A Pat On The Back - But A Warning Too
I don't usually like to cut and paste articles, but this is worth a read.
April 17, 2003
Brits brilliant but short in men and resources
Military Briefing by General Wesley Clark
"HELLO, sir," the Brit said as he approached. "I just wanted to introduce myself; I worked for you in the Kosovo campaign, but you probably don't remember me."
It was April, 2002, at Heathrow. He didn't say precisely what he did, where he was headed or why, but it wasn't that hard to guess. In both Washington and Tampa were military headquarters, and I could sense that the planning process for the attack on Iraq was well under way.
Now the heavy fighting in Iraq is over. It's taken a little over three weeks, and it's not too soon to tote up the pluses and minuses of the British commitment.
That commitment has been, as summed up by high- ranking US officers in a single word, "brilliant".
From start to finish the British force worked constructively in the planning, came prepared to contribute to the fight and displayed superb warfighting skills, outstanding flexibility in handling Basra and the vicinity, and great teamwork with American forces - air, land, and sea.
In particular the SAS role, although largely unreported, was apparently a spectacular contribution. As for the accidents and fratricides, air and ground - well, some of this is seemingly inevitable in war, and even more so when operating with forces of other nations, but we have to do better next time, and no doubt we will.
The Brits' excellence came as no surprise to the Americans. I first saw British forces at work in the summer of 1990 at the British Army Training Unit, Suffolk, Alberta. Several of us had flown up from the US Army's National Training Centre in the Mojave Desert to see how Brits fought and trained. The impact of the Falklands experience, eight years after that war, was truly impressive: these units were handling the intricacies of live-fire integration of artillery, mortars and manoeuvre with confidence - far more confidence than I saw in comparable US units at the time.
Today, the Americans, too, have combat experience, and have also learnt peace operations. Northern Ireland and Panama aside, we fought together in the Gulf War, worked on the ground together in Bosnia, flew together in the Kosovo campaign and kept the peace there afterwards, and knocked out the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Despite the occasional misunderstanding, we are as close as two different armies can be. We largely use common terms and procedures. We exchange officers, soldiers and units, go to each other's schools and share intelligence seamlessly.
Britain's strengths lie in the character of its forces; they are disciplined, well-trained and capable. There is a studied casualness, a certain cockiness in these units. But they are good. British units don't miss start times, get seriously misoriented, or stumble. They accomplish their missions, but they reason their way through. The Brits are one of the least "doctrinal" forces in Nato - they always adapt to the circumstances. In this campaign they lived up to their reputation, with a tempered campaign to take down Basra that minimised losses and damages on all sides. Yet no one in Iraq doubts that the Brits can be tough and hard if necessary.
But the British force is badly in need of increased resourcing. Already, the forces are perhaps a generation behind the best available technology in some areas, and are hard-stretched in support. Much of the British force left in Germany was apparently scavenged to field the division-sized force in the Gulf. And even then, British forces lacked some modern communications, position locating systems, some of the latest specialised night-fighting gear and a full logistics structure. British ground forces have wrestled with problems of overcommitment for years - they are simply smaller and leaner than the requirements would suggest.
And don't think that the diversion of British forces into Basra was accidental. This was apparently a planned and fortunate combination of military needs and limited resources for which British forces were precisely suited. But there are other circumstances in which these British forces would be less than suitable, and for which there might not be a year of advance planning. And that should be worrisome.
British air forces lack Stealth technology and the full array of precision-strike munitions and platforms, although they do have airborne early warning and electro-optical reconnaissance systems that are still valuable in combined operations. The Navy is struggling to participate in the rapid advances made by the US Navy in "network centric operations".
The British Government and the country's military leaders should be congratulated on remarkable work in making the most of the resources available. But fundamental decisions surely lie ahead. Did the forces have everything needed to do the job? Does the action in Iraq close the book on stressful military activities, or merely open a new chapter? Should Britain just strive to hang on to its current military capabilities or invest more to keep up with advances in military technology and the art of war? Where will the additional resources come from? Certainly, the men and women returning in triumph from Iraq will be asking some of these same hard questions. And please don't blame them for that. They served magnificently, and will want to contribute to the next victory as well. That's their duty.
General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander Europe 1997-2000, and led Nato forces during the Kosovo campaign