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Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:09 p.m.

British Army: Bush's crumbling fig-leaf?

The Army's ID problem

Yesterday, an unusual source (a populist, usually pretty dire, 'poor man's 60 Minutes' on the BBC) put me wise to what looks like yet another aching chasm of (un)preparedness: combat identification: the means employed (amongst other objectives) to avoid friendly fire - or fratricide, as it's technically known (layman talking - caveat lector!). (The proportion of total casualties claimed by fratricide has, it seems, remained historically in the range 10-15% [1].)

It's not, to be fair, as simple as a rifle jamming or a tank's filter getting clogged in sand (where res ipsa loquitur would seem to apply). Use of the equivalent of an aircraft's IFF is not enough: from what I've read [2], the key thing is to integrate Combat ID into general battlefield information management.

Which is where the British Army falls short of the US Army: the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs is to a substantial extent concerned with that kind of integration - C4I is the buzz-phrase here (this 1998 NATO report seems not a bad place to start to get one's head round these issues). And the British Army has chronically underspent the USA on research and equipment in this area, as in so many others.

Salvation is apparently to come from the Bowman system of personal radios: everyone with such a radio is automatically identified as friendly [3]. Which is fine. Except Bowman (a £2bn programme - running late, of course) is not due to see service before 2004 [4], [5]!

The Political Dimension

Now is not 1991. The UK political dynamics are quite different: in 1991, a straightforward mission (to expel an invader) undertaken under cover of a UN mandate and a broad coalition gave a large comfort zone to politicians in approving British participation in the effort. It was plain vanilla, War 101.

For 2003, the US is planning preemptive invasion, no coalition to speak of, a dubious UN mandate (if that), etc, etc. Many MPs in the governing Labour Party are apparently going along with Blair's policy of supporting the US in the hope that war will be avoided, or at least, that a number of the minus factors will be corrected.

Outright opposition to the Blair line would be difficult for those outside the ranks of the Awkward Squad of left-wing MPs. But a genuine risk to UK forces due to equipment failures or inadequacies would be a pretext that might come in handy for loyalists who wanted to apply the brakes to UK involvement in an invasion.

The sensitivity of friendly fire incidents is seen in the MPs questioning of Sir Kevin Tebbit (Permanent Secretary [top civil servant] at the Ministry of Defence) [6]: Tebbit disagrees with the suggestion that fratricidal casualties are worse than those inflicted by the enemy.

(In 1991, British combat deaths were low - 15 - but, of these, 9 were fratricidal [7]. It is illogical, no doubt, to consider the percentage, rather than the absolute number, of such casualties - but somehow the percentage seems instinctively to matter - some kind of Zeno's Paradox going on, perhaps.)

Pressure could well emerge not, perhaps, to deny a British component to the Iraqi invasion force - too embarrassing for Blair - but to limit British participation to air operations and special operations (SAS and Paras, say).

And the less substantial the apparent British military commitment, the less effective the fig-leaf for the Administration's invasion of Iraq.

1. The NAO report mentioned below (page 13ff)
2. The report of the National Audit Office, which formed the basis of an enquiry by the (UK House of Commons) Public Accounts Committee, is directed not (primarily) to the substantive issue of Combat ID, but to issues of procurement organisation within the Ministry of Defence. The Commons Defence Committee does not seem to have addressed the substantive issue within the last year or so.
3. NAO Report (page 30, para 3.16)
4. PAC Report (page 17, Question 15)
5. Except that Tebbit later supplied a note (PAC Report page 32) which says delivery of 45,000 Bowman radios started in January 2002, and the radios have been used by British troops in Afghanistan! Quite why this good news wasn't given to the Committee during the session isn't clear. I smell a rat....
6. PAC Report (page 22, Question 60ff) - the session with the committee often reads like a script from Yes, Minister, with verbal nonsense well up to Sir Humphrey standards!
7. PAC Report (page 16, Question 3)