The slot that I have been given in the programme is perhaps at one both the easiest and the most difficult. Having not yet heard from the galaxy of expertise which will look at detailed aspects of possible future combat air systems, I can make broad sweeping generalisations which may or not reflect the assumptions that each of our speakers will be making. I can only give you a personal view of the factors that are likely to shape our security needs in the coming years, and the constraints and opportunities that may be in play. In any forward planning process, you need first to examine what the aim of the exercise is before advocating solutions. In the Cold War, we would start with a fairly detailed and specific threat analysis. In the less well defined security context today, we develop military capabilities which are shaped to give us certain scales of forces (defined by size, radius of action, capability and sustainability - for example the SDR requirement for a combat brigade with naval and air support , deployable for a second crisis of which only one involves warfighting and is no longer than 6 months). These capabilities are proposed against a range of possible security needs, but are also need to be structured to be sufficiently general purpose to meet unforeseen problems.
So, I shall talk a bit of future security needs. In a conference which is focused on the equipment side, we shall also need to look at what technology will be offering to meet these security needs, and as part of that the industrial dimension. As any defence programmer knows, long term military planning has a large political input as well as a purely military assessment. It was good to start this conference with Lord Gilbert and to remember that however good the military case for a particular programme, it is rightly the final view of the politician that counts. What resources are available in the future for defence will be a political judgment; which alliances and cooperative ventures flourish and which die will be political decisions, and which wars we fight and which we ignore is again up to the politicians. It is important to remember this. As an exercise for the SDR, I went through the annual Defence White Papers of the previous 17 years to see how successful they had been in terms of their forecasts and plans coming to fruition. For entirely understandable reasons, it is a pretty dismal picture. So we should not assume that our convictions today will be translated into hardware tomorrow. We must however make the best assessment we can if we are to meet the challenges ahead.
Let me turn to our security needs. We are accumulating more experience than we might have wanted in the field of post Cold War security. For the UK we have seen military action in the Gulf War, in Bosnia both for UN and NATO operations, in air exclusion operations over Iraq, in Desert Fox and now in Kosovo. This mix of NATO, UN and ad hoc coalition warfare seems to be representative of the various ways that we may find our forces being engaged in combat. The announcement last week that the UK is prepared to assign a rapid deployment force of brigade strength for deployment by the UN makes such operations even more likely to be regular features of UK military requirements into the future. Lessons on the mix of capabilities needed will continue to flow from each experience, and I shall return to balance of investment questions. However, the general point to make at this stage is that these operations call for the full range of air land and sea capability, and that high intensity warfare structures are appropriate to these types of operations. The demands of low casualty rates both for own forces and for civilian populations put new demands on survivability, intelligence and precision. The difficulties of running military operations with a coalition of democracies makes quick resolution important if public and political support is to be maintained. Decisive quick resolution requires the ability to concentrate force.
It would be wrong in any look at security needs to consider only the experience of the last decade. NATO membership still focuses on the need to protect its members from an external threat. While we are safer now from such a threat than in the past, the timescales for the defence planning and procurement process are very long. The two new carriers that we will talk about are planned for introduction into service in 2012. By that time Russia may be very different - perhaps better or perhaps more threatening. We still have no way of knowing whether our optimistic assumptions about the future intentions of China are right, and again we may be more or less concerned in ten year's time. Nor can we know how our natural allies will be faring whether in Europe or in North America. NATO may have enlarged further without difficulty and our security concerns be similar to those we worry about today. But it may not.
In the near term we should worry about Kashmir, Korea and Kurdistan - 3 more "K"s to add to Kosovo. We have not yet stabilised the Balkans or solved the problem of Iraq. Taiwan could still be difficult, and North Korea remains completely unpredictable. The experience of the last decade has at least reminded the governments of democracies that there is a continuing need to invest in defence capability.
As choices have to be made about new systems, technology will be shaping our thinking. This is nothing new: military requirements have in the past driven technological innovation. The difference now is that technological innovation - more often in the civilian field - is driving military requirements. This audience will be only too well aware of the difficulties caused by the long defence procurement timescales compared to the very short generational times of today's technologies. We are it seems condemned to procure obsolete equipment, or forever chase the latest development and never deploy capability.
As we listen to the siren voices of technological promise for new combat systems, we will need to keep asking what risks there are inherent in these promises. Will the technology deliver what it promises, will it be affordable, will be flexible and will it dovetail with our likely partners in military operations? The politicians may be asking other questions: will a particular project enhance national research, boost national industry, show European cooperation, reduce likely casualties, make weapons appear less inhumane, or perhaps importantly appear as exciting procurement news today. If we couple these military wishes with the political needs, and perhaps add in the research community with the industrial pressures, there can be a common interest in promoting the more exciting technologies at the expense of the more mundane incremental enhancements that can be delivered earlier at lower cost. In the US the continuing attempts at providing the magic defence against ballistic missiles, first started in the 1960s, boosted in the 1980's by SDI, and now translated into NMD, is a good example of how to pour billions down the drain for no increase in military capability. We have our own rather smaller scale examples in the UK.
None of this is meant to be Luddite about technology. Air Systems have always been at the technological leading edge. There are however difficult trade offs to be made between technologies. Cost, flexibility and survivability raise a wide number of issues which we shall discuss in this conference. There are different approaches to be taken, but there are also problems of how to put together coalition operations if the technological approach diverges too far between partners.
One other aspect of technology which must affect our thinking is the advantage that global technologies give to possible adversaries. Anyone can walk into Dixons and pick up a handheld GPS receiver for around £100. This can give a third world power with some old Russian or Chinese surface to surface missiles a much enhanced capability to threaten its neighbours. Personal Computers are now operating at computing speeds which used to be available only through carefully controlled supercomputers. Trading restrictions for such machines are impossible to enforce. As we have seen it is even possible to send the US's most sensitive nuclear data by e-mail to China. Consumer technology is offering many new choices to prospective state and non-state trouble makers, even at the conventional and information warfare level. For WMD there are other dangerous opportunities.
The make up of the delegates to this conference show how important the industrial considerations are in all this. I shall not rehearse the well known problems of transatlantic competition and co-operation, although I suspect we hall hear much about it. Rather I would head up the difficult industrial questions to be addressed as we look forward to future combat air systems. They are of course part of the technological problems which I have just mentioned. Each nations wants its own thriving research, development and defence industrial base. The numbers of systems procured are small, although the cost and potential profits remain large. Co-operation, partnerships, collaboration and merging of defence industries allow a larger customer base, shared costs (and shared profits) and ease interoperability problems. Technological transfer can either be eased or become a problem, and needs to be considered carefully.
I worry a bit about the political pressures for exclusively European integration of defence industries. There would seem little benefit to defence capability if we develop two camps on either side of the Atlantic. Both from a technology sharing aspect and from a market sharing aspect, there seems to be much to be said for looking at more transatlantic cooperation. In the end, much of industry will make its choices on shareholder value issues, and governments will adapt procurement policies in the light of resultant industrial changes.
Perhaps the most important factor in planning our future combat systems is one which is not on the agenda for this conference - yet it will be in everyone's mind as we discuss options. It is of course resources - how much money will there be for defence in the future and how much of that will be available for combat air systems? Defence budgets have been declining worldwide over the past decade. It may be that for internal political reasons the US will up its budget temporarily, but I do not think we should read too much into this. From a UK perspective, the decline has been pretty unremitting. It may be that the experiences of Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo will give George Robertson sufficient clout to enhance the UK defence budget - or at least stabilise it beyond the SDR 3 year promise. For the rest of Europe the picture is not encouraging. All are looking at restructuring their forces to a greater or lesser extend to meet the new requirements for deployed operations, but they are also looking for lower costs. Germany has the problem of conscription to handle, plus the establishment of rapidly deployable forces and a likely decrease in budget of perhaps 20%. The more European nations (perhaps including the UK) see themselves as minor partners to the US in operations, the less incentive there will be to stabilise their defence budgets. I have argued elsewhere that we need a European defence budget into which nations must place either capability or money. Then virtue would be rewarded (perhaps the UK would even be entitled to a rebate).
In reality the choices that we will discuss in this conference are likely to become more difficult because of the resource question. However good, and militarily necessary, a system may be, if the budget cannot afford it, it will not happen. We saw the difficulties, particularly for Germany, in completing the Eurofighter project. This should be a lesson for the various high ticket items that are on the menu for future combat air systems.
In deciding what capabilities we need for the UK, we must increasingly make some assumptions about the partnership in which we operate. We have, although the government would deny it, shaped our forces on an assumption that for the difficult operations, the US will be with us in force. The Gulf War and Kosovo have shown us that air power is today an American capability. The Europeans can to a greater or lesser extend add extra capability, but none of it is essential (militarily rather than politically). If we use our submarine launched cruise missiles, we must fire a significant portion of our total holding to gain an adversary's attention. If the key to the air campaign is offensive action, we provide 4% of the bombs dropped. The UK has a good record of providing a small but broad capability to support an multinational operation. But how do we decide, when resources constrain, which capabilities are essential if all are optional?
The defence programmer is always asking balance of investment questions. The Strategic Defence Review articulated the debate and the solution in a more public way than usual. But as I indicated at the beginning, no Defence White Paper in the last 17 years has been proved right in its assumptions and forecasts. After Kosovo, there will be perhaps greater sympathy towards the resource needs for defence. Will that sympathy be translated into priority for future combat air systems? The air power enthusiast will argue that we now have two air campaigns (the Gulf and Kosovo), with the air operations over Iraq, as proof positive that the future is all about air warfare and coercion from the air; and that this means that resources must be focused in this area. This will be true for the United States, where air power offers great advantages to the US in its reluctant world policeman role.
In the UK, the analysis post Kosovo may be different. The air power contribution at 15% of total sorties flown was respectable but not critical to the operation's success. Alliance cohesion was demonstrated, the UK matched or bettered its European partners, and was seen as a serious player in the air. There will be questions to be asked about weapons to platforms and about offensive to defensive ratios of investment. There will be questions to be asked about aircrew to aircraft ratios. But it is not immediately obvious that the total segment of the defence budget which goes to air systems in their widest sense will get first call on any reslicing of the cake. The big lesson of Kosovo is more likely to be in the limitations imposed by our now having such a small army. If we continue to need to provide for NI, continue in Bosnia, take on Kosovo and now have an added UN commitment, it is difficult to see how the sums add up.
Whatever the outcome of the next balance of investment examination in the MOD, it would be a heroic assumption that significant extra resources will be available for future combat air systems, and it is possible that they will be reduced to pay for a larger army. This conference needs then to face up to the challenge of priorities rather than just providing an over hopeful menu.
In looking at ways to square the circle, I would offer some final words of hope. We have a problem that one member of the Alliance provides so much of the air power and technology that the remainder begin to lose hope militarily, industrially and from the technological aspect with ever matching the unequal partner. If we are not as a result to end up as the Continent that provides political respectability in the air, and infantry on the ground, we do need to look more positively as ways to pool European capabilities for greater effect. As it happens such pooling is much much easier for air systems than for either land or maritime systems.
We can also focus our attention of the systems which offer the advantages of flexibility with a good cost-effectiveness ratio. We must be as aware of through life costs on a systems basis as we are of platform capital costs. After all the B52's still had a major role in both the Gulf and Kosovo air campaigns. Money and technology focused on weapons rather than platforms paid dividends.
As with all forward planning, there is no way of knowing if we have the right answer. We must just try to minimise the chances of being completely wrong. This conference should help that process.