CGS speaks on "Tomorrow's Army, Today's Challenges"

Below is the text of General Dannatt's speech (check against delivery):

"May I start this morning by adding my welcome to all those attending this Conference, and in particular may I thank Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold and his RUSI Staff for organising this RUSI and Defence Events Management Future Land Warfare Conference and doing so in these impressive surroundings.

"I would also like to thank our friends in the Association of the United States Army, and our generous sponsors for the support that they have given. And may I add a special welcome to a number of very senior Officers and accomplished individuals who will be speaking, or chairing the sessions.

"We are very fortunate that General William Wallace, the Commanding General of TRADOC, has flown over to join us, as well as a number of my Chief of Army Staff colleagues or their representatives:

"In particular, I would like to welcome General Hans-Otto Budde from Germany, General Filiberto Cecchi from Italy, and General Sverker Goranson from Sweden.

"I would also like to welcome General James Mattis, Commanding General of the US Marine Corps who will be speaking tomorrow, and several distinguished academics, including Professor Christopher Coker and Professor Michael Clarke and also our own Major General Dr Jonathan Bailey, one of few British Army Officers to complete a Doctorate while a serving General Officer in the British Army. To all our guests, thank you all for coming; we look forward to hearing what you have to say.

"Reflecting on today's Conference theme, and having been in the post of Chief of the General Staff for just over nine months, I want to offer some general impressions of where we currently are with regard to the development of the British Army, before turning to some specific issues; in military terms, I will set out the Situation and then turn to my Intent and Scheme of Manoeuvre for the future.

"But my take on the future is inevitably conditioned at least in part by some reference to the past and the present – nothing starts with a blank piece of paper – there is always a legacy – and we are fighting two wars.

Contemporary Context

"That said, I note, but don't share, Francis Fukuyama's view that the end of the 20th Century marked the triumph of the West and that capitalism, liberalism and democracy had emerged victors of that century's protracted ideological conflicts. If he felt that the crumbling of Soviet Communism marked the "end of history", I suggest he had forgotten to look back over his shoulder, where he might have noticed a Crescent-shaped shadow – a shadow coming into focus when the Cold War still had a decade or so to run, and perhaps some two decades before that other apparently defining event – 9/11.

"But, if I have difficulty with Fukuyama, I have considerably more sympathy with the suggestion that where the international environment is now, is not linked to, or a direct consequence of 11/9 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down or indeed of 9/11 2001 when the Twin Towers came down but with the suggestion that current events owe their origins more to a date around 1979, when the Cold War still had ten years to run.

"Although that sounds pretty specific, my sympathy extends to the argument that in 1979 the Cold War became "expectant", if you like, with the two problem children born on 11/9 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and 9/11 2001 when the Twin Towers fell.

"And remaining specific, while there was no defining event in 1979 like the Twin Towers or the Berlin Wall, it was a year when many powerful forces began moving – the plates adjoining the fault lines became active. What do I mean? Well around 1979:

• The then newly elected Polish Pope, John Paul II, began to prove that religion and nationhood mattered more than Lenin or Stalin would have cared to admit.

• President Reagan sent shivers down European backs by calling the Soviet Union the "Empire of Evil".
• Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran turned on the flamethrower of Islamic anger and jihad against the West.
• Teng Sia Ping began to bring China back into World politics, and, perhaps most critically, Osama Bin Laden, still a Saudi playboy until then, found, after the Mecca uprising in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that year, that he had found a vocation in promoting Holy War

"And all that is, I suggest, a long way from the "end of history".

"So I suggest that what began a decade before the Wall came down, eventually led to the end of the stability of the old bi-polar World, and sowed the seeds of Global Terrorism – essentially an asymmetric response to a single Superpower by the militarily dispossessed and the historically humiliated – and which was dramatically illustrated by the airliner attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.


"So my point is – and I know that I make a broad generalization here – that throughout the greater period of our lifetimes, events over a protracted period have been shaping the contemporary environment – the environment that will define, for all of us, the next phase of our military careers.

"So it is not surprising that as I look at the British Army that went into Iraq in 2003, we see an Army still largely equipped and shaped by the legacy of the Cold War. Indeed, we see an army that remains extensively enmeshed in:

• The remnant of the post-communist Balkans
• On the edge of a new and deadly Great Game in Afghanistan
• Sitting tightly on Post-Colonial Sierra Leone and the Falkland Islands, and now
• Helping construct a modern Islamic state in the tinderbox that is Iraq in the face of extremism and jihad. And we are doing this in a region perched precariously above a large proportion of the World's remaining supply of oil. So it is, indeed, some high octane context that we find surrounding current events.

Turning The Tanker

"But it all takes time to turn the tanker as in the Army's case we move from being Continentally-based facing a single threat, to becoming a genuinely Expeditionary Army, increasingly home-based but widely committed on operations – and the world is not standing still.

"As General Pete Schoomaker observed while he was still Chief of the US Army, it is difficult enough to change an Army, let alone to do so when you are trying to fight and win at least two wars.

"And, of course, it is the two major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that are both key drivers of change and the all-consuming focus of the British Army at present.

"So, moving from the contextual and the general, and accepting that some form of success in Iraq and significant achievement in Afghanistan must be the short-term objectives – our Conference begs the wider question of how do our Armies cope with today's imperatives while ensuring that they remain balanced for tomorrow's unknowns?

"By way of introduction to this Conference I offer two sets of thoughts.

I conducted something of a personal estimate on becoming Chief of the General Staff, which led me to formulate a broad Statement of Intent, as a focus for some top down guidance.

And secondly, we have just held an Army Development Forum to address this key question of how do we prepare ourselves for potentially a generation of conflict. The results of which are producing some emerging work – to which I hope the outcome of this Conference will add.

"In formulating my Intent, I asked myself three questions:

• Who collectively is the British Army and what does it stand for? The Moral Component – an emphasis on People.
• How should the Army think? The Conceptual Component – the doctrinal piece.
• What should the Army be prepared for and with what should it be provided? The Physical Component – the training and equipping dimensions.

Moral and Conceptual Components

"Let's take the first two questions together:

"As I have already commented, the end of the Cold War has not brought the 'New World Order' that many anticipated. Instead the range and variety of threats and challenges to our security have multiplied. The Army is being used for different purposes, further afield than we might have expected a few years ago, and in very demanding operational circumstances. We live in an economically and socially globalized society and the threats and challenges to our security are also global and have sympathizers in many societies and countries, including at home.

"These threats cannot be defeated by conventional means alone, as they are principally a conflict of values and ideas – a battle for hearts and minds - now on a global scale. And these threats do not just face us abroad, but increasingly we have identified that we need to understand our own home front. It is not only a matter of society feeding us with the soldiers of the future, but also it provides us with the basic consent for us to conduct military operations.

"The public will not continue to support the use of force in their name, unless the Army is trusted and respected, and this may be increasingly difficult to gain. The British Army is currently held in high esteem by our nation, but this is fragile and under no circumstances must we take this for granted. It will only be maintained through sustained and effective communication with the public at large and through our continued adherence to our core values and standards.

"It is therefore vital that we, as an Army, know what we stand for - thus our core values and of selfless commitment, courage, discipline, integrity, loyalty and respect for others are increasingly important as the foundation on which success will be built. And our standards of behaviour must be above reproach. And here is the crux of the question – if we are engaged in a wider battle of ideas, how do we maintain our firm moral bearing within the Army, when our wider society's own moral compass may be spinning?

"But it is also vital that we understand our opponents, their environment and their culture. In the same way that we studied the Soviets intensely for half a century, we must apply the same intellectual rigour to today's challenges. However, in my view, our Manoeuvrist doctrine is well suited to respond to these challenges, for it encourages lateral thought and the ability to defeat multi-faceted and asymmetric threats, underpinned by our war-fighting ethos.

"I am determined that we should maximize our people's potential through a greater understanding of the Manoeuvrist Approach and Mission Command, recognizing also the importance of a Comprehensive Approach within the framework of coherent campaign plans. I would hope that there is nobody in the room who is not completely familiar with the tenets of the Comprehensive Approach, and yet we still struggle to implement a truly unified purpose and methodology to tackle operations. We are operating in an era in which campaigns are likely to require non-kinetic effects more often than kinetic.

"The enduring problem will be that when the security situation is fragile, military forces will still be required to adopt the flexibility of approach to step across a number of lines of operation to fill gaps and provide additional capability – the trick is going to be how we best educate our people for this very demanding task. We are developing an understanding of each other and slowly we are educating and training each other – but it is slow, probably too slow.

"Furthermore, we need to recognize that we are probably engaged in a wider conflict that may last for a generation and I think this has yet to be recognized widely. The heady appeal of "go first, go fast, go home" has to be balanced with a willingness and a structure "to go strong, and go long". In these circumstances, I think the nature of the Military Covenant, the relationship between the Organisation and the Individual, between the Army and the soldier, is critical. Although the nature of service is inherently unequal and soldiers often have to put in more than they receive, at the very least British Soldiers should always expect the Nation, the Army and their commanders to treat them fairly, to value and respect them as individuals and to sustain and reward them and their families with appropriate conditions of service.

"We are starting to do better, but I am convinced that we need to do more in this respect. And fundamentally, it is the Chain of Command that binds the Military Covenant together. If the chain breaks, then the Covenant is compromised and the basis of trust between those who lead and those who are led will be lost. And I sense that we all need to watch this very carefully at the moment. This is a clear challenge to all those in authority, from the Chief of the General Staff to the most junior Lance Corporal in charge of a fire team or a single vehicle.

"Furthermore, a key Issue identified by our recent work is how to prepare our people to deal with the complexity of operations now and in the future. We often try to template our operations - warfighting operations linking to COIN or perhaps the Contemporary Operating Environment of the "three, now four Block War" model, but our recent experience has told us that templates only go so far. The enduring, transitional and extremely complex nature of modern operations demands an iterative refreshment of doctrine and our capability requirements. More fundamentally, we need to develop the methods by which we can train and educate our soldiers – at all ranks – to help them manage this complexity. This requirement to be adaptable, agile and dynamic will continue to introduce tension into our force structure and equipment capability debates.

"So, with regard to the moral and conceptual components, we can conclude that the next few years will indeed be challenging. It is, of course, critical that we determine what we must do to achieve strategic and tactical success on current operations, but to do so whilst ensuring our soldiers and their families are properly cared for today, whilst not losing sight of what is needed to ensure success in the longer term. We need an Army in being in five and ten years time, not just the memory of one that expended itself in the middle of the current decade.

Physical Component

"But moving more briefly to the Physical component, we must also ensure that the Army is both prepared for future operations and provided with the right equipment. It is, therefore, my intention that the physical capabilities of the Army, including the Joint Helicopter Command, deliver a comprehensive Land Manoeuvre capability to Defence. This will comprise a balanced Ground Manoeuvre capability of heavy, medium and light force elements working in partnership with an integrated Air Manoeuvre capability itself comprising an effective mix of lift, reconnaissance, attack and utility capabilities. And this overall Land Manoeuvre capability will either be supported by, or be in support of the air, maritime or SF components.

"Appropriate joint command and control, fires, intelligence and logistics will underpin our overall ability to conduct combined and joint operations across the full spectrum, synchronizing the full suite of kinetic and non-kinetic effects. Increasingly, in the context of one Army, the manpower for all of this will be drawn from genuinely integrated Regular and Reserve elements.

• From a ground manoeuvre perspective, while combined Arms brigades will remain the key building block for the conduct of the most likely operations, the ability to conduct high intensity war fighting operations at Divisional level (with three national brigades) remains the most demanding and therefore represents the 'gold standard'.
• At the same time, air manoeuvre, enabled by the addition of AH to existing air assault and rotary wing capabilities will increasingly provide a commander with greater operational flexibility.

"But all this requires that our forces are properly trained. The way we have developed our low level training has mapped out a comprehensive and logical path to prepare for programmed and contingent operations. However, not only must lower level and individual personal skills be protected and promoted so too must be unit and formation level training, along with the professional skills to exercise command and control at that level.

"While simulation and synthetic training have important roles to play, there is no substitute for the friction generated by large field exercises. Our ability to conduct combat at every level from Brigade, through Company to individual logistic patrols is not just key to our current fight, but will help preserve our low level warfighting skills, and be the foundation to rebuild those skills to Division and Corps level when circumstances permit.

"So we know what we must do, and how we must train for it, but how should we be equipped? The medium weight FRES programme remains key to balancing the ground manoeuvre capability and will replace a wide and numerically large range of fighting vehicles throughout the Field Army. The overall force will remain unbalanced and sub-optimal until FRES is fielded; therefore every effort needs to be made to bring it into service as soon as possible. It will also contribute significantly to filling the urgent requirement to further improve Protected Mobility. VECTOR, BULLDOG and MASTIFF are three steps in the right direction, but the replacement of all SNATCH outside the more benign environments remains a high priority.

"We must also ensure that our Command and Control arrangements are fit for purpose in the 21st Century. There remains a national operational air-gap between the four star and the two star levels for deployed land operations. Over time the relationship between HQ LAND Forces and HQ ARRC should change in order to deliver better command and control of the Land Component at the three star level. At the same time, the demands of current operations have brought into stark relief the paucity of deployable C2 at both the two star and one star levels:

• We are in the process of creating an additional deployable two star headquarters, which will have initial responsibility in support of operations in Afghanistan, as well as for force generation and preparation of certain brigades in between operational tours.
• It is also important that we ensure the force structure at one star level is robust enough to handle the pace and complexity of operations. Hence the conversion of 52 Infantry Brigade into a deployable brigade for operations in Afghanistan for the next five years, and the probable requirement to create a further brigade headquarters as well. That's a decision for later this year.

Battle of ideas

"Well, the Chairman is looking at his watch, and I conscious that this has been a gentle canter through the very widest of subjects. What is key is that a journey that started within the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs has not yet ended and indeed has not moved in the direction we first predicted in 11/9 1989, or even 9/11 2001. The challenge of this generation is as great as any that have gone before us in the last century.

"It is a battle of ideas, and the battleground will be unpredictable. In any event, we need to be prepared for a very wide range of tasks from warfighting contingent operations to low level combat within a complex environment, whilst critically maintaining the support of the population, the consent of the nation and maintaining our own values and reputation.

"The only way that we can prepare for the challenges of the future is to be flexible and agile, and being willing to adapt, while remaining robust in the defence of the standards that set us apart from others."