Conventional Military Forces and Defence Procurement

 

 

 

It’s a real honour to be addressing such a distinguished audience at this joint seminar. The question I would like to start with today is one that applies to all countries. It is very basic: what, in the modern world, constitutes conventional military capability?

 

At the International Institute for Strategic Studies, we publish what is generally seen as the authoritative work detailing each nation’s capabilities, called The Military Balance. But in the modern era there is a growing need for us to do more than publish figures on the number of troops, aircraft, tanks and ships. These are important, but they by no means tell the whole story about a nation’s true capability. Nowadays you need to have a better idea about what a country can actually do. This shift in our requirements has come about because, since the end of the Cold war, things have changed for western armed forces in two important ways. First, the mission has changed. Unless you know what the mission is perceived to be, you cannot judge whether a nation has the capabilities to carry it out. Secondly, there have been important advances in technology, which influence what is possible in terms of capability and at what cost. To a greater or lesser extent, at least one of these factors affects all nations.

 

So the answer to the question of what modern capabilities are lies, I think, in a revision of the relationship between these two factors. For western countries, you have on the one hand troops that are much more involved in operations than they were previously. On the other, you have the possibility that new technologies can alter your ability to carry out those missions – though there may be limits on how much.

 

During the 1990s, there was a great deal of enthusiasm about what was called by some Americans the Revolution in Military Affairs. The argument was made that information and computer technologies, new sensors and materials would permit a step change in warfare. Commanders would have almost perfect knowledge of what was happening in the so-called battlespace, and would able to bring the perfect combination of precision weapons to bear on any situation. This was a long-term vision of the future. Nobody was suggesting that such capabilities would be available instantly. Still, just a glance at the last 18 months in Iraq suggests that some of those earlier ideas were somewhat fanciful. New technologies may be able to help. But human skills are also required.

 

Technology is only useful depending on the use that you have in view.  And for most western countries, the purpose of armed forces has changed radically. During the Cold war, NATO countries and the Soviet Union directed their technologies towards deterring, but if necessary fighting, a war that thankfully never happened. European forces were static, not equipped or trained for easy deployment to other parts of the world.  After the Cold war, two things happened: first of all, finance ministries extracted the peace dividend. Between 1985 and 2000, defence spending fell in constant dollar terms by about a quarter. Secondly, European governments found that they actually needed to use their armed forces for operations. In spite of still high levels of spending, there were severe limits on their ability to do so. During the 1990s, it became evident that radical changes were necessary.

 

Each country will naturally have a different view of the threats in faces, and will set different priorities. But if you look at what European troops have been doing over the past decade, you will find that they have been increasingly deployed on operations. By the year 2000, more than 48,000 troops of European Union members were deployed on peacekeeping missions, and by last year this had risen to 56,000. This is still only a fraction of the numbers that Europe has in uniform, but it much more than would have been possible 10 years ago. Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, Congo, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and Iraq – in just the last eight years, western countries and those closely allied with them have intervened with military force in all these places. Too often, they found themselves without the ability to do so with the required effectiveness and speed. This was exposed most graphically in the Kosovo campaign of 1999, when the US undertook almost all of the aerial campaign – 78 days of bombing – and then found that Europe, even with that length of notice, was very hard pressed to muster and transport peacekeeping troops the short distance to Kosovo. They lacked all sorts of basic capabilities.

 

Without going into the rights and wrongs of each intervention, the plain fact is that the need for intervention to stabilize potentially threatening situations is unlikely to diminish. European countries have all recognized that, to play their part in countering global threats, they have to have forces that can be used. They have to be effective, properly trained and equipped, professional, and able to work alongside troops of other countries. Big reform programmes are under way. Britain has led the way but others playing their part, such as Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the political need to reduce spending has not diminished at all. Spending must be much more cost effective. And that is where technology comes in. For Europe, new technologies have been identified as a means of obtaining more capability, but by spending less money - a magic trick that every government wants to be able to perform!

 

I’ll come back to how this magic trick might work in a minute. But I want to look briefly at the US, where different circumstances apply. The US spends vastly more on defence than any other country and vastly more on new equipment and on technology research. Washington's aim is to develop technology that will maintain its absolute military superiority over all others. It does not have the same budgetary constraints. The US was and is ready and equipped for major war, which involves deploying and sustaining large number of troops over long periods and distances. The unchallengeable military might of the US will become even more formidable as it introduces new equipment such as the F-22, the Joint Strike Fighter, new unmanned aircraft and precision weapons, new warships and armoured vehicles.

 

But in spite of all this, the US too has found that it is not well prepared for modern missions, because these involve the task of what the US calls “nation-building”. Each time the US gets involved in a stabilisation or peacekeeping mission – and it frequently does – it starts from scratch, with inadequate planning and troops untrained for the task. Perhaps the Iraq experience will cure this problem – certainly there are plenty of people in Washington, including Republicans, who are disturbed by events in Iraq and see the need for US forces to build peacekeeping skills. The bottom line is that the US should also be adjusting its extraordinary capabilities for modern missions. And there are in fact signs that it may shift defence spending away from traditional military capabilities and more into dealing with irregular or asymmetric threats. The record suggests, however, that the US is likely to continue to see a large part of the answer in the exploitation of new technologies. Europeans favour a more face to face approach to peacekeeping, relying less on technology and more on interpersonal skills. Iraq is an object lesson that having enough boots on the ground still matters a great deal – the irony is that a number of important European countries do not have any boots at all on that particular ground.

 

Does this divergent approach mean that Europe and the US will adopt different technologies, thus further deepening a transatlantic divide on weapons technology and promoting new competition between defence industries? In fact, I think it is possible to draw some common threads between the American and European versions of transformation. In the US, which has led the debate on new military technologies, the futuristic vision that was called the Revolution in Military Affairs has in fact narrowed and become much more realistic since the 1990s. Equally, Europe's suspicious approach has been overcome by an appreciation of the benefits to be gained.

 

It is obvious that countries will always have different weapons, different surveillance systems, troops with different capabilities. But if they are to work together, the most important thing is that they have a common picture and can communicate with each other. Therefore, most countries are working on being properly networked, both between their own separate armed services and with the forces of other nations. The US calls this network centric warfare, the UK calls it network-enabled capability, and no doubt there are other names as well. But the basic idea is the same. Information from a range of sources is shared across a network so that the best and most rapid response to any situation can be made. This means better communications, linked computing systems, compatible sensors, more precision-guided munitions. The emphasis is on the focused effect that you can achieve through a particular action.

 

This approach has a radical effect on procurement, not to mention on decisions about manpower and training. It does not create many new acquisition programmes by itself – it is not a new aircraft or a new missile. But it influences all acquisition programmes: in NATO and EU countries, it would not be possible to advance plans for a new weapon system without making the case for how it will fit in with other weapon systems belonging to all the armed services of a nation, and with those of allies. Every programme must be part of a “system of systems”. If this works, new technologies will be a force multiplier and will extract enhanced value from the money spent on them.

 

Overall, there is a big cultural shift under way in the armed forces of all NATO nations. Traditionally, any general or admiral would have referred to his future capability by mentioning the new platforms he was getting – new aircraft, ships, tanks. Nowadays, there are a relatively few new major platforms and the push is for him to describe systems – communications, command and control, intelligence or weapons – that he can bring to bear from a number of different platforms. And because of the change of mission and the pressure on budgets, the systems must be usable on actual missions, and soon. Only the US will really have the money to buy things for a rainy day.

 

One should not overstate this change in procurement culture. We all know that defence procurement is a lengthy business. Every government and military service is saddled with the results of procurement decisions taken many years ago. Service chiefs and politicians will still champion new aircraft and ships. But a change is steadily occurring. It is not a revolution, but it is the application for modern technologies to actual military operations. It is not a panacea, because boots on the ground and human skills will always be vital, especially in peacekeeping. But if it works, it will achieve much better value for money for taxpayers around the world.