The Radio 4 Today programme seems to have established a hotline to the MOD office for leaks. The latest scoop is a draft National Audit Office (NAO) report on the Kosovo operation. The contents of the report have not been denied by the NAO, and the MOD has been reticent in its comments, partly due doubtless to the Easter recess. As a result the media have had an enjoyable few days of knocking copy. How valid has this reaction been?
First, the report is at a draft stage. This will mean that the NAO has forwarded it to interested departments for comment to make sure that they have got their facts right. Nevertheless, it is likely to be pretty close to a final version. Second, the draft report praises the UK contribution to the Kosovo campaign for achieving security goals and for helping to rebuild the shattered province. It also makes complimentary remarks about a number of detailed improvements in capability and organisation. However, the media focus has inevitably been directed at the section on weaknesses. Here the main areas of concern are munitions, communications and medicines.
On munitions, there appears to be two different adverse comments: one on shortages and the other on serviceability. First the claim is made that there would have been a critical munitions shortage if the air campaign had continued for much longer. This has been denied by the RAF in briefings. Their actual usage of munitions was surprisingly low. A total of 1011 UK air delivered weapons were used of which only 244 were laser guided precision bombs. When this number is set against the total of 23,614 dropped by all NATO aircraft, it is clear that any shortage of UK weapons would have had a negligible effect on the overall campaign. The indications are that the RAF was operating at the limits of its aircrew availability, and was therefore the constraint was not weapon numbers. It may be that they would have needed to replenish stocks if the campaign had continued, but such relatively small numbers should have been easy to obtain. Doubtless one of the lessons learned will be the need to consider larger stockpiles of critical munitions, but that is different from suggesting that the success of the campaign was at risk.
The report may also be considering the availability of Tomahawk cruise missiles. However, the UK was never planning to have a large stock of these weapons. They were more a sign of political solidarity with the United States. The original order was for fewer than 100 missiles, and at the time of Kosovo only one of the submarines had been converted to fire them.
The report also highlights poor serviceability of the Sea Harrier and its defensive missile systems. This may well be the case, but will have had no effect on the Kosovo campaign. The aircraft carrier arrived in the Aegean well after the start of the air campaign, stayed for a month, and then left before the end of the campaign. Its 5 Sea Harriers flew some 102 operational sorties out of a NATO total of 38,004. The presence of the British aircraft carrier was a useful political signal of commitment, but had virtually no military utility.
The NAO reports picks up the criticisms that the army had made of its deployable communications capability. The Source has already commented on this problem in January 2000 in "The Limits of Defence Procurement". The ageing Clansman system has well documented problems of both serviceability and capability, and a replacement has been on the stocks for many years through the Bowman programme. Old radios are unreliable and lack modern secure encryption facilities. The army will be glad that the NAO report supports the urgency of the requirement.
It will be interesting to see whether the NAO's suggestion that available systems could have been procured during the build-up in Macedonia will survive the drafting process. Bowman remains a complex project where the technology moves much faster than the procurement process. The introduction of a short term buy of an off-the-shelf solution for a particular operation raises some interesting value for money questions. Since the operation was completed successfully, it is questionable whether the NAO, or the Treasury, would have had much sympathy for the necessary expenditure.
There are two reported criticisms on the medical aspects of the campaign. The first is of over-stocking of particular medicines. Apparently 47 years worth of antibiotic injectors were available. Again, it will be worth waiting to hear the MOD rationale. It may be that this was a sensible precaution to provide against the need for rapid care for epidemics among the refugee populations - or it may just have been a cock-up. The second criticism raised more media heat. The report says that 6000 morphine autojets sent to the theatre in March 1999 had a shelf life until only April 1999. Dr Moonie, the junior MOD Minister, has explained that the new batch, which would have replaced these stocks, failed its quality test. On the other hand the 6000 deployed autojets passed the necessary check for a 6-month life extension. It would seem more appropriate for the NAO to congratulate the MOD for managing a potentially difficult supply problem rather well. This illustrates the difficulties of reacting to draft rather than final reports.
The MOD has always tended to leak, but the problem seems more acute now than for some time. There is no doubt that the budget is as overstretched as the troops, and that everyone is fighting for scarce resources or relief from the pressure for yet more savings. The danger is that, through these leaks, the public will gain an overstated impression of incompetence and mismangagement, which will make politicians less sympathetic to the call for more resources.