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

 

 

Britain's Strategic Culture Wars

 Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim”

 Thomas Babington Macaulay

 

Introduction

Is Britain fit for its new-found ‘freedom’?  Do either the British Establishment or the British people realise just what “Global Britain” will demand of them? What should British power be for – soft and hard? On the face of it at least, Britain remains a very powerful actor. The Henry Jackson Society’s Audit of Geopolitical Capability even has Britain as the world’s second most powerful state due to what it calls “…a broad spectrum of capabilities” Sadly, for Britain, power is about so much more than mere statistics and the Jackson assessment fails to consider the broad spectrum of vulnerabilities from which Britain also suffers.  Britain is also locked in a strategic culture war of which Brexit is both part and consequence.

Furthermore, Britain was a very different place in 1973 when it entered the then European Economic Community. Indeed, for all its myriad of economic and social problems Britain was still a power of some heft in the world. Almost fifty years on Britain is at best a medium weight regional strategic power.  Consequently, Britain’s departure from the EU far more than a mere institutional re-alignment. It is the abandonment of community for anarchy that will demand of the British very different kinds of leaders and a markedly changed mind-set about the relationship between law and power. Is Britain up the challenge of such a transformation?  Is Global Britain anything more than a ‘BoJo’ wet dream?

Anarchy versus Community

Most states beyond Europe exist in anarchy, a state of nature in which power rather than law is pre-eminent and which is euphemistically called the international system.  For as long as the democracies were at the pinnacle of relative power the nature of that anarchy was tempered by legal instruments in the form of treaties. However, with Europe’s values-led civilianistic welfare states retreating in the face of interests-led security states such as China, the very nature of the international system is again changing. Lexpolitik, the application of legal power in international relations is once again being eclipsed by Machtpolitik, the primacy of the strong over the weak. 

Even the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, is often more at ease with Machtpolitik than Lexpolitik. Historically, much of the American Establishment has seen treaties as mere instruments to enshrine the leadership of the ‘Shining City on the Hill’ and its manifest destiny.  In other words, treaties were for ‘lesser’ powers. This view is reflected in the mistaken American belief that both World War One and World War Two were in effect European civil wars fought between inherently aggressive European states, rather than a struggle between early democracy and classical and radical autocracy. President Trump has taken such a world view one step further by importing the transactional business anarchy from whence he came into US statecraft. This is why he is far more comfortable with Russia's President Putin than Germany’s Chancellor Merkel who exists in German legalism, at the other end of the power-law spectrum.

Contemporary Britain has long confused values with interests. Tensions over the Government’s UK Internal Market Bill are but the latest iteration of a struggle for the purpose and method of policy. Almost all the parliamentary rebels opposed to the bill were lawyers who believe international relations should be ‘rules-based’, i.e. governed by treaties and laws. Moreover, the entire Brexit negotiating process has revealed an essential tension between an EU, which sees everything in legalistic terms, and a Britain just beginning to realise what stark policy choices is must confront as it re-enters the ‘world’ in which the likes of China, Russia, Turkey and the US are used to operating. In such a world Britain’s magical ‘soft’ power counts for little if nought.  The problem is that law without power is not worth the vellum it is scribed upon, and over a long period the relationship between law and power in Europe has become ever more estranged, as though power itself is the problem from which Europeans must protect themselves. The result is self-evident today in the sovereignty deficit from which Europe suffers and its precipitous strategic decline.

One reason the Brexit negotiations have been so taut is because they ultimately concern two contending views of how Europe and the world should work. Indeed, under Theresa May even Britain’s negotiators shared the EU world-view. For the European Commission power must be enshrined in law that it both controls and interprets.  This also affords the Commission real power in what will ultimately become an existential battle with the EU member-states it purports to support and yet seeks to supplant. For Dominic Cummings, the eminence tres-grise of this particular Administration Brexit is thus not only about a struggle for power between what he sees as two sovereign entities, but also about the nature of power itself. For the negotiations to succeed Britain has to successfully convince the Commission that it is indeed a sovereign equal, whilst for the Commission the very idea of a European state being its sovereign equal is anathema. 

Managers versus statesmen and women

Another essential challenge Britain now faces concerns the nature of those in charge.  After almost fifty years in the EU Britain is governed by technocratic managers, many from a legal background. What it needs are far more statesmen and women. Any candidates? Prime Minister Johnson makes political capital out of his hero Winston Churchill.  However, Churchill belonged to a different age and a different Britain.  By historical and strategic standards Britain’s contemporary political leaders are lightweight. They cut their political teeth in the post-Cold War age of Brussels when the method for political gain was influence in Brussels, or if not blaming the self-same Brussels for their many mistakes.

Such political fecklessness has been aided and abetted by an under-resourced Whitehall High Establishment plagued by political appointees in the form of Special Advisors or SPADS. The result is a kind of political gridlock in what far too much importance is placed on the 24 hour news cycle protecting ministers from their own folly, and far too little on dealing with weighty issues. It is as the whole Westminster/Whitehall bubble has become a giant machine for kicking difficult issues down a seemingly never-ending road. Contrast that with Britain’s political and practitioner elite a century or so ago which was much more focussed on the problems of Empire and a balance of power with other states in Britain’s favour within the anarchy of the international system.  In other words, big stuff, whatever one thinks of it by contemporary standards.

Statecraft?

Such imperatives necessarily reinforced the need for statecraft – the relentless and considered application of state power over time and global space in pursuit of the national interest.  At the core of British power was also an elite civil service that routinely spoke truth to it and had the acumen and abilities to so do. Now? For much of the twentieth century Whitehall has necessarily had to manage Britain’s relative decline whilst the political class has pretended it was not happening.  Indeed, Britain’s joining of the then EEC was part of that process.  Since 1973 with Britain in the ‘Community’ the main focus of Whitehall has been managing Britain’s influence in the EU. For all the importance of the US, NATO and British security and defence policy, what matters to politicians is domestic policy.  As Bill Clinton once famously said, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’! It still is.  

The consequence has been the steady abandonment of the statecraft and the big strategic thinking for which London was once known for the penny packet daily EU interactions of Brussels, allied to the Blair-led penchant for strategic virtue-signalling.  Such process has placed a particular premium not only on good lawyers and policy managers, but spin doctors.  Indeed, spin seems to have become ‘substance’ for much of Britain’s political elite. Today, the very managers charged with the shift of Britain from European legalism to global powerism are people who, by their nature, simply do not believe in the mission.  Several government lawyers resigned this past week claiming they were doing so out of principle because a state like Britain does not break international law. Nor, ideally, should it. However, behind their high principle is a much more fundamental issue of power. The shift from community to anarchy will undoubtedly see lawyers loosening their grip on both Westminster and Whitehall. Or, at least, it should. The very idea of lawyers ‘managing’ anarchy is oxymoronic.  Proof? The emergence of the Machiavellian Dominic Cummings to pre-eminence…for however long he lasts.

The consequences

Britain’s abandonment of community for anarchy also has near home consequences. It has certainly fuelled profound tensions with the Republic of Ireland over the inner-Irish border. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) which brought a cessation to the armed struggle was, given the circumstances, clever statecraft. It was also a fudge and to maintain peace it must continue to be so. Clause 2, Section 1 (iii) of the GFA is clear: until and unless the people of Northern Ireland decide otherwise Northern Ireland remains an integral part of the UK and thus two regulatory and sovereign entities will continue to exist on the island of Ireland.  There is no question that because both Britain and Ireland were EU member-states the issue of the border retreated. However, anyone who remembers ‘bandit country’ during the Troubles knows what a dangerous demarcation it was, particularly in places like South Armagh. A new fudge had been negotiated in the form of the Withdrawal Agreement but that is now also being questioned. Dublin has every right to be exasperated but what it is powerless in the face of a power struggle between London and the European Commission in which the GFA is now mired.

Ideally, there should be a democratic ‘border poll’ to settle the now/again contested issue of sovereignty. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom is sufficiently fragile that London cannot afford to accidentally legitimise a second Scottish independence referendum. Equally, the Commission can also not escape blame free for it has undoubtedly sought to exploit this issue to weaken the political bonds between Great Britain and Northern Ireland to demonstrate to all member-states the price they would pay if any of them dared follow Britain’s lead and move from community to anarchy. Whilst the European Commission is not an enemy of Britain, it is no friend.  

Test of power

Britain is thus facing a profound test of power. It would be nice to think the forthcoming Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (IR 2020) would at least acknowledge such a test.  It would also be encouraging if there was some effort to establish how Britain’s tools for security, defence, development and foreign policy could be re-forged into a strategic implement for leveraging national influence.  An indicator of any such strategic ambition would be a much beefed-up National Security Council.

The need for such unity of strategic purpose and effort is not just to enable Britain to better compete in an anarchic international system. Britain is also fast losing influence in the two ‘communities’ that continue to afford Britain some influence – the UN Security Council and NATO.  Unless Britain begins to better match words with committed forces and resources then it is hard to see how London can over time retain the influence it still just about has in either institution.  The French are still manoeuvring to ‘relieve’ Britain of the post of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (DSACEUR) in NATO. This is hardly a surprise. A weak Britain will find it particularly hard to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) if it no longer has the military power to fulfil its security responsibilities.  The UNSC is neither a retirement home for the strategically infirm nor an executive committee of the UN. The good news is there is still some evidence Britain can face that test. London’s support for Ukraine is important and so-called ‘ferret missions’ to test Russian air defences suggest a willingness to be robust in the face of aggression still exists.

Britain: Between community and anarchy

Global Britain 2021 will need to demonstrate that it is no longer Global Britain 1921. First, Britain must finally escape the clutches of imperial nostalgia. Second, London must move to position Britain as an important, modern regional-strategic European power, even as it leaves the EU. Third, London will need to re-learn the art of statecraft and generate the power to demonstrate Britain’s continuing importance to other Europeans and Americans. Fourth, the British world view will need to be both hard-headed and reasonable, built on a philosophy of liberal realism that avoids any repeat of the naïve globalisation that successive governments foisted on Britain and which opened the country up to a myriad of avoidable vulnerabilities.  London’s creation of a new groupings of like-minded democracies in the form of D10 is a first step in the right direction. The alternative is a dark one. Unless effectively led there is the very real prospect that a combination of Brexit and COVID-19 will finally kill Britain off as a power, if not Britain itself.  London is trying to pull off a complex extraction from a complicated community whilst constitutionally-compromised (Scotland), mired in COVID-19 debt and led by an elite establishment the massive majority of whom do not believe in the mission. 

For almost fifty years Britons have grown accustomed to the comfort blanket afforded them by both the EU and NATO. Britain has left the EU and unless Europeans reinforce NATO it is hard to see how an over-stretched America can carry the Alliance for much longer. At least illusion is about to be stripped away and Britain will be forced once again to either swim in anarchy red of tooth and claw, or sink.  There is a wider danger. Britain still matters. If a democracy with the power and weight of Britain performs poorly on the international stage, or is even dismembered, the balance of power between the civilianistic and militaristic powers will shift rapidly and markedly towards the latter.  No pressure then, London.   

What should British power be for? British ‘statecraft’ must reflect an uncomfortable truce in the strategic culture wars between the Machiavellian entropy of Dominic Cummings and his ilk and Westminster-Whitehall’s can’t see the strategic woods for the tree-by-tree processors. As Britain shifts from community to anarchy lawyers must accept that law without power is simply virtue-signalling indulgence, whilst the likes of Dominic Cummings must understand that power without law is the not only the antithesis of parliamentary democracy, but a threat to its very survival. Ultimately, for a state like Britain power and law must merge. In concert with democracies the world over Britain’s continued aim must thus be to endow rules-based international relations with sufficient power to enable it to prevent the worst excesses of might and constrain and shape those that seek to subvert it. In other words, the very purpose of British power is to uphold the rules it helped write and outside of the EU Britain will need significantly more hardish power to realise such an end. Only time will tell if Britain sinks or swims. Only time will tell if Britain’s elite is up to the challenge? How much time has Britain got?

Julian Lindley-French

September 15th, 1940!

 “I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organised to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war for some time, if not indefinitely”.

Air Chief Marshal, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Dowding. May 15^th, 1940

Weather: Heavy overnight cloud and rain clearing. Fine with patchy cloud in the morning giving way to strata-cumulus clouds at 5,000 feet providing 8/10ths cover.

September 15^th, 1940:

0900 hours: Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives at HQ Royal Air Force 11 Group, Fighter Command at Uxbridge and is greeted by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, Air Officer Commanding.

1030 hours: Radar (radio direction finding or RDF) stations of Chain Home at Beachy Head, Dover, Dunkirk (Kent), Pevensey, St Lawrence, Ventnor, and Westcliffe situated along the Kent coast and on the Isle of Wight, the personnel of which were mainly women of the Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF - they became the Women's Royal Air Force or WRAFs after the war), detect two formations of 150 plus Luftwaffe aircraft forming up between Boulogne and Calais. 11 Group RAF fighter squadrons are placed on standby.

1100 hours: 200 plus Heinkel 111 and Dornier Do-17 and Do-215 bombers from 111/Kampfgruppe76 and KG73, escorted by Me-Bf109 and Me-110 fighters, are tracked flying NNW towards the English coast at Dungeness at heights of between 15,000 and 26,000 feet (‘Angels’ 15 and 26 in the parlance of the RAF ground controllers of the day).

1105-1120 hours: 144 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires of (in sequence) 72, 92, 229, 303, 253, 501, 17, 73, 504, 257, 603 and 609 Squadrons ‘scramble’ and are ‘vectored’ by their Sector Controllers to meet the incoming Luftwaffe attack.

1130-1145 hours:  RAF commanders confirm the target is London. AVM Park calls upon 12 Group (AVM Trafford Leigh Mallory) based to the north of London to cover the capital. These include the so-called ‘Duxford Wing’ of massed Hurricanes and Spitfires.  12 Group scrambles some 100 fighters of (in sequence) 41, 242, 302, 310, 19, 611, 249, 46, 1(RCAF), 605 and 66 Squadrons.

1200 hours: The first massed RAF attack of the day begins.  The slow progress of the Luftwaffe bomber formation enables 12 Group fighters to join 11 Group and intercept the enemy with 11 squadrons above Maidstone and Ashford. The RAF’s strength comes as a shock to Luftwaffe aircrew and, whilst the Spitfire squadrons engage the fighter escort, the Hurricanes attack the bomber formation which begins to break up.  Stragglers are attacked and several are shot down.

1215 hours: The Spitfires succeed in separating the Bf109 fighters from the bombers. The longer-range, twin-engined Me-110s are no match for the British fighters and are effectively forced out of much of the battle, in spite of courageous efforts by many of their crews to protect the bombers.  Under intense RAF pressure the bomber force begins to drop its bombs randomly, whilst many turn prematurely short of London and seek to make their escape. Many of those that have survived are damaged, whilst those German pilots who bravely press on towards London are then confronted by 12 Group’s Spitfires and Hurricanes which ambush the bombers from a height of between 25,000 and 26,000 feet, some 3000 feet above the upper most layer of the bomber force. The weight of the attack is decisive and the Luftwaffe force is quickly broken up. There is no respite for the hard-pressed Luftwaffe crews.  The RAF maintains the pressure on the enemy by continuously and repeatedly attacking the bomber force from all sides as it makes its now disorganised way back towards the English coast. Many of the survivors head first west of London before turning for home over Weybridge, whilst some 80 bombers take a more direct route, first down the Thames Estuary and then over Kent, harassed all the way by the RAF.

1230 hours: The first massed battle of what would eventually prove to be the decisive day of the Battle of Britain is over. The RAF has gained a vital victory. What was meant to be the Luftwaffe’s final destruction of Fighter Command is decisively defeated. However, September 15^th, 1940 is far from over. As RAF squadrons land, re-fuel and re-arm the Luftwaffe prepares to launch the second major attack of the day.

1300 hours: Radar stations along the Kent coast again begin to detect another massed Luftwaffe force forming west of the Boulogne-Calais area, many of the aircraft involved have taken off from airfields in the Antwerp and Brussels region. AVM Park confirms the available strength of 11 Group’s fighters, but orders no action to be taken…yet.

1330 hours: Radar confirms the massing German force is larger than the morning attack and as yet the Luftwaffe’s targets are not clear to the RAF. 11 Group and 12 Group fighters are placed at ‘readiness’, together with squadrons from 10 Group (AVM Quintin Brand) which covers the West of England.

1400 hours: The Luftwaffe force approaches the Kent coast ((KG2, KG53, KG76 plus some elements of KG1, KG4 and KG26). This time the Luftwaffe gains a tactical edge by reducing the time it takes to mass the attacking formation. Moreover, the sheer intensity of the morning’s action has disrupted Fighter Command’s battle rhythm. Some RAF squadrons are still refuelling and re-arming whilst many of the pilots who had survived being shot down in the morning are not yet back with their squadrons.

1410 hours: RAF Sector Controllers place all 11 Group squadrons on standby and request ‘maximum assistance’ from 10 and 12 Groups. Five squadrons of the Duxford Wing (49 aircraft) from 16, 242, 302, 310 and 611 squadrons are scrambled. Crucially, AVM Park adjusts his tactics from the morning. He orders the bulk of the squadrons to hold back and patrol east, south and west of London. However, he also orders his forward deployed squadrons at Hawkinge, Lympne, Manston, Tangmere and Manston to engage the Luftwaffe fighter escort early in an attempt to force the Bf-109s to ‘dogfight’ and use up much of their limited reserves of fuel. This renders the bomber fleet exceptionally vulnerable to massed RAF attack.

1415 hours: The first bomber formations cross the Kent coast. Two other formations follow at 1430 and 1445 hours. The bomber fleet is again made up of He111, Do-17 and D-215 aircraft.  The British estimate the strength to be between 150 and 200 bombers plus some 400 Bf109s and Me-110s as escorts. In fact, the strength is 170 bombers and some 300 plus fighters.

1415 hours: The first engagement takes place south of Canterbury. Other formations are attacked south of Maidstone and west of Dartford as RAF squadrons begin to harass the attacking force. The closer the Luftwaffe gets to London the more Spitfires and Hurricanes attack them.  Bereft of an effective fighter escort the bomber force is quickly and badly mauled by 11 Group as (in sequence) 73, 66, 72, 249, 504, 253, 213 and 607 Squadrons repeatedly attack.

1450 hours: AVM Park’s decision to hold squadrons back, most notably the Duxford Wing, now proves decisive, even if many of the RAF fighters had been scrambled too slowly. 150 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires attack the bomber fleet over the south and south-west of London. As in the morning the Spitfires attack the Bf109s and Me-110 fighters, whilst the Hurricanes attack the bomber force. Critically, the Bf109s are now at the limits of their range.

1500 hours: 303 (Polish) Squadron returns to its base at Northholt. In just over an hour of action they destroy 3 Do-17s, 2 Me-110’s and 1 Bf109 for a cost of 2 Hurricanes lost and 1 pilot killed. By the time Luftwaffe bombers reach London they are out-numbered by defending Hurricanes and Spitfires. They break off the attack and turn for the Channel and escape.

1600 hours: The last of the Luftwaffe bomber force is attacked as it makes its way across the English coast. Another small incoming raid of 10 He-111s is detected heading towards Portland for an attack on the Supermarine Spitfire factory at Woolston. It is engaged by 10 Group’s 152 (Spitfires), 607 (Hurricanes) and 609 (Spitfires) Squadrons. Several aircraft of the attacking force are destroyed and no bombs are dropped on the factory.

September 15^th, 1940, Battle of Britain Day, is over.

Analysis

September 15^th, 1940 was a turning point not just of the Battle of Britain, but of World War Two and the fight against Nazism. The RAF had won a decisive victory over the Luftwaffe and whilst they did not know it at the time, the victory effectively ended any chance Britain could be invaded. Without complete control of the air Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain, was effectively dead in the water. At least it would have been. Any attempt to cross the Channel with two Army Groups comprised of the best Wehrmacht units would have been suicide in the face of constant attacks by the RAF and the Royal Navy, which in 1940 was still the world’s largest.  Britain would fight on and the RAF would begin the long and slow shift from the defensive to the offensive and the regular 1000 heavy bomber attacks on German cities.  These attacks were hugely popular with a British people determined to ‘give it back to em’, but came at an appalling cost to RAF aircrew, German and other civilians.

To some extent ‘The Day’ has become shrouded in myth. The RAF claimed to have shot down some 185 Luftwaffe aircraft on September 15th. In fact, the number was 61, with twenty aircraft badly-damaged, whilst the RAF lost 32 fighters. By the standards of contemporary warfare the casualties were relatively light. The RAF lost 16 pilots killed in action and 14 wounded, whilst the Luftwaffe lost 81 aircrew killed with 31 wounded, although 63 aircrew were also captured by the British.  Many were experienced men. Moreover, by September 1940 Britain was out-producing Germany in the construction of advanced fighters. Therefore, whilst the Luftwaffe was by no means a spent force on the evening of September 15^th, 1940, the defeat came at the end of what had been a gruelling summer for the Luftwaffe.  However, perhaps the greatest impact of the RAF’s decisive victory was psychological.  For the first time in World War Two the Luftwaffe had faced a force equipped with advanced technology, excellent air defence fighters and very capable pilots and had been badly beaten. 

The Battle of Britain had effectively begun on June 18^th, 1940 when Churchill said to the House of Commons, “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is now over, I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin”.  The RAF’s total strength at the outset of the Battle of Britain was 1,963 aircraft whilst the Luftwaffe had some 2,550 aircraft. Not all British aircraft, of course, were front-line fighters. However, by the end of the campaign the RAF had lost 1,744 aircraft destroyed to the Luftwaffe’s 1,977 aircraft destroyed. Crucially, the Luftwaffe’s head of intelligence, Oberst Joseph Beppo Schmidt, repeatedly over-estimated Luftwaffe strength whilst chronically under-estimating both the fighting power of the RAF and the remarkable capability of the world’s first advanced air defence system. Indeed, Luftwaffe aircrew, who were repeatedly briefed that the RAF were down to their last few fighters, shared a grim standing joke each time they saw British fighters moving to attack: “Here come those last 50 British fighters…again”. 

On the morning of September 15^th Air Chief Marshal Dowding had 726 fighters at readiness, whilst the Luftwaffe had 620 fighters and 500 light-to-medium bombers, the bomb capacity of which was simply too ‘light’ given the strategic objectives. By comparison, in June 1942 RAF Bomber Command attacked Cologne with 1000 far heavier bombers, such as the Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and Wellington types. The Germans also had no organised espionage network in Britain so they could not accurately know what damage they were doing, the state of either the RAF or the morale of the British people. They thought they had but most German spies were quickly captured by the British and forced to work for British Intelligence. 

Luftwaffe High Command’s over-confidence also led them to make catastrophic mistakes. On August 15^th, 1940, dubbed “Black Thursday” (Schwarzer Donnerstag) by Luftwaffe aircrew, Luftflotte V based in Norway was ordered to attack the north of England. The assumption was that all the RAF’s reserves had been moved south to cover Kent and London. They had not.  Chain Home picked up a force of some 200 attacking aircraft early in its mission which was then badly-mauled by Spitfires from 13 Group (AVM Richard Maul) which covered the north of England. It was forced to turn and flee over the sea losing 23 aircraft for no downed RAF fighters.  The escorting Me-110s even abandoned the bombers and formed so-called ‘wagon wheels’ for self-protection. The so-called Dowding System had prevailed again.

The Dowding System was critical to Britain’s victory.  It used the ‘eyes’ of radar to rapidly inform a robust command chain of the strength, speed, direction and height of an attacking force. This enabled HQ Fighter Command based at Bentley Priory to quickly assess the size and likely targets of the force before giving each Group the information they needed to deploy its squadrons efficiently and effectively. Group HQ then passed on the information to Sector Controllers who scrambled the various squadrons. Crucially, the entire system was ‘hardened’ when it was built in 1937 to ensure it was both resilient and enjoyed redundancy of communications and was thus very hard to knock-out. That the system existed at all was due to decisions taken in the 1930s by the oft-berated Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. Such was its success that the Dowding System was to form the basis of many of the world’s ground-controlled air defence systems up until, and in some case even beyond, the year 2000.

The Luftwaffe was defeated because it failed to secure either of its primary strategic aims: to force the British to the negotiating table on German terms; or secure uncontested air superiority over the English Channel as a prelude to invasion. It also suffered a massive materiel loss over the three month course of the battle from which it never fully recovered, undermining its future effectiveness in Russia. The fault lay not with the mainly young Luftwaffe aircrews who showed great bravery, but with their commanders, most notably Luftwaffe Chief Reichmarschall Hermann Goering.  He failed to understand the importance of radar to the British and also failed to exploit the RAF’s greatest vulnerability – 11 Group’s vital front-line air bases. They were often attacked but then allowed to recover because the Luftwaffe never fully understood the battle rhythm of the RAF and thus failed to exploit its vulnerabilities.  Luftwaffe high command also failed to understand that the true test for the RAF was not the number of fighters it could shoot down, Britain was replacing them at a faster rate, but the attrition rate of the pilots who flew them. Dowding’s main concern was the rate of loss of his 2,353 British pilots. Thankfully, Britain had a golden reserve in some 574 foreign pilots from Poland (141 pilots), New Zealand (135), Canada (112), Czechoslovakia (88). Australia (36), South Africa (25), Free French (14) US (11), Ireland 10, and some 10 pilots from what is today Zimbabwe, the Caribbean and Israel. 

One of the most important consequences of the RAF’s victory was the damage it did to both the prestige of Goering and the trust Adolf Hitler had in him. The first seeds of doubt that Nazism would prevail were sown in the mind of Hitler and his Nazi cronies by the RAF’s brave pilots. As dawn broke on September 15^th, 1940 Goering and his Luftwaffe commanders had confidently expected they would, indeed, inflict the final, fatal blow on what they really believed to be the RAF’s few remaining Spitfires and Hurricanes.  The sight of massed RAF air power waiting to ambush the attacks rapidly disabused already cynical Luftwaffe aircrews of their commanders’ folly. As Hans Zonderlind, an air gunner on a Luftwaffe Do-17 said of September 15^th, “We saw the Hurricanes coming towards us and it seemed the whole of the RAF was there. We had never seen so many British fighters coming at us at once”.

Much of this complacency was driven by Nazi ideology and the German superiority it espoused. During the Polish campaign of September 1939, and the attacks on the Low Countries and France in May and June 1940, such arrogance was reinforced by success. The RAF punctured this arrogance. Much of it was down to one aircraft, R.J. Mitchell’s superb Mark V Spitfire and its Rolls Royce Merlin engine. There is no question the Spitfire got into the heads of Luftwaffe aircrew. The aerial scourge, and in many ways signature sound of the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg campaigns had been the ‘flying artillery’ that was the Juncker Ju-87 ‘Stuka’ dive bomber. However, between August 15^th (Adler Tag) and August 18^th the Stuka’s suffered such heavy losses to both Spitfires and Hurricanes that they had to be withdrawn from the fight.  As battle fatigue set in Luftwaffe aircrew constantly reported being attacked by ‘Spitfires’, when in fact the RAF had more Hurricanes. 

It is still a matter of conjecture whether or not Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland asked Goering for a squadron (staffeln) of Spitfires. In some respects, the Me Bf-109 was a superior fighter. It could climb faster and due to its fuel-injected engine also climb higher than a Spitfire. The mix of cannon and machine guns also gave it more devastating firepower than the eight Browning 303 calibre machines guns with which both Hurricanes and Spitfires were equipped. However, the Spitfire enjoyed two critical advantages in air combat both of which were due to its two elliptical wings which could bear far more weight than the Me Bf-109. This enabled the Spitfire to dive and turn faster, as well as turn very tightly at lower speeds.  And, of course, both Hurricanes and Spitfires were operating close to their own bases, whereas the Me Bf-109 was not, which negated many of its advantages as a hunter.  Interestingly, by the time the last Spitfire was built in 1948 some 22,000 had been manufactured in 22 variants, including a navalised version, the Seafire. 12,129 of them were produced at the enormous Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory near Birmingham which began production in May 1940, albeit mired in very British managerial and industrial relations challenges. Critically, preparations had been made to massively increase British military aircraft production in the event of war with the 1936 Shadow Factory Plan.

The lessons for today? First, whilst the building of modern free Europe did not begin that day, it took a great stride forward. Democracy fought back and won. Second, even if distracted by as deep an economic crisis as faced by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments during the 1930s a democracy must never abandon a sound defence or properly prepare to mount it. Third, that equivalency of military materiel and personnel is vital. Preparedness, readiness and robustness.

In tribute to the RAF pilots of many nations who defended Britain and a free Europe on a fateful day, and the many young women who made that defence work. In respectful memory of ALL the brave young men who lost their lives on September 15^th, 1940, Battle of Britain Day. As Churchill famously said on August 20^th, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

Requiesce in Pace.  Per Ardua ad Astra!

(With thanks to the Battle of Britain Historical Society)

 Julian Lindley-French, September 15^th, 2020