Britain Sets the Defence Agenda

 “There are significant parts of Britain’s defence architecture that will need to be re-thought, if Britain is to prepare effectively to confront a radical age.  To do that, the British will need to do something that has traditionally eluded them.  They will need to think big about security.  ‘Strategic’ will need to mean something”.

 “Little Britain?” Julian Lindley-French 2015

 

Power and strategy

November 20^th, 2020. Power is strategy, politics is trade-offs. Yesterday’s announcement of the largest increase in British defence expenditure since the end of the Cold War sets the defence agenda for NATO and Europe’s future defence. It also lays down a challenge to other Europeans. As such, it is a masterstroke of British statecraft for it reminds other Europeans of Britain’s vital importance to their security and defence on the eve of Brexit, signals to the new Biden administration that London will invest in a twenty-first century special relationship, and warns secessionists of the power of the British state to use defence investment to thwart them.  It is also a vital injection of political capital in the strategic brand of Global Britain. Having set the ambition Prime Minister Boris Johnson must now mean what he says and deliver. The COVID-19 economic crisis is yet to bite and when it does pressures will grow to spend instead on a whole raft of demanding domestic issues, not least public sector pay. Given that, why does a hike in Britain’s armed forces make sense?

Like all crises COVID-19 will accelerate and intensify dangerous global strategic competition. The nature and scope of new military technology and the 5Ds of continuous warfare (deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and coercion through implied or actual destruction) with which Britain must contend is now clearer than it was five years ago. If properly spent this investment will go a long way to promoting sound defence and credible twenty-first century deterrence through a strengthened and modernised NATO.  The strategy is thus threefold: to reinforce the defence Special Relationship with the US by creating a British Future Force able to operate to with US forces at the high end of military effect across the multi-domain future warfare of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge; to generate the necessary military power to enable post-Brexit Britain to exert defence influence over European and other allies and partners, as well as being a public good in and of itself; by integrating high-end military force with intelligence, diplomacy and aid and development enable Britain to exert global influence and thus retain its status as a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council.

Defence value versus defence cost

This is the stuff of contemporary geopolitics. And, whilst the costs will be substantial, the value will be great.  Consequently, the investment will leverage a strategic value for Britain far beyond the cost of defence investment and is thus an efficient, effective and value for money way to enhance British security. This four-year defence deal will be worth £16.5bn ($21.8 billion), given that the annual defence budget is some £40bn such represents an increase of about 10%, far beyond any comparable commitment by any other major European state.  There is some quibbling over the figures. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests there will only be £7bn of new money for the annual defence budget by 2025. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that existing planning envisaged the defence budget rising to £45bn by 2025, whilst the new plan will now see it rise to £52bn. Downing Street went further. “The £16.5 billion extra in the Ministry of Defence's budget over the next four years is the amount over and above the manifesto commitment. The Government has already pledged to increase defence spending by 0.5 per cent above inflation for every year of this parliament. On existing forecasts, this is an overall cash increase of £24.1 billion pounds over four years compared to last year's budget”.

Johnson said the purpose of the investment was to “end the era of retreat, transform our armed forces and bolster our global influence”. He went on, “I have taken this decision in the teeth of the pandemic because the defence of the realm must come first.”  Johnson also said, “The international situation is more perilous and more intensely competitive than at any time since the Cold War and Britain must be true to our history and stand alongside our allies.” He also said that the investment would “…unite and level up our country, pioneer new technology and defend our people and way of life”.

 

What new capabilities will the new investment generate?  Johnson was clear, “Since the Cold War the threat from our adversaries has been evolving. Our traditional defence and deterrence capabilities remain vital, and our Armed Forces work every day to prevent terror reaching the UK's shores. But our enemies are also operating in increasingly sophisticated ways, including cyberattacks, to further their own interests”. The aim is to make Britain’s armed forces by far the most technologically-advanced force in Europe thus affording London a powerful coalition leadership role with the British Future Force.

Britain is also going back to space. The establishment of a UK Space Command was an election manifesto commitment. Britain already possesses a Space Operations Centre at Air Command in High Wycombe. This is a deep joint force and involves personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army and the Royal Air Force and is in line (albeit far more modestly) with US Future Force planning, particularly the development of US Space Command.  The so-called ‘high frontier’ is now regarded as future war theatre for military operations.  Britain will also create a military Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability that will focus on developing intelligent drone swarms, autonomous vehicles and target recognition, with a significant part of the new investment devoted to research and technology.

The messaging

Timing is everything and the Brexit message implicit in this announcement is clear: there can be no meaningful European defence without Britain. It would be naïve in the extreme to believe Brexit can be separated from Britain’s role in the defence of Europe. A bad Brexit deal will inevitably lead Britain to retreat from the continent, withdraw behind its nuclear deterrent, and act as a high-level strategic raider alongside the Americans. A good Brexit deal will see Britain take its proper place as a leader of European coalitions, a role London is now indicating it seeks to play. An equitable Brexit deal will thus see Britain re-commit to the defence of continental Europe and help lead the drafting of a new NATO Strategic Concept and join with France, Germany and other Europeans to rebuild the European pillar of the Alliance.

The strategic message to President-elect Biden is equally clear. Britain is investing in its unique strategic skill set that unlike any other European state reaches across the multi-domains of power. As such, Britain will remain the only European ally able to project high-end military power in conjunction with offensive cyber and information warfare capabilities. As a leader of European coalitions London is also signalling to Washington its determination to balance power projection with people protection and thus ease the burdens Americans must bear for the defence of Europe. 

There is also a clear domestic message. Johnson also stated that his ambition is to restore Britain as the “foremost naval power in Europe” with the main military beneficiary the Royal Navy. This makes sense. Britain is an island and the security of sea-lines of communication (SLOC), underwater cable infrastructure and freedom of navigation are a vital British interest. Consequently, the three under construction members of the seven planned Astute-class of nuclear attack submarines (HMS Anson, HMS Agamemnon and HMS Agincourt) will now be completed quickly. The Successor programme and the four Dreadnought-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines currently under construction will also be completed as planned. The six advanced Type 45 air defence destroyers will be augmented by eight advanced Type 26 anti-submarine frigates and five Type 31 general purpose frigates, plus fleet support ships to support the new Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group. Most if not all of these ships will be built in Scotland (on the Clyde) and Northern Ireland (Belfast), creating and supporting up to 10,000 COVID protected jobs in both. The message to the Scottish Nationalist Party is thus blunt: if Scotland becomes independent it will lose all access to the buying power of the British state and any last industrial capability in Scotland will thus be lost. Romantic nationalists might be willing to pay such a price. The Scottish people?

Paying the price of the COVID war

Still, there will be a cost and how will it be paid for? The cost of Britain’s war effort generated by World War One and World War Two peaked at between 175% and 250% of GDP in the years from 1914 to 1962.  With the COVID crisis the past year has seen the national debt rise from 80.8% of GDP to (probably) over 100% of GDP in 2021.  The war debt was paid for with cheap US loans which were then paid back in fifty instalments between 1950 and 2006 (somewhat longer than the planned in-life service of the two new British heavy aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales). 

The Government put war debt into a box and treated it as a distinct liability separate from the rest of the national debt.  Today, Britain can also borrow cheap money and will need to adopt a similar approach to COVID debt as it did to war debt.  As such, increased defence expenditure should be seen as a function of COVID ‘war’ debt. It is also pay-back time for many of the banks that were propped up by the British taxpayer in 2008-2010 when their global (not British) debts threatened to destroy them.

There will have to be further ‘efficiencies’ sought and this will mean cuts to legacy forces.  However, such cuts need not be egregious. Much is made of the so-called £13bn ‘black hole’ in the defence investment budget caused by unfunded defence aspirations in the 2010 and 2015 defence reviews.  In fact, the real shortfall is £6bn and only over ten years. The figure of £13bn would only be pertinent if the gap between aspiration and funding had continued to grow.  With this injection of capital that gap will now be closed. It will also enable the British armed forces to escape from another trap: the enforced use of legacy equipment for want of anything else. One lesson from the tragic war in Nagorno-Karabakh is that faced with a new triad of even limited numbers of cyber, drones and precision strike munitions legacy formations are rapidly defeated.

Reform of the defence procurement system will also need to continue. Thankfully, there are precedents for innovation that must be built upon.  For example, the Aircraft Carrier Alliance that built the two new aircraft carriers exploited the entire national industrial base and multiple supply chains far beyond the traditional defence industrial sector. Much of the emerging and disruptive technology entering the battlespace comes from the civil sector.  A new strategic public-private partnership is needed to foster the necessary relationships with ‘tech’.

Distinction will also need to be made between defence investment and wider national security investment. The planned co-operation between the signals intelligence capabilities of GCHQ and the MoD to create the planned National Cyber Force will merge the AI, information and digital domains and must thus be seen as a national contingency and funded as such.  Britain devotes some 7% of its $3 trillion economy to all aspects of national security, stability (policing) and defence.  The new force will have defence, counter-terrorism and counter-crime applications and should thus be funded as a national contingency.   

Power, politics and strategic literacy

The central theme of my 2015 book Little Britain? was that Britain’s political and strategic elite had lost the capacity to think geopolitically, were strategically illiterate and Britain’s defence was paying the price for it.  The book argued that Britain’s leaders lacked the political courage and the strategic foresight to make intelligent decisions about foreign, security and defence policy and the effective statecraft Britain so desperately needed.  This decision suggests Prime Minister Johnson and his administration do understand the first duty of the state is the defence of the realm and that any such defence is relative to the threats Britain faces. Whatever other pressures Britain faces British leaders must first and foremost secure and defend British citizens.  For over ten years Britain has only recognised as much threat as HM Treasury believed it could afford. This announcement suggests Britain is finally beginning to recognise threat for what it is.

This announcement is a good start, but it must now be delivered. By the way, Prime Minister, if you want a detailed strategy to justify the funding please read my forthcoming 2021 book Future War and the Defence of Europe (Oxford University Press for the English language version and Franckh Kosmos for the German language edition).

Julian Lindley-French

COVID-19, Europe's Defence and the Riga Test

Please find below the link to my Policy Brief which I had the honour to write for this year's Riga Conference. The paper is entitled "COVID-19, Europe's Defence and the Riga Test" and considers possible implications of the coming COVID-19 driven defence cuts across much of the Alliance, the possible implications for my friends in the Baltic States, and what we need collectively to do about it. Read more... PS if the link does not work directly please copy and paste into your browser. 

https://www.rigaconference.lv/wp-content/uploads/COVID-19-Europes-Defence-and-the-Riga-Test.pdf

Does America (Still) Want to Lead the Free World?

 “We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it”.

 Thomas Jefferson

Checks and balances

November 5^th, 2020. So, that was that! The Great Arsenal of Democracy has spoken…sort of. As I write the US is heading for a Biden presidency. However, the Democrats are likely to see their majority in the House of Representatives reduced and, crucially, fail to gain control of the US Senate.  If confirmed the real ‘winner’ is the US Constitution. The checks and balances it enshrines will ensure that a Biden White House will be an essentially centrist administration.  What does the last forty-eight hours suggest about the next four years for Europe and America’s leadership of the free world?

Many Europeans will be quietly celebrating this morning amidst the economic wreckage of COVID-19. At least the transatlantic relationship will return to some form of ‘business as usual’, some will suggest.  Wrong! It cannot and will not.  There are few concepts I can lay claim to but I was the first to suggest the foreign and security policy of the Trump presidency would be transactional. At the time I called upon Europeans to look beyond the politics of Trump at the structural challenges the Americans are facing, foreign and domestic. They did not.  Instead, Europeans have used President Trump as an alibi to avoid facing the hard security and defence choices they must now make. This is something, I fear, COVID-19 is about to make a whole lot worse.

The world is changing…

Some months ago I also asked a question: who will win COVID-19?  It will certainly not be Europe, but nor will it be the US.  The terrible twin titans of the post COVID-19 international system are geopolitics and geo-economics, neither of which are trending in the West’s favour.  The world is witnessing a profound shift in the balance of coercive power away from the democracies towards China, and by extension its piggy back partner, Russia. The economic and military rise of China also seems to be accelerating as a consequence of COVID-19 with profound implications for European defence and the transatlantic relationship.

The defence strategic consequences?  In spite of the still awesome military power projection the US Armed Forces are still capable of even the mighty US Armed Forces cannot be present in strength in all places all of the time across the full spectrum of twenty-first century conflict.  Power is relative and for a state to exert such influence it would need to be uniquely strong in relation to all other possible peer competitors. There may have been a moment back in the early 2000s when some Americans thought the US enjoyed such power and could act as the Global Policeman (even if many Americans denied such ambitions), but 911, Afghanistan and Iraq quickly proved such pretention to be illusory, if not delusional. The coming years will thus likely see a kind of information-digital-hypersonic arms race in which the autocracies systematically seek to ‘short-of-war’ exploit the many vulnerabilities that are also the very essence of democracy.

…but so is America

Then there is the changing nature of America itself. A lot of Europeans still tend to view America through the prism of ‘the Greatest Generation’, which in tandem with Churchill’s Britain and Stalin’s Russia won World War Two. They forget the isolationist Vandenberg America of the 1930s and ignore the extent to which the US is again fast changing. There were two telling trends in this election. First, the percentage of white voters fell from 70% in 2016 to 65% in 2020. Second, the sheer scale of voting revealed a far greater engagement of minorities in the electoral process. This is to be welcomed. Political legitimacy in liberal democracies rests upon the need for the greatest number of citizens to engage.  Analysts too often tend to see geopolitics in terms of power indicators, which are often stripped down to size of a respective state’s economy and the relative power of its armed forces.  However, the ability of a state to apply power also rests upon a range of other, often intangible domestic factors. The power of the ageing ‘baby boomer’ vote was again apparent in this election. However, their future is behind them and twenty years hence the US will wear a different identity and political complexion.

Lessons from history?

In some important (although not all) respects contemporary America is not unlike late imperial Britain in the 1920s.  On the face of it, 1920 saw British power and influence at its zenith. Britain emerged from World War One victorious and in 1920 still possessed by far the largest navy in the world, the true measure of global power at the time. However, Britain was also mired in debt, not unlike the US today which faces a budget deficit of some 16% GDP, the largest since 1945, and a national debt fast approaching $28 trillion.

Britain was also deeply divided.  The 1918 Representation of the People Act and the 1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act extended the franchise to all men and women over the age of twenty-one.  With two strokes of the Parliamentary pen the age of High Victorian Aristocratic Imperialists (of which Churchill was very much a part) was effectively brought to an end. To say the political and strategic consequences were profound is an understatement.  Britain had been in relative decline on the international stage since the 1890s as Wilhelmine Germany emerged as a European industrial powerhouse, America stopped colonising itself and began to look outward, and the Empire of Japan began to take its first tentative steps towards Great Power. Important though such change undoubtedly was Britain’s retreat from Empire accelerated far more quickly because of the changing nature of Britain itself.  

Downton Abbey America?

The shift in the Britain of the 1920s away from Imperialism and towards Disarmament was not just a consequence of the sacrifice of World War One. With the seizure of power by the political leaders of the bourgeois and working classes a British world view began to emerge that was very different from that of the Patrician order of old. That is the implicit story of Downton Abbey which any fan will recognise. In what was perhaps the first great struggle between imperial globalists and social nationalists the Great Depression then further accelerated change in the global, political and social order, just like COVID economics seems to be doing today. The change showed itself most clearly over the question of Britain’s role in the world, in particular what was then termed Indian Home Rule.  Gandhi, Nehru and others were successful (eventually) in agitating for Indian independence, but what is not often recalled is the support for such independence in Britain itself.

Masked by Britain’s subsequent role in World War Two it is often overlooked that much of 1930s Britain no longer had the political appetite to be an imperial power. With the political empowerment of the working class, both men and women, British politics rapidly became focused on the domestic struggle between entitlement, capital and labour. In Britain, such tensions took the form of events like the 1926 General Strike and the rise of the Trades Union Congress.  In contemporary social media driven America it is reflected in culture wars, entrenched politics of identity and the demand for far greater political and real investment in promoting racial and social equality.  There is also the huge task that any new Administration must face of modernising American infrastructure, much of which is clapped out. 

These immense domestic pressures the new Administration will face also begs two further questions of Americans. First, do Americans still want to lead the free world?  Second, if Americans do, how? Britain’s past may again prove illuminating.  The Naval Defence Act of May 31^st, 1889 formally adopted the so-called Two Power Standard. This committed the Royal Navy to maintain twice the strength of the next two most powerful navies combined. On the face of it the Standard was a statement of British Imperial power. In fact, it was recognition that the French and Russian navies enjoyed the luxury of being able to make life exceedingly difficult for an over-stretched Royal Navy by choosing when, where and how to apply pressure the world over.  This is much the same dilemma the US faces today with the rise of China as a hybrid, cyber and potentially hyper war power, and Russia’s assertive coercion in and around much of Europe. In other words, for America to still lead the free world and defend Europe it will need to impose some form of ‘tax’ on the Allies to do it.  

Rise and Fall…

Britain’s decline was played out on the world’s oceans, as will America’s. Throughout the 1890s the challenge for Britain of controlling home waters, the Mediterranean and the sea lines of communication to Britain’s African colonies, India and the Eastern Empire became increasingly acute.  The appointment of Admiral Tirpitz in 1898 led to the eventual 1907 creation of Imperial Germany’s High Seas Fleet which was designed for one purpose – the defeat of the Royal Navy in Britain’s home waters. London soon recognised that in the face of such challenges Britain could no longer defend all of its interests everywhere, all of the time.

To solve the problem of what became known as imperial overstretch in January 1902 Britain forged the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The alliance helped transform the Chrysanthemum Throne into a regional-strategic Great Power, and all that happened thereafter, including the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The policy quickly paid strategic dividends to Britain with the crushing May 1905 naval defeat of Russia by Japan at the Battle of Tsushima (with at least one Royal Navy officer in attendance) and helped lead to the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. 

America? America is not Britain and its power fundamentals are far stronger than Britain's ever was.  Therefore, if the US still has the will and political cohesion to lead the free world it can do so, but only in concert with committed and capable allies. In the Indo-Pacific that will mean deeper ties with Australia, South Korea and, of course, Japan. India? As for Europe, the Americans need NATO, but only if NATO can be transformed into a group of capable allies that can and will properly share risks, costs and burdens.  However, if such a new NATO is to be realised THIS America must want to lead and be willing to continue to bear the costs of such leadership, which will remain substantial.  Washington will also need to demonstrate the strategic patience needed to rebuild and maintain the alliances Washington increasingly needs. The alternative?  Look at Britain. A century ago London’s writ ran the length and breadth of the world. Today, London’s writ does not even run the length and breadth of Britain.

The difference between a President Biden and President Trump? They will be manifold, particularly in matters of style.  President Trump also saw American power as transactional because he for him international relations is little more than a protracted big business negotiation over global real estate. The transactionalism would be driven by a simple truth: the US has no alternative. Yes, there are many Americans who no longer confide in US strength and not a few who increasingly fear the power of the other, but the free world still needs American leadership and that leadership must both empower its people domestically and its allies globally. 

Julian Lindley-French  

NATO's Black Elephants

Black elephants? My friend Professor Paul Cornish puts it succinctly, “The real threat to NATO and its cohesion are Black Elephants; risks that are widely acknowledged and familiar (the ‘elephant in the room’) - but ignored. When the elephant can no longer be ignored it is passed off as an unpredictable surprise (a ‘black swan’) by those who were slow to address it. NATO’s biggest Black Elephant is the reluctance of its member countries to spend on defence.”

Embedded herein is the link to my video contribution to an event organised by Rome's Aspen Italia and the Istituto Affari Internazionale on October 8^th entitled The Future of NATO.

I do not pull my punches!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AR6QADCO3k&feature=youtu.be 

Julian Lindley-French

The NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept

“It is important to emphasise that the willingness to commit decisively hard capability with the credibility to war fight is an essential part of the ability to operate and therefore of deterrence…we cannot afford any longer to operate in silos – we have to be integrated: with allies as I have described, across Government, as a national enterprise, but particularly across the military instrument. Effective integration of maritime, land, air, space and cyber achieves a multi-Domain effect that adds up to far more than simply the sum of the parts – recognising – to paraphrase Omar Bradley – that the overall effect is only as powerful as the strength of the weakest Domain…We must chart a direction of travel from an industrial age of platforms to an information age of systems.”

General Sir Nick Carter, “The Integrated Operating Concept”, 30 September, 2020

Exercise Joint Warrior

NATO’s Exercise Joint Warrior is underway. It brings back fond memories. In 2013 I had the honour of being an observer. Apart from ‘decorating’ the wardroom of HMS Westminster with the substantial and substantive consequences of my patent lack of sea legs, and being pretty ill for twenty four distinctly unmemorable hours thereafter, I gained an invaluable insight into the maritime-amphibious business of the Alliance. Joint Warrior 2020 finishes tomorrow having conducted a series of mainly anti-submarine and contested landing exercises in the North Sea and having involved over 6,000 personnel and 81 ships from 11 nations.  Critically, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) was also present in tandem with the Royal Navy. The past? No. The future.

The British-led exercise also pointed to the future by showing how a European maritime-amphibious future force could operate with the US future force in a contested battlespace. For the first time the new Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group was revealed with HMS Queen Elizabeth at its F35B Lightning 2 power projection core. The exercise was also taking place against the backdrop of NATO’s real twenty-first century challenge: how to transform the Alliance’s defence and deterrence posture, what President Macron rather unfairly called ‘brain dead’ NATO last December, into the super-smart, agile force the Alliance will need by decade’s end. 

It is a force that if needs be must have the capability and capacity to act across the mosaic that is hybrid, cyber and hyper warfare. A transformation that must also take place whilst the coming COVID-19 economic crisis wreaks havoc with European defence budgets. Even today even Europe’s largest navies, the Royal Navy and French Navy, are so small that if they seek to carry our Mahanian sea control, à la the RN Carrier Strike Group, it can only be done at the expense of Corbettian sea presence.  Any smaller they will be unable to perform either role. The solution?  A deep combined European Future Maritime-Amphibious Force built around a command hub focussed on the British and French navies.  The irony is that Britain’s departure from the EU may make such a force easier to realise now that the spectre of an EU Army/Navy has been removed from British concerns. 

Zircon and the US Future Navy

Future Allied defence and deterrence is not the only challenge implicit in Joint Warrior 2020. On October 6^th, US Secretary for Defense Mark Esper previewed Battle Force 2045, the plan for the US future navy. Esper offered the vision of a five hundred ship US Navy comprised of both manned and unmanned ships. The essential points of the Esper Plan is for more nuclear attack submarines, 50-60 amphibious assault ships that could also be used as light aircraft carriers (this is ironic for the Royal Navy as it pioneered such ships and then scrapped them), large (1000-2000 tons) and medium (500 tons) unmanned ships, together with extra-large sub-surface platforms (50 tons) that can host hypersonic missile and Artificially Intelligent drone swarms, with the future fleet supported by 80-90 frigates and longer range carrier strike aircraft, both manned and unmanned, that have far greater ‘reach’ than afforded by the F35B Lightning 2.

On October 7^th, as Exercise Joint Warrior got underway, and as a sign of the challenge Allied navies will face, President Putin’s sixty-eighth birthday present was a successful test of a 3M22 Tsirkon (Zirkon) hypersonic anti-ship missile which can travel at over 1.2 miles/2 kilometre per second up to 1,200 miles/2,000 km. A message? Absolutely. NATO? In my speech to the Committee for Standardization at NATO HQ in Brussels at the end of last month I said that the next ten years will see the equivalent of seventy years of past military technological development crammed into it and more.  There are some good signs. For example, the US and UK already enjoy what might be called an AI Special Relationship, but far more needs to be done by the Allies to compete in what could be a deadly race between democracy and autocracy.  

The NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept (NSIOC)

The Plan? Certainly, NATO needs a new Strategic Concept that reaffirms the enduring purpose of the Alliance and its fundamental tasks given the fast changing nature and scope of contemporary and future risks and threats. Critically, the Alliance also needs a NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept that would populate General Carter’s vision with real resources, something the British alone will be unable to do.  This is because the essential challenge for NATO deterrence and defence concerns the balance the European Allies must strike post COVID-19 between cost, military capability, military capacity, technology and the fast expanding military task-list that is being generated by the new strategic environment.  The next decade really will be different and dangerous.

That challenge is reinforced by the urgent need to effectively and efficiently organise cash-starved Bonzai European militaries into a force that can contribute meaningfully to Allied defence and deterrence, maintain interoperability in extremis with the US future force, and if needs be act as a high-end, first responder in and around Europe. As an aside, London should be congratulated for looking ahead but for the British there is also a profound danger that the forthcoming Integrated Review 2020, with its headline-grabbing focus on space and digital domains, will simply be yet another of those ‘clever’ London political metaphors to mask further cuts to Britain’s already waning fighting power. In other words, Britain’s future force only makes sense in a NATO context and only if it can work at the high end of operations with the Americans.

Thankfully, there are signs that such hard realities are beginning to be gripped. NATO’s new Concept for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro Atlantic Area (DDA) is designed as a stepping stone en route to an adapted/transformed Alliance. It is also designed to deliver an unambiguous, consistent and continuous demonstration of Alliance military power with a commitment to operational purposefulness by emphasising not just awareness of, but also future effectiveness, across multiple warfare domains and in multiple geographic areas.

Given the level of strategic ambition necessarily implicit in NATO’s future defence and deterrence posture, including further reforms to the NATO Command Structure, the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept (‘Active Engagement, Modern Defence’) now belongs to another age.  This is because NATO will have to engineer a new force and resource centre of gravity at a higher end of military effect whilst also securing its citizens from what I have called 5D continuous strategic coercion (deception, disinformation, disruption, destabilisation and implied destruction).

The Path of Transformation

Realism is also needed as the path of NATO transformation rarely runs smooth and many Allies are still deeply reluctant to embrace the change needed to save the Alliance upon which they rely for their defence. In 2018 the North Atlantic Council tasked General Scaparotti, the then Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), to set out his ‘Strategic Thoughts’ about both the threats to the Alliance and the response.  This led to the 2019 NATO Military Strategy (NMS) which is entitled ‘Comprehensive Defence, Shared Response’ (CDSR).  The NATO Military Strategy adopts a whole of security approach and not only frames the development and employment of the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power (MIoP), but also offers a road-map to the future. There are three core elements to the Strategy. First, it recognises the need for the Alliance to confront again geostrategic competition, as well as the dangers of pervasive instability and the strategic shocks they can trigger as central to the strategic environment with which NATO must contend. Second, the Strategy identifies Russia and Terrorist Groups (TGs) as the main strategic threats to the Alliance, given their depth, breadth, duration and complexity. Third, the Strategy recognises the need to move away from Crisis Response and both contest and counter these threats by developing a common capacity for competition and deterrent power in peacetime, crisis and defence. Critically, whilst NATO remains a defensive Alliance the 2019 Military Strategy also moves the Alliance from having a reactive posture to a deliberate strategy for force deployment and employment.

The DDA emerged from the Military Strategy under General Wolters, the current SACEUR to act as the bridge between the Military Strategy and is called (by me) the NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept (NSIOC).  This is because DDA is about the core business of credible defence and deterrence: warfighting in the Twenty-First Century. As such the DDA provides NATO with a coherent framework and approach to such a challenge by addressing military deterrence activities in peacetime and defence actions in crisis and conflict. DDA also addresses scale of threats and ambition of response by considering Alliance roles and tasks around ‘360 degrees’ of large-scale, long-term complexity. Critically, it also seeks to address something your correspondent has long been pushing for: strategic interdependency between the Alliance’s ability to address threats from Russia inside its area of responsibility (AOR), and Terrorist Groups outside its AOR.

Above all, DDA is an Alliance effort to fully understand that complex nature of modern warfare as a contest, where deterrence must demonstrate an informed and unambiguous ability to defend, whilst defence will demand control of several geographic areas and multiple domains of warfare simultaneously.  Critically, the DDA is analysis-led not cost-led and focuses on how Russia and Terrorist Groups not only gain geographic, domain and readiness advantage, but also how they operate over space and time. To that end, the DDA establishes clear geographic and domain Deterrence and Defence Objectives (mapped to activity) that would also impose tactical, operational and strategic dilemmas on adversaries.  As I understand it, China is not discussed at great length but the methodology could be applied to such an end.  The increasing role of advanced civilian-generated technology (AI, big data, quantum computing, Nano, bio etc. and et al) is also not addressed directly but is implicit.  

Exercise Joint Warrior 2020 must be judged against the backdrop of both the DDA and the NATO Military Strategy. What does it suggest about Joint Warrior 2030? Impressive though such NATO exercises may appear as a news item, power is relative and the maritime-amphibious domain is but one domain of Allied deterrent and defence effect that will need to be credible across air, sea, land, space, cyber, information and knowledge. In other words, the DDA opens the door to a smart NATO that all such exercises must contribute to by combining firepower, resiliency, manoeuvre and innovation.  Indeed, the DDA reimagines deterrence by denial so that is not simply a function of weight of force, but through active and hyper-fast reinforcement of what are known as ‘Fires’ (both multi-platform & multi-domain) held at depth and distanced underpinned by agile and robust command and control. As such, the DDA demands far greater and far more dynamic force readiness and responsiveness that will be critical to the multi-speed, multi-scale, multi-domain NATO that must be developed in the years to come as part of a future war NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept.

Exercise Joint Warrior 2030

Exercise Joint Warrior 2030 has two distinct elements both critical to the high-end testing of both its maritime and amphibious capabilities. Much of the NATO Task Group is comprised of forces assigned to the new Allied Command Operations Heavy Mobile Force, some 90% of which is European.  The maritime element first establishes an air, sea and sub-surface defensive ‘bubble’ around the force using both manned and unmanned systems. F35 Lightning 2s, together with a raft of ‘loyal wingmen’ drones, also provide an extensive ‘umbrella’ for the force as well as undertaking a range of hyper-joint tasks ranging from surveillance to electronic hyper warfare, data gathering and aerial top cover. Below the surface British and French nuclear attack submarines, with their ‘loyal school’ of underwater unmanned vehicles, provide a similar defensive bubble supported by super-quiet Dutch and German electric-powered submarines.

The amphibious element is where the changes in NATO materiel and doctrine of the last decade are most obvious. Some miles offshore a wave of landing craft and CB90 assault craft depart the British heavy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales and stealthily make their way to the shore.  At the spear-tip of the force is 45 Commando, Royal Marines, US Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade and the Royal Netherlands Mariniers, together with the new AI-enabled Joint Commando Air-Maritime Assault Force. Most of the force continues to the beach undetected, but halfway into the target part of the force veers away. From the decks of the assault craft ghostly figures ascend to the heavens.  3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines is going into action.  Equipped with the latest Mark 5 Gravity Jet assault suits the battalion represents the future of airborne assault https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL02e4L-RQo&feature=youtu.be. As each commando rises into the night sky s/he carries an assault rifle and a series of small ground attack missiles. Heavier personal equipment is carried alongside by a personally-assigned ‘intelligent’ lift drone.  

As the Commandos begin the assault a further phalanx of ‘intelligent’ fast strike drones lift off the decks of the British aircraft carrier and make their way towards the littoral. Royal Air Force,  Royal Navy and US Marine Corps F-35B Lightning 2s are also warming up on the deck to reinforce the shock the Royal Marines, Special Air Service and Special Boat Squadron are about to inflict.  Timed to match the moment of the enemy’s least readiness and thus create maximum shock and confusion, the SAS and SBS force move towards their respective objectives.  As they advance flying commandos appear from several directions at once and target each individually identified ‘mark’, whilst a swarm of AI drones probe and then penetrate enemy defences destroying their digital net. The Special Forces, now supported by the ground force, quickly seize the objective and establish a bridgehead for the follow-on force. Fleet Air Arm Merlin 3 helicopters with advanced noise suppression blades move in behind the intelligent machine attack drone ‘swarm’ so that the Royal Marines and their US and Dutch counterparts can maintain momentum from the Littoral.   

Fantasy? Some years ago I led a significant project for the commander of an important Allied navy into the future of so-called ‘brown water operations’. Entitled Effect in the All Water Battlespace: Riverine Operations the essence of the report was how best to fight and stay in a contested Littoral environment and at the same time reduce the cost per naval platform per operation through innovation, adaptation and a strategic partnership with key civilian actors, such as the Smit Tak and Mammoet.  To meet its goals the study combined strategy, innovation and technology to form new partnerships and ideas. Two key findings were that a) many civilian contractors are used to operating in contested zones; and b) much of the technology available to such contractors was far in advance of their military counterparts. The ultimate aim was to understand how an essentially European force could better fulfil its mission in the Littoral as quickly, effectively, affordably and successfully as part of what is known in the jargon as ‘ship to objective manoeuvre’. In other words, the report thought future. That is precisely what others are now doing.

As Exercise Joint Warrior got underway another exercise was taking place, albeit on a wholly different scale. On October 1^st, China’s National Day, a large-scale amphibious ‘invasion’ began which was designed to simulate an assault on Taiwan.  The exercise was a test of a People’s Liberation Army Navy Marines Corp that is currently being expanded from a 20,000 strong force of naval infantry into a power projection force modelled on the US Marines Corps some 100,000 strong. The PLANMC is indicative of the fast change underway around the world and places Europe’s increasing strategic unworldliness in stark relief.

If NATO is to remain relevant it needs more than a new Strategic Concept. It needs a NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept and a NATO Europe Future Force that can demonstrate to themselves and their American allies that Europeans are at last willing to pull their strategic weight, meet the associated costs and take the necessary risks. Given the growing world-wide commitments of America’s over-stretched forces the credibility of Alliance defence and deterrence need nothing less. A good start? NATO HQ starts promoting the Concept for the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area rather than trying to hide it!

Julian Lindley-French

NATO 3.0: Standardization, Interoperability and Mobility

 “Imagine this: seventy years of military technical advancement crammed into ten years. That is the challenge NATO must confront if it is to preserve the peace”.

Professor Julian Lindley-French

October 1st

Why S & I?

On Tuesday I had the very distinct honour of addressing the seventieth anniversary meeting of the Committee for Standardization at NATO HQ in Brussels in support of my old friend, Assistant Secretary-General Camille Grand and Lieutenant General Scott Kindsvater. My presentation was entitled “Seventy Years On: Meeting the Standardization-Interoperability Challenge”. My message was characteristically blunt as it needed to be: critical to the future Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area will be the speed of relevance of allied defence capability and capacity with unity of effort and purpose integrated at the level and myriad points of required network-centric effect.  

Why? Standardization and Interoperability are two sides of the same capability and capacity ‘coin’ and key to generating credible and relevant force at an affordable cost in the post-COVID 19 environment.  However, NATO’s future architecture, together with the specialisation and interoperability that supports it, will need to change rapidly over the coming decade. Central to that will be the ability of the Alliance to move forces and resources across its area of operations far more nimbly and securely than today, with the digital at least as important as the physical. 

This is because the Alliance faces two possibly existential challenges: the now war and the future war. The now war is already underway and stretches across the 5Ds of complex strategic coercion in the form of systematically applied deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and implied or actual destruction. In a speech this week General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the UK Defence Staff acknowledged as much in his vision of a new British Integrated Operating Concept.  What he was describing was, in effect, a future defence against future war, the deterring which will become NATO’s primary over the next decade. The speed of command and warfare will accelerate exponentially as super-computing steadily gives way to quantum computing which in turn drives forward increasingly intelligent and autonomous artificially intelligent drones and other systems. Given that what will NATO’s ‘battlespace’ look like in 2030? Bio, hypersonics, Nano, big data and advanced machine learning will all abound?  NATO needs to answer that question because if it does not others will, most notably China and Russia.

How S & I?

How? Let me assume that in spite of the growing threat to Europe from the likes of China, Russia and a host of global reach, catastrophe-seeking terrorist groups, Europeans are not going to opt for what would theoretically at least be the most efficient application of limited security and defence resources – a common defence.  Given that, and the growing pressure on the United States and its armed forces from a host of threats the world over, the only logical way for Europeans to close the yawning gap between the defence they need and the defence they can afford is to forge a much closer collective defence ‘identity’ through NATO. 

Only NATO can ensure standardization and interoperability take place at sufficiently high a level to preserve and strengthen the all-important deterrent: high-end military interoperability with the US future force.  The purpose of NATO of standardization and interoperability should thus be the creation of a robust, digitized, high-end, first responder, multi-domain fully autonomous (if needs be) NATO Europe Future Force able to operate alongside US forces in an emergency and deal with the most pressing of contingencies in and around the Euro-Atlantic air, sea, land, cyber, space area of operations if US forces are busy elsewhere. Critically, such a force must be ready by 2030 at the latest. If not, then we Europeans will be complicit in creating the conditions for future war through the de facto appeasement of a fast changing and dangerous reality and the slow retreat of NATO forces into deep vulnerability via the Maginot Line cul-de-sac that is low-end force 'co-operability'.

 Why NATO?

The EU certainly has a role to play. PESCO, the European Defence Agency, the European Defence Fund and the Co-ordinated Annual Review of Defence (CARD) have a critical role to play. There will also be several EU and NATO countries that will be very keen for such an effort to be focussed on the former to 'protect' their respective defence industries. However, if standardisation is EU-led it will inevitably be more to the analogue rather than the digital end of the future tech industrial standards that will increasingly shape the future force. This would lower the capability centre of gravity of the European Future Force and weaken interoperability in the future complex battlespace between US and European forces. This would inevitably place US forces under even more pressure to be the vanguard of all Allied military engagements. Enemies will know this and thus seek to create as many simultaneous attacks as possible to expose NATO’s critical and growing vulnerability: US military over-stretch and an inability of non-US forces to withstand shock or generate a meaningful response in the wake of a high-end attack in Europe.

Will industry play ball? NATO S and I must be as much about shaping and exploiting industrial tech standards as building the future force. It needs to. The NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) has a vital role to play. However, the age of naïve globalisation must be brought to an end. Allied governments must convince the West’s civilian tech-industry to be a little less global and little more Western when it comes to future defence and deterrence. After all, that is precisely what Beijing has done by investing in the ‘Chinaisation’ of its tech and the standardization and joint interoperability of its own increasingly impressive future force. Parochial Euro-Atlantic defence industrial protectionism will also need to be removed from these issues with the NATO Europe Future Force a driver of defence technological and industrial innovation via better aligned US and European security and defence industrial interests. 

In short that will mean a host of projects that see US tech opened up with better European access to US ‘black box’ technology, far earlier industrial involvement in both European-led and US-led project specifications (e.g. a much better version of the F35 programme), with Europeans far more willing to buy far more off the US shelf without inflated US servicing contracts. Finally, Europeans will need to create a much wider concept of what is a 'defence' industry in the 2020s. The British ‘Aircraft Carrier Alliance’ is a case in point. To build the new ships the ACA sought to exploit much of the national supply chain and far beyond. It was lumpy and costly but important lessons about innovation were learned.  In return the US must commit to buy far more European equipment with the NATO Europe Future Force a vehicle for the development of much more European ‘kit’ the US might want to buy. That means a European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) that is far broader, far more responsive and far better at fielding advanced ‘make a difference’ equipment than today, as well as agile enough to support a host of new technologies (AI) and the start-up companies that drive much of the innovation.

What about M?

Innovative and creative thinking will be as critical as adaptive systems, even if that means changing the way NATO does business. For example, I am currently supporting a major project on enhancing and improving military mobility during a crisis in Europe. Indeed, it is impossible to discuss the future of standardisation and interoperability without also considering military mobility, because the ability to move forces and resources quickly are an essential component of credible defence and deterrence. Frankly, until the European allies share roughly the same strategic assessment with each other, and more or less that of the US, the danger is that little will move S, I and M from being a series of partial, tactical-level projects to becoming part of the Alliance’s future strategic defence and deterrence architecture. Perhaps by introducing other adaptive instruments such as military mobility to the S & I debate, and linking all of it to a new narrative about the enhanced civ-mil crisis mobility it fosters, the Allies will begin to draw their own conclusions about how best to meet their NATO obligations in the most efficient and effective manner possible in the changed and fast changing post COVID-19 strategic environment.

There is, of course, a politico-strategic dimension to all of this. Implicit in S, I and M is a very different concept of transatlantic burden-sharing.  In simple terms, unless Europeans demonstrate to Americans a far greater willingness to share the burden of their own defence in time the Americans may not only be unwilling to bear the load, but also unable. Europeans must not dismiss this threat to the Alliance. The Trump narrative that Europeans are free-riders on the US is taking hold.  An opinion poll conducted for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on September 17^th entitled “Divided We Stand” and led by Dina Smelz, was clear if unsettling. Americans continue to view alliances as a key part of US international engagement, and a majority continue to believe alliances benefit American interests.  However, 57% of Americans interviewed support the Trump administration’s decision to decrease the number of US troops in Germany, whilst an additional 16% percent believed that all US troops should be withdrawn from Germany.”  The good news is that 73% of those interviewed believe the US should remain committed to NATO, whilst 52% supported the use of US forces in the event of a Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

NATO 3.0: The Future Integrated Operating Defence and Deterrence Architecture

Standardization, interoperability and mobility are means to an end for enhanced Allied defence and defence in a fast changing and deteriorating strategic environment. Central to NATO’s ability to fight its now and future war about the re-balancing of NATO’s ends, ways and means.  To achieve that the Allies have to become far better at dividing the political from the structural which prevents the proper assessment of what NATO will need from its nations in the decade to come. This means moving the NATO debate beyond the stale question of whether Allies spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2024 of which 20% per annum must be on new equipment. Rather, the debate must become far more focussed on the best application of collective resources in pursuit of NATO’s future defence and deterrence architecture.  Here, it is the responsibility of the Alliance to offer its political leaders, and indeed its citizens (like me) a clear vision of such an architecture so that we all know what we are paying for. That means going significantly further than both the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) document or the 2019 NATO Military Strategy.  NATO needs a new Strategic Concept for a new Strategic Architecture!

There also needs to be a much clearer NATO strategic narrative with enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility at its adaptation, innovation-led core. A new narrative which states unequivocally that in spite of COVID-19 not only are we Europeans moving to do more for our own defence we are determined to build together a new digitised defence within the framework of a new N|TO Integrated Operating Architecture. And, that we fully understand that NATO defence and deterrence cannot be separated from global peace for which a strong US remains essential. For that reason Europeans together recognise the urgent need to ease pressures on US forces by building the first responder, high end, cross domain European future force.

Next steps? This week and for the first time the new British heavy aircraft-carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth took on a full air wing of F35 Lightning 2 strike aircraft and Merlin helicopters as part of NATO Exercise Joint Warrior.  The force is comprised of aircraft from RAF 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and, critically, US Marines Corps strike aircraft from (VFMA) 211 Squadron. It is an example of not just deep standardization and interoperability, but the deep joint and combined force operating concept that must be a central pillar of NATO’s 2030 defence and deterrence architecture. Such interoperability will be vital to enabling the US to make better use of its forces and resources the world over and keep a strong deterrence presence in Europe with allies. Burden-sharing in politically demonstrable action.

Ultimately, enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility are critical to what must be a new transatlantic strategic security and defence ‘contract’ – NATO 3.0. The US will continue to guarantee European defence in return for Europeans not only doing far more for their own defence, but helping the Americans to help them.  As such, S, I & M afford the Alliance not only tactical value, but strategic value. Why? Over the next decade seventy years of military-technological advancement really will be crammed into ten and force upon the world-wide web of democracies of which NATO is a critical part the most profound of choices: do we choose to be strategic prey or do we have teeth?

Julian Lindley-French