The Strategic Defence Review (1), published by the British Government last Summer, met with critical acclaim both from the international security community and from the UK armed forces. The acceleration of moves towards joint service organisations was widely recognised as sensible for both operational effectiveness and resource efficiency reasons. The three service Chiefs endorsed the review with individual messages showing their enthusiasm for the plans(2). Many were surprised at the apparent ease with which previously intractable inter-service disputes had been solved. In particular, the RAF seemed to have conceded a number of its key activities to the other two services.
A deeper look at the implications of the Review suggests that it is more significant for the way in which it has further diminished the power of all three service lobbies. The transfer of power has not been from one service to another, but has been significantly from the Royal Navy, the Army and the RAF to the Centre and the Joint Headquarters. Lord Mountbatten's vision of a fully unified Ministry of Defence, first articulated in 1962 (3), is now within sight of being achieved. This article argues that the role, status and location of the three service Chiefs will be increasingly questioned as the findings of the Review are implemented.
A Century of Inefficiency
The search for an efficient method of strategic planning is not new. Florence Nightingale had drawn public attention to the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy of the War Office in the Crimea War:
" a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, a not very efficient office, and one in which the minister's intentions can be entirely negatived by all his sub-departments, and those of each of the subdepartments by every other." (4)
If the War Office was unmanageable internally, neither it nor the Admiralty saw any need to work together. While the Army kept to the land and the Royal Navy kept to the sea, such independence could be made to work for most of the time. However the development of the manned aircraft as a war-winning weapon brought a new dimension to inter-service rivalry. The Royal Flying Corps, established in 1912, followed by the Royal Naval Air Service two years later, ensured that the development of air power in Britain would be characterised by turf wars and a lack of planning coherence. In 1916, Lord Curzon wrote a note for the Cabinet explaining that we had lost mastery of the air: "The evidence is incontestable that there has been a great lack of co-operation, and a competition, often the reverse of advantageous, between the two services"(5). He became chairman of a newly formed Air Board, but within five months announced that it was impossible to develop a coherent policy given the attitude of the Admiralty. Aircraft production was concentrated under a single head in 1917. General Smuts was tasked with producing a report on Air Organisation for the Cabinet. This report led to the formation of the Air Ministry and the establishment of the Royal Air Force in 1918. The answer to the inefficiencies of inter-service rivalry in World War 1 was the creation of a third service.
There were those who looked upon the Air Ministry as a device for wartime, and pressed for a return to two departments of State when the war ended. It was fortunate for the fledgling air force that Churchill was appointed as Secretary for War and Air, which allowed him to promote his long held views about the importance of proper management of air power. However, the disputes were now between three rather than two services. In 1936, the post of Minister for Co-ordination of Defence was established with Sir Thomas Inskip as the first incumbent. It was the period where the Air Ministry was the major user of resources for the bomber programme, the Royal Navy had second call on money, and the army was the poor cousin. The Inskip report of 1937 may have changed the priority for spending from offence to defence, but it still left the RAF in the lead with the need to build up air defences.
Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister in May 1940 saw a concerted effort to point all the players in the same direction. Churchill became Minister for Defence and shunted the individual service ministers out of the War Cabinet. He ran defence planning and resource allocation as a Prime Ministerial task. After the war, this centralised control suffered a set back with the establishment of the Cabinet Defence Committee which took its input from the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry. Although the Minister of Defence was the deputy chairman of the committee, the Chiefs of Staff and the individual ministers sat on the committee and were thus able to bypass him. The individual service ministers had their own appropriations and each service went its own way.
Suez exposed the weaknesses of the divided organisation both in terms of planning and execution, and Prime Minister Macmillan charged Duncan Sandys with sorting it out. In 1958, Sandys' White Paper on defence organisation (6) sought to develop an organisational structure which would make the defence minister responsible for "formulation and general application of a unified policy relating to the Armed Forces and their requirements." A new post of Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff had been created in 1956 (Lord Mountbatten claims that he had suggested it to Eden) (7), and this post now became Chief of the Defence Staff. The individual service chiefs retained their right of access to the PM and their individual ministers. This was the time of the Sandys Review, and its projected cutback in manned aircraft for air defences did little to help bed the arrangement down well. Sandys had a remit to cut defence expenditure, and he took little notice of the views of the individual service chiefs. There was perhaps more unity generated by the common dislike of Sandys from each of the services. As a result his proposals were watered down and progress to a unified central control was slowed.
It was not until 1963, that a truly unified Ministry of Defence came into being as a result of the work of Lord Mountbatten who was the second in post as the Chief of Defence Staff (1958 to 1965). Mountbatten argued successfully that the individual service ministries must be abolished if the Defence Minister was ever to be able to take control. This made Peter Thorneycroft the first Secretary of State for Defence, with the individual service ministers reduced to ministers of state who had to act through the Defence Secretary. Mountbatten also intended that the service chiefs would, in a parallel way, tender their advice through the CDS. However the battle fought by the service chiefs was successful and they retained their individual roles and responsibility for military operations The procurement organisation was also formed, and the Defence Operational Requirements Staff came into being in an attempt to get inter-service agreement about longer term plans. The new Ministry of Defence meant that 4 departments of state disappeared (3 services and aviation). The Secretary of State became responsible for all questions of policy and administration of the fighting services. He would have 3 principle advisers: the Chief of the Defence Staff, the Permanent Under Secretary and the Chief Scientific Adviser. Mountbatten remained concerned about the disruptive effect of the vestigial remains of the 3 service departments and was clear that the goal must be a completely functional organisation. (8)
The 1964 election of a Labour Government, with its small majority, was a mixed blessing in terms of MOD reform. The Geraghty Committee of 1966 produced a plan for a radical restructuring which would eliminate the single service boards, and have a Defence Management Board responsible for procurement, personnel and logistics. The plan did not find favour and was not implemented. Denis Healey did bring the three service intelligence organisations together however. In 1967 the service ministers were downgraded a further notch, and two new ministers of state posts for Administration and Equipment were established, and in 1970 the junior service ministers disappeared entirely, but were restored the following year by the new Conservative Government (but with much limited remits).
The weakening of the power base within the ministry of the individual service chiefs has been much slower, but the move from three independent kingdoms to a unified central headquarters has continued from 1970, when the powers of the CDS were increased. The 70s saw little movement in the power struggle between the single services and the central control advocates. It was a difficult time with a succession of financial crises The arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime Minister in 1979 had a number of effects on defence. The pay awards of the dying Callaghan government were accelerated and defence took a higher priority in government thinking. Nevertheless, Mrs Thatcher was not impressed by the waste and inefficiency of the MOD. She replaced her first Defence Minister, Francis Pym, when he did not seem to be sorting out defence to her satisfaction. John Nott came in charged to shake up the organisation. His Review looked to change the traditional carve up of the cake between the services. Keith Speed, the Navy minister, was sacked when he spoke out against cuts to the Navy, and was not replaced. His was the final death knell for the single service ministers, thus at last severing the direct link between the individual services and Parliament.
Michael Heseltine,who followed John Nott, adopted a radical approach to defence management. His Ministry of Defence Organisational Review (9) was published in 1984. He had grafted on his Management Information for Ministers System (MINIS) which had been developed while he was at the Environment Department. It took little note of the single service sensitivities and was structured on a broadly functional basis. The key change was to the responsibilities of CDS and PUS who became jointly the principal advisers to the Secretary of State. CDS was the adviser for military operations and strategy, while PUS looked after political and financial policy. The VCDS and 4 DCDS posts, the 2nd PUS with the Office of Management and Budget, the CSA and the CDP left a rather small policy role within the MOD for the individual service chiefs, whose boards could provide advice to the centre. The 2nd PUS was a member of all of the service boards to give that linkage. The Chiefs of Staff kept proudly their right of direct access to the Prime Minister.
As the Cold War was coming to an end, the happy days of growth in the Defence Budget was also at an end. Whitehall was being transformed by the New Management Strategy, which sought to align financial and management responsibilities. The government was also intent on privatising what it did not need to run, and making semi-independent agencies of activities which did not need direct day to day running from Whitehall. Contracting out of activities which had previously been undertaken by servicemen or MOD civilians reduced the number of defence personnel - and also showed how expensive they were. A single commercial bidder would happily provide an operation for all 3 services, where each service may have operated its own previously. The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency brought together tracts of land owned by the services with scientists and analysts who could operate as a defence capability rather than a single service lobby group.
An internal study, called 'Prospect', was undertaken in 1991 into the need for each senior post. The move to aligning financial and management responsibility meant that the separation of the C-in-Cs from the policy making board members was no longer sustainable. There was also a need to rationalise headquarters to save money and improve efficiency. The Principle Administrative Officers (CFS, QMG and AMSO) were double-hatted as the CinCs of the logistics arms in each service. Likewise,the Principle Personnel Officers (2SL, AG and AMP) became the CinCs of the three personnel/training commands. This had the effect of moving most of the individual service board members out of London. The Procurement Executive was also undergoing changes which meant that the the three service Controllers were now downgraded.
The next changes followed rapidly with Malcolm Rifkind's Front Line First defence review. There was very much a theme of joint operations and training throughout the studies. Thereview was designed to take the logic of the new management strategy further:"there was still a gap to be closed between the principles of Prospect and NMS and current practice" (10) Prospect had forecast a decrease in MOD London posts from 12,700 in 1990 to 5200 in 1995. Front Line First set a target of 3750 for 1998. The OMB and Defence Staff compartments were to be ended. It would create "a Head Office composed of a unified Central Staff and three small headquarters staffs supporting the individual Chiefs of Staff as heads of their services. Further responsibilities would be delegated to Commands" (11). The FPMG (Financial Planning and Management Group chaired by the PUS) is made clearly the single key policy forum with the Chiefs of Staff Committee as the ultimate source of professional military advice. Front Line First also created a permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood. Up until then, the appropriate service had provided its operational headquarters for joint operations (the Navy for the Falklands; the RAF for the Gulf War). This was a significant stepping off point for the next stage of rationalisation.
George Robertson, published the new Labour Government's Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in July 1998. The SDR has taken forward the development of the MOD, and reduced the roles of the individual single services, in a number of significant ways. A key innovation is the establishment of the Chief of Defence Logistics post. Each service currently runs the majority of its own logistic support requirements. There is some sharing of the less operationally sensitive common needs, but each service has a large logistic expenditure. Each of the logistics CinCs has a budget of between one and two billion Pounds - over 20% of the defence budget in all. The grouping of the three service logistics commands into a single central joint organisation is therefore a massive change in control of resources. As the new CDL stated
Clearly, the single-service PAO posts will disappear and the question of the best way to make certain that CDL is represented on the Service Executive Committees is still under discussion. (14)
On the operational side the SDR also makes changes designed to improve inter-service co-operation. An important indicator for the future is the making of the Chief of Joint Operations into a Top Level Budget Holder, thus giving him equal status with the 3 service operational CinCs. The amount (£M300) is relatively small - 10% of CinC Land - but the significance is great. The development of Joint Rapid Reaction Forces also points the way to the immediately ready forces being under central command, with the single services as second echelon activities.
"The substantial expansion in both the number and types of forces assigned to our Joint Rapid Reaction Forces, and hence the number of operations likely to come under the command of the Permanent Joint Headquarters, has led us to reassess the role of the Chief of Joint Operations.......We will therefore increase the responsibilities of the Chief of Joint Operations." (12)
All this is of course reinforced by Joint Force 2000 (Harriers), Joint Defence Centre (Doctrine), Joint Helicopter Command, Joint Ground Based Air Defence, Joint Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defence as well as of course the Joint Support through CDL.
What does this leave for the individual services to do? As the SDR makes clear, the role of the single services, and their chiefs, will be to deliver fighting capability. They will be responsible for training, discipline and ethos. This is a limited remit compared with the heady days of the global strategy review when the single service Chiefs could produce government and NATO policy.
The changes to the power of the individual services over the past 80 years have been very marked. Yet, despite the establishment of a unified Ministry of Defence in 1964, the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff have managed to survive successive reviews which have been designed (overtly or covertly) to reduce or eliminate their influence. Nevertheless, they have progressively ceded important areas of responsibility, and the pace of change has been quickening.
In any future Defence Review, it will be surprising if the spotlight does not turn first on the personnel organisations. As more and more of the key appointments will be for posts within the enlarged joint organisations, there will be a greater need for a joint approach to manpower planning. This will inevitably bring pressure for rationalisation on the personnel management areas of the services. An independent review of the armed forces personnel strategy (the Betts Report) in 1995 concluded that the MOD needed to find a more effective solution to the ownership of personnel strategy. The MOD's response (13) did little to change the long standing, and ineffective, personnel management by committee. The need for common standards, best practice and efficiency will undoubtedly lead to proposals for a Chief of Defence Personnel, with an organisation to parallel that of the new Chief of Defence Logistics. Indeed the implementation of such a structure would be less complex that the changes required in the logistics area.
This leads to interesting possibilities for longer term developments in the service chiefs' roles. As the single service boards, the service executive committees, have changed over the past ten years, they have seen their key members disappear from Whitehall. Whereas board members were once all in neighbouring offices in the MOD main building, their Personnel and Logistics organisations are now out of London, the Procurement Executive is at Abbey Wood, and the operational commands are working to the Permanent Joint HQ. The Assistant Chiefs (ACNS, ACGS and ACAS) provide the only direct staff resource to individual COS for coordinating and planning within the MOD. Most of their dedicated staffs have been redeployed to provide the central staff resource for operations, programmes and operational requirements.
When it next becomes necessary to review senior posts within the MOD, the Chiefs of Staff may find it more difficult to defend their role. If their job is to provide fighting capability then how does that differ from the operational C-in-Cs? Operations, logistics, the forward programme, operational requirements, procurement, intelligence and research are all organised centrally. Once a move is made to centralise personnel management with a Chief of Defence Personnel, there will be little justification for the Chiefs of Staff to be separate posts from their operational C-in-Cs.
At the same time, there may be an longer term evolution of the relationship between the Chief of Joint Operations (CJO) and the three operational commanders (CinC Fleet, CinC Land and CinC Strike). If their task is to provide operational fighting capability to the CJO, then logic would suggest that they might become subordinate to the CJO, who would thus be able to ensure that priority was given to development of the most appropriate operational capability at any given time. By this stage the heads of each of the three services would have become the operational Commanders, and would finally be out of the policy loop within the MOD.
In such a development, single service training and ethos could be retained but capability would be delivered on a centrally controlled (rather than joint) basis. Traditionalists worry about all three services being forced into a common uniform on the late and unlamented Canadian model. But, most UK forces do wear the same uniform, or specialist clothing, when on operational duties. The formal uniforms have always been more varied within the army than between the services.
Would the final completion of Mountbatten's vision of a functionally based MOD give us a defence establishment that produces the best defence solutions without internal partisan wrangling? Experience suggests this may be an unattainable aspiration. Just as the unified War Office of the Crimea was beset by bureaucratic infighting, there will doubtless be scope for vested interests to manipulate the system to their advantage in the 21st Century. Whether the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff will be there to take part in these future Whitehall battles seems a little less likely.
Notes
1. Cmnd 3999, The Strategic Defence Review, July 1998
2. Messages were include in MOD Fact Sheets pack which accompanied launch of the Strategic Defence Review.
3. Memorandum from Lord Mountbatten to Prime Minister Macmillan of 9 October 1962 is analysed in Defence by Ministry by Franklyn A. Johnson, Duckworth 1980 pp 105-7.
4. Politicians and Defence edited by I.Beckett and J.Gooch, Manchester University Press 1981 p viii.
5. War Memoirs IV by D.Lloyd George, Ivor Nicholson & Watson 1936 p1849.
6.Cmnd 476, Central Organisation for Defence, July 1958.
7. Mountbatten explains his role in his Foreword to Defence by Ministry op cit.
8. The Defence Equation by Martin Edmonds, Brasseys 1986 pp 64-71.
9. Cmnd 9315 Central Organisation for Defence July 1984.
10. Front Line First: The Defence Costs Study HMSO July 1994 para 204.
11. Ibid para 207.
12 The Strategic Defence Review Supporting Essays, The Stationery Office July 1998 p 8-6.
13. The Armed Forces of the Future ,The Stationery Office February 1997.
14. My Job by General Sir Sam Cowan, RUSI Journal December 1998 p3.
15. Politicians and Defence edited by I.F.W.Beckett & J.Gooch, Manchester University Press 1981 p viii