The end of the Cold War left NATO with a vast and expensive set of military forces, which had been practising to fight a single campaign for over 40 years. The planning assumptions for an all out war in Europe were relatively simple. The enemy was well defined and consisted of the aggregate forces of the Warsaw Pact. The exact locations, strengths of forces, tactics to be used and phases of the war were studied by generations of soldiers. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, all changed the strategic landscape in Europe in little more than a 3 year period. NATO's purpose was suddenly in question as nations scrambled to cash in on the peace dividend. Yet in the event, the decade of the 90's has had more diverse military action by the Western nations, under various banners, than at any time previously. Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Haiti, Albania, Kosovo and East Timor have seen western military force deployed to less than benign environments. A new doctrine for peace support operations has replaced the manuals on flexible response in the military staff colleges of the Alliance.
This series of military experiences is sufficient now to have established a strong consensus on the new rationale for NATO, which was articulated in the Strategic Concept launched at the NATO summit in Washington in April 1999. The ever increasing data from real operations, rather than deterrence postures, has also highlighted the major shortcomings in the security capabilities available to the Alliance for these new tasks. The Gulf War, while not a NATO operation, was conducted by an ad hoc coalition drawn for the most part from NATO members. It was conducted using NATO procedures with forces drawn from NATO formations. It was a relatively clear cut case for the international community to react to aggression, and thus an almost ideal trial for the concept of enforcing international law. Iraq had clearly broken international law by invading Kuwait, and the UN could authorise military action to expel the invaders. Iraq had few friends among its neighbours; had an oppressive regime with potentially dissident groups; and was remote to US and European publics. The US led coalition was able to take its time in building up military presence in the surrounding area. The then novel doctrine of a prolonged air campaign was tested successfully. Lack of casualties to the allies made the 6 weeks of offensive air action acceptable to politicians and public. The early losses of UK Tornados had caused great concern, and it became clear to the military commanders that safety was to take priority over short term effectiveness. The much greater availability of precision guidance for bombs had also set a precedent in terms of what was acceptable collateral damage in this type of operation. The 4 days of ground war reinforced this new vision of war: ground forces sent in only when it was safe to secure the victory that had been won relatively bloodlessly from the air.
The key lesson from the Gulf War was that the US was both quantitatively and qualitatively in a different capability league from all the other nations involved. As the French discovered to their annoyance, if you could not operate to US/NATO procedures, then you were kept out of the action. In the air, it was a war of offensive air operations, and these had to be conducted from medium to high altitudes. Air defence fighters had little work to do. The European nations had invested heavily in fighters to protect themselves from the long range Russian bombers of the Cold War. For their offensive operations, they had depended on low flying tactics to improve their survivability against Warsaw Pact air defence systems, while accepting that there would be a significant attrition rate. In a war that was expected to last only days before going nuclear, training and equipment were posited on achieving rapid results. Somalia reinforced the perception internationally that the US was only prepared to remain engaged if their troops were kept safe. The pre-dominance of airpower solutions to international crises was underlined by the continuing air operations over both Northern and Southern Iraq. Operation Provide Comfort had successfully, through air operations, rescued the displaced Kurds who had fled from their homes in Northern Iraq. It was less clear that the results for the Marsh Arabs in the South were as positive. While there was a need for some fighter capability to police the air exclusion zones, it could be carried out as the secondary role of either bomber or reconnaissance aircraft.
The sequence of events in Bosnia reinforced the US view that offensive airpower could provide the necessary coercion to bring recalcitrant leaders to the negotiating table. That the history of the region up to the Dayton accord is considerably more complex is unimportant. There is a widespread perception among American decision makers that the threat and application of air strikes was critical to obtaining Milosevic's agreement to the Dayton proposals. Again, in this short air campaign, the world expected precision attacks with no collateral damage and no losses to our own side. When an airman was lost over hostile territory, combat search and rescue effort became the over-riding priority. Operation Alba, the response to the breakdown of law and order in Albania, showed that there were crises which required a European coalition of the willing response. In this case, it was clear that the mechanisms for putting together such a coalition were imperfect, and that a successful outcome was only possible because of the relatively benign environment.
The 1999 Kosovo air campaign brought together all the political and military lessons that had been learned in the post Cold War operations. The US had expended a good deal of research on improving its precision weapons. Nevertheless, the use of laser designation remained a significant constraint if the target was obscured by weather. The two other precision systems (GPS navigation and TERCOM ground mapping) were available both in bombs and cruise missiles, but were significantly more expensive and limited to fixed targets. They required access to US national data. Nevertheless, this mix of weaponry allowed the campaign to be planned on a requirement for no casualties to NATO forces, and minimal collateral damage. These constraints undoubtedly prolonged the air campaign, but given that the required outcome was ultimately achieved, we can expect future operations to have similar assumptions about the requirement for very low numbers of casualties.
The contributions from the 14 NATO nations which took part were varied, but all were overshadowed by the US. For example, the UK carried out 1618 of the total of 38,004 NATO sorties flown, or just over 4%4 . 102 of these sorties were the Sea Harriers doing little more than defending the small anti-submarine warfare carrier that they are deployed on. 324 were air-to-air refuelling aircraft aircraft mainly supporting the Tornados that operated from their bases in Germany. The UK E3-D airborne early warning aircraft clocked up 184 sorties. The sorties which mattered were those carrying out offensive attacks, and here the total UK effort was in the range 4% to 10% depending on the method of calculation (the lower figure reflects munition numbers and the higher missions flown)5 , and we know that in many of these cases it was not possible to release weapons. From 1008 RAF bombing sorties just 1011 weapons were released. Of these three quarters were non-precision weapons. The story is similar for the other non-US NATO air forces. The US provided 70% of the total aircraft and 80% of the total weapons delivered. Europe was shown to be good at providing political support for the operation, but poorly equipped to contribute to an offensive air campaign in an effective way.
The United States Defence budget for 1998 was $270 bn from a GDP of $8.1 tr. Out of almost exactly the same total GDP, the EU nations together spent some $173 bn on defence or 64% of the US total. The US fields some 1.4 million professional forces and almost as many ready reserves. The EU runs 1.8 million troops of which 700,000 are conscripts and retains 3.6 million reservists at various stages of readiness. These raw budget and personnel statistics show clearly why Europe is so far behind the US in its military hardware development. Europe fields more full time troops, and very many more reservists, than the United States, yet spends only half as much on defence. It is often claimed that the major factor in differences in US and EU capabilities stems from an all regular force in America being compared with a largely conscript force in Europe. As can be seen from the figures, this is not the main issue. If all conscription were eliminated, and two thirds of the reservists were released, the EU could field over one million professional soldiers,sailors and airmen.
If Europe, however defined, wishes to be a more equal partner with the United States in its ability to intervene internationally, it needs to spend its defence money differently. It is currently trying to support far too large a number of regular forces, conscripts and reserves on too little funds. This means that little is available for funding research, development and the procurement of equipment and weapon stocks. While the United States is hardly a perfect example for tight control of defence spending, it is nevertheless achieving a different order of military capability for its expenditure. This suggests that Europe needs either to raise its defence spending, or reduce and restructure its forces to match the current spending more effectively. It is unlikely that there will be much political enthusiasm among nations for raising defence expenditure, and it is therefore more sensible to look at how European nations might work together at restructuring their military forces to provide more appropriate capabilities to the likely demands of the future.
Before making any assessment of the appropriate size and shape of future European armed forces, we need to examine the nature of the current and future security need. NATO remains firmly committed to its collective defence requirement. Individual national governments have a responsibility for the territorial defence of their lands, which they exercise through NATO membership. Yet the current threat to territorial integrity is very remote, and the planning assumption is that there would be a long warning time of any newly emerging threat. It is important that European governments analyse the degree of risk that they are prepared to take in this area if there is to be a sensible allocation of defence resources.
Much of the force structure in Europe is still drawn from the Cold War days, when the priority was to deter the threat of a short warning time invasion by Warsaw Pact forces across the Inner German Border. The nature of such a threat determined the need for forward defensive positions on the ground supported by heavy armour with limited need for range. In the air, the need was for very good early warning detection to direct large numbers of air defence fighters and ground-based surface-to-air missiles. Those countries, such as the United Kingdom, which were further distant from the border, could develop air defences on the basis of long range engagement of incoming bombers. At sea, anti-submarine warfare was a high priority. Overlaying the force planning process for this set piece campaign was the assumption that if the conventional battle were lost, then nuclear weapons would be used. For some European nations, this meant that there was little investment in conventional long range interdiction capability. Air to ground capability was designed more to assist the ground battle and halt the advance of Warsaw Pact armour. In sum, the long period of the Cold War produced a force structure in Europe that was designed for a short, high intensity conflict, where air power assets, with the exception of nuclear forces, were primarily defensive or in a support role. Air strategists might articulate the arguments for interdiction and offensive counter air campaigns, but in practice their best bombers needed to be reserved against the potential need for early nuclear options.
While the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 could change the security context in less than five years, it is not easy to restructure the armed forces of Europe as quickly. Some changes in balance were possible through the cuts that took place throughout NATO nations in the early 90's. However, some of the reductions were made soon after the end of the Warsaw Pact, when it was still thought possible for Russia to pose a threat in a relatively short time. Thinking, as the 1991 NATO Strategic Concept showed, still looked primarily at maintaining a defensive posture, although with significantly lower readiness for most forces. By the end of the decade, three members of the Warsaw Pact (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic) had become full members of NATO, while the rest, including Russia, had become formal partners with the Alliance. Russia was so weak that it was finding great difficulty in winning a conventional war in Chechnya. Only her decaying nuclear weapon arsenal remained as a potential residual threat to the security of the rest of Europe.
The UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) which was started in 1997 and was published in mid 1998 is a thoughtful analysis of the security concerns of one European nation. It identified the positive results from the collapse of Communism and the emergence of democratic states throughout Europe. It stated that there was no direct threat to Western Europe, and that none was foreseen, provided that efforts were made to continue to promote and develop the constructive relationships between all nations of Europe. On the negative side, the SDR identified a number of new security risks. In particular, it pointed to instability inside Europe, citing Bosnia and Kosovo, as a threat to the UK's security. The SDR went on to say: "Instability elsewhere - for example in Africa - may not always appear to threaten us directly. But it can do indirectly, and we cannot stand aside when it leads to massive human suffering." This was the first statement of humanitarian intervention as a national security driver. The Review also identified the growing threat from proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical technologies, particularly from a number of hostile regimes. Finally, it reminded the reader of the new risks to security from drugs, organised crime, environmental degradation, terrorism and new information technology vulnerabilities.
The security threats as perceived by the UK were in line with the general thrust of, and indeed helped to shape, European and NATO thinking. The successive crises in the Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor have also had an effect on political perceptions of the utility of military force. NATO decided to formulate a new Strategic Concept, which would be launched at its 50th anniversary summit meeting in April 1999 in Washington. As officials from member states began drafting they drew on the recent experience in Bosnia, and were already contemplating what might happen in Kosovo. The United States was seeking to extend the NATO mandate beyond its collective defence remit. The concerns felt by some European nations changed as the Kosovo crisis showed what this meant in practice. When the Washington Summit took place, NATO found itself fighting a major air campaign against Serbia and showing that it was prepared to intervene beyond its national boundaries.
The development of a coherent defence policy for the EU had been an area of great difficulty for most of the 90's. The UK had been particularly unhelpful, fearing that any enhancing of the EU's role would be at the expense of NATO cohesion. The logjam was broken by the Anglo-French summit at St Malo in December 1998. Despite having predicated the just completed UK defence review on a continuing NATO centred Atlanticist foreign policy, within six months of its publication, Prime Minister Tony Blair was advocating a much more significant role for Europe. The St Malo Declaration made it clear that: "the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises" . The declaration went on to say:"In order for the European Union to take decisions and approve military action where the Alliance as a whole is not engaged, the Union must be given appropriate structures and a capacity for analysis of situations, sources of intelligence, and a capability for relevant strategic planning, without unnecessary duplication, taking account of the existing assets of the WEU and the evolution of its relations with the EU. In this regard, the European Union will also need to have recourse to suitable military means (European capabilities pre-designated within NATO's European pillar or national or multinational European means outside the NATO framework). This was a radical change of position for the British and opened the way to the further developments in 1999 in European defence.
The WEU summit in Bremen at the end of May 1999 took forward the thinking that had started at St Malo and had been confirmed in Washington. The apparently insurmountable difficulties of the differences in membership between NATO, WEU and EU appeared to be no longer a sticking point. They agreed that there was a "need for WEU to be operationally effective with the involvement and participation of all WEU nations in accordance with their status and to continue its cooperation with the EU and NATO, in preparation for any new arrangements which may be agreed in light of ongoing developments". The Cologne European Council Declaration put it into a wider context, but picked up the same points, when they committed themselves in paragraph 2 "to further develop more effective European military capabilities from the basis of existing national, bi-national and multinational capabilities and to strengthen our own capabilities for that purpose. This requires the maintenance of a sustained defence effort, the implementation of the necessary adaptations and notably the reinforcement of our capabilities in the field of intelligence, strategic transport, command and control." It it is quite significant that this was a declaration by all 15 members including four 'neutral' countries.The Anglo-Italian declaration of 20 July has produced some concrete proposals on what needs to be done. It has rightly widened the requirement from a need for an EU capacity for doing its own humanitarian, crisis management and peace support operations (the Petersberg tasks). The need for a more effective European role in NATO is promoted as a clear lesson from Kosovo. The declaration seeks to develop a timetable to achieve European-wide goals for enhanced military capabilities, and a set of national capability objectives to achieve this European requirement. Finally last week's anglo-french summit pushed forward the idea of a European rapid reaction force with full air capabilities.
We have now, in theory, an outline plan for progress in improving European defence capabilities in a way which works with the grain of NATO. That is a remarkable step forward given the reluctance of the US and the UK in past years to address these issues. But there are many difficulties ahead. NATO would claim to have a planning process, and to have expended much effort over the years on coercing nations into setting more challenging force goals for themselves
In order to look at the air power capabilities that the European Union nations should field, we need to make some assumptions about the scale of effort that it would be appropriate for the EU to seek to provide. The EU and the US are just about equal in terms of absolute wealth. The EU is more populous and has more potential conflicts in its backyard than the US. However, the US has formal security obligations in Japan and Korea as well as in Europe. Taking all these factors into account, it might seem a reasonable initial benchmark for European nations to contribute a usable military capability to NATO of the same order of magnitude as the United States does today. The United States plans to generated ten air expeditionary wings, each with about 15,000 personnel and 200 aircraft. Certainly Europe would not need to aim for any greater capability than this. This would not be a recipe for duplication, but a significant challenge for Europe. It would make the Europeans equal partners when operating within NATO, and would ensure a capability for operations on a European basis when necessary. In theory is should be easily affordable given that the EU nations spend 64% of the amount that the USA does on defence. In practice, it would require massive restructuring of the way military forces are provided within Europe.
The UK Government has taken this as a strong lesson of the Kosovo operation:
...... in co-operation with our Allies, we need to examine ways in which member states can increase their qualitative and quantitative military contribution to NATO's overall capabilities. The priority lies in such areas as precision attack weapons, secure communications and strategic movement assets. Interoperability of systems will, of course, be a key component of this.
The key elements for early work in improving European capability are contained in this analysis. Readiness, deployability and sustainability are identified as prime drivers for force structures. Precision attack weapons, secure communications and strategic movement assets are highlighted as areas for priority work. There are significant implications for air power in all of these six issues. Europe needs to completely restructure its expensive, but unusable, military capability to meet these challenges. While the focus of this volume is on air power issues, it is impossible to look at air power in isolation. The funds provided for defence purposes throughout Europe are unlikely to increase without a significant change in threat perception. This means that restructuring of capabilities will need to be achieved within broadly the same resource assumptions as today. Thus, a balance will need to be struck between the different elements of the joint force structure. Nevertheless, it is possible to start by making an initial unconstrained assessment of what air power assets Europe should be able to deploy, and then assess how they might fit into the resource priorities.
Using the Kosovo campaign as a benchmark for a modern military operation which should be within the capability of European nations, we can break out the scale of effort that might be needed in future. The campaign needed to be able to call upon the traditional mix of air defence fighters, bombers, close air support, reconnaissance, airborne early warning, air-to-air refuelling, strategic airlift, tactical fixed wing and rotary transport capabilities. Although the maritime aspects of the operation were limited, it must be assumed that future campaigns might need the appropriate mix of maritime reconnaissance, air defence, attack and anti-submarine warfare air assets.
The EU nations together have elements of all of these air power capabilities. They field some 3235 combat aircraft with a total air force manpower of 380,000. If the NATO non-EU members are added (Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Turkey) the numbers rise to 4281 combat aircraft and 530,000 men. These large air power assets are however balanced to provide the defensive posture that was appropriate to the static defence requirements of the Cold War. All forces have a strong air defence element reflecting the requirement to defend their own territory. While many of the fighters can be used in a bombing role, they are not all weather capable and aircrew will not have undertaken primary training in this role. For offensive air operations, the only EU nations with a significant capability are France, Germany, Italy and the UK, who can field around 500 aircraft in an all weather bombing mode. Looking at the scale of offensive air capability needed for the Gulf and Kosovo, Europe needs to work at providing perhaps 50% more all weather bombers than it can at present. This is an achievable aim if the excess of air defence fighters is given up.
However, the platform is only part of the question in modern air campaigns. It has become very clear that in future operations, precision weapons will be the norm. Figures for weapons stocks are not readily available, but inferences can be drawn from the data of weapon usage in the Kosovo air campaign. If the US is to be matched, it seems that the only way to do it is by pooling and operating air power at the European level. We have a model in NATO AWACs which could be extended into various elements of our activities. The supporting activities are probably the easiest ones.
What capability does Europe need which it could operate on a similar basis to NATO AWACS? Airlift is an obvious example. If forces are to be deployed rapidly, they need to be able to call on a significant airlift capability. Pooling of some of the widely used C130 Hercules could provide an immediate European tactical fixed wing transport capability. Provided that nations structured their contributions sensibly, they could make operating cost savings at the national level through closure of bases, training units, and headquarters. The level of saving would depend on the degree to which each nation felt able to rely on the supporting infrastructure being provided by a European facility. Some ten EU nations operate C130 aircraft. It would be possible to imagine a pooled fleet of 60 aircraft, which would look after all the national C130 needs of Belgium (who operate 11), Denmark (4), Italy (10), Netherlands (2), Spain (12) and Portugal (6). France with 14 C130s and the UK with 55 have larger transport aircraft fleets; and they could provide a partial contribution of perhaps 4 and 10 aircraft respectively to the pooled arrangement. Greece (15 C130s) and Sweden (8) would probably choose not to depend on pooled aircraft. For those nations that were prepared to put their whole C130 fleets into a common pool, there would be significant savings in operating costs, and they would also have a much better assurance of availability on a day to day basis. For Europe there would be a usable airlift capability for humanitarian operations as well as for use within NATO. Over time, the management and operation of this common fleet would lead to a common perception among participating nations of the characteristics of the next generation transport aircraft. The extra costs of operating on a national basis rather than a pooled basis would also become clear, and it is likely that nations would begin to see the advantages of contributing to such a force element.
In a similar way, the requirement for a large strategic airlift capability could be tackled. The operation of such a fleet could easily be managed by the same organisation that would look after the tactical C130 pooled capability. It would be possible to procure a new capability of C17s or Antonov strategic transport aircraft that could either be operated by the military or on a leased basis from a cmmercila company. In either case the costs would be lower than each nation trying to operate a very small fleet of large and expensive aircraft.
Air to air refuelling capability is also needed by all European air forces, and would be a natural candidate for a European fleet operation. There is consideration being given to procuring the Uk air to air refuelling capability through a public private partnership arrangement. This would be particularly easy to enlarge to encompass those nations in Europe which sought such a facility. The economics of the operation would improve for the larger fleet and there would be no sovreignty issues to worry about given the service is being provided by the private sector.It is possible to draw up similar proposals for transport helicopters, although care must be taken to ensure that sufficient assets are based within easy flying range of their normal tasking. This will tend to require dispersed deployments and the efficiencies from pooling short range assets will therefore be less. None of the air transport or air tanker proposals would undermine national capability. Indeed for the smaller nations it would both increase available capability and reduce costs.
The concept can be extended to front-line combat aircraft, although sensitivities about national capability will be greater. The introduction into service of Eurofighter from 2002 to five European nations (UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece) offers a good opportunity to enhance capabilities and reduce costs through pooling of assets. Sharing training, engineering, logistic, and operational planning facilities would throw up significant operating cost savings. These would be greatly increased if the number of operating bases could be reduced as a result. Most importantly common fleet management would play a vital role in retaining system configuration control so that all Eurofighters remain fully interoperable. From a political viewpoint, if as a result Europe were able to offer a force of 500 of the most modern combat aircraft for future NATO operations, it would be a capability contributor more equal to the United States.
The last decade has shown that the United States is now operating a quite different level of capability from anyone else in the world. If we wish to operate in alliance, we must follow the US air power doctrine. It appears that Europe in general, and the UK government in particular, is not happy about this state of affairs. To become a more equal partner with the US in NATO, nations are going to have to restructure their air forces significantly. Money is not the problem, but small air forces with all the support overhead are a problem. Either Europe starts merging its airpower, or it must leave it all to the United States.