policy and posture on a functional
basis prompted by the fact that there was no clear antagonist
against whom to make detailed plans. This opened up the opportu-
nity for new approaches to defence planning and budgetary man-
agement in 1964. Without these management innovations,
subsequent initiatives that characterized the 1980s and 1990s would
have been much more problematic to introduce and implement.
Management science in defence did not end with the introduc-
tion of programme planning budgeting systems (PPBS) in 1964.
However, it took until 1979 for new techniques and approaches to
be introduced into defence planning and management, after which
the floodgates were opened for a succession of management innova-
tions over the ensuing 18 years. These were driven more by new
philosophies about the nature and role of government within
156 The Changing Face of Military Power
The issue of defence policy objectives was not one that offered
much scope for change. Nor was there further scope at that time for
structural changes. Efficiency in defence could only be found in
people and in the application of ‘management science’. The ‘people
factor’ had earlier been addressed when Heseltine had been at the
Department of the Environment after 1979. Equally significant was
the appointment of Sir Clive Whitmore as MOD Permanent Under
Secretary (PUS) who came not from within the ranks of the MOD
but from another department and therefore had no particular inter-
ests to protect.
MOD civil servants did not resist change or the introduction of
new management practices; in fact, the then PUS, Sir Frank Cooper,
aware of the government’s drive for efficiency in Whitehall, had
already prepared the MOD’s response to the government’s Financial
Management Initiative.21 So, by the time Heseltine became Secretary
of State, a system of Responsibility Budgets had already been intro-
duced and the MOD staff were well acquainted with a Management
Information System for Ministers and Top Management (MINIS),
cost-centre accounting, and a Budget System for Administrative
Expenditure (MAXIS).
Within two years all three had been incorporated into the MOD.
Their longer-term effect on later management changes would be
profound. They laid the foundation for further approaches that
would characterize future defence management, namely, the
definition of individual responsibility, enhanced delegation of
Martin Edmonds 161
The first outcome of the Defence Costs Study that brought into effect
a ‘joint’ approach involved not the three armed services, but rather
the services and their civilian colleagues within the MOD main
building. It recognized that the MOD was unique in that it con-
tained two core functions, civil and military. The recommendation
was that these could be performed by integrated staffs; provided
these functions were distinctive, the MOD’s structure could make
adequate provision. This would be ensured by ‘preserving clear
lines’ of functional responsibility to Ministers. From an efficiency
perspective, savings were expected to be made by removing duplica-
Martin Edmonds 167
Services’ Personnel Board at the most senior level responsible for the
strategic direction of personnel. There is now an FMPG (Service
Personnel) supported by the Services Personnel Policy Board –
arguably yet another illustration of ‘jointery’ at the top level.42
‘Jointery’ lent itself to other areas in the quest for substantial cost
saving, though in certain respects the concept also made some oper-
ational, training or structural sense in a changing defence environ-
ment. One of the latter examples was the decision to merge the
Service Staff Colleges to form a single Joint Services’ Command and
Staff College (JSCSC). Certainly, the options in the Defence Costs
Study in this respect have not materialized.43 Above the JSCSC, the
existing Higher Command and Staff Course and the Royal College
of Defence Studies, both joint in their composition and orientation,
have remained.
Training offered considerable scope for ‘jointery’ and also was
found to conform with the government’s policies on reducing the
size and cost of the public sector. If outside agencies could prove
more cost-effective in training, or if the three services could combine
their training requirements, then savings in reduced overheads, less
duplication, and fewer personnel could be achieved. For example, a
defence helicopter flying school for all three services was planned.
More controversial, perhaps, was the merging of the services’
medical provision with the closure of two of the three service hospi-
tals. A ‘joint’ hospital was retained at Haslar, near Portsmouth, and
three peacetime military district hospital units would be set up
adjoining National Health Service hospitals.
The focus of the Defence Costs Study was to find savings in logistic
support. The emphasis in the study was less on jointery, as this was
thought to be incompatible with the individual services’ need for spe-
cialist maintenance and repair on specific equipment. Nevertheless,
repair, maintenance, warehousing and storage, and postal and courier
services were open to market testing and out-sourcing. Since then,
however, the pressure for greater ‘jointery’ determined that a
mammoth joint Defence Logistics Organization, serving all three ser-
vices, has been established under a three star officer.
The (FLF) Front Line First: Defence Costs Study was estimated to
realize savings of over £750 million in the first year and further
savings in excess of that figure were expected in following years. To
that extent, the exercise achieved its primary aim. Savings however,
Martin Edmonds 169
Notes
1. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978), p. 1269.
174 The Changing Face of Military Power
first Joint Services Command and Staff Course, MOD, Front Line First,
op. cit., p. 23.
44. For example, see MOD Defence Diplomacy (London: DISN Pubs, MOD,
March 1999). Also, M. Edmonds, Defence Diplomacy and Preventive
Diplomacy: the Role of Maritime Forces, Bailrigg Memorandum no. 34
(Lancaster, CDISS, 1998).
45. See MOD, Joint Forces, Modern Battlewinning Armed Forces (London, DISN
Pubs3, MOD, March 1999).
46. MOD, Strategic Defence Review, Cm 3999 (London: HMSO, July 1998).
47. Ibid., pp 41–4.
48. MOD, Strategic Defence Review, op cit., p. 5 and pp. 7–12.
49. G. Robertson, ‘Smart Ways to Run a … Business’, RUSI Journal (June
1999), pp. 66–8.
50. J.H.F. Eberle, ‘Defence Organisation – the Future’, in Martin, op. cit.,
p. 105.
51. Ibid., p. 105.
52. D. Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 261.
53. M. Rifkind, ‘Front Line First’, RUSI Journal (December 1994), p. 6.
54. Broadbent, op. cit., p. 201. Also Bland, op. cit.
9
British Defence Policy in the
Post-Cold War Era: History
Comes Full Circle?
Andrew Dorman
Introduction
177
178 The Changing Face of Military Power
At the same time various leaders within Europe have also sought
to define the new security agenda.1 For example, while President of
the European Commission Jacques Delors concluded:
We cannot limit our horizons to the new Europe. All around us,
naked ambition, lust for power, national uprisings and under-
development are combining to create potentially dangerous situ-
ations, containing the seeds of destabilization and conflict,
aggravated by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The Community must face this challenge. If it is to be worthy
of the European ideal it must square up to the challenges of
history and shoulder its share of the political and military
responsibilities of our old nations, which have always left their
mark on history.2
While all this has been going on there has been significant change
to Britain’s armed forces. Since 1989 they have all been reduced in
size and have begun to reorientate themselves away from their Cold
War threat-based tasking with an increased reference being made to
an expeditionary warfare capability in different forms. However,
progress has generally been slow and in Kosovo the Europeans
found themselves totally dependent upon an American decision to
use force and for the conduct of the majority of the air campaign.4
When the Americans subsequently put a limit on their own ground
deployment the Europeans struggled to put sufficient land forces
together in time to implement the peace agreement.5 This led to a
Franco-British call for a European corps level intervention capabil-
ity.6 The Joint Declaration of the British and French Governments
gave a renewed impetus to the Saint Malo Declaration and put con-
crete proposals forward, which were subsequently endorsed at the
EU’s Helsinki Summit.7
This chapter therefore seeks to examine the reality behind
Britain’s moves towards the changing nature of conflict and in par-
ticular its commitment to a European rapid reaction force. It has
been divided into three parts. Firstly, it sets out six reasons, some
new and some old, why Britain will use military force in an expedi-
tionary fashion. Secondly, it will examine the changes made to
British defence policy. Thirdly, it will draw some conclusions about
the implications this has for future British defence policy.
Initially it was thought that such a review would take about six
months and the government sought to canvass a wider range of
views than had previously been the case in defence reviews. The
result was a review that took 14 months to publish and which is still
to be fully worked out. Robertson virtually admitted this when he
stated that the SDR was only the first step in the process. The SDR
sought to address the defence requirements to 2015,61 but retained
the existing military tasks, defence roles and defence missions that
were promulgated under the previous administration.
The first obvious change to defence policy within the SDR was the
creation of an eighth defence mission – defence diplomacy.62 In part
this drew together a number of existing tasks under a new heading
but it also reflected the government’s internationalist agenda and
the desire that Britain should be a force for good in the world.
Initially defence diplomacy had a European focus, continuing the
pro-European bias of defence policy. Its links to NATO’s Partnership
for Peace Initiative and overt reference to the UK’s existing Outreach
programme made this implicit assumption.63 However, defence
diplomacy has now been broadened to stretch beyond Europe, with
the government’s contribution to the peacekeeping mission to East
Timor being only the most recent example of this.64
The SDR also drew attention to Britain’s position as a leading
member of the EU and this was linked into Britain’s membership of
NATO and the importance of the United States.65 On first appear-
ances this was an apparent reversal of previous policy reflecting a
European, rather than transatlantic, focus. However, the change is
subtler. It represented an attempt to keep a foot in both the US and
190 The Changing Face of Military Power
Linked into this was the British decision to assign troops to the
headquarters of the Eurocorps. Politically this was highly symbolic,
as the previous British administration had been one of the principle
critics of the corps and had sought to block its evolution at every
opportunity. This quiet reversal of policy, therefore, represented a
shift of the UK from a confrontational position with the Franco-
German founded Eurocorps to an acceptance of its importance.
Conversely the French government agreed to English becoming the
sole working language within the corps. Following on from this it
was agreed that the Eurocorps will take over from the ARRC in
Kosovo72 with the Eurocorps reporting directly to NATO’s Supreme
Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). This marked the first
significant step post-Helsinki towards the creation of a second rapid
reaction force within NATO run by the Europeans. Subsequently
192 The Changing Face of Military Power
NATO’s military staff has set the requirement for three high-level
readiness headquarters and Eurocorps is one of the six bidders for
inclusion.73 If successful, it will significantly enhance NATO’s expe-
ditionary capability74 and by implication the Eurocorps will serve as
the basis of a European capability to match NATO’s ARRC. Britain
has accepted that it will not have the European lead of this corps.
However, it will have seen off any challenge to its control of the
ARRC, which will allow it to remain closely aligned to the US,
without it appearing at all disloyal to the Eurocorps. The next step is
an open British declaration of a brigade or more to the Eurocorps as
part of the 15-brigade structure. Without such a move it is impossi-
ble to imagine that the Helsinki agreement will ever become reality,
and Britain will have left itself open to criticism from its European
partners.75 This step would most easily be achieved by offering the
Anglo-Dutch Commando Brigade, which has already been commit-
ted to WEU tasks.
By way of contrast the SDR also placed a considerable amount of
emphasis on joint capabilities within the UK services and Britain’s
ability to take unilateral action.76 To manage the remodelled expedi-
tionary forces a new Permanent Joint Task Force Headquarters
(PJHQ) was created, which is capable of overseeing simultaneous
operations. This marks a significant advance over the previous situa-
tion and, if fully implemented, will mean that more than one oper-
ation can be undertaken outside the United Kingdom without
recourse to the callout of a significant number of reserve personnel.
This will, therefore, give the government a greater degree of flexibil-
ity than it has had to date and ensure that it is not forced to choose
between NATO and EU-led operations. To support this, SDR also
contained a number of structural changes, such as the reordering of
the army’s brigades, which underpinned the declared policy. In
addition, it contained a number of procurement commitments,
such as to two large aircraft carriers and improvements to strategic
sea and airlift, which will ensure that different elements of policy
will have a more harmonious relationship.77
However, the realities of these policies remain dependent upon
the provision of the requisite support capabilities, and this is where
their continuity is brought into question. SDR highlighted the
importance of technology, particularly the ability to gather informa-
tion about an opponent and use it to maximum advantage. ISTAR
Andrew Dorman 193
and improved command and control are stressed within the SDR
document and one of the first announcements after the SDR docu-
ment was released was the decision to go ahead with the next gener-
ation of military communications satellites.78 However, the concept
of information warfare is discussed in only five lines.79 Partly this
reflects an innate conservatism that still persists within the MOD
and that opposes radical change. It also represents the desire to see
what emerges from the United States before making any financial
commitments. Nevertheless, as the United States continues to push
further ahead in command and control, communications and intel-
ligence, and long-range interdiction systems, the widening gap
between America and her allies can only serve to undermine NATO.
The Kosovo experience reinforced this conclusion and it is worth
noting the limited air contribution made by even Britain and France
– Europe’s leading military powers.80
There are further clouds on the horizon. In the future Britain is
increasingly likely to be presented with the choice of purchasing
limited amounts of equipment in order to allow its armed forces to
remain compatible with the United States or to build equipment in
conjunction with its European partners. This situation is further con-
fused by the industrial implications of such decisions. For example,
there was much prevarication over strategic lift aircraft and the new
air-to-air missile for the Royal Air Force. Each decision was viewed as
an indication of the MOD’s bias towards either Europe or the US. For
example, the airlift decision – to buy the Airbus A400M – emphasized
the government’s commitment to Europe and European defence
industry. This ran contrary to the air force’s preferred option, the C-
17.81 The BVRAAM (Beyond Visual Range Air-to-air Missile) decision
had similar implications with France and Germany putting pressure
on Tony Blair to intervene and ensure that the Matra BAe Dynamics
missile was ordered rather than the rival US product.82 This time the
RAF’s preference was for the European option and it got its way. To
placate the US an interim purchase of AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium
Range Air-to-air Missiles) was announced.83
Conclusion
close ally of the United States. British defence policy has pursued
this twin-track approach with some success and Britain has cur-
rently managed to restore its level of influence in Europe and with
the United States to that achieved during the bleakest days of the
Cold War. This is quite an achievement given the state of Britain’s
relations with both Europe and America that the government inher-
ited. At the same time the government has taken a number of steps
in the development of an expeditionary capability. In capability
terms the SDR has sought to give the British government three
options. First, one involving the use of force in conjunction with its
European partners as mentioned above. Second, to undertake inde-
pendent action – presumably in support of dependent territories or
as lead nation for a Commonwealth type operation. Third, to act in
cooperation with the United States outside NATO in operations
such as Desert Fox. These fit neatly into the requirements to placate
both the Europeans and Americans while reserving the option of
independent action in order to preserve Britain’s wider interests –
such as retention of a Permanent Seat on the UN Security Council.
However, the ability of Britain to continue this policy remains
questionable in the longer term. There are difficult choices ahead,
which could easily send this particular train off the rails. First, refer-
ence has already been made to the diversity in technological capa-
bilities between the various members of NATO. In essence there are
three tiers: the United States is on its own at the top (tier 1); the
next tier down includes the major military states of Western Europe
of which Britain is the leading member (tier 2); below this lie the
smaller West European states and some of the new NATO members
(tier 3). The Kosovo experience has indicated the problems of tiers 1
and 2 remaining compatible. There is a significant danger of Britain
being forced to choose between tiers 1 and 3. Second, the defence-
industrial dimension looks as though it will force the government to
choose in favour of Europe. This is probably the area in which the
first crack will appear. Moves towards a greater European defence
capability will reinforce the trend towards a deepening of the
European political relationship and Britain’s divisions with its
European partners on other issues, such as the single currency, may
sour its defence relationship with Europe while the trend towards
European defence-industrial consolidation may drive a schism
between the UK and USA. Maintaining a policy balanced berween
Andrew Dorman 195
Europe and the USA will therefore revolve around the government’s
ability to paper over the cracks as they appear, but the ultimate
success of such a policy seems doomed from the outset. As a result
Britain is likely to be left with a fudged expeditionary capability,
which is half myth and half reality.
Notes
1. See S. Duke, The Elusive Quest for European Security: from EDC to CFSP
(London: Macmillan, 2000).
2. J. Delors, ‘European Integration and Security’, Survival, vol. 33, no. 2
(March/April 1991), p. 100.
3. T. Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’, speech made to
the Economic Club of Chicago, Hilton Hotel, Chicago, 22 April 1999
(http://www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp?2316).
4. See House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourteenth Report: Lessons
of Kosovo, Report and Proceedings, HC.347, session 1999–2000 (London:
HMSO, 2000).
5. Lord Robertson, ‘European Defence: the Way Ahead’, speech to Royal
Institute of International Affairs, 7 October 1999.
6. Joint Declaration of the British and French Governments on European Defence,
Anglo-French Summit, London, 25 November 1999; ‘Moving Forward
European Defence’, MOD Press Release, no. 421/99, 25 November 1999.
7. Statement on the Estimates, 1999 (www.mod.uk/policy/wp99), para.17
(London: HMSO, 1999).
8. M. Evans, ‘British Officer Takes Over in Sierra Leone’, The Times,
2 November 2000, p. 20.
9. For a fuller examination of this argument see J. Roberts, ‘Oil, the
Military and the Gulf War of 1991’, RUSI Journal (Spring 1991),
pp. 11–16. In contrast D. Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm: the Second
Gulf War (London: HarperCollins, 1992), emphasizes the level of
Kuwaiti overseas investment. K.R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How
the West Armed Iraq (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991) argues that it
was to do with the West’s over-arming of Iraq and the imbalance
created in the balance of power in the region.
10. The Strategic Defence Review, Cm. 3,999 (London: HMSO, 1998), p. 2.
11. In the deployment to the Gulf and Somalia the West European coun-
tries were the first to follow the US in announcing the deployment of
their forces.
12. House of Commons Defence Committee, ‘Fourth Report: United
Kingdom Peacekeeping and Intervention Forces: Report together with
the proceedings of the Committee relating to the report, minutes of evi-
dence and memoranda’, House of Common Papers no. 188, session
1992–93 (London: HMSO, 1993), p. xxvi. (Bold in the original.)
196 The Changing Face of Military Power
13. Statement on the Defence Estimates 1993 – Defending Our Future, Cm. 2270
(London: HMSO, 1993), p. 10.
14. The role of the media in influencing public opinion has been clearly
evident in Britain with the recent airlift of wounded from Bosnia.
Operation Irma, the British aerial evacuation of a number of seriously
wounded individuals from Bosnia was due largely to the media focus on
the plight of one child.
15. Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past: the Memoirs of Lord Carrington
(Glasgow: William Collins, 1988), p. 218.
16. S. Croft and P. Williams, ‘The United Kingdom’, in R. Cowen Karp (ed.),
Security with Nuclear Weapons? Different Perspectives on National Security
(Oxford: Oxford University Press/ SIPRI, 1991), p. 147.
17. See P. Cornish, British Military Planning for the Defence of Germany, 1945–50
(London: Macmillan, 1996); C. Bluth, Britain, Germany and Western
Nuclear Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 10–30.
18. See W. Churchill, The Second World War Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy
(London: Penguin, 1974), pp. 495–507.
19. J. Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations, 1939–84: the Special
Relationship (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 34.
20. C.M. White, The Gotha Summer: the German Daytime Air Raids on
England, May–August 1917 (London: Robert Hale, 1986); J. Terraine,
Business in Great Waters: the U-boat Wars, 1916–45 (London: Leo
Cooper, 1989); D. Robinson, The Zeppelin in Combat: a History of the
Naval Airship Division, 1912–18 (Henley-on-Thames: G.T. Foulis and
Co., 1971), pp. 95–138, 204–33, 262–83.
21. E.R. Hooton, Eagle in Flames: the Fall of the Luftwaffe (London: Arms and
Armour Press, 1997), pp. 13–76. See also Terraine, op. cit.
22. P.S. Meilinger, ‘Proselytiser and Prophet: Alexander P. de Seversky and
American Airpower’, in J. Gooch (ed.), Airpower: Theory and Practice
(London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 22–3 and A.G.B. Vallance, The Air
Weapon: Doctrines of Air Power Strategy and Operational Art (London:
Macmillan, 1995), p. 16.
23. M. Dockrill, British Defence since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 32.
24. See W.S. Churchill, The Second World War Book III: their Finest Hour, the
Fall of France, May–August 1940 (London: Cassell, 1949).
25. Quoted in H. Wynn, RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces (London: HMSO,
1994), p. 13.
26. Ibid., p. 44.
27. L. Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons (London: Macmillan,
1980), p. 5.
28. Defence: Outline of Future Policy, Cm. 124 (London: HMSO, 1957).
29. Wynn, op. cit., p. 397.
30. F. Roberts, 60 Years of Nuclear History: Britain’s Hidden Agenda (Chalbury:
Jon Carpenter Publishing, 1999), pp. 153–4.
31. The United Kingdom Defence Programme: the Way Forward, Cmnd. 8,288
(London: HMSO, 1981), p. 6; A. Dorman, ‘John Nott and the Royal
Andrew Dorman 197
51. Agreed at the NATO Heads of State and Government meeting in Rome,
7–8 November 1991, NATO Press Communiqué S-1 (91) 85, 7
November 1991.
52. Statement on the Defence Estimates 1993, op. cit., p. 10.
53. B. George, and N. Ryan, ‘Options for Change: a Political Critique’, in
Brassey’s Defence Yearbook (London: Brassey’s, 1993), p. 44.
54. Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1991: Britain’s Defence for the 1990s,
Cm. 1,559, (London: HMSO, 1991), p. 6.
55. Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1996, Cmnd. 3,223 (London: HMSO,
1996), p. 57.
56. House of Commons Select Committee on Defence, ‘Fourth Report:
United Kingdom Peacekeeping and Intervention Forces: Report
Together with the Proceedings of the Committee Relating to the Report,
Minutes of Evidence and Memoranda’, House of Commons Paper no. 188,
Session 1992–93 (London: HMSO, 1993), p. xxiii.
57. Ibid., p. v.
58. Ministry of Defence Press Release 055/97, 28 May 1997.
59. The Strategic Defence Review, op. cit., p. 8.
60. Ibid., p. 5
61. Ibid., p. 6.
62. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
63. Ibid., p. 15.
64. ‘Defence Diplomacy: Good Things Come in Threes’, MOD Press Release
No. 367/99, 18 October 1999.
65. Ibid., p. 6.
66. T. Blair, speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, London, 22 November 1999.
67. Joint Declaration issued at the British-French Summit, Saint Malo,
France, 3–4 December 1998.
68. J. Lodge and V. Flynn, ‘The CFSP after Amsterdam: the Policy Planning
and Early Warning Unit’, International Relations, vol. 14, no. 1 (April
1998), pp. 7–21.
69. Robertson, ‘European Defence’, op. cit.
70. ‘Joint Declaration of the British and French Governments on European
Defence’, Anglo-French Summit, London, 25 November 1999; and
‘Moving Forward’, op. cit.
71. Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1999, para. 17.
72. L. Hill, ‘New European Task Force Takes on First Task in Kosovo’,
Defense News, vol. 15, no. 7 (21 February 2000), p. 4.
73. L. Hill, ‘NATO Offer for High-alert HQs is Oversubscribed’, Jane’s
Defence Weekly, vol. 34, no. 17 (25 October 2000), p. 12.
74. Ibid.
75. M. Evans, ‘Britain Will Control its EU Troops Says Hoon’, The Times,
20 November 2000.
76. See paragraph 4 of Secretary of State for Defence’s introduction to the
SDR. The Strategic Defence Review, op. cit., p. 2. For a list of the enhance-
ments to joint capabilities see G. Robertson, ‘Robertson’s Review:
Andrew Dorman 199
Modern Forces for the World’, Ministry of Defence Press Release 172/98,
8 July 1998, pp. 2–3.
77. Ibid., pp. 24, 26–7 and 29.
78. Ministry of Defence Press Release no. 213/98, 12 August 1998.
79. The Strategic Defence Review, op. cit., p. 21.
80. See House of Commons Defence Committee, ‘Fourteenth Report:
Lessons of Kosovo, Report and Proceedings’, op. cit.
81. P. Beaver, ‘UK MOD Instructed to Re-examine RAF’s Future Airlift
Requirement’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 22 December 1999, p. 3; and
N. Cook, ‘Endgame Nears for UK RAF’s New Transporter’, Jane’s
Defence Weekly, 26 January 2000, p. 29.
82. M. Oliver, ‘Blair in £900m Missile Row’, Observer, 27 February 2000,
Business Section, p. 1.
83. ‘Major RAF Equipment Order Announced’, (www.raf.mod.uk/history/
00arch.html#eqpt), 16 May 2000.
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10
The Economics of Joint Forces
Keith Hartley
The concept of using Joint Forces with the three arms of the
Services operating together, is today more and more important as
the traditional distinctions between maritime, land and air oper-
ations have been removed. The Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air
Force rely on each other and combined they provide a greater
punch than possible as separate elements. By increasing ‘jointery’
we are not proposing to amalgamate the three Services into a
single amorphous defence force. There is great value in the sepa-
rate identities and distinct characteristics of the Navy, Army and
Air Force … because the needs of the modern battlefield still
require the specialist skills and ethos of each Service.2
201
202 The Changing Face of Military Power
Joint operations are not a new concept, but previously they were
implemented on an ad hoc basis during crisis or war. Future UK
defence policy and planning will be based on joint forces.4 Before the
SDR, there were some joint force initiatives, namely, a permanent
Joint Headquarters, a Joint Rapid Deployment Force (JRDF) and a
Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC). The SDR extended
the joint approach to create Joint Rapid Reaction Forces (JRRF), a
Chief of Joint Operations, Joint Force 2000, a Joint Helicopter
Command (JHC) and various other joint units. Table 10.1 lists the UK
joint forces and units and their features.
The official literature claims two major arguments for jointery.
First, the armed forces together provide a greater capability than the
sum of their individual parts; and second, joint solutions offer
efficiency savings through rationalization and the elimination of
wasteful duplication. Nonetheless, continued emphasis is placed on
the need to retain the individuality and separate identity of the
three services and their specialist skills, ethos, loyalty and commit-
ment. For example, one option considered by SDR was to transfer all
battlefield helicopters to a single service but the MOD concluded ‘as
with merger of the Services, we believe that any advantages would
be outweighed by the damaging impact it would have on ethos,
morale and operational effectiveness’.5 In contrast, both the army
and RAF had maintained separate air defence capabilities using dif-
ferent variants of the Rapier missile. Each used their own operating
procedures, command and control systems, maintenance support
chains and training organizations. This has been ‘operationally
inflexible and wasteful’.6 The new Joint Ground Based Air Defence
will ‘have a properly integrated and flexible low level air defence
Keith Hartley 203
Organization Features
Source: Ministry of Defence, UK Defence Statistics 2000, DASA (London: HMSO, 2000).
Source: Ministry of Defence, UK Defence Statistics 2000, DASA (London: HMSO, 2000).
Source: Ministry of Defence, UK Defence Statistics 2000, DASA (London: HMSO, 2000).
Notes
1. Ministry of Defence (MOD), The Strategic Defence Review: Supporting
Essays (London: HMSO, 1998), section 8–1.
2. Ministry of Defence, Joint Forces: Modern Battlewinning Armed Forces
(London: Ministry of Defence, 1999), pp. 1–2.
3. K. Hartley, ‘Jointery – Just Another Panacea? An Economist’s View’,
Defence Analysis, vol. 14, no. 1 (1998), pp. 79–86.
4. See, MOD, The Strategic Defence Review, op. cit. and MOD, Joint Forces,
op. cit..
5. MOD, The Strategic Defence Review, op. cit., section 8–7.
6. Ibid., section 8–7.
7. Ibid., section 8–8.
8. MOD, Joint Forces, op. cit., p. 2.
9. T. Sandler and K. Hartley, The Political Economy of NATO (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
10. MOD, Joint Forces, op. cit., p. 2.
11. H.M. Sapolsky, ‘The Interservice Competition Solution’, Breakthroughs,
vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 1–3.
12. Ibid., p. 1.
13. Ibid., p. 3.
14. MOD, Joint Forces, op. cit., p. 2.
15. A role similar to that played by managers in the National Health
Service.
16. MOD, Joint Forces, op. cit., p. 2.
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Index
217
218 Index
Lebanon 3, 61–2, 68, 79, 83, 104 Quadrennial Defense Review 24, 39
Latin America 47, 51, 55–7, 59
Libya 61, 66, 101 Revolution in Military Affairs 3,
8–9, 111–28, 132, 136, 145
Mexico 57 Revolution in Political Affairs 9, 113
Middle East 3, 45, 47–8, 56 Royal Air Force 11, 35, 112, 131–2,
Ministry of Defence 11, 73–5, 81, 186, 193, 201–2, 211–12, 214
140–3, 151–2, 154, 157, 159, Royal Navy 11, 50, 112, 130, 159,
160–1, 163–7, 169–71, 173, 188, 182, 201, 211
193, 202, 206 Russia 35, 47, 81, 95, 116, 137
Mozambique 3, 178
Saudi Arabia 58, 64, 67
Nairobi 47 Sierra Leone 6, 17, 124, 178–9
National Missile Defense 52 Smart Acquisition 142, 145
New World (Dis)order 2, 5 Somalia 17, 20, 49, 77, 104, 116
North Africa 56 South Africa 3
North Atlantic Treaty Organization South America 58
4, 5, 9–10, 15–16, 18–19, 21–3, South Asia 55
27–39, 50, 52–3, 60–1, 80, 84, Southeast Asia 3, 55
94–5, 97–8, 101–2, 104–6, 108, Soviet Union 2, 4, 6, 58, 99, 102,
116, 123, 132, 135–7, 145, 159, 104, 177, 181–2, 184–5
162, 169, 177–8, 181, 183, Spain 101
185–7, 189–92, 194, 214 Sri Lanka 68
North Korea 47, 61, 66 Strategic Defence Review 9, 24,
Northern Ireland 3, 94 124, 129–32, 143–5, 170, 180,
Nott Review 130, 159, 185, 187 189, 192–4, 201–2, 204
Index 219
United Kingdom 6, 8–9, 16, 37, Vietnam 61, 81, 96–7, 99, 102,
62, 69, 78, 81, 96, 101, 105, 104, 114–16
111–49, 155, 160, 204, 210–12,
214–15 Warsaw Pact 10, 94, 116, 177
United Nations 7, 15, 18, 60, 74, Western European Union 177,
79, 94, 102, 106, 114, 116, 177, 180, 187
180, 186, 188, 194, 210–11 World Bank 74, 78
US Air Force 49, 52, 67 World Trade Center 69
US Army 51, 66, 119 World Trade Organization 59