Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton KCB ADC BSc FRAeS CCMI RAF, Chief of the Air Staff gave a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies on February 10th. The topic: Dominant air power in the information age.
I don't know what's worse, an Air Marshal arguing for the pre-eminent importance of air power that, however cogently put will always seem a little self-serving, or his point that only those with the years of working with air war assets should make decisions on the composition of such forces. Again self-serving, but that's not really what is problematic.
The sum total of the speech amounts to an argument that things should stay the same. Keep the aircraft carriers, keep all of the abilities that we have now, keep the shiny toys on the battlefield. Glossed over half-truths, anachronistic thinking, and a fair bit of tunnel vision from a man who has spent his adult working life embalmed with the fluids of military preservation.
"I don’t want to talk in too much detail about kit, because air power is about capabilities, not just the platforms that deliver key parts of those capabilities." Fair enough. But then the Air Marshal goes on to talk about the Tornado, a platform he piloted for many years.
No, I don't have a personal problem with the person giving the speech. He is emblematic of a way of thinking that becomes so tightly woven within itself, I'm sure he doesn't even realize that he is a perfect product of the machine that made him. It is likely he is as normal as you are. As to how normal I am, well, I'll leave that for you to decide.
AM Dalton talks briefly about The Green Paper, which is like a pre-policy government paper where interested parties can contribute thoughts before a White Paper is produced that is actually meant to serve as direction for a period of time (as little as 5 but often up to 20 years). It is instructive to note that AM Dalton says, "The Green Paper draws heavily on the excellent work of the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre on the Future Character of Conflict."
The DCDC is a British Ministry of Defense think tank.
Yes, that's right. The British Ministry of Defense contributed material to a Green Paper that is supposed to help set policy for future military capabilities, acquisitions and philosophy for the next twenty years. What we have here folks is a closed policy loop.
You may not care what the British are doing, but the speech nicely encapsulates the process that all major countries use to determine future force projection capabilities. Essentially, a bunch of (very well educated) generals sit around and imagine what kinds of toys they want in the future. Then they send their ideas to the government, which is gathering information on what kinds of toys they should have in the future.
AM Dalton was educated in the mid 1970's, and joined the RAF in 1976. Is it possible for someone who received the bulk of his education more than 30 years ago to become forward thinking? To imagine what war will be like in the future? The British experience at least is full of examples of small-scale and large scale conflict, counter-insurgency operations, and politics behind the barrel of a gun.
He certainly tries to appear flexible.
"...Strategic Defence Review will shape our future structure and determine the equipment programme, with implications that will resonate for at least the next 2 decades. So for the sake of our future security, as CDS recently observed, Afghanistan must serve as a prism to view the future, not as a prison for our thinking."
"I believe air power provides a comparative advantage in relation to the capabilities of potential adversaries."
..."future battle-space will be congested, with forces drawn into densely populated areas; cluttered, where targets will be difficult to distinguish; contested, where access will be disputed and we’ll have to fight for the freedom to manoeuvre..." (italics original)
The last two quotes are sequential, and contextual. AM Dalton seems to be saying that air power can be used in congested, cluttered areas where targets are hard to distinguish (from civilians). History has shown that this is a bad idea. Ask U.S. Marines who were sent into battle in Iraq after the limits of air power were reached how they occupied congested, densely populated areas.
The speech devolves into acronyms, military platforms, and the uses of military hardware shortly after the last quote above. A general playing with shiny toys. It doesn't seem like original thinking in the least, and crucially ignores one important step that should be undertaken by every nation that produces Green Papers:
What image does a country want to promote now and in the future? I am no peacenik, liberal-libertarian or student of 'let's all play nicely and with trust and honour'. In the real world of politics, the person smiling at you may very well be looking for the place to push the knife in when you aren't expecting it.
All I am saying is that no military should have a hand in setting policy by virtue of an end-run around the democratic process. It must be up to a government alone to set policy, and then allow the military that serves the political arm of government to figure out, within the confines of the budget they have, how to best satisfy the directives given.
It may be that military planners cannot fulfill all objectives within their means and that the government will have to scale down its plans. Or, sticking with their plans, increase the military budget. In the end, the government will be wholly responsible for the outcome.
original article: http://www.iiss.org/recent-key-addresses/air-chief-marshal-sir-stephen-dalton/
No comments:
Post a Comment