MoD First Reflections on Iraq

Its seven chapters divide the report into Policy Background to the Operation, Planning and Preparation, The Campaign, Equipment Capability and Logistics, People, Processes and After the Conflict.  Published too early to list lessons to be learned, each chapter instead makes a series of “reflections”, some of which are straight observations, others confirm the effectivity of current military procedures, doctrine, equipment etc, and the remainder suggest areas where, in the Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon’s words: “we could have done better”.

This article will briefly look at some of the things that we could have done better, as indicated by the First Reflections report, which will provide a heads up of the types of issues that the MoD will be looking at to improve military operations in the future.  To make this article easy on the eye, I will indicate all direct quotes from the First Reflections report by using bold and quote marks. 

“Given US technological and military dominance, we should continue to track, align with and integrate US developments in areas where our force balance and resources allow, particularly in terms of the organisation of enhanced HQs, communications and information systems, and Combat Identification.  We should also ensure that our command structures can engage and influence key US decision-makers with appropriate weight and at the right levels.” (Page 7)

The policy of this Government seems to be to keep a foot in two camps: Europe and America.  It doesn’t see the point in being antagonistic to the world’s largest military power, when such a stance would bring no benefits to Britain, but instead would leave us out of the decision-making loop.  Some might say that the US, even with the UK onside, will still make its own decisions regardless of the views of its closest ally.  An alternative view is that Britain has a choice between having no influence with the United States and having some influence.  The benefits of choosing the latter is that Britain can at least expect to be listened to by the US, behind closed doors as well as publicly.  It means that Britain is in the US’ decision-making loop; not always as active as we might like, but at least in a position to see what is going on, to have access to intelligence and to take part in the debate.  Marginal influence on the world’s largest military power, the Government might argue, is better than no influence at all.  The Government has also made it clear that the UK is unlikely to take military action in the future alone; most wars we anticipate fighting with coalition partners.  While these partners will include NATO and non-NATO partners, it is the US military that we are most likely to fight alongside.  It is therefore sensible to continue to track, align with and integrate with the US military as much as possible.

We also need the capability not only to embed senior planners in US or coalition headquarters, but for those planners to have to necessary national intelligence and other feeds necessary to allow them to not only add value to the planning process, but to be seen to be adding value.

“Mobilisation of the Reserves and auxiliaries proceeded smoothly, although in future there is a need to consider further the time gap between call out and reporting for duty.” (Page 9)

Lessons learned from the mobilisation of reservists for Op TELIC will be explored during the one-day RUSI conference on Reserve Forces on 30 September 2003.  A Newsbrief article on this subject will be published thereafter.

“By 18 March, we had deployed a formidable joint force of 46,000 men and women and their supporting equipment over 3,400 miles to theatre.  This had to be done in significantly less time and with a larger force than the planning targets assumed by the Strategic Defence Review.” (Page 8)

It could be argued that recent operational commitments of the UK armed forces have driven a coach and horses through the SDR assumptions.  At best SDR can be viewed as a planning start point from which force structures for operations can be decided.  While our commitments are going beyond that envisaged in SDR, there is a risk associated with each deployment, but as long as this risk is understood and planned for, the original SDR concept together with the New Chapter can form a sound basis to meet potential future commitments. 

“The full range of the Iraq experience will need to be reflected in future training and equipment provision.  The Iraqi regular army put up stiff resistance in places…(but the) greater threat to the coalition, particularly to lines of communication and rear areas, was from paramilitary and irregular forces closely associated with the Saddam regime…. The Iraqis used suicide bombers…. (which) while such tactics did not have a significant impact, they showed a disregard for the provisions of the Geneva Convention, put the Iraqi population at risk, and presented the coalition with a challenge as to how to respond.” (Page 12)

Too often military training is compartmentalised into warfighting or peace-keeping with never the twain meeting.  The challenge for exercise planners is to provide imaginative training environments where types of operation are not compartmentalised.  Not only might soldiers have to re-role quickly from high intensity warfare to peace support operations, but they might then have to change back again, or might have to carry out counter insurgency operations.  Adding another dimension of complexity, soldiers in one area may be doing one thing and their comrades in the next town doing another.  While the war in Iraq does highlight the value of agile forces in responding to asymmetrical threats, military exercises should provide commanders with an understanding of how asymmetrical tactics work and what an enemy using these tactics is likely to do.  This type of enemy won’t view risk in the same way: he may be content to seek minimal or temporary gain at high cost;  he will attack vulnerable targets – supply chains, logistic personnel – as any attack that causes discomfort is viewed as a success, whether or not it affects the overall battle or not.  He aims to distract and harass so that his enemy might lose sight of the bigger picture, losing momentum and patience.  While current doctrine enables British forces to take all this in their stride, and whilst years of experience in Northern Ireland and the Balkans has made them better equipped to deal with situations that are unpredictable that any other of the world’s armed forces, there is probably much more that exercise planners could do to prepare commanders for these asymmetric threats.  

“Although we knew much about the broad structure and disposition of Iraqi land and air forces, very little was known about how they planned to oppose the coalition or whether they had the will to fight”  (Page 15)

This again highlights the importance of HUMINT that so often in military operations has proved to be the missing vital link.  HUMINT can provide military commanders with an assessment of the enemy’s intentions, its morale and its will to fight.  Whilst our investment in intelligence gathering, of all three forms, is significant, possibly one of the most neglected areas of intelligence is that of assessment.  While strenuous efforts were made to collect HUMINT in Iraq before the start of the war, First Reflections is right to highlight the lack of intelligence about enemy intentions as a weakness.  HUMINT has often been regarded as the preserve of specialist units engaged in low intensity operations.  This mindset, although changing, needs to be further challenged and commanders need to fully understand the application and limitations of this collection discipline. 

“The recent trend, particularly apparent in this operation, towards a significant increase in the demand for intelligence and a need to service the requirements of rapid, decisive and multi-layered campaigns, has the potential to test severely even the most sophisticated intelligence organisations.  Consequently, we will wish, with potential allies and partners, to review our structure and specialist and deployed manning, to ensure their suitability and resilience to meet this challenge.” (Page 15)

Commanders have always “demanded” intelligence, but too often what they are presented with is significant quantities of unevaluated, often irrelevant information about an enemy.  The real challenge is not just collecting large quantities of information, but collecting the right information, processing it as effectively as possible in order to present relevant and timely intelligence to commanders.  Our current intelligence gathering systems produce more information than is humanly possible to make sense of, therefore hand in hand with collection capabilities must go the development of the expert systems that will support the analysis of this information by humans.

“During the conflict it proved difficult to measure the effectiveness of the information campaign…Future efforts in this area will concentrate on streamlining the means of assessing the effects…and confirming the truth about events from our commanders in the front-line as quickly as possible.”  (Page 18)

It is difficult to assess the general effects of information operations while hostilities are still underway, but HUMINT is one of the sources of information that may provide indications of the effectiveness of the information campaign. 

“The implications of maintaining congruence with an accelerating US technological and doctrinal dominance need to be assessed and taken into account in future policy and planning assumptions.”  (Page 19)

While the US clearly has technological dominance as a result of its investment in defence capabilities and therefore it is right that the UK aims to maintain congruence with it, the issue of doctrine is more questionable, particularly in low intensity operations.  The UK has contributed significantly to the development of internal security, counter insurgency and peace keeping doctrine, both inside and outside NATO, and has much to offer the US in this area. 

“For this operation, MOD approved over 190 UORs at a value of around £510M….The UOR process inevitably involves the risk that not all requirements will be met in time, but it would be inefficient and unaffordable to buy and maintain equipment for every imaginable contingency in every climate.  However, we will undertake further analysis to improve our understanding of the likely timescales within which different capabilities could be procured, delivered and fitted, to help inform the process within MOD’s Equipment Plan.” (Page 22)

Clearly it is neither possible nor desirable to maintain an inventory of equipment capable of being used in any conceivable circumstance.  The challenge is to ensure that forces have the most flexible equipment available to them, and that there are regular assessments of potential future operations and associated potential equipment requirements.  The MoD can’t equip the armed forces to fight every potential conflict that could arise in the next five years, but perhaps it could better prepare for these potential conflicts by identifying where the potential equipment holes are, and plan for how these holes could be rapidly and effectively filled. 

“The UK has a wide range of communications and information systems performing different functions.  These were not all compatible with each other or with US systems, which led to interoperability problems.  As a result, reliable, secure, timely and effective communication between all stakeholders could not be guaranteed”. (Page 24)

Enabling units to communicate voice and data securely, easily and quickly, including between coalition forces, will be a welcome leap forward for the UK armed forces.  The problems with Clansman in the Gulf this year were apparently not show-stoppers, mainly because of the continued reliance on Ptarmigan.  However, Bowman couldn’t come quickly enough for British forces, and even when it arrives there will continue to be interoperability challenges for coalition forces deployed on operations.  Resolving the communication problems once and for all should be a high priority for the MOD, particularly given the current emphasis placed on NEC and coalition operations.

“MOD has identified the requirement for better stock visibility (in theatre) as an important lesson from previous operations.  However, finding an affordable solution to meet this requirement has not proved easy.  Elements of the US Total Asset Visibility (TAV) system were purchased as a UOR for the operation.  In the light of our experience, we need to examine the requirement for a common, robust tracking system to track equipment and stocks in fast-moving operations.” (Page 26)

The requirement for an effective TAV system, while in existence before the war, has emerged as a “must have” for future operations.  The problems with asset tracking can be largely resolved by investing in a system such as the US’ TAV system, enabling logistic planners to have an overview of where all equipment is, how long it has been there and even what state it is in.

“The mobilisation from the TA of large numbers of individual reinforcements, rather than from formed units, runs counter to TA ethos and unit cohesion.  We need to identify how the reservists’ chain of command can be more dynamically utilised, and to examine ways of creating linkages with regular units in order to exploit specialist skills more efficiently.”

It is unrealistic to expect TA personnel to be deployed in the future as formed units as a matter of course in the current operational environment.  Whilst the TA unit set-up provides an excellent training and motivational structure, the reality is that these units will be called upon to provide individual reservists to fill gaps in the regular army.  Fostering close links between regular units and the TA, by having them deployed side by side, can be only for the good.  In light of manning problems, the New Chapter and the relentless squeeze on budgets, the MOD is doing much to woo reservists and potential reservists.  Another example of this is the MoD’s suggestion that it consults Volunteer Reserves on potential new roles, in view of the fact that “personal commitment is entirely voluntary”.  The regular armed forces are also a volunteer force – should they perhaps be consulted too?  It wasn’t a surprise to see that the House of Commons Defence Committee politely shrugged off the proposal:  “We understand the arguments for consulting reservists during their summer camps, although we doubt whether it was essential to do so.”

“In terms of planning for the post-conflict phase, we must learn from the difficulties faced in the provision of security in the UK area of operations…the unexpected speed, extent and consequences of the collapse of Saddam’s security infrastructure has posed challenges for the introduction of new law and order arrangements as rapidly or effectively as we would have wished.” 

This is yet another challenge for the exercise planners.  The usual procedure with an exercise is to spend a couple of weeks defeating the enemy, and much less time “winning the peace”, and even then it’s viewed as much the easier part of the exercise.  The challenge is to present the post-conflict part of the exercise as a relatively long, difficult, frustrating, dangerous, morale-sapping time.  While this may not always be the case in reality, the post-war period of the war in Iraq has shown that in this regard we must prepare for the worst.  

This article has highlighted only a few of the many “reflections” put forward in the report and is no more than an indication of some of the themes that might influence aspects of defence policy in the near future, some of which we will see reflected in the Defence White Paper and a report of the MOD’s final reflections on Op TELIC, both to be published later this year.

 

Eleanor Goldsworthy