TUESDAY 21 JULY 1998

GENERAL SIR ROGER WHEELER, GCB, CBE, ADC GEN AND MR TREVOR WOOLLEY

  2460. No, the TA?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I am sorry. I do not know is the answer because we are in the process of the consultation which may lead to a variety of organisations for infantry units. It is a question of how many sub-units you corral together to form battalions.

  2461. Can you give us a taster of the options?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) It will be a lot less than there are now. I cannot be more precise than that, to be frank, because we just do not know.

  2462. One of the arguments in favour of reducing the Territorial Army as home defence now is very different from home defence in the Cold War. The SDR did not go into the detail I would have liked on asymmetric warfare terrorism which could, does and will take place in the UK, the use of chemical and biological weapons and all forms of terrorism. Is there not in those circumstances, in the post Cold War era, a still significant role for the Territorial Army in home defence? If we were engaged in a conflictual situation then surely the same targets that the Spetznaz would have been trained to attack would be available to any terrorist organisation. Who is going to defend the key stance in the event of a crisis, the police?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I think it is a question of scale, if I may say so. Facing the threat to a UK base that Spetznaz followed by an invasion might have produced is a very different scale from the sort of asymmetric warfare to which you refer. We do have more than 20 light battalions across the country, regular ones, which in my view would be used in that particular role.

  2463. In a small army you would not want all of those engaged in home defence surely?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) You posed a question about asymmetric warfare and a terrorist threat.

  2464. Yes?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) Military home defence required us to deal across the board with a very much bigger threat than any asymmetric threat that can be predicted. After all, we are working off the assessments made by the Joint Intelligence Committee of the likelihood of that sort of warfare.

  2465. If military intelligence is to be privatised will Control Risks come up for the same assessment or Group 4. They are very good.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) The Joint Intelligence Committee are gentlemen from Whitehall and I imagine that they will continue.

  2466. At what level of readiness do you believe it is essential for a task to be assigned to the regulars and not to the Territorial Army?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) We have said at 30 days to produce the brigade that either goes to war or goes on an operation other than war. We have said 90 days for the division. The reason that the Territorial Army units that we are planning to put in as part of that division go is because we reckon they can be held at that sort of notice, i.e. about 90 days.

  2467. Supporting documents in the SDR state that some reservists "will be trained to operate key battle-winning equipment such as Challenger, AS90 and Rapier". Anything you would like further to add on whether these could be deployed as individuals or reservist crews?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) As I was just saying to Mr Brazier, we do expect that to happen. I think it will be a very important element to the improvement of the Territorial Army's capability to have those individuals trained as crew men. We will be developing a much closer link between the integrated army that I was talking about an hour and a half ago by doing that sort of thing, by twinning units with like units in the regular and Territorial Army, in order that they can effectively train.

  2468. Chairman, just before you go, could I ask if you have looked at the situation in America at all where they have a twin reservist structure? They have the army reserve which is based on the sort of approach you mentioned, the emphasis on individual augmentees, units are there to train pools, and the National Guard who are called out as units. The National Guard has a wastage rate of 17 per cent, the lowest in the English speaking world, and the US Army Reserve has a wastage rate of 37 per cent and despite enormous resourcing are close to collapse in many people's view. Do you really think that people join the Territorial Army because they want to be part of a pool of reserves?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) No. That is why I said, if I may go back to what I said earlier, that at short notice they will be used as individuals, as indeed they have come forward in the 10 per cent that are in Bosnia and rather more in Northern Ireland.

  2469. Yes.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I did say also in response to a question over there that they need to train as sub-units and units as the structure from which if we did need to regenerate larger forces they would become larger and figure in whatever the threat was at the time. The important thing about it is that they will be properly resourced to carry out that unit training against a role as a general reserve, for want of a better way of putting it, that we do not yet know. What they cannot do is to react at 30 days' notice and go off on an operation as a unit which is likely to last for six months and maybe longer. They just do not have that ability as a sub-unit.

  2470. Why can the Signals and the SAS react at 90 days upon your figures—
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) Because you are essentially talking about people who are maintaining equipment as technical experts, you are not talking about hanging together the all arms warfare that would be called for if you were in the direct fire units, if I may put it that way.

  2471. I do not want any more questions on this, we have ten minutes to cover a lot of things, Mr Brazier. Obviously one of the areas where the TA were deployed was Germany and the situation has changed profoundly in Germany. What kinds of discussions have you had with the German Ministry of Defence or outside the German Ministry of Defence on the changes to the army that are going to take place in Germany?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) Well, of course until such time as the SDR was announced, we were not in a position to have discussions with any of our allies until Parliament had been told what the plan was going to be.

  2472. We have been told you have been talking to the US quite significantly.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) May I just continue? I talk to my German, French and American opposite numbers about once a quarter about life generally. Through those conversations it was quite clear and made quite clear to our German colleagues, since you specified them, that we believed in our membership of NATO as the absolute cornerstone of our defence. Therefore, as far as I was concerned, our command of the arc and the arc units is a very important part of our national contribution to that alliance, quite a lot of which is stationed, particularly the headquarters in Germany, and the division in Germany—to come back to a comment that was made earlier on—is not there any longer to go to the inner German border. It is because we can train with our allies both at CPX level, FTX level and in a variety of other ways to get to know exactly how we all operate so that we can be integrated into whatever coalition we might find ourselves being part of, as indeed we are in Bosnia with both the Americans, the Germans and the French and a number of other people. In addition to that we are able to deploy the division from Germany, as we did during the Gulf War, just as easily through Hamburg and Bremerhaven as we could do through Southampton and other ports in the United Kingdom.

  2473. There is some quite alarmist stuff in the newspapers, General, about massive cuts in Germany. Did your German colleagues express any excitement about that prospect or did they express any reservations about any substantial British withdrawal?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I think in a general way my German opposite numbers were very concerned that we should remain in Germany in some strength. They perfectly understood that we may need to make some adjustments for our own reasons, which is what we have done. I know that General Wilman is extremely pleased that we have produced a solution which maintains the division in Germany and the arc headquarters because I have talked to him about it.

  2474. Have you or any of your colleagues, or at a political level, heard of any attempts to ascertain German political opinion or German public opinion on the size and shape of British forces in Germany? Obviously there is still a very strong political reason why we should stay in some numbers.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) That is for the political membership of the MoD to have carried out and the Foreign Office. What I was doing was making sure that the military arguments for staying there, which I have just mentioned, which of course include training areas and things of that sort, which I have not yet mentioned, were properly taken into account.

  2475. Is there anything further you would like to say on military, strategic and political purposes of remaining in Germany in substantial numbers?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) From the military point of view, as I have said, it maintains our very close relationship with the rest of our allies within NATO. Also it not only makes a political signal but enables us to carry out military training together. That means that the military training grounds that we use in Germany are enormously important. Earlier on Mr Colvin made a remark about heavy weapons training on Salisbury Plain and of course there is a great advantage to us in being able to go to Bergen-Hohne, Graftenwohr and indeed Poland with the First Armoured Division and its elements to train.

  2476. I suppose, too, if the SDR had indicated a very substantial withdrawal from Germany this would have sent the wrong signals to our Congressional colleagues, some of whom might have been quite delighted to have led the charge at substantial withdrawal. Did you have any feel for that?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I do have a feel for the fact that it is important for the United States to be involved in NATO and to have substantial weapons bases in Europe in order to be an effective member of NATO from the military point of view. If that is the case the fact Britain with the agreement of Nato and our German allies in particular stations a division in Germany is a very important part of that balance.

  2477. Will there be any employment implications or unemployment implications for the German workforce attached to units, in particular (I know it was not in the SDR, the decision had been made earlier) the withdrawal of the Royal Air Force from Germany?
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) I cannot speak for what happens as a result of the Royal Air Force coming out.

  2478. I thought you had jointery.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) Indeed but that decision was made by the Airforce and was nothing to do with me or the SDR. So far as the reduction is concerned we are taking three armoured regiments out of three yet to be determined bases which will have a very small effect on the area from which they are coming in employment terms.

  2479. We will write to the RAF but if you can help us on what you consider the employment implications will be that would be useful. You commented on Salisbury Plain. What effect will the withdrawal have on the usage and sustainability of Salisbury Plain and our United Kingdom training areas? Maybe you can amplify on what you have said.
  (General Sir Roger Wheeler) Inevitably an additional tank regiment is going to have an effect on both the use of the dry training area and the live ranges in the United Kingdom. There are ranges upon which German tanks used to train in Castlemartin which we will be using because they are no longer used by the Germans and we shall have to be very careful how we plan our use of the training areas as a result of bringing particularly the extra tank regiment back. I do not expect it to have a very dramatic effect but I would agree it will have some effect.