20 APRIL 2004

GENERAL SIR MICHAEL WALKER, ADMIRAL SIR ALAN WEST, GENERAL SIR MIKE JACKSON AND AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR JOCK STIRRUP

  Q240 Mr Havard: That structure which you are explaining which has worked well in the past, if the overall number of the army is not to increase, or in fact is to decrease, are we actually talking about a change of shape? Obviously in terms of light brigades and heavy brigades, there is a change of shape, and I think there may be a change in shape in terms of how you improve the usability of the people you are actually left with. A large percentage of them seem to be tied up with the wrong things at the right time. How do you change the process? Are you changing the process internally as well as questions about materiel and equipment?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Not, I think, in a way that I can recognise from your question of a changing process internally. I have given you the structure of the formation readiness cycle now, and, you are right, there is a lot of the field army which is not in those six ground manoeuvre brigades, but the air assault brigade has its own arrangements, and of course a lot of the rest of the field army is predicated, amongst other things, in support to Northern Ireland. You mentioned 40% not being trained for their role. I do not recognise that figure. I do not know what lies behind your allegation there, but . . .

  Mr Havard: I will explain them to you later.

  Q241 Mr Crausby: The Defence White Paper tells us in paragraph 4.1 that "some of our older maritime vessels contribute less well to the pattern of operations that we envisage, and reductions in their numbers will be necessary." Could you tell us which type of vessels you have identified as contributing less well as set out in the Defence White Paper? I do not expect you to tell us which vessels you intend to scrap, but could you give us some sort of insight into the thinking that provoked that statement?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes. Part of the way we are looking at future warfare involves, as you know, Network-Enabled Capability, effect-based operations, and we have had to look and rebalance across maritime—indeed, across all of joint warfare—the best ways of providing these capabilities. We have been looking to the way that we fight in the future and it has become clear to us that that will take investment in other areas. Clearly, within a limited amount of money that means you have to take investment out, to put it into the areas where you really want it to be. In the maritime context, the Batch-1 42s, for example, with the Sea Dart system, are ships that contribute less than the batch-3 42s and less than the later 23s, in terms of those sorts of capabilities that we are talking about. The money and resources freed up from getting rid of that type of platform will be reinvested to other capabilities; for example, in the maritime and joint sense, the CVF, the JCA, the TACTOMs going into Astute type submarines and that sort of thing. That is what the White Paper is alluding to.

  Q242 Mr Crausby: On a more positive note, can you tell us which vessels have proved more capable?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: As I say, the later 42s clearly have more capability to them. The 23s, particularly the later 23s, are able to be operated with far less people. They have a range of capabilities that we have found extremely valuable for the sorts of operations we have been conducting in the Arabian Gulf and in the North Indian Ocean and in other parts of the world as well. We have put investment into amphibious shipping. As you are aware, we have the two new LPDs; one of them was operating on R2 during the training up in North Norway recently; Bulwark will be coming to us later this year. We have the LSDAs being built and the second one was launched on Good Friday. It is in those sorts of ships that we are putting investment, really to increase our expeditionary capability. We have been lucky in the navy because almost by definition we are capable of expeditionary warfare, because of the way we walk around with our homes on our back and everything with us on one platform. But increasing that expeditionary capability, because those were the types of operations that were envisaged in the SDR as becoming more and more relevant to the world we are in, is the shift of emphasis in where we are moving our money around.

  Q243 Chairman: I would allude to a debate the Defence Committee had, admittedly in the middle of the Cold War, about the size and shape of the surface fleet, when we had Sir Richard Mottram saying "about 50" when we had 43 frigates and destroyers and, however eloquent he was, he was not able to explain why that was "about 50" as opposed to "about 40". Then each decade we have lopped off ten more ships, with the same arguments exactly that you are giving now—quite correctly giving, theoretically—but in consequence we will be getting down to the mid-20s in terms of frigates and destroyers and ten years from now we might be down even lower. It is almost as though the navy is getting out of ships. If the Treasury, or whoever above your level, Admiral, is going to argue this case and will not be arguing strictly in terms of the cost or personnel, I really hope they will publish some sort of serious document to try to convince people that we do not need some of these older ships. Because I find it a little absurd, in a way, that if we only went to war with equipment that was ten years old, we would never have got into a war from Crecy onwards. Frankly, we always go into a conflict with some capability that is older than others. There is an argument—whatever the naval equivalent of the footprint is—that if we have fewer and fewer frigates and destroyers, one then wonders what sort of presence we are going to have outside the English Channel. Please, if this is the argument that is forced on you, at least present it in such a way that appears to be modestly convincing, that we are cutting ships because there is some strategic rationale for doing so. I have been on the Committee for over 20 years and this just comes round the houses all the time: the same arguments, different people. I am as unconvinced now as I was then. In the case of the older type 42s, is there not a case for re-arming them, of putting something on them that is relevant to defend our carrier force or to perform functions that may be necessary rather than pensioning them off? I do not expect all the answers to that, but I hope you will produce a serious document giving am attempt at justification.

  Admiral Sir Alan West: Chairman, may I come back a little bit on that?

  Q244 Chairman: Please do.

  Admiral Sir Alan West: There is a whole raft of issues encapsulated in that. Clearly one has to cut one's cloth within the limit of the budget that is available and therefore one has to make assessments of priorities. In an ideal world, as you will expect from a First Sea Lord, he will want to have as many ships as is possible and indeed probably far more than he actually needs, that is one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum we have to cut our cloth within the amount of money that is available. I think we have got to try and move away a bit from numbers, but there is always some strength and issue in numbers, as you rightly say. We are trying more and more to move away from that and say what is the effect of the capability we want to achieve. So, for example, the capability of the Merlin ASW helicopter, of which we have now got 42 in service, is huge in Anti-Submarine Warfare terms and makes up in a sense for quite a lot of what in the old days would have been Corvettes and units like that. It is not all as gloomy as it might seem from first vision. When one looks at the whole gamut of maritime capability and all of the parts that fit together, it is not as gloomy as it looks. In terms of do we want to upgrade something like the Batch-1 42s, part of the problem is because of the saga of what was NFR90 and then the Common New Generation Frigate, etcetera and then our decision to go for Type 45s, a British destroyer with the PAAM system, there has been a delay in these things being replaced. The way to go in terms of anti-air warfare defence is the Type 45, of which we have now got six on order and we should really be getting those in now, but we all know the reason that did not happen and that would have been the best way to do it. To upgrade an older ship is really not a very cost effective and sensible way to go for UK plc for the money we have to invest in it. In terms of overall numbers, yes, there are concerns if you go down below certain levels. My ship was sunk in the Falklands, there were four ships sunk there and four of the frigates and destroyers were quite badly damaged. If you get down to too low numbers and you have to get involved in something where that happens it becomes very significant. These issues all have to be taken into account, but I think just to focus on numbers of destroyers and frigates does miss some of these other great capabilities we have got in terms of our expeditionary capability, amphibious warfare, the Carrier decision where the CVFs have huge extra capability, TacToms and Astute class submarines, all of those other issues. Some of the points you made are valid, Mr Chairman.

  Chairman: As you said last time, you cannot be in two places at the same time and when you are getting down now to about 20 then your words will come back to haunt you. The thing that disturbs me about the whole process—and I am aware of the need for efficiency—is the process is driven by how much money the Treasury is prepared to allocate to you and frankly, if the Prime Minister wishes to deploy those forces readily around the world then doing it within the constraints of what might be a diminishing budget appears to me to be a little bit of a fantasy. You either decide you are going to have adequate forces, adequately funded, adequately led, adequately deployed and adequately resourced or you do not and in my view we are moving into that area. If there are going to be any further cuts in the defence budget, you might wish to see and we might wish to see them being curtailed because the Treasury once again, as in the 1920s with the Ten-Year Rule, has their perception of warfare ten years from now which often is based on an illusion and on economic decision making rather than defence policy making.

  Q245 Mr Viggers: Will you share your current thinking about the new aircraft carrier? We can all see the problems. The Joint Strike Fighter is some seven years behind the milestones, three years behind the service entry date and, perhaps more importantly, it is two tonnes overweight. Whilst we have been told that size is not everything, nevertheless will there be a short take-off vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter to which the Americans are not committed or are you thinking along the lines of conventional take off and landing? Can you share your thinking on this, please?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: At present the position is that we are going for the STOVL variant of the JSF as the aircraft that will be carried in the CVFs. I have seen various reports about weight issues and things but this often happens early on in a programme. I do not recognise the dates that you are giving us yet, I do not think any of those have been finalised, but the position as regards the MoD is at present our plan is as it was, to go for the STOVL variant of JSFs and that is the way we are proceeding at the moment.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: You said to which the Americans are not committed when you were talking about the STOVL variant. The US Marines are hugely committed to it and the United States Air Force has just announced plans to buy STOVL JSFs for its own forces for the very critical role which we discussed earlier of providing support to forces on the ground. The Americans are committed to STOVL JSFs in a major way, more so now than they were even six months ago. There are weight problems for all variants. The weight problem is more critical for a STOVL aeroplane than it is for a conventional one, but weight is a very serious issue which is being tracked very closely by all the partner nations and on which industry is working very hard. As things stand at the moment I am pretty confident that the industry will be able to overcome those great problems but it is clearly going to be a challenge.

  Q246 Mr Viggers: What is the plan for the size of the airwing that will be carried in the new ships?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: The plan is it will be 36 JCAs and then there will be four MASCs (Maritime Air Surveillance Capability), which is the future AEW capability, that is the basic airwing that we are basing it around.

  Q247 Mr Viggers: Have you studied a marine version of the Typhoon?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The answer to that is yes. That was looked at in the early days and was discounted.

  Q248 Mr Viggers: So you have decided not to proceed down that path?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Indeed, we have decided to proceed down the STOVL JSF route.

  Q249 Mr Viggers: We have been told not to be size fixated, but can you tell us the latest plan for size and weight of the aircraft carrier?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: We are in phase three of the work. At the moment all of the designs are for a ship of about 60,000 tonnes and about 275 metres long, but I would have to come back to you on this. I think that is the size that it is looking like at the moment. There has been a lot more detailed work done in terms of design and things than has been the case in the past at this stage of work prior to what one has known as Main Gate, a lot of work on that, but that is about the size. The way things are built now means it will have a very large flight deck with that 60,000 tonne weight, it will be about two-thirds the size of the flight deck of a Nimitz. These will be quite big ships. When they are berthed in Portsmouth Gosport will not be able to see Portsmouth, which some people in Gosport will be quite pleased about, so they are quite large.[2]

  Chairman: I have foregone the pleasure of asking questions on the French for fear of saying something appallingly politically incorrect, so I will keep my mouth shut and pass on to David Crausby who is far more discreet than I am.

  Q250 Mr Crausby: I asked the Secretary of State about involvement with the French on the Future Carrier Programme and he said "We are certainly prepared to co-operate with France or any other country which might have a similar requirement to our own". He went on to say, "There must be some benefits in at least talking to France about the fact that they require a conventional large carrier." How significant is the French Navy in your plans for the future carriers?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: I think there are possible benefits in terms of the industry-to-industry co-operation. Let us say, for example, we decide on a podded main engine for this carrier—and I am not sure that has been finally decided or not—and that we are going to have two on each of ours, that means we would be buying four of them, but if the French go for a very similar design and they want two engines, you are getting six and hopefully you will be able to get a reduction and similarly in other areas like that. That is where we would see there being value in co-operation. What we do not want to do is get to a situation where the French say we are not quite happy with your design, let us redesign it. All of the things that went wrong with the Common New Generation Frigate and the NFR90 we do not want to let happen again because the timelines for introducing this carrier for us are quite tight and we know that will inevitably cause delay. My view is that if you get involved in redesigning between countries like that you end up with it costing more as well. It is really on an industry-to-industry basis where there will be the need for co-operation and where I think there is potential for some reductions in costs overall and I hope there are some because that would be very good news. The more stuff we have in common then the support costs over time would be less as well.

  Q251 Mr Crausby: Can I be assured that it will not cause any delay?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: Where we are coming from is that we are going to make an ISD of 2012 and that is why we are being very adamant that there is this industry-to-industry co-operation and there is not going to be something grander than that. There is a tendency with other nations to say I would quite like to have a stabilisation system that is different, they have got them in Charles de Gaulle, that would mean a complete redesign of the carrier and that is not the route we wish to embark on.

  Q252 Chairman: And the French can give you enormous advice on extending the life of an aircraft carrier.

  Admiral Sir Alan West: I am not going to comment on that, Mr Chairman.

  Q253 Mr Crausby: Apart from the procurement of the new aircraft carriers and the Type 45 destroyer, what other steps are you intending to take to "deliver effect from the sea"?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: The new Astute class submarines will carry the TACTOMs; block four of TLAM which has got a hugely enhanced capability, it is more accurate, you have different types of warheads, it has got a longer range, it can loiter, you can pre-programme it and re-programme it in the air which gives a wonderful ability to do deep strikes and use for coercive action. That would be one that would leap out to me as something else that gives us this ability. The other arm is really the new amphibious force and the new amphibious shipping we have got. For example, although the LPD was later than I would have liked, Albion is proving to be a superb ship. The actual command and control capability within that ship and the ISR capability within it is really showing itself to be fantastic. When we were doing the exercise up in north Norway we began to develop that more and more and I think there is a lot of potential for huge enhanced capability in our amphibious effort because of the new ship.

  Q254 Mr Crausby: Are you satisfied that this emphasis on the delivery of effect will not be achieved at the expense of adequate force protection?

  Admiral Sir Alan West: Specifically in the maritime sense we take force protection extremely seriously. In anti-air warfare terms the reason we have gone for PAAMS, which will be the best AAW system in the world, is it will be capable of shooting down any known missile. The ASW threat is less than it used to be in the past. However, there is no doubt that one well-handled submarine could have a major impact on any operation and we have still got an ASW capability and can counter that. In terms of asymmetric threats, we have put quite a lot of money into our systems to enable us to counter things like fast attack craft, they have not all arrived yet but they are in the process of appearing with the fleet and we are training our people to enable them to use those and to be able to conduct those operations against the asymmetric threat. I believe we are looking carefully at all of the aspects of our defence to enable us to conduct these operations. Also, there is no doubt about it, when ships are out of sight of land it is very difficult for people who are not sophisticated enemies to know where they are at all. To find one, pinpoint it and deliver a weapon is in fact extremely difficult. In asymmetric terms, as long as you are out of sight it is quite tricky for these people to do anything.

  Q255 Mr Blunt: Can I ask some questions about coalition operations, initially about working with the United States and, secondly, about the problems then of working with our European allies since our main assumption is now going to be on the need to work with the Americans. Using Iraq as an example, we say in the White Paper, "When the UK chooses to be engaged we will wish to be able to influence political and military decision-making throughout the crisis, including during the post-conflict period." How are we getting on in Iraq in influencing the United States in how they are conducting operations in Iraq?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: You will know and I suspect that the CDS—

  Q256 Mr Blunt: I focused it on you because it is primarily on the ground.

  General Sir Michael Walker: You have misunderstood because you do not influence on the ground, you influence right back into the national capital. You give your piece and we will put it in context.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: This question of influence on a senior or larger coalition partner from a small one, as the CDS has already said, has a number of dimensions to it and a number of levels to it and clearly at a strategic level this is national leader to national leader and it is not for me to answer on that part here. What it means on the ground is ensuring that you have a structure which allows that coalition to work together as best it can. There are a number of thoughts here which I think are important. Coalition, multi-nationality, yes, brings great political advantage but it also brings military friction and that is reality. The great trick is to ensure that your political advantage is greater than the military friction which a coalition brings with it. There are a number of ways in which you can minimise any potential friction, that is by having a system, which we most certainly do in Iraq, of deputies under the US commander, whatever we are talking about the British deputy is there. The fact that the British approach to post-conflict operations doctrinally is somewhat different to the American approach is a fact of life, that is simply a fact. Therefore it is important that the liaison and deputy system you have got makes sure that that difference is minimalised in terms of what happens. So there are a number of strands to this in theatre. Just a week or ten days ago General John McColl (some of you may remember him from taking the original ISAF Force to Kabul two years ago) went out on promotion as a three star to act as the deputy to the American commander under the new force structure being put into place now in Iraq for the transfer of sovereignty. The final thought here is if you try multi-nationality at too low a level you are getting into a position where the friction may outweigh the political advantage and, therefore, to keep units/brigades discrete is a sensible approach and you will see that is more or less what it is on the ground today.

  General Sir Michael Walker: Can I ask you to interpret the word friction in its military sense? We talk about military friction as being the friction of war, ie those things that combine together to make things not run always as smoothly as they might in combat and in all fighting operations. Friction here does not mean that we are permanently arguing with those people around us, if I could put that context right.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: I use the word in the technical sense, yes.

  General Sir Michael Walker: The reality is you need to have influence at the operational level, at the tactical level and at the strategic level and the mechanisms for doing those are new mechanisms to us. Whereas in the context of a NATO run Article 5 operation the political machinery, the military C2 structure and the link between the two has been pretty well established over a number of years, in coalition terms you have to manufacture that from the outset. At the height of Telic I think we had something of the order of 600 people, civil and military, salting the various levels of influence throughout the chain of command that went from Donald Rumsfeld right down to the military. Indeed the Foreign Office were working at their piece which included the State Department and so on. It is a multi-faceted approach to provide that influence. At each level only part of it is achievable. So if you want to influence at the tactical level, that is fine, but you do not influence the strategic level from your people at a tactical level. So there is a requirement to salt any coalition chain of command with your people. We are not the only nation to do this. There are a lot of other nations who have had people in Tampa Florida working with Tommy Franks, having access to the Pentagon etcetera. It is a fairly major piece and the ability to produce that has got to be a fundamental part of any planning for these operations both prior to conflict, during conflict and post conflict.

  Q257 Mr Blunt: In making this decision that we have to have the ability to co-operate with the United States in terms of equipment and capability, how long do you think it will take for the UK to bridge the gap in demand and information capabilities that were demonstrated in Iraq? Are we going to be able to display effective `catch-up' with the United States to achieve that level of ability to co-operate or are we constantly going to find that as we improve our system they have gone a technical leap ahead? Perhaps all three services will have a different perspective on the co-operation there. I would guess that there is a different story for the Royal Navy or even the Royal Air Force as there is for the Army.

  General Sir Michael Walker: I think that is true. The answer is that we will never replicate the Americans' capability in command and control, information management, C2 and technology in that sense. Our aim really is to make sure that we have a plug and play system so we can plug in at the appropriate level.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We are not actually trying to catch up because if one chased then I think you are right, one would never overhaul them. What we are trying to do is to point ahead and get to the same capability at the same time. In terms of developing new capabilities, particularly a network-enabled capability, we are working very closely with all of those elements in the US defence structure, including the military, to ensure that our objectives and our plans are aligned. That does not mean to say that we will be buying the same things, but it does mean to say that we will be working out protocols, processes and procedures to ensure that as these things come into service on both sides we will be inter-operable. I think the key point here is that this is a moving target and you have got to pull a bit of a lead.

  Admiral Sir Alan West: On the maritime side, I think what is very interesting is if you go back a few years ago, the Americans were stepping again and again further and further away from us and we were in the strange position, going back about ten or 15 years ago, in that the UK Navy were just about keeping up with the Americans but with great difficulties in certain areas and we were beginning to move away from our other NATO allies. The Americans now realise that for the operations they are involved in they have to involve other coalition parties and therefore they are adjusting their linkages to enable that to happen, to allow this plugging in and connectivity. We are much better now in the Royal Navy at being able to link into the Americans than we were. So if you take a look at the Americans now trying to make the coalition side work more, I think things are better than they were and I do not think there is that same danger. To give an example, during Telic there were a number of systems we connected into that we had not really been connected into before, one of which is SIPRNet and the Americans are allowing us to be fully connected into that this summer in our big exercise with the Americans off the American East Coast and so we will be exercising exactly these aspects. Our Task Group that goes over there will actually be linked onto SIPRNet. It is not as bad as it was, I think we are getting better and they are not moving ahead at the same light speed that they were and leaving us gasping.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: Perhaps it is less obvious where armies are concerned in the sense that the degree of technology and the amount of it is less important than it is in the other two. The phrase I use for this is that we must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not equal we must fight as the Americans. Do you see my distinction?

  Q258 Mr Blunt: Yes. Can I ask about operating with all our other coalition partners because there is obviously a tendency with the UK being the size of power it is that we see an exercise where I imagine we have rather more foreign partners in our area of responsibility in Iraq as a percentage of our forces than the United States do in their area, so it is a much larger scale problem for us than incorporating these other smaller powers into other forces often directly under UK command. Can you illustrate for each of your services the problems involved when working with those sometimes smaller countries and sometimes larger countries, places like Germany, both the political restrictions that operate in working alongside them and where you think the Allied Command for Transformation is actually going and the challenges our forces have to face in order to enable these smaller countries to ensure that the political advantages they bring then do outweigh the military friction? I hope you will illustrate that by way of example in the case of each service.

  General Sir Michael Walker: Allied Command for Transformation is going to be in its own words `the forcing agent for change' and I think it will do that. I think it will begin to make it absolutely clear, particularly in the NATO context which other alliances tend to keep as their benchmark for their own progress, that the whole transformation process is about developing capabilities to work together in difficult, tense environments and I think people have understood that. There are a number of other things that are happening which will test that notion fairly soon; the NATO response force is one. It has been set up and enthusiastically espoused by all the nations within NATO. Now they are going to be asked to do things. We will see whether that enthusiasm is translated into impact. Similarly, the proposals to develop European battle groups has been enthusiastically espoused sometimes by people who are both members of NATO and Europe, others who are just European and in all of that context those sort of nations are looking very hard at the way that the Allied Command for Transformation, which has fed very heavily off American views on transformation as well, is proposing to do business. For example, if you go to Scandinavia, if you go to Finland, you will find that they are quite advanced in their whole means and the process by which they are addressing network-enabled capability. Of course it does mean different things to everyone, but the forcing agent of change from Allied Command for Transformation will lead to a process where this can be proven or not proven and we will see that being exposed over the course of the next two or three years.

  Admiral Sir Alan West: Within the maritime environment our ability to link in work and talk to what I call the old NATO nations is extremely good and there are linked protocols and NCCIS and all of these sorts of abilities to connect with them and to pass on data works very well. The new NATO members have got some catching up to do, and working with non-NATO nations is tricky because of crypto-incompatibilities. It is more difficult with a non-NATO Navy in the maritime sense to have that full connectivity, but we cannot have full connectivity, they cannot get into those NATO systems and clearly would not get into the American systems. Generally we have got very good connectivity. In terms of difficulties of operating, I suppose the one that stands out the most would be RoE. So, for example, in Operation Active Endeavour different nations have different RoE and that can sometimes cause difficulties for the commander when he is trying to organise his group in terms of taking action against suspected terrorist ships or illegal immigrants or whatever it might be. That would be something that would stand out as a specific difficulty.

  General Sir Mike Jackson: In my experience the degree to which you get cohesion in a multi-national force is to some extent at least a function of the degree of commitment of the national contingents to the task in hand. Some may be more enthusiastic than others. Obviously if you are in a NATO Article 5 situation you have superglue and they are going to do it because they are all under the same situations. Non-Article 5 situations, however, are rather different beasts and the degree of commitment can vary from one nation to another. They also will see the task and see the political circumstances in which they have decided to deploy military force through different perspectives perhaps and national considerations may be different. This brings us on to RoE that the First Sea Lord has mentioned and more than that, of course, the whole question of a national red card, what people are allowed to do and what people are not allowed to do and there is no easy answer to this. It goes back to my point earlier about the level to which it is sensible to have a multinational force. If you are going to fight a war-fighting operation you need to be very careful as to how far down these routes you allow a multinational force because you are going to get that Clausewitz-ian friction post conflict; less intense, the sense of multi-nationalising further down below brigade and you are under a different set of circumstances and a different outcome of the Clausewitz-ian friction versus political advantage.

  Q259 Mr Blunt: I was going to ask you to comment on what we saw in Bosnia in particular of the extraordinary choreography required by the coordinating command in many operations as to who was to do the ring, who was to do the house searches because of the various limitations on each nation. You say there is no easy answer. I was going to ask whether you see our Allied Command for Transformation and the drive to make forces work more effectively together overriding any of these problems?

  General Sir Mike Jackson: For NATO members this problem is much less because we are all used to each other.