The question that I have been set is "Can NATO afford to modernize its airlift assets?". The direct answer to this is quite easy. Of course it can. We are talking about 19 of the richest nations in the world, and if they wanted to they could up their spending across the board on defence. The real questions are whether they have any political will so to do, whether their current plans are realistic and affordable, and what do they see as the priorities within their defence budgets. You will doubtless hear from a number of the industrial presentations later at this conference of the various orders for new aircraft, and I shall only deal with those in brief. What I would like to do is concentrate on what is going on in Europe and how that will affect the airlift available in future for NATO and other international operations.
It has been an exciting couple of years for defence thinking in Europe, and the interlinked threads are slightly complex. I will talk about the work that the European Union has been doing on capabilities as well as the work that has flowed from the NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative. Cross cutting both of these has been the operational experience of Kosovo and other recent UN operations. To add to the complexity, the European industries have been reconfiguring themselves, and influencing the political requirements in the defence procurement field.
We cannot discuss European contributions to NATO future forces without considering for a moment the relationship between NATO and the European Union. To remind you, the two organisations are not entirely overlapping in their membership. This is important when we look at how capabilities will fit together. NATO has 19 members, and there is an expectation that it will continue to enlarge with new European members over the coming years. Of those 19, the US, Canada, Iceland, Turkey, Norway,Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are not members of the European Union. The European Union has 15 members and it also expects to enlarge over the coming years to perhaps twice as many member states. Of the current EU members, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden are not members of NATO, and of course France remains outside the integrated military structure of NATO.
The EU has grown over the years from a free market area, like NAFTA, into much more. It has had an intention for some time to develop a common foreign and security policy. The events of the last two years have accelerated the work in this area, and have important implications for the contribution that Europe can make to defence. There is no doubt that immediately after the end of the Cold War there was little coherent thought or European agreement on what military capabilities would be needed in future. Nations cut their forces by about a third, and took what financial savings they could. The Gulf War, the subsequent experiences in the North and South of Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Albania, and then Kosovo, Sierra Leone and East Timor have reminded the European nations that they have a role to play. Sometimes it will be under a UN flag, sometimes NATO, sometimes the EU and sometimes an ad hoc coalition of two or more states. We see the latter in the US/UK force for Desert Fox and the continuing operations over Iraq. The important thing is that European states have realised that they will have a need to carry out military activity beyond just the territorial defence that most were focused on within NATO throughout the Cold War. Unfortunately, they have lost a lot of time in the last 10 years when they should have been reshaping their forces for these new roles, and they have allowed budgets to decline markedly. The UK has taken a lead in the reshaping, and is generally credited with doing well in its Strategic Defence Review of 1998 towards a model of the new sorts of capabilities which will be needed. That review took airlifty modernisation as an urgent need. The French followed with their review on similar lines, as they move from the draft to an all professional force. Germany has had much greater difficulty for a number of good reasons. It had both the cost and the impact of reunification. It had constitutional difficulties with moving to operations other than defence of its own territory, and it has a great attachment to conscription as a nation buiding activity.
Let me run through some of the key milestones in the changes in thinking, and then try to assess whether the new plans will work, and if so when?
The NATO 50th anniversary summit of April 1999 should have been a celebration of half a century of keeping the peace, and a welcome to the 3 new members. Of course it was all of that, but it also took place at a time when NATO found itself at war for the first time in its history. Not only at war, but in a war that had not been authorised directly by the United Nations, was not about territorial defence, but was a humanitarian intervention. This new role for NATO had been much discussed in the run up to the new Strategic Concept, which was to be launched at the Summit, and its fair to say that not all European NATO members were supportive of such an extended concept in the early days. Kosovo has chanhged all that. The shape of forces for power projection require different capabilities (or different emphasis) than those for static defence. Europe was organised for a defensive battle, ready to fight where it stood. The new tasks required an ability to deploy rapidly to trouble areas and sustain operations for many months. It was scarcely surprising that NATO found it was short of many of the assets it would need. The Defence Capabilities Initiative listed the shortfalls, and all the member nations signed up to rectifying them. Airlift is of course at the heart of any rapid deployment capability, and both strategic and tactical airlift enhancements were needed.
The new NATO Strategic Concept recognised the changes in the strategic environment since the 1991 NATO Strategic Concept was produced. Many of the elements were directly relevant to the need to reshape European defence capabilities. In particular:
-- Military Capabilities: The Concept reaffirms Allies' determination to strengthen Alliance defence capabilities by ensuring forces thatare more mobile, sustainable, survivable and able to engage effectively on the full spectrum of NATO missions.
-- New Missions: The Concept calls for improvements in NATO's capability to undertake new missions to respond to a broad spectrum of possible threats to Alliance common interests, including: regional conflicts, such as in Kosovo and Bosnia; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery; and transnational threats like terrorism.
-- European Capabilities: The Concept highlights development of a European Security and Defence Identity within NATO as an essential element of NATO's ongoing adaptation, enabling European allies to make a more effective contribution to Euro-Atlantic security.
This last bullet of the Strategic Concept recognised the work that been going on in parallel to develop a more coherent EU approach to foreign and security policy.
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 enhancement 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. 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" . This was a radical change of position for the British and opened the way to the further developments in 1999 in European defence. The Cologne European Council Declaration committed all 15 members 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."
All this work was brought together at the EU Summit in Helsinki on 10/11 December 1999. To develop European capabilities, Member States have set themselves the headline goal: by the year 2003, cooperating together voluntarily, they will be able to deploy rapidly and then sustain forces capable of the full range of Petersberg tasks as set out in the Amsterdam Treaty, including the most demanding, in operations up to corps level (up to 15 brigades or 50,000-60,000 persons). These forces should be militarily self-sustaining with the necessary command, control and intelligence capabilities, logistics, other combat support services and additionally, as appropriate, air and naval elements. Member States should be able to deploy in full at this level within 60 days, and within this to provide smaller rapid response elements available and deployable at very high readiness. They must be able to sustain such a deployment for at least one year. This will require an additional pool of deployable units (and supporting elements) at lower readiness to provide replacements for the initial forces.
Member States have also decided to develop rapidly collective capability goals in the fields of command and control, intelligence and strategic transport, areas also identified by the WEU audit. The declaration included a specific welcome for the establishment of a European air transport command.
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 practice, the achievement of the process has been limited, particularly in the past decade. The institutional arrangements will almost certainly delay the development of the agreed capability.
Just three weeks ago, the EU nations met to pledge their contributions to this force, and interestingly most of the non EU NATO nations and non NATO EU nations were there with offers as well. It is all some way from reality, but it has helped the political will to do something about defence. It looks now as though 11 of the 15 EU nations will increase their defence expenditure (albeit marginally) in the next year. The focus in the press has tended to be on numbers of ground troops to be committed. However, there is a strong realisation of the importance of the air component of these new forces.
The 1999 Kosovo air campaign brought together all the political and military lessons that had been learned in the post Cold War operations. I do not have to rehearse the statistics about relative US and European capabilities and contributions to this audience. 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 lesson of what this meant for influence was not lost on the European political leadership. The subsequent humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Mozambique, Sierra Leone and East Timor have all shown the need for strategic airlift capability.
Why is Europe in this parlous state? First and most obviously is the relative spending on defence. The United States Defence budget for 1998 was $267 bn from a GDP of $8.1 tr. Out of almost exactly the same total GDP, the EU nations together spent some $173bn on defence or 64% of the US total. The figures are even worse now given the $/Euro exchange rate.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 spending its money on troops for a defensive war rather than on air power to meet the new challenges.
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 some future campaigns might need the appropriate mix of maritime reconnaissance, air defence, attack and anti-submarine warfare air assets. Discussion of Helsinki has focused on the troop requirements, but it is these air power needs which will pose the greatest challenges.
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. They are also, in many cases, managed in such small packets as to be infefficient. 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 primary 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. France and the UK with post Colonial legacies have some strategic lift, but other European nations have nort seen the need for it, or the tanker support to extend the range of operations. This is all changing and Germany is in the lead with proposals for a European strategic airlift force.
Seven countries of the EU are looking to procure (what look like rather optimistic figures) up to 288 A400M to meet this new strategic airlift requirement. The aircraft is still a long way away from production, and it will be probably another 10 ten years before we see this force in significant numbers. The UK did not feel that it could wait that long, and has leased 4 C17s from Boeing (delivered into service in May 2001) in the interim and continued the replacement of half its C130 fleet with 25 new C130Js. In practice it has been necessary to lease Antonovs on a number of occasions for short notice tasks. In very rough terms we might size these aircraft on the basis of of C130 equivalents. The A400M will be worth two C130s, the C17 is worth three and the An124 is worth six. You can argue the figures, which are based on payload but I use them as an illustration of the relative sizing.
The political and industrial pressures are such that I think we can expect the A400M to go ahead, althought the numbers may be less certain. For the UK, there may be a difficulty when it comes to giving up the C17s, as by that time the military will have become used to the greater load capability. But that is some time off. In the meantime the German proposal for a European airlift command is gathering momentum, and we may see a pooling of those assets which are in service around Europe at the moment. Already we are seeing the Netherlands looking to the Germans to provide their airlift.
I should also mention tanker (AAR) capability, which is just as important for these power projection missions. Eurore (again except for France and the UK) is light in this area. The UK has a large amount of money in the defence programme set aside for a new tanker capability. It may do this by contracting out the requirement. It is not clear that the rest of Europe has focused sufficiently in this area.
In any discussion about improving European defence capabilities, the argument usually begins with a plea for more spending on defence. It is also argued that greater integration of defence industries would be beneficial. Neither approach has much prospect of early success, and there can be no confidence that either would generate real enhancements in capability without a radical restructuring. Putting aside the political difficulties, Europe could undoubtedly organise its defence spending more efficiently if it were done on an integrated basis in the same way that the United States organises its armed forces at the national level. Such an approach for Europe will not be possible for many years (if ever), as it will necessary for EU member nations to give up national sovereignty to what is currently an unacceptable extent. There are similar, although slightly less acute, difficulties with moves towards allocation of military tasks to particular nations. This "Role Specialisation" was much studied during the later stages of the Cold War. Even with a common view of the mission, nations were reluctant to become reliant on other Allies for particular capabilities. Nevertheless a de facto specialisation has occurred as European nations have been unable to match the technology of the US. It may be that there will be a greater willingness for each European nation to undertake fewer roles, but make those that they field more effective. This approach will require close co-ordination if it is not to open up yet more gaps in capability.
The proposals agreed at the 1999 Helsinki Summit could provide an appropriate mechanism for co-ordinating efforts between EU nations, and also keeping less enthusiastic contributors up to the mark. It would allow nations to move towards as much specialisation as they felt comfortable with, and to be credited with real military contribution to the EU force component. However this will take some years to develop. In the meantime there is a danger that European capability will degrade further. What is needed is some early action to improve capability without assuming large budget increases. This can only be achieved by looking for ways to reduce nugatory expenditure by cutting duplication, unnecessary support overheads, and inappropriate capability. This is a painful process even when carried out on a national basis. It will be yet more difficult if it is to be carried out on an EU basis. Nevertheless, it is the only immediate option available, and can be done relatively rapidly given the political will.
If we look at the European forces as a whole, we see duplication of headquarters, planning, training, logistics support, procurement, research, bases and other facilities. This would be bad enough if the scale of the frontline in each nation justified the scale of the support infrastructure, but it does not in nearly all cases. Opportunities for more effective operation of European military forces are apparent in land, sea and air capabilities. However, the air capabilities offer more easily achieved improvements for a number of reasons. Air procedures are already better harmonised between nations than is the case for land and sea power. This is partly because of air safety issues and partly because speed of operation means that communications, standard operating procedures, rules of engagement, planning methods and terminology must all be agreed, standardised and practised between air forces which are likely to operate together. English has become the universal language of the air, and this considerably eases the problem of mounting international combined air operations. Given the high unit cost of air force platforms, it is not surprising that many nations operate common equipment. This also eases the problems of rationalisation. Finally, the high costs of infrastructure to support air operations means that modest rationalisation can pay high dividends in achieving greater military capability at lower cost.
In looking for opportunities to provide more effective European military power, the leap is too often made towards a full scale integrated European army. Indeed the Helsinki proposals are in danger of trying to achieve this step, which remains impossible unless the EU becomes a much more politically integrated entity. In the near term (the next 5 years), it would be much more productive to look for opportunities to rationalise forces in being which can be operated more efficiently on a multilateral or EU-wide basis. The model for such a supranational activity is the NATO AWACs force, which has successfully provided an airborne early warning capability to NATO members at much lower day-to-day operating cost than would have been the case if operated on an individual national basis.
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. The focus on this, particularly by the German government, and in the Helsinki statement, is very welcome. However, coordination of assets and multinational activity is different (and will be less efficient) than integration. In looking for an opportunity for early rationalisation, we need to identify a capability which is common to many EU members. The air tactical transport role is a capability which most nations need, and many provide for it at least partly using the C130 aircraft. Pooling of some of these 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 70 aircraft, which would look after all the national C130 needs of Belgium (who operate 11), Denmark (4), Italy (10), Netherlands (2), Spain (12), Sweden (8) 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 6 and 10 aircraft respectively to the pooled arrangement. Greece (15 C130s) might choose not to depend on pooled aircraft. For those nations that were prepared to put all of their C130 fleets into a common pool, there would be significant savings in operating costs. They would also have a much better assurance of availability on a day to day basis, given the ability to plan routine servicing across a larger fleet. For Europe there would be a usable airlift capability for humanitarian operations as well as for use within NATO. Nor would nations lose the option to withdraw their airframes and aircrews if they felt the need for some national purpose. The force would not be rendered useless if one or more nations declined to take part in a particular operation for national reasons.
However, for lower costs to be achieved this would have to be quite different from current on-call multinational arrangements. The force would operate from a single main base located centrally in Europe, but would have dispersed flights to service national needs. There would be a single headquarters, manned by personnel from the contributing EU nations. Aircrew would be multinational and not tied to the airframes provided by their nations. There would be a single planning, servicing and logistics organisation to support the force. Most importantly, the manpower, headquarters, infrastructure and other savings would have to be realised in the military structures of the contributing nations. Those resources could then be redeployed to updating and enhancing other capabilities. 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. This would have great benefits in terms of reducing duplication of defence research and procurement costs in this particular area. 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. This would also increase the pressure for common equipment procurement programmes for successor aircraft.
In a slightly longer timescale, 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 large transport aircraft, which would be in harmony with the A400M proposals. 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 sovereignty issues to worry about given the service is being provided by the private sector.
In the much longer term, it is possible to contemplate the gradual development of the European Air Force as experience of pooling forces is gained. Confidence would grow with experience of the greater availability of air power assets to individual nations, to the EU and to NATO. Such a force would be in the lead for a wider integration of European defence capabilities, which would require the development of a European defence budget. Nations would still be able to retain independent national air capabilities if they so wished, but such national air power would not count as a contribution in European defence budget terms.
There is a close parallel in these proposals with the original evolution of independent national air forces. Armies and navies wanted to own their own air power, and were concerned about becoming too dependent on an independent air force, which would be centrally controlled at the higher level. The costs, confusion and inefficiencies of maintaining army and naval air forces eventually led nations to form a third service which could procure and use air power effectively. The next stage for such sensible rationalisation must be an integration of air power across national boundaries. Those national boundaries may have had physical meaning on the ground and at sea, but are irrelevant in the air of Europe today. If the political will were there, Europe could produce effective modern air power, and could even do it more cost effectively than does the United States.
I fear however that we are some way from the political will to take these bold moves towards deeper force integration. When it happens, as itmust because of budgetary pressures, airlift is likely to be an early candidate. This will make the proposals for airlift based on A400M even more politically attractive, although I doubt the fleet size suggested will come to pass. There is little hope of real increases in defence spending throughout Europe, and that means that rectifying the deficiencies is going to be slow and painful. The worry should not be about a strong independent EU capability detracting from NATO, but about a continuing weak EU capability undermining NATO.