By T.D. KILVERT-JONES

T.D. Kilvert-Jones, a program manager, historian, and defense analyst at Universal Systems and Technology Inc., in Fairfax, Va., was formerly a career British Army officer.

British military and naval forces are now deployed around the world to a degree unprecedented in the post-Cold War era: from Brunei to Bosnia, from Cyprus to Saudi Arabia, from Belfast to Botswana, from Germany to Gibraltar--and in an additional 26 countries. This diversity of deployment is matched by the variety of their operational roles that, in support of national, NATO, and U.N. objectives, range from peacekeeping to limited war. This spectrum of tasks, carried out under widely different climatic, geographical, and operational circumstances, necessitates a flexible structure, a dynamic doctrine, strong leadership, and a correspondingly broad inventory of weapons and equipment capabilities.

The Strategic Defence Review

In 1998 the new Labor Party Government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, introduced a comprehensive and very much needed Strategic Defence Review (SDR) that reassessed Britain's security interests and defense needs in the light of new and emerging strategic realities. The SDR has been widely acclaimed as the best attempt in recent history to restructure and ration-alize the country's armed forces and establish more effective and relevant relationships among Britain's defense industrial base, the government, and the armed services.

The findings of the SDR were published in July 1998 as a government White Paper, Command 3999. A wide range of dramatic and effective programs and initiatives that focused thinking on the requirement to deploy highly trained and well-equipped forces around the world to prevent or contain crises was then instituted. To achieve the capabilities needed, U.K. government agencies, led by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), have identified the best methodology for force modernization. This process has touched every aspect of the military infrastructure--from human-resource policies to defense-acquisition procedures.

The changes proposed by the SDR embrace the specific technical, doctrinal, and organizational developments needed to support a second-tier-power's approach to expeditionary operations and emerging security issues in an era of fundamental social, economic, technical, and cultural change. The SDR's impact on British joint and maritime forces is being felt in a number of ways.

The Crucible of Peace

Today's new and more complex national-security environment was a catalyst for change. The SDR also acknowledged that technology has once again had a revolutionary, if not decisive, effect on military capabilities, particularly the key enabling technologies of digitization and intelligence acquisition. Inevitable demands for improved efficiencies to generate savings in the ever-limited defense budget also have forced the pace for a fundamental review and reorganization of the acquisition infrastructure now known as the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA).

In truth, prior to SDR, too many of the United Kingdom's key defense acquisition programs had been over budget, behind schedule, and lacking the dynamic top-down leadership structure that could create the imaginative approaches that would bring the right equipment into service on time. In order to reverse that trend, program-management procedures were restructured under the auspices of the Smart Procurement Initiative (SPI). SPI will address these challenges by adopting a "whole life" (i.e., total life cycle) approach to acquisition--investing money early in the project's life, working more closely with industry, and, where appropriate, acquiring capabilities in stages. The SPI has delegated much greater authority in the acquisition process to the initial 33 newly appointed integrated-project-team leaders. This promises to produce a new and vital dynamic in the requirement analysis, design, and selection of MOD's future equipment inventory.

In the summer of 1999, John Howe, MOD's deputy chief of defence procurement, recognized the impact of these necessary changes and stated that Britain "must make the optimum trade-offs between time, cost, and perform-ance. In many cases, we will elect not to pay a premium for ultimate perform-ance." In tight fiscal conditions, the best is certainly the enemy of the good. Other key SDR equipment-acquisition initiatives include a better integration of industry with the MOD to produce affordable, battle-winning military equipment.

As Howe commented, "It would be perverse of the ... MOD not to take greater advantage of the knowledge and strategic direction of companies in both the military and civil sectors of industry." This cooperative approach should enable the British to design, develop, and bring into service "new solutions to the front line faster and with less risk than before." Other benefits of this approach include cost effectiveness and greater joint force efficiency, because interoperability will be a critical requirement from the earliest design stage.

Significantly, within the European arena, Britain will be working more intimately with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden by January 2000. These nations will be initiating a defense-industrial restructuring in Europe through the Organism Conjointe de Cooperation en Matiere d'Armament (OCCAR). Beginning in January, OCCAR will be able to award contracts for projects placed under its supervision. In this increasingly global manufacturing economy, even prime U.S. defense contractors may need to look more widely and carefully for restructuring partners in the face of these new European initiatives.

Modernizing the Joint Force

In accordance with Britain's grand strategic policy, the armed forces are committed to being a force for good in the world. By implication, they must be capable of projecting power in support of national foreign policy. That requirement implies an expeditionary capability that must not be at the mercy of host-nation support, particularly after the examples of the "lock-in" and "lock-out" of allied air assets by Italy and in Saudi Arabia during past crises.

New policy requirements, and the realities of an overdependence on sometime fickle allies, have ensured that Britain's new expeditionary capabilities will include a strong maritime air component (Royal Air Force and naval). That component is destined to be carried on two new aircraft carriers (designated CVF for "aircraft carrier future") supporting a joint force equipped with appropriate expeditionary logistics and strategic air and sealift.

Over the next 18 to 48 months, critical decisions will be made on the selection of the future carrier-based aircraft and on the construction consortium and final design for the carriers themselves. There is little doubt that imminent U.S. decisions will influence the British selection of the future aircraft. If the U.S. Marine Corps selects a Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), then it would be logical for Britain to do the same. The STOVL-equipped CVF would allow simultaneous aircraft landings and takeoffs--a fundamental advantage. These decisions lie at the heart of the expeditionary equipment developments proposed in the Strategic Defence Review.

The core requirement within SDR is the need to mount expeditionary operations using mission-tailored Joint Rapid Reaction Forces (JRRF) under the aegis of a combined coalition or treaty structure. To that end, key institutional changes within the uniformed services have been introduced. These radical organizational developments are certainly logical, economically sound, and consistent with the overall vision of SDR. The United Kingdom will now operate a pool of joint forces capable of mounting expeditionary operations in cooperation with the United States and other principal allies.

To that end, the following initiatives have been undertaken in addition to the air and sea expeditionary components already in development:

• Rationalization of the Joint Helicopter Command: 400 RAF support, naval, and Army attack helicopters have been grouped under a single command based in Wilton, Wiltshire;

• A common logistics structure (the Defence Logistics Organisation) has already been established;

• An interoperable air force and maritime air capability (Joint Force 2000) has been set up using a Joint Harrier Force--this has been designed as a new maritime air group commanded by a rear admiral reporting to RAF Strike Command, High Wycombe;

• A restructured but reduced mission-orientated reserve component has been established, in addition to a Reserve Training and Mobilization Center, thus making it easier to deploy trained personnel on operations;

• The Joint Doctrine and Concepts Center; a Joint Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Regiment; and a joint low-level air-defense school have been established; and

• Acquisition plans for two CVFs and new strategic airlift and sealift have been initiated to provide the vital enabling capabilities for expeditionary operations. A call for tenders also has been made for four new roll-on/roll-off container ships.

Trans-Atlantic Interoperability

More recent concerns have been brought to public attention following NATO's operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The realization that the most technically advanced of America's NATO allies could not contribute a fully interoperable air capability to the air war over Kosovo was disconcerting and added firm evidence of a widening technical gap--foreshadowed by Prime Minister Blair's government in the SDR.

Of note, an analysis in the SDR's "Security Priorities in a Changing World" reads, "How do we and our Allies retain interoperability with U.S. forces given the radical changes they envisage?" In his valedictory speech in May this year, German Gen. Klaus Naumann, who was retiring as chairman of NATO's Military Committee, said the Kosovo conflict confirmed his worst fears that the time is rapidly approaching when the United States and its European Allies "will not be able to fight on the same battlefield."

NATO's European air forces were, to an extraordinary degree, reliant upon U.S. electronic-warfare, aerial-refueling, intelligence, and precision-strike capabilities.

The authors of SDR recognized that U.S. and European strategic redesigns need to reinforce one another, rather than work at cross-purposes. Unfortunately, the mismatch is pronounced:

• The European NATO members still have 2.5 million troops in arms supported by $160 billion in defense spending. Only $8 billion of the total is spent on research and development, and $32 billion on procurement;

• The United States has 1.5 million troops in arms supported by $250 billion in defense spending, of which $25 billion is allocated for research and development, and $42 billion on procurement; and

• The United States invests $35 billion per year to create the kinds of advanced weapons and intelligence-gathering systems used in the war over Yugoslavia, while Europe spends $10 billion a year--a sum fragmented by national projects that further constrain meaningful results.

The SDR has been designed to provide Britain with a versatile military capability. This is consistent with other key states in Western Europe that have all, in one form or another, adopted force mobility and power projection as the new motif for the transformation of their militaries. If the United Kingdom maintains its momentum and sustains the necessary budget to realize the changes and equipment acquisitions projected in the SDR, then it will be a European leader in joint expeditionary warfare. Its total force will take on an appearance, doctrine, and skill level more akin to the U.S. Marine Corps than the U.S. Army. Elsewhere in the alliance, there is little consensus about what mobility and power-projection capabilities are required, but the collective intent is to transform today's militaries to provide the means for power projection and greater interoperability. This is clearly a driver for change.

The Emerging Challenge

A critical challenge involves the meshing and integration of force structures and defense industries on both sides of the Atlantic. The changes to British acquisition structures and processes introduced by the SDR process have gone a long way to easing this challenge. While sustaining the British industrial base will always remain a critical issue (thus the CVFs will be built in Britain regardless of which consortium wins the contract), the new processes in the DPA will allow programs to be awarded to the most effective company or coalition of companies--regardless of national issues. The Apache Longbow purchase is a case in point.

This is a necessary evolution. With declining defense resources in virtually every NATO member nation, ensuring economies of scale in key defense technologies is becoming critical. Declining defense budgets, when combined with the growing cost of today's weapons systems, make it unlikely that any single nation--including the United States--can field the full range of defense capabilities required for the next century. Clearly cooperative industrial efforts and force-interoperability requirements will remain critical goals well into the next century.

With the changes being implemented in the U.K. armed forces as a result of SDR, Britain's maritime component is demonstrating an admirable ability to adapt to the demands of expeditionary operations in the world's complex littorals. Cold War warships are now being reengineered and redeployed with new roles. For example, following the recent acquisition of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) and their successful use in the Kosovo conflict, the Royal Navy is commencing a refit program to adapt all Trafalgar- and Astute-class submarines to be TLAM-compatible by 2008. HMS Illustrious has also now undergone a refit to remove her forward Sea Dart launcher from the flight deck in order to allow more RAF Harrier GR.7 aircraft to be spotted on the deck. Meanwhile, the former Sea Dart magazine on Illustrious has been adapted to hold GR.7 weapons. Other changes reflect a spirit of adaptability and, as one spokesperson stated, "a willingness to make more of the ships that we have got."

Casualties of Change

There are, however, tensions emerging in the MOD that would suggest that this is not a bloodless time of change. In August 1999, Lt. Gen. Edmund Burton, a deputy chief of defence staff, resigned. As he told his staff, "At a time of unprecedented change, this news will come as a surprise to most members of the Systems Area. I will not attempt to conceal my disappointment at having to leave you prematurely." Burton's premature departure followed his blunt assessment that smart procurement would not provide the savings expected on the scale or speed demanded by U.K. government ministers.

The Labor government actually is seeking a £2 billion saving in rationalized acquisition to fund new systems and so avert cuts to planned programs and capabilities. SDR is a masterpiece, but its value will be for naught unless it is resourced so that the structural changes and necessary equipment purchases can be made.

When crises such as Kosovo emerge and British forces are deployed, the operation is normally paid for from a government contingency fund. Regrettably, the U.K. Treasury has insisted that the extended Kosovo operation will be funded from "efficiencies" within the defense sector. Unavoidably, something has to give. In the best case, the critical programs that stem from SDR will not become underfunded. The centerpiece expeditionary program of the SDR--the new CVF program and its JSF variant--must not be allowed to "slip to the right."

At present, MOD officials insist that the SDR remains on target and the new aircraft carriers will be in service by about the 2012-to-2015 time frame. U.K. observers will watch with great interest. Sadly, news that a much-needed casualty-receiving ship has already been cut from the projected expeditionary force may be a disturbing harbinger that the high cost of on-going peace-support and humanitarian operations--the reality of SDR's defense diplomacy--has now impacted its projected warfighting capabilities. 

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