UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 45 - i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

FUTURE CAPABILITIES

Wednesday 24 November 2004

ADMIRAL SIR ALAN WEST GCB DSC ADC

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 84

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Wednesday 24 November 2004

Members present

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair

Mr David Crausby

Mike Gapes

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Kevan Jones

Richard Ottaway

Mr Frank Roy

Rachel Squire

Mr Peter Viggers

________________

Memorandum submitted by Ministry of Defence

Examination of Witness

Witness: Admiral Sir Alan West GCB DSC ADC, First Sea Lord, Chief of Naval Staff, examined.

Q1 Chairman: Welcome, Admiral. Would you like to make any opening statement? You have been sick, I understand?

Admiral Sir Alan West: First of all, I would say that all my experts tell me that I am not contagious, but I got up out of my sickbed at lunchtime to come here, and I am delighted to do that. I am also told it is not Sars, you will be glad to hear, although I have just got back from China - it is just ordinary flu! I am delighted to do that because I enjoy the sessions with the House of Commons Defence Committee because it is nice to talk to people who have a true interest in defence. One of the things that I find unfortunate now, I am afraid, across the UK - I think partly because our Armed Forces have been so successful - is that there is not that deep interest in defence. So I always find these sessions useful and it is good to talk to people who are interested in defence.

Q2 Chairman: And you got your retaliation in first so if there is a question you are not prepared to answer you will be engulfed in a cough and we will have to suspend it!

Admiral Sir Alan West: Cough and fall over - an easy way out! The books I have given you, one is on the Royal Navy and I find that very useful myself - the little book - and it does give great detail of our equipment in the Navy and our people. I think one has to say, when you look at that, notwithstanding the pressures and everything else, that anyone in Britain would be proud about that. The other book is the fact that I think across the board in the UK people do not have an understanding of the interaction between the three Services, this joint effect, and the book is about Telic, what I call kicking open the door into Iraq, where I think that if you ask the average man on the street somewhere in Middle England he would think it was the Army who did all this, did they not? Understandably, because of what you see on the television. The reality is that all three Services were fully involved and this book actually shows what the maritime did ranging through from TLAM, guarding the right flank to allow the Americans to go in and then of course Seventh Armoured followed those in. It is a coffee table type book - nothing very heavy - but it does give a flavour of the huge involvement and the fact that without the maritime - for example 95 per cent of every bit of equipment used by the Air Force and Army out there came by sea - it could not have happened, and I think that is worth doing to show that all three Services are vital for joint type operations. I think I have said enough already.

Q3 Chairman: Thank you very much. I sincerely hope that most of the ships or all of them depicted in this book will be around in five years. Certainly we will do our best to try to ensure that. Question number one please, Peter Viggers.

Q4 Mr Viggers: The Defence White Paper in December 2003 described the priority for the Navy as being "increasingly on delivering effect from the sea onto the land, which includes a land attack capability, supporting forces ashore and on securing access to the theatre of operations and protecting the crucial sea lines of communication from the home base." Increasingly the switch is from blue water and towards littoral operations, yet we are withdrawing three Type 42 destroyers, three Type 23 frigates, one Trafalgar class nuclear submarine, one Swiftsure class nuclear submarine and three mine hunters. Are you confident that the decision to focus naval capabilities on delivering effect on to land, which reflects the current security environment, will stand the test of time over the longer term, particularly given the expected service life of the vessels concerned, which is 25 years for frigates and 50 years for carriers? And will you have enough ships?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Certainly the versatile Maritime Force, which is what we are aiming for in the Navy, will be able to provide that capability, but it seems that there is something more behind your question there, which is something to do with reduction in numbers and that sort of thing. I think the first thing to say is that, bearing in mind the status of the United Kingdom, the fact that we are a member of the P5, I consider us still a great power; the fact that we have huge investments all around the world, that it is important that we are involved in commitments worldwide. To do that costs a certain amount of money - to have military forces able to do that. Being a military man I would always want to have more money, and it is just as well that there are people like you in the House to make sure that one cannot go on demanding more and more. My own personal view is I think it would be rather nice if there was a little bit more money for defence, but that is a political decision. Within the constraints of the amount of money that has been devoted for defence, and bearing in mind that the Chancellor did actually give a considerable increase last year and has given other considerable increases, the package that we came back with in terms of the adjustments to our force levels is, I think, the best we could do. We have to take into account all three Services. It is important, for example, that the Army could start implementing the Future Army Structure. I think that is a very sensible move and I think General Jackson has been very brave in implementing that. I have not talked to a single junior Army Officer who does not believe it is the right thing to do, and indeed it actually provides more units capable of use and will give stability to their people. That, of course, cost a certain amount of money, and when one looked across all of defence money had to come from places to pay for that. Would I like to have more destroyers and frigates? I expected to pay off three Type 42s - the oldest is about 30 years old, one is 29 and one is 27, something like that - but they are still a sad loss; they are extremely capable sense but it made sense, when I looked at the overall balance within the maritime of what were the most important things. The loss of the three 23s, much younger ships, again I would prefer not to lose those. My own personal assessment, if I had a carte blanche and the money was available - and it is not - I would like to have about 30 destroyers and frigates, and I have said that in public before. But you have to cut your cloth according to the amount of money that is around, and I had higher priorities in the Maritime and there were higher priorities across defence that had to be taken into account, and bearing all of those in mind I think the balance we came to was about right. I do have a personal sadness that, for example, there has been a huge amount in the media about the regimental system, the loss of some regiments, which will happen at some stage in the future, and I understand all the emotion involved there. But as I say, actually at the end of the day I think the Future Army Structure will be a much better structure, which will allow a greater usage of our soldiers. There has not been very much about the real loss of my ships and those have started happening already. This is not something in the future; already Newcastle has gone into port for the last time, and from my perspective these are regiments. Similarly, Glasgow; she had her last visit up to Glasgow and she is paid off. Tomorrow HMS Norfolk pays off. Two of my MCMVs have paid off, but they are not quite at the same level as a regiment. Again, it goes back to this knowledge across Britain of defence, it is rather sad because I feel that some of my people, who are working hard in these ships, feel that they are not being as appreciated as much as they might, and actually they do extremely good work around the world. Going a little bit further in terms of destroyer figure numbers, yes, we need to spend money on network-enabled capability, that is absolutely the right thing to do. It will enable us to use the Forces we have more effectively; it gets you more bangs for your buck; it enables you to cut casualties on your own side and on the enemy's side; it enables you at very high speed to have effect and hit the centre of gravity and actually win. But very often a destroyer or a frigate is a singleton, it will be somewhere in the world - and I said I have just been to China, for example, and HMS Exeter was up there. This had huge impact on the Chinese. I am sure that her visit this year, after Liverpool's last year during the Sars epidemic, resulted in us getting some huge contracts at the airport there in Shanghai. They were able to talk to me and said how wonderful it was that we had a ship. This defence diplomacy issue is often a singleton type ship, and if you have one of something it does not matter how network enabled you make it because if you have not got it you have not got it. That is my worry sometimes about numbers. But going back to where we came from, with the amount of money I had, I had higher priorities in the maritime and there were higher priorities in the defence, and I am sure that in that budget constraint that the answer we came up with is the right answer or I would not have signed up to it, which I did with the other Chiefs of Staff.

Q5 Mr Viggers: Do you think the new emphasis on offensive roles is at the expense of more traditional defensive roles and do you think that there are gaps left there?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Sorry, I am not quite clear?

Q6 Mr Viggers: The new focus on offensive roles and the long projection of force from the sea means that Forces have been switched to that role from the traditional North Atlantic and other defensive roles. Do you feel that there are gaps left there?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think looking at the world environment and to the best of our ability to predict it - and you have to be very careful with predictions because the one thing you can guarantee is the next war era will not be one that we have predicted, so one always has to be very careful - I believe it is correct to have shifted from that deep blue water protection of convoys, sea lines and communication, and make that shift towards work within the littoral projection ashore, assured entry, enabling the Air Force and the Army to get to where they need to get to in the world, to do the business they need to do for the United Kingdom. I am sure that is correct. Sometimes in operational analysis, when people feed in information and it goes through the old machine to come out with an answer of how many ships you lose, I believe they underestimate how many ships might be needed, for example, to protect choke points, even against terrorist attack, and people sometimes draw incorrect assumptions about how many allies will help us on these occasions. I think we saw during Telic, in Iraq, a number of nations that we might have expected to have said, "Yes, here is a ship," but did not, and sometimes those figures are difficult. But having said all of that we are not in an ideal world and I am certain that the priorities we have set are the right priorities within the constraints that we have.

Q7 Mr Viggers: You mentioned Telic, that 95 per cent of the equipment going to Telic went by sea, and yet when it went beyond the Suez Canal we had to rely on allies to escort ships.

Admiral Sir Alan West: That is fine, as long as you have the allies there to do it, but my point is that in some of the places there were not any. So we had to send someone, for example, to the Straits of Gibraltar to assist there.

Q8 Mr Viggers: One has to be ready for asymmetrical warfare and I would have thought that the classical asymmetrical weapon is a mine, which can be used by comparatively unsophisticated countries or groups, and yet we are scrapping three minehunters. Is that a wise decision?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Again, one is always loath to use "platforms", even though that phrase is used in a rather derisive way sometimes. I think the figure of 16 is okay; I have less difficulty with that figure, even though we have a niche capability in mine warfare, which I think is probably the best in the world and we saw that out in the Gulf. I think that figure of 16 is appropriate, and we are looking very hard, looking to the future at how we are going to maintain that fantastic capability we have of mine hunting. One of the problems with that number is ensuring that they are deployed in time because you have to guarantee that they are there in time to do the initial entry, and all this sort of thing. There is an element of "Drake's mirror" there, where good Admirals over the years in this country - and we have had a lot - are able to look in their Drake's mirror and see what might be happening in the world and can start moving things. For example, when I was Commander in Chief, although we did not know anything was going to happen in the Gulf, one's feeling was that actually it was an area that was pretty dicey, and I therefore deployed a group out there to work with local nations. Therefore it was there some six months later when things started happening. So you can get round those, and of course the joy of maritime, the joy of things at sea is that territorial seas are territorial seas. Once you get out in them most nations are totally unaware of what is there, and certainly most terrorists are unaware once it is clearer littoral waters. You can send a whole force, it can sit there and it can come back, as in 1997 I sat with the whole battle group off Hong Kong outside territorial waters, well out in the sea, and that was a non-issue really. That is one of the joys of maritime forces.

Q9 Mr Viggers: I suppose summarising my concern, it is that the Defence White Paper talks about projecting force to different areas. Specific mention is made of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Would we have the surface ships to back up such a projection?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think one has to be very careful about undertaking commitments until you look at exactly what you have to cover them. In Africa at the moment in terms of ships, regularly APT South and sometimes APT North - the Atlantic Patrol Task North and South ships - go to West Africa to show a presence. We used the Amphibious Task Group there of course in Sierra Leone, with great effect. So the flexibility of our units, so long as they are not tied up somewhere else, is huge. Basically, any Naval unit can travel about 600 miles a day in any direction with no one stopping them; so they can move to another theatre if need be. But of course you can only undertake a certain number of commitments. As far as South East Asia or Indonesia and all that area goes, the thing that struck me when I was in China was that we are the biggest investor of any EU nation in China, biggest in Malaya, biggest in Singapore, biggest in Indonesia, biggest in Australia. This is an area which is important for the wealth of this country and therefore stability is important. How much better having the odd ship there, which helps the stability and defence diplomacy, rather than waiting until it becomes somewhere like the Middle East.

Mr Viggers: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Q10 Mr Crausby: Can you tell us, Admiral, what was the justification for ending the UK's commitment of one ship to NATO's Standing Naval Task Force, and indeed what the response was from other NATO members?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The reason for the reduction, and this was taking the ship out of the Standing NATO Force Atlantic, was because of the number of holds we had available to do it, and there were not enough to do that. There were seven of these permanent tasks at this stage and effectively you need about 3.7 ships to do a permanent committed task like that - 1.3 for a smaller task around the UK. Because of the reductions we have had we were not able to do that task. Once these latest rounds of reductions are done - and at the moment we are having to review what will happen about the other permanent task - you have look at how they can be done because clearly once we go to 25 destroyers and frigates there is a limit to the number that you can do. So that Standing NATO Force Task was done purely because we did not have enough ships to do it. There are two Standing NATO Forces for destroyers and frigates, one of which is Standing NATO Force Atlantic, one of which is Standing NATO Force Mediterranean. Both groups tended to be used recently on Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean, which is an operation - it is still an Article 5 operation - that started after 9/11 to intercept ships in, primarily, the Eastern Mediterranean to stop movement of terrorists, ammunition, explosives, all these sorts of things, and those two forces have been involved in that. We have seen that the Standing Naval Force Mediterranean was more significant and left our ship there, and as the changes in NATO take place and we are moving towards the NRF (the NATO Reaction Force) the Standing Force Mediterranean will probably transform into part of the NRF, but that has not been finally decided, that is being debated at the moment. But that will be one of the standard tasks that we will have to look at in conjunction with the other standing task to see which one we intend to fill, because if you take away the Standing NATO Force Atlantic you go from seven to six tasks. They effectively are fleet ready escort around the UK, the Atlantic Patrol Task North - that is the Caribbean and all that sort of thing, and all the good work that Richmond has done after the various hurricanes and things; Atlantic Patrol Task South, which is down in the Falkland Islands and the work done on West Africa and that sort of thing; the ship that is up in the Gulf - and I think some of you on this Committee visited the ship right up at the northern end of the Gulf, looking after those two oil platforms to ensure the safety of that oil flow and stability out there. And then one out in the Indian Ocean involved an operation during Freedom - this is looking for terrorists in the Indian Ocean, where we have taken command of that group quite often. So those are the tasks that are there, and we will only be able to do four of them because we have reduced our number of ships. That is a decision that will have to be made, which one is seen as most important, and I think the Secretary of State said when he was here, "Yes, there are Standing Tasks but times change and maybe some are less important than they were, therefore they will have to be dropped," and that is a decision that will have to be made over the next few months as we draw down to this new level of ships.

Q11 Mr Crausby: You said in an interview with Jane's Defence Weekly that you think there will have to be another reduction, at the time. Are you now saying there will have to be two more reductions in Standing Tasks?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes, two more Standing Tasks will have to go; we will go from six to four. We were at seven.

Q12 Mr Crausby: So we went from seven, we have already reduced to six and now we have to lose two more.

Admiral Sir Alan West: That was the Standing NATO Force Atlantic, and I have to say that although it is maybe not the best message to NATO because, after all, we are, I believe, the pre-eminent maritime power in Europe, for very good historical and other reasons, and it was a bad message, I think. But still, I agree that was probably the least important of those tasks and I can easily live with that. I think now we are looking at tasks which I thought were quite important and someone will have to make an assessment whether they are or not. That does not mean we will not have ships going to any of those areas, and what I have the Commander in Chief and people looking at very closely is how can we somehow get some sort of coverage because I think it is very important for the UK to have coverage in these areas because it helps stability. Again, part of the reason that we are wealthy and affluent and doing very well at the moment is that there is this stability and prosperity in the world, and the fact that we have investment abroad, the fact that there is a free flow of trade, the fact that insurance rates are low, it always helps if you have a grey funnel line ship around. We know that from where there has been trouble in places like the Gulf, for example, where insurance rates started going up before Telic, and we sent our Royal Naval Reserve Team out to Dubai and sent 22 ships out there, we were able to drive that insurance rate back down. All of that helps and so it is important, and so we are looking at how can we get ships out into these areas in some other way of doing it.

Q13 Mr Crausby: So are all of those Standing Tasks at threat? The one that protects the Falkland Islands, for instance, is that at threat? Is that one you would be considering?

Admiral Sir Alan West: All of those Tasks will have to be looked at and a decision will have to be made which ones will not be filled.

Q14 Mr Crausby: There are no decisions made?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No decisions will be made and this will be reviewed and looked at and I imagine that a decision will be made on that probably by the third quarter or something of next year because that is when, with these timelines, we will have to be making that sort of decision.

Q15 Mr Crausby: So what about the NATO Rapid Response Force? What contribution do you expect to be able to make to the naval element of the NATO Rapid Response Force?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There has been quite a good story to tell on that already. The Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for the NRF was delivered during the exercise Destine Glory in the Mediterranean earlier this year, and I am very pleased that the Royal Navy and Commander in Chief and my UK maritime battle staff did a lot of driving of that because my battle staff are actually commanding the maritime element of that NRF at the moment - this rotates between nations and we are doing that - and the IOC was proved in that with this operation Destine Glory. In terms of the ships involved there is debate still: should there be a standing element to this? That goes back to the one I talked about, Active Endeavour, Standard Force Mediterranean, should that become a standing element or should it not? That is still being debated. And the units that are allocated for this task are normally double earmarked, sometimes triple earmarked, and one identifies units that can be available for the NRF. So, for example, in this period, just because of the way it has worked, we had a dearth of amphibious assets available from within Europe for this force. But generally we see this as we will be able to earmark units as necessary to make up a sensible maritime part of the total NRF, which of course includes air and land.

Q16 Mr Crausby: Finally, Chairman. Will the Royal Navy's commitment to defence diplomacy be reduced in the future as a result of all of these cuts?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think the answer has to be yes, that it will be reduced because with less destroyers and frigates there is less opportunity for going and doing this. There are six less, we have gone from 31 to 25. Other assets do it as well, of course; you can do it with your carrier and all of that, but we have less to do it with, and the classic way of doing it is with the destroyer frigate which has all this range of capabilities. It is the smallest unit that operates completely autonomously with the capabilities of its own aircraft, missiles, guns, all of the things that you need in one little package. They roam all over the world - I am sure a number of you have been to ports and have visited them there - and I think they do a huge amount of good. So there will be a reduction. Having said all of that, within the constraints of the money we have I am absolutely certain that concentrating on other areas of maritime programme was where money had to be concentrated within the resources we had available.

Q17 Mr Hancock: Good afternoon, Admiral. Having fewer ships, I agree with you, is like losing a great friend, and coming from a city like Portsmouth I think people do feel the loss of a ship is important. It is not just the availability of that vessel but it is the opportunity it offers the Navy for training. Having fewer ships you have less sea time, less capability and manpower resources. How do you cope with that when a quarter of the Navy is reduced, and you yourself have said that for every ship deployed you need at least three, possibly four ships there in the game plan for that deployment? So how do you cope with that, giving your seamen adequate training and opportunity for sea time?

Admiral Sir Alan West: It is a very valid point you make, ranging from command opportunities, Executive Officer type opportunities, charge opportunities for the engineers, the supply people, ships flights - of course there is a reduction in the number of helicopters. So you are absolutely right. Of course it is six out of 31 destroyers and frigates, but of course we still have three carriers and two LPDs, an LPH, so it is not 25 per cent but it is still an issue. And losing similarly MCMVs and the three Northern Ireland patrol craft once things are fully stabilised in Northern Ireland ---

Q18 Mr Hancock: Two out of three carriers are therefore tied up at any one time.

Admiral Sir Alan West: To be fair, normally it is one that is really tied up and the other two will operate after a fashion. But it does have an impact and that is a worry and the Second Sea Lord and the Board have identified this. The Second Sea Lord is looking at this, and we are looking really in terms of structure, how can we allow for this change? It is difficult. I think we can identify a way around it. But, yes, every time, particularly actually the smaller ones, because there is a wonderful way of training your officers, giving them the responsibility and all of the things that we drive into a young man so that when he does then become a Commander or particularly a Captain of a big ship you have turned him into the man you want to be representing the UK abroad and taking some of those very key decisions at crucial moments. So it is an absolutely relevant point. What we have to do is to make sure that we can make it work even though that has happened, and I believe we can, and that is what we are focusing on doing.

Q19 Mr Hancock: Will it mean that the rotation of commands will speed up, so there will be less command time so that more sailors can have the opportunity of being either Executive Officers or in command of their own ships? I think it does pose some real problems to retaining the young committed naval officer who saw himself possibly as a future Admiral even, and losing that opportunity if they do not put in the sea time and do not get the command experience?

Admiral Sir Alan West: First of all I hasten to add that actually there are lots and lots of opportunities, so I would not want people to think that there are not. The length of time in command has always been a very knotty one. For some years we have had a reducing number of ships, and there is a balance to be struck between getting through the maximum number of people who are capable and doing that job, which they see as very attractive and a lot of people join the Navy to do that - but they obviously have to be capable of doing it - and giving them long enough doing it to check that they are fully able to do it and to get the maximum benefit, and that has always been a terribly difficult balance. It ends up as about 18 months. Very often one will want to leave them longer and sometimes people do less, sometimes people only do about 12 or 13 months. But it is always a very difficult balance; it still will be and it is something that will have to be juggled in the context of the work we are looking at, and structures and things like that. Similarly there is a case for engineers, all this sort of thing. So it is something that we have to look at across the board. Of course, if you reduce the number of platforms, the number of ships then it causes more of a problem, and we have to tackle that and we are tackling that because we are looking at it because the new ships coming along give us much greater opportunity to use them at sea. They can stay at sea for much, much longer because of the way they are designed because of the support and everything. We are already looking at, as you know, squad manning for the ships' companies; we are looking at restructuring the various branches to allow this greater utility out of the platform, and I think in the context of that we will solve some of these problems and allow people this opportunity to command - maybe two commanding officers for a ship, something like that. That is what we will be looking at.

Q20 Mr Hancock: Have you in the Navy Board made any case - you spoke earlier, in an answer to Peter Viggers' question about the Glasgow and two other ships recently coming out of service - for those ships not to be disposed of but held either in reserve somewhere or given minimal capability available, so that there was, if necessary, the possibility, because, heaven forbid you have another Nottingham scenario, when you only have the 25 ships and if you have a Nottingham situation where a ship was taken out either by enemy action or by accident, where is the contingency to fill those gaps? And is it possible that it might be prudent for the Navy not to dispose of these ships in a hurry?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The problem is - and we have looked hard at this in the past - that actually keeping a modern ship in a state where you could pull her out easily and readily with the right, trained people all ready to move on board her and to go and operate is really extremely difficult and actually quite expensive. So sadly it does not work. It would be a lovely thought. You have raised what is a very, very important point. I said that in an ideal world, if I had the money that was available, I believe that this country needs about 30 destroyers and frigates - or let us call them surface combatants. Part of the reason that I did not mention it in developing the argument earlier is that we have no attrition buy for these. Whenever we buy any aeroplanes we always, quite correctly, buy an attrition buy because effectively two per cent in the air have some sort of prang or other. We seem to work on the assumptions that the ships will not. Sadly, although they go off my Christmas card list, occasionally they do, and in war it is even more the case. So for example the OA, when you feed the data in talks of need, I think it is 12 destroyers and frigates for a large-scale operation. I have only been involved in what I might call one large maritime operation - that was fighting in the Falkland Islands - and there were 23 destroyers and frigates involved, of which four were sunk, one of which was my ship, and eight were badly damaged. I do have a worry about that resilience, which is a point you raised. So that again is a reason why I am nervous. But, having said all of that, looking at the requirements we have, looking to the future and the amount of money I have, I am sure that we are absolutely right in having put our focus on future carrier capability, maintaining the amphibious thrust that we have, enhancing the Marines, as we have, putting some money towards fleet support, which is not as good as it should be, and I think the balance is correct. But you absolutely highlight all the things that make me nervous, and these are all risks. But of course our job as Chiefs of Staff and within the MOD is to take risks and work out which is the risk that we can most afford and that is one of the risks that we are taking.

Q21 Mr Hancock: It is going to take a decade or more for all of the new ships to come on stream, hopefully. In that time, and during that time, if the government's White Paper is to be believed, the pressure will be there on the Navy to deliver a different style of capability, maybe more frequently deployed to hotspots around the world. Is there an issue, as far as you are concerned, that this argument still has not been lost as far as the Navy is concerned about trying to retain these ships? Because many of us are surprised that quite modern ships are being taken out of service and being disposed of, and I think there is a coherent argument being put by many people who are around the Navy to suggest that this is a grave error of judgment; that until the Type 45 has come into service it must be seen as a mistake for this country. In our recent history over the last ten years we have been so dependent on the Navy's ability to get to places and not only to show the flag but to deliver a punch.

Admiral Sir Alan West: I go back to what I said, that in terms of the amount of money we have the priorities we have come to are correct. The Type 42s, I could accept those going, reluctantly. They are getting old and there are difficulties in keeping things like 909 radars going and this sort of thing. The three Type 23s, I know they cost about £8.8 million a year to run or something like that. It is unfortunate but there is insufficient money to do that, against some of the other priorities. I think I have made my views clear about not being happy about the loss, but equally within the constraints of what we have I am sure that we have made the right decision on which bits to squeeze in our programme and which bits not. As I said, we do have to remember that there was a considerable amount of extra money given to defence last year and the year before. But within the amount we have we cannot do all the things we would like to do.

Q22 Mr Hancock: In April of this year we were given the date of May 2009 for the Type 45 actually to be in service. Have you any reason to believe that that date has slipped forward or are you confident that the first Type 45 will be delivered and in service to meet that date?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think the May 2009 date is the absolutely correct date. It was published in the NAO, and so I am delighted it has been published so that people know what the actual date is because I think people were talking about 2007 and that clearly was not the date. And that will be the date they make. I have to say the Type 45, everything I see about it I like and it will be a wonderful ship. Seven and a half thousand tonnes, it is going to have the PAAM system, and the radar we have for this means it will be the only anti-air warfare ship in the world which is capable of shooting down the highest threat missile which the Russians produced, and they have already sold to India and I think will go to China. So it is exciting in that sense. It has space for 60 Royal Marines on board so it has that ability to put people into the littoral and have those sorts of capabilities. It is going to be a wonderful ship. I went up to cut the first steel for the Dauntless up in the yard on the Clyde at Govan, and I have to say I was really impressed by how the yards have moved on, how they have now started gripping the fact that they have to deliver to time and cost and get sorted out - all these things that have caused us real problems. I was very impressed. And the fact that they had taken on 100 extra apprentices. I was educated up on the Clyde when it was teaming with shipyards, and I am afraid they got it all wrong for a number of years, but now it is really good to see that. I think it is going to be a wonderful ship and I am looking forward to having them there. Sadly I will be gone by the time they are ready because I am too old. They will be lovely drives for some young officers.

Q23 Mr Jones: Admiral, can I stick on the subject of the Type 45s. You said in Warships Magazine in early 2003, "I would also like to see Type 45s equipped with the new Tactical Tomahawk land-attack missile." In Jane's Defence Weekly in August of this year, you said, "I think the case is very compelling ... the problem is that there is no money. I had hoped we might have had a nod in that direction. But we haven't and it will have to fight its way through the equipment programme in the normal way." First of all, how far have you waded through the programme; secondly, what are the costs? You said it is quite insignificant, but what is going to be the cost of equipping and using it?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The position still is that this is going to have to find its place within the programme. It has no greater push than that. My position is very clear and I have said it all the time and I still firmly believe that it is something I believe we should have in those ships, but it has to fight its way through all the Committees and everything else within the MOD, and as can be seen from the fact that we are paying off Type 23s, there is no money around; that is the problem. I still think it would be a very good thing for us to have. I can remember going back to when there was a debate about putting TLAMs into the SSNs, a lot of people said, "They will never be used, what are you doing this for, goodness me!" The reality is that we used it in the Kosova crisis, we used it in Afghanistan and we have used it in Iraq. They have been very useful, and the fact that we are linked in so closely with the

Americans on this has been of huge value for us, giving insight into their operations, working absolutely side by side with them, and the fact that we have a common weapon that can be shifted around, and it has been very, very valuable; and I think that would be enhanced if we had it in the Type 45. It is interesting that the Americans have fitted land-attack cruise missiles very widely in their ships; the Dutch are looking at doing this; the Spanish are looking at doing this; the French are going to do this. Therefore I think it makes sense. However, there is no money and one has to look at all the other priorities and this will fight its way and we will see where we get to on it.

Q24 Mr Jones: As the Navy's role is clearly going to be in support of land forces does that not leave a gap then in the capability of the Type 45 in terms of land support?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No, I do not think so, because she still carries her helicopter; with her PAAMs she will be able to provide very capable air defence over the littoral area - the land and the littoral area; she has extremely good radar, in terms of guiding other aircraft and this sort of thing, rather like 1 ACC capability, all in a destroyer. She has the ability to carry Special Forces, up to 60 marines and, as I say, she has got a 4.5 gun, which is equivalent to one light battery. It would be very nice to have a larger gun and work is going on to look at that, whether that is feasible within the cost restraints we have, and that would add more clout. Yes, I believe it would be very nice to have the Tac Tom, but the Tac Tom of course is much more deep strike rather than the close range things and there are other ways of doing that. We have the Tac Toms in the Astutes and in the T Boats at the moment and we have the CVF, which will be able to do this assured access and use deep strike as well. So I am sure part of the debate will be, does this mean we have over-egged it in terms of the amount available, and that is where the debate will lie? As I say, there is no money at the moment, sadly.

Q25 Mr Jones: In terms of the gun, I know that the US Navy and a few others have adopted a Mark 45 gun actually producing guided shells now, which are quite sophisticated. Are we actually looking at that as an option for the Type 45s?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The special ammunition they are doing is for slightly larger calibre guns and that is one of the reasons we are looking at getting a bigger gun, a 155-type gun. A lot of the special ammunition they are making is for a 155-type gun, and there are some very interesting proposals and we are going to test them out, I think very wisely; I would hate to fire it and find that the ship sinks or the deck rolls back or whatever. So we have to check that out, but it is an exciting prospect because you can suddenly get very good ranges, out to 100 miles or so, with some of these very clever munitions, which would be very, very helpful for the Army in terms of this initial entry and support.

Q26 Mr Jones: For example, I think it is the US Navy that has a Mark 45 gun with the new ERGM round, which is this round that is guided to the actual target. I also understand quite a few European Navies have also procured that. Is that an option for the Mark 45, in trying to increase this capability of land attack?

Admiral Sir Alan West: As I say, we are looking at getting the larger gun. If that makes sense and we can fit that within the money that is there then I am sure we will do that. Once you do that you have the option of using this clever ammunition, and it seems to me something that would be very, very valuable. Naval fire support, even of the small stuff we have, 4.5 inch, is very, very useful. It worked really well. We were told in the 70s that we will never use this again, and I think something like 18,000 salvos were fired in the Falklands. If you are a soldier and you have some nasty people there it is lovely to be able to call down a great weight of fire suddenly. So it is an attractive option and certainly soldiers I know who have been able to call on it like it, and therefore if we can get the bigger calibre that would be super.

Q27 Mr Jones: What is the timescale?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I just do not know, I am afraid, but I know that it is actively being looked at at the moment and they are going to do a trial, I think.

Q28 Mr Jones: There is going to be a position, is there not, where if you are going to come in in 2009 you are going to retro-fit some of these, if you are going to change the guns?

Admiral Sir Alan West: As I say, I am afraid I do not know the detail well enough to be able to tell you.

Q29 Mr Jones: Could you drop us a note in terms of where you are?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes, certainly, as to where we have got to on it.

Q30 Chairman: If the threat changes, is there a great problem of bolting on a Tomahawk missile? Will it alter the weight, the balance, the size and shape?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There is actually space within the ship which was built into it to be able to do it, just in case. One of the things we learnt is that steel and space are not expensive; what is expensive is filling it all up. So we have steel and space and clearly it is always best to fit anything as you build it because that has to be cheaper. But if there is no money then you cannot do it anyway.

Q31 Mr Roy: You propose to replace the current three aircraft carriers with two larger and more capable vessels. Given that the concurrency assumptions envisage a norm of three concurrent operations, what is the rationale for reducing that number of carriers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: We are looking really at one medium and two small effectively, and for the small you would not expect to have a carrier ---

Q32 Mr Roy: Sorry, one medium and two small?

Admiral Sir Alan West: That is the normal ongoing thing, and we can do for a short period two mediums, and one of the mediums will be for six months, in which case you could not have a CVF for both. What you want this for is the fact that you cannot rely on host nations abroad. Every single indication we have is that that is the case and it is getting harder and harder as one looks around the world. Looking at the future we certainly cannot guarantee pointing those jets into another country on to their airfield to do something for us somewhere else. Over flying can be difficult as well. You can absolutely guarantee it when you have got it in an aircraft carrier.

Q33 Mr Roy: Do you not think that one of the options would be three or more smaller, more agile carriers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The reason that we have arrived at what we have arrived at is because to do the initial strike package, that deep strike package, we have done really quite detailed calculations and we have come out with the figure of 36 joint strike fighters, and that is what has driven the size of it, and that is to be able to deliver the weight of effort that you need for these operations that we are planning in the future. That is the thing that has made us arrive at that size of deck and that size of ship, to enable that to happen. I think it is something like 75 sorties per day over the five-day period or something like that as well.

Q34 Mr Roy: Do you think you can confidently expect the unexpected when you get down to such numbers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think you can expect the unexpected but I think that capability of deep penetration attack is what we will require and I think, rather as we found all over the world in the past, you cannot guarantee getting it there from using other people's airfields. I was sunk in the Falklands when there was no shore-based aircraft there. I think we only had one Vulcan or something, and we had a couple of Nimrods, and effectively we needed carrier air. The reason off Korea that it was carriers was because no one could get there. There are whole areas of the world. That is why the Chief of the Air Staff is so much on side with the carriers, because it is a guaranteed way of getting the Air Force and Navy aircraft to where the action is. One of the figures I quote, some time since the last war every aircraft shot down in air to air combat by the Brits, apart from one, has been shot down by an aeroplane that took off from a carrier. Why is that? It is because the carriers can get where the action is. That is why I believe it is so important, and it is seen as an absolutely key and important flank of our expeditionary capability. That was stated in the SDR, the SDR Extra Chapter, the Defence White Paper, and I am very pleased that that is the case. As I say, in 1966 or so, when we said we were not going to go down this carrier route, a number of people said that we will end up doing some sort of amphibious operation in the littoral where we will come under enemy air attack and we will not have as many fighters and attack aircraft as we want, I did not realise that I would be one of those who was sunk because of it. I have no doubt whatsoever, looking to the future, that we will regret it if we do not have that ability to deploy air power to wherever we want to in the world to conduct operations, because it will end up with sailors and soldiers getting killed because that air power is not there, and I can see that happening. Therefore, I am absolutely convinced about the carrier and I am very glad the MOD is. It is unfortunate, having mentioned it and said we really wanted it in 1997, it has taken rather longer maybe to get going than I would have liked - I think that is because people were looking at it in such detail. We have 60 per cent design definition now, which is higher than any other project. I think it is something that we can look at and say, "Can this department actually deliver something which is so important?" and it is a good way of judging it. Everything I see at the moment shows that, yes, it will deliver it and I am delighted that it will achieve that because Ministers support it, the Chiefs of Staff support it and I very much look forward to starting to build this thing and getting British industry really going with it.

Q35 Mr Roy: I was going to ask you a question later on about logistics support, which would have been along the lines of what steps do you take to acquire the capabilities to support land operations in the absence of Host Nation Support, and I think you have just answered that.

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes, and there are other aspects as well. In terms of initial entry the AMPAR amphibious capability allows the start of that and then the Army can start moving in. Sea-based logistics is a wonderful way of providing logistics. You do not have big footprints on the shore, particularly in these days of asymmetric threat from terrorists - it is actually quite difficult for terrorists to get out and get at ships, unless they are in very constrained waters or very close into shore. It was interesting in Op Telic that the only reason the Seventh Armoured Brigade could go over the line of start time was because of stuff they had taken from the amphibious task group of the sea-based logistics there. I think this is seen now in the MOD and it is something that we are aspiring to. The Americans are doing it on a huge scale of course. But that is our way of guaranteed access.

Q36 Mike Gapes: As you are aware, the French government has been going through discussions about its future aircraft carrier programme and made a decision recently which was quite controversial internally, to go for an option of a conventionally powered carrier. Do you see possibilities that there may be cooperation with the carriers in the future when they have a new system, and are you in any discussions with your French counterparts about how that might work?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I talk quite frequently with Admiral Jean-Louis Battet, who is the Head of their Navy. I think maybe he had hope of greater cooperation or greater linkage between design and things like that when he went down this route. I am sure he made absolutely the right decision not to go for another nuclear carrier, and he made that for whatever reasons he made it. But certainly I would not have gone down the route of a nuclear carrier; they are expensive and there are other issues that affect them. So I think it was the right decision he made. We have got a very long way down our design route and our designs and things we want are not necessarily the same that they want. We were badly scarred by the Project Horizon, the common new generation frigate, which is the same thing, and NATO frigate, NFR90, that package, which is all the same ship, which went on and on because we could not actually get our standards and designs aligned. What we have made clear all the time is that whereas there might be scope industry-to-industry to make savings at the lower level, what we will not do is to go and say, "Let us look at re-designing this thing." That would kick all our timescales out and it would cause us very real problems and it would not necessarily be what we wanted and it would delay this thing and make it more expensive. Generally, if you can get things on time then you are more likely to get them to cost, and that is an important area. There might be savings in, for example, let us say there are four engines per carrier, and instead of eight there will be 12 engines, and that means a possibility there. So in some of the subsystems and industry-to-industry there might be scope for making some savings. Looking to the future beyond that I think there is scope, for when you look at Europe the only people with what I call big carriers - the Italians are building one of about 27,000 tonnes - would be the French and ourselves, and I am sure that we can come up within the context of the European Battle Group or whatever else, or the European part of NATO, some way of operating our carriers so that we were taking the weight between us on that issue. I am sure there is some scope for that, possibly, but we have only just started addressing that sort of thing.

Q37 Mike Gapes: So you are talking about operational cooperation with British aircraft flying on to French carriers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The problem there is of course they are flying Raphael and that needs catapults and wires and of course we are going for the STOVAL variant, which has a jump and does not have wires, so helicopters may be transferring across, yes. Just as an aside, these new carriers have immense flexibility; they can carry all sorts of other aircraft. Although the main focus is this deep strike role with the JCA, the STOVAL Joint Combat Aircraft, they are capable of so many other things - a big, flat deck has huge capabilities. We operated off Illustrious six Chinooks across Pakistan into Afghanistan during the Afghanistan crisis, with 40 commandos; we could operate 20 Chinooks off the new platform. That has to have huge advantages for us if we ever wanted to do that, in places in the world where we cannot get to otherwise. So it has this immense flexibility.

Q38 Rachel Squire: You will not be surprised, Admiral, if I want to pick up a bit more on the future of aircraft carriers, both because of my time in serving in the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, but also my interest as a local MP for the Rosyth dockyard and my hopes, along with other MPs, for getting a major share of the work. First of all, picking up on the question there about cooperation with France, I was looking at a Warships Magazine interview with you in January/February 2003 and you were asked then about the discussion about the new carriers contract that was placed at the end of January 2003 and the merits of competing companies, but you were quoted as saying, "What matters to me is that the Royal Navy gets the first carrier by 2012. Who builds the ships is neither here nor there. The work will be done in the UK." I would like you first of all to perhaps reinforce that you still do see the work being done in the UK, and also ask you about your feelings about (whoever is the First Sea Lord) that opportunity to receive the first carrier in the Royal Navy in 2012. Is that still achievable or is there a general air of mood that the date has somehow moved beyond 2012 for the first future aircraft carrier to be in operation?

Admiral Sir Alan West: To answer the first part of the question, it is of course UK government policy to build all warships within the United Kingdom, or the ships of warlike purpose within the United Kingdom. I have to say personally I am rather pleased that is the case because I think it is important to have that capability. Some people have different views but that is my own view. I think in the context of that it is great that we have started this work, discussing with the various ship builders about some sort of strategy for the future, how we can smooth the amount of work there is, how we can look at a portion, what is available in terms of work, because when the carriers are ordered there will be a large amount of work required from our yards. There is the UK Naval Shipbuilding Industrial Strategy work that is going on, which I think is going to come to a conclusion by the second half of next year, and I am really pleased that that is now being undertaken. We have of course six Type 45s being built. The first three completed orders, the second three the hulls, yes, but not all the fittings, but that is still there, and we are going to have eight of those. We have the Astutes, of course, with three fully ordered and items for a fourth coming along. Looking at our requirements for the future, there is a requirement for a placement for our Royal Fleet Auxiliaries and there are also the carriers of course. Those have not been ordered as yet, nor have the follow-on Astutes or the next two Type 45s, but assuming all those things happen it will be quite a load. Therefore, I think it is absolutely right, looking at the ability to build and not wanting to have huge peaks and troughs, that we talk to industry and look at all the facilities that are available and work out a plan for how this can be done, not losing the requirement to get good value, time and cost and all these sorts of things. Actually I have to say, although we have had some bad experiences over the last few years I do believe that the UK yards are getting better. I went up and saw Illustrious the other day up in Rosyth and Rosyth has churned out the carriers - they have had three refits in a row and all the benefits of having a stream of things, and with all the money saving ways they can get because they learn how to go here and where to put a bit of kit, it is paying off. It has been done to time and cost and it is fantastic. I think we need to do this across all of our industry, and within the MOD we have looked at the maritime coherence sea package. We have said that it is no good, because of the amount of money available to us, to think we are going to get all the Royal Auxiliaries replaced now, but let us look at how we can stretch this out and it will fit in with industry and how we can come to some sensible arrangement. I am very pleased that those bits of work are going on and I think we can come to some sensible conclusion with British industry. As I say, it is important still that they realise that things have to be done to time and cost. The ISD and exact dates, I am still adamant that I want it in 2012. I would be very silly - I mean, we will not know exactly that until we have the final Main Gate and final response from the Integrator and the Alliance. There has been a bashing around about what the contract is and that is when we will finally see. I would still like to make 2012. That is the date I would like to make. Certainly all my experience is that every time something goes on a few years you pay for that, because you have to pay for overheads, you have to pay for all the other things and it all costs you money. Therefore I think we need to crack on with this as fast we can or it will end up costing us more money. That is what I think we ought to do, and so that is where I stand on it.

Q39 Rachel Squire: Just how disappointed are you that the order for the future aircraft carrier has not taken place, as it was said it would, in 2004, and any concerns you have, both about the longer term impact on the Navy of delay, but also - and I will perhaps come back a bit later about the industry issue - how do you keep the skilled work forces available throughout the country if there is constant delay on work to maintain those skills and provide new experience to those at the yards that can be so important in providing the Royal Navy with what it needs when it needs it?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The way I would start answering that is that we have had quite big problems over the Astute programme. The initial price that was quoted, the initial timing, the initial delivery dates, I think initially in 1993 it was something like two and a half billion and it was going to be ready in 2005, or something. I think it has gone up by about 35% and it is going to be delivered four years later. Part of the reason for that was because we had stopped building ballistic missiles, I believe, we had finished with our vanguards and there was then a gap, and, as you rightly say, all the skilled workers, all the skilled designers, everybody disappeared. There was then a gap and then we had to build this up again, and that is not a clever way of doing things. You need a drum beat of these things to get the best answer out of it, and therefore to fall off the precipice and not do anything for a while and then suddenly order them to do something is not a clever way of doing it. Doing that within the constraints of our funding and treasury rules and everything else is difficult. You ask me: am I disappointed we have not ordered it? I am disappointed. I think this is a very good test for our department, the Ministry of Defence. We stated quite clearly in 1997 that the carriers were crucial for expeditionary warfare. It was again said, as I say, in the extra chapter, again in the White Paper. 1997 is seven years ago. I know all the reasons why it has happened - there have been problems on the industry side, there have been problems on our process side - but we really do need to get on with it; and, in terms of judging how a department does, if the Government ministers want to go and do something, it seems to me it should happen, but then I am rather an old‑fashioned sailor, I suppose, and I think that is what should happen. I am disappointed, but I think now it is cracking on, and the fact we have 60% of design finality there will mean there will be savings later, because we are clearer what we want, and, of course, the NAO and PACs have picked up the fact that if you go into these things without knowing exactly what is what, your costs will be more later. So in that sense I am reassured, but we really have got to get going, and talking about, "Gosh, there might be an excess of work in British yards" - yes, there might be, but if we do not order something there will not be and people will go and there will be a problem. That is why in maritime coherency work, work with industry I believe is very important, and I think it will be good for the UK and for UK industry. Having seen things like the yard up in the Clyde, how the new technique is coming on there, having seen what people like Murray Easton have done at Barrow where they are really getting on top of this, having seen what is coming out of back-ops in terms of carrier refit work, I believe British industry can do these things, and we should encourage them, and that is an important thing, but that is slightly my personal view on it, I have to say.

Chairman: If Rachel cannot get a good press release out of that, Admiral, for her weekend papers I will be very surprised!

Q40 Richard Ottoway: Admiral, following on from carriers to air defence, you made it pretty clear when it was announced that the FA2s were going to be phased out in 2006, that you were not happy about it and at that time you were under the impression that the Type 45s, the first lot, were going to arrive in 2007. Given that it is now not going to arrive until 2009, I imagine you are even more angry, but just what is your level of concern over the gap there and how do you propose to fill it?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The answer is that this was always a risk, and there was a period when there was a gap and there was a risk and how long was that gap going to be. One has to put it in context in that when we go out to sea we find we have a layered air defence capability, and the fighters are the long‑range ones and we have medium range missiles and we have close range, things like Golden Keeper, Falcon, Phalanx, Sea Wolf, and then we also have soft kill capabilities which are very efficient against certain missiles as well. So it is a whole package of capabilities and this was one layer. When the decision was made we had to look at the amount of money we thought it was going to cost to re‑engine and remove obsolescence from the FA2, and I believe the decision was the correct decision because it would have cost a lot of money, and I am not even convinced that we could have actually got a bigger engine into that FA2 air frame. I am sure some people say, yes, you can, but we are pretty scarred with people attempting things like that. So I think, because of obsolescence, because we could not get the bigger engine in it, which meant we would have real problems in operating in some of the areas of the world where we seem to operate more and more, I believe that was the right decision, especially because the real focus we wanted from this air carrier now was deep strike and close air support for when we make theatre entry. Therefore, the shift from FA2 to the GR7, or GR9 hopefully, I think was the right thing. I was paying off 800 squadron earlier this year - very sad; a very good squadron; they had actually shot down a number of the aeroplanes that were trying to attack me in the Falklands - but they were very bullish about where they were going, and in 2006 when 801 pays off 800 will stand up again, hopefully with all GR9s, but, GR7s, GR9s, it will not have the same anti‑air warfare capability. It will not. Even when we get a dated incident of GR7s or GR9s will not have that same capability, because there is no doubt the FA2s have got a superb anti air warfare capability; but, bearing in mind the limited capability they will have, the layered defence we have, the fact of what it would have cost to try to keep those other things running, bearing in mind all the other pressures on defence, I think it was the right decision to make. We will still be taking risks in that gap period in certain types of operations, and I would not be too happy being in a very high air threat, but let us take something like the Falklands operation, that gap period. Unless there was someone there to help you, we would still do it because we do what we are told to do by the Government and we would still make a mess of the guys having a go at us, but we would much rather have them around.

Q41 Richard Ottoway: Are you still standing by the statement you made that unless you actually had, in certain operations, some short cover, you would actually tell the Government you could not do something?

Admiral Sir Alan West: We do not like saying we cannot do it. The Navy never says it cannot do it; nor do our Armed Forces. What we would say is, "These are the risks there and these risks are extremely high." You have to make up some scenario where it would be, and if it was that sort of situation then one would have to say how high that risk was, and then one would start doing palliatives as to how you stop it. Is there a way of making sure they cannot use any of their airfields? Are we able to use special forces? Are we able to use TacToms, for instance? So you can get round these things, but in a general sense there is a gap, yes, and until we get the JSF there will be a gap, but I still think it was the right decision, on balance, for all those other reasons.

Q42 Richard Ottoway: One of the reasons that you got sunk in the Falklands was due to fairly limited airborne early warning radar cover. What is the requirement or how do you expect to meet the requirement for AEW radar with the new CBS?

Admiral Sir Alan West: It is MASC. All these bloody acronyms!

Q43 Richard Ottoway: Maritime airborne surveillance control?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There we are. Even we get caught out with these bloody acronyms! MASC is the part of this whole package; and, the carrier package, everyone focuses very much on aircraft carriers, but it is a £12 billion package altogether. Most of the cost is the joint combat aircraft. There is also a MASC part of it and then £3 billion is the carrier. So it is actually a tiny amount compared with the totality of this, giving you huge flexibility, of course. MASC, which is this airborne early warning capability, at the moment the money and funding that is in there is really looking at something rather like the Sea King 7's capability, which is extremely good radar and a control type fit, and we are looking at a series of options. Should it still be a Sea King? I think they will be quite old by then. EH101? They are looking at a number of options. What will the options be? Should it be UAB? Should it be an EH101? I do not know, but I imagine the costings that they are basing it on would be on an EH101 air frame with that same fit, I would think. That is what is being looked at the moment and there is lots of work going on there and no decisions have been made. The Sea King 7s, we have been very, very pleased with. Not only are they superb for airborne early warning, they also have this ability over land which we were quite unaware of until about a year before Telic, and, of course, in Telic they were controlling, they were able to spot tanks and APCs coming out of Basra and they were able to guide 847 Naval Air Squadron Lynxs onto these targets and destroy them, and 847 destroyed, I think, 50 tanks, APCs and various other vehicles coming out guided by the Sea Kings; so extremely good radar and very good airborne early warning.

Q44 Richard Ottoway: So the least you will have is the Sea Kings?

Admiral Sir Alan West: That would be the absolute least, and in terms of timing, again I do not think one can get too excited over a year here or a year there or a year later, because Sea Kings are adequate to do the AEW initiative. A year here or there does not really matter. There seems to be a place for it at some stage.

Q45 Richard Ottoway: Looking at your artist's impression in your handbook of the Type 45, the aerial is quite high up there. I suppose to a limited degree the Type 45 cover without the Sea King?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes, it gives a very good cover, but not as good as--- You are getting your radar right up there and it means, with the Lynx, you can stop transmitting on anything else so all you have got maybe transmitting is that thing up in the sky, so people cannot find you; but, yes, part of the reason the ship is so large was to get that aerial, that five ton aerial that rotates, or whatever it is, and I cannot remember the exact height, above the sea, and that was quite a thing for the ship designers.

Q46 Richard Ottoway: Going back quickly to a point we made about the gap, the FA2s, if you are doing this type of operation which we were discussing, and you would have to tell the Government what the risk was, would it affect your decision‑making? It is a fairly obvious question really. Would the availability of shore bases and perhaps the United States help you with that? How dependent do you have to be on it?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think if one looks at large and medium scale, we find it quite difficult to conceive of an operation where the Americans would not be with us. Therefore in terms of, for example, the CVF, I have talked with the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) in America. He is very keen for us to get these because he sees us slotting in with his‑‑‑

Q47 Richard Ottoway: You are providing cover for him?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think, although they might seem to have all sorts everything, they have not. For example, in Afghanistan last year they had to call on the French to bail them out with their carrier. He really wants us to have these, but he wants us to have same sort of clout as one of their carriers, which is this figure at 36. He would find that very useful, and really we would mix and match with that. It is always dangerous, as I say, because the thing you can guarantee is the war you are involved in will not be the one anyone has predicted, but I would find it difficult to conceive of a bigger operation where we would not have the Americans with us, where we are doing something completely without the Americans.

Q48 Mr Crausby: You are on record as a big supporter of nuclear powered attack submarines, as I am. How concerned are you about the loss of the capability as a result of the reductions in the SSN fleet?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think I am on record as saying that I am concerned. It comes back, of course, to the amount of money you have got to do all these things. One of my concerns on the SSNs is we have now got an ageing fleet, and one thing that we just will not do is take any risk with nuclear safety. We are so safety conscious on it that it does cause us problems sometimes because - it is quite correct - we would just absolutely not take a risk. It would be different if there were a world war going on, but when there is not we are unwilling to take a risk. Therefore, as they get older, inevitably little things might crop and you say, "Hang on, we want to look at this more carefully." I think the figure from SDR was 10 SSNs. We went from 12 to 10. From that ten, how many of those, on average, am I able to guarantee running? The figure is probably about six. My worry with going down to eight was: how many of those can I guarantee running? As I say, they are getting older and how can I be sure that I will have the numbers I need for the sorts of operations that are laid down in the Defence Planning Guide, and that requires actually six SSNs, five or six, depending on the circumstances, and with eight of these old ageing ones I am concerned. Can I actually provide that? When I have got the Astutes, then, with eight, I will be able to do all the things that I need to do, because they are newer, they have got a different core, all of these sort of benefits. We are working with the Americans about exchanging thoughts and things on their capability ‑ we work very closely with them ‑ and therefore I think I will be happier, but that was really my concern, having gone down to this number of eight, because we just refuse to take a risk. When I took over as Commander in Chief, because of a number complexities - pinkle welds and hydrogen cracking - it does not matter what they are - there were things that we were concerned about and having to look at very carefully. After a huge amount of work, we found this was not such a big deal but then I had one SSN, I think, when I took over as Commander in Chief. We had nine running recently, but that is why I am concerned. There is a lot of loose talk about, "If we did not have a nuclear deterrent we would not need nuclear submarines". The first nuclear submarine we got was before we got a nuclear deterrent, and we had been running a deterrent. I think, Resolution went on patrol on 14 June 1968 and since then we have done continuous deterrents, but we had SSNs before that, because SSNs are the only true submarine still, even allowing for airborne propulsion, and I could deploy them at huge speed at long ranges around the world. They do carry TacToms. They frighten other navies. Most navies in the world, if they want to fight you, will not to go sea if you have got and SNN there. The only navies who will go sea are the Americans, ourselves, the French to a limited extent, possibly the Russians if they really had to. Other navies will not to go sea, because they would be dead. The only thing I can guarantee to kill a major surface combat is an SSN. They are able to do a SIGINT without anyone knowing, they are able to go places and no‑one knows they have been there and come away and they give me huge capabilities, and that is why I like them.

Q49 Mr Crausby: There are some that would argue that they are hugely expensive, and you have already discussed the question of working within the budget. There is a huge diversity of tasks that it faces. They are only of any real use in war‑fighting situations. How would you answer that, and how confident are you that the next batch of Astute will be ordered. Will the pressure not come on enormously to block the next three orders?

Admiral Sir Alan West: In answer to your question about war‑fighting, in war‑fighting they are absolutely, they are the tops really, they are fantastic, ranging from their TacToms, which block, when we have got those, for a 1500 mile range, can re-programme in the air, are more accurate than the current ones that are much cheaper and I can swap them over with the Americans and they help me out in the Navy; but actually in peace‑time, in limited peace‑time, they can carry special forces, they can insert them and no‑one ever knows they have been there and get them back again, they can carry out SIGINTs in places where people have not a clue that is going on, and we have some really good coups in terms of anti‑terrorist stuff because of that; so they are able to do other things as well. The only thing is that they are exceptionally expensive, I agree with you, but for those capabilities, particularly in war‑time and the other, I believe they are worth it. We clearly cannot have lots of them, because they do cost a lot of money. There is certainly a requirement for them to protect our deterrent boats should there be a threat to our deterrent boats. If we take all of that together, I am convinced we need to keep them, and I believe we need to keep building the Astutes, because once I have got those my worry about the ageing fleet and my worry about having availability will go. Three ordered; a long leap for the fourth. I have seen nothing at all at the moment that makes me think that there is an intention not to go and order the remainder. There will be an interesting debate about the future deterrent within this country which will have to happen. I would be surprised if it did not happen in the next Parliament, after the election, because when one looks at time‑lines for replacing, as was said in the SDR, we expected the current deterrent, the Trident force, to last 30 years ‑ that takes you up to the mid 2020s. If you think about the timescales to replace that, then people have got to start talking about that in the next Parliament. In the context of that, I am sure people will also talk about what protection is needed. First of all, there has got to be a decision made, an absolutely political decision: do we want to keep nuclear weapons? Then, what is the best way of doing it, and then on from there. So that is all going to have to happen in the future, and that will all have an impact, I am sure, on nuclear submarine numbers.

Q50 Mr Crausby: There have obviously been problems with BAe and Barrow. Are you satisfied that things are on track now and to what extent will that have an effect on further orders?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The answer is that there have been problems. I think it is firmly back on track now, I think they have really gripped it, and some of the things like the welding practices there and the levels - almost no re-weld required at all - and the quality of that sort of thing; they have started to master the computer-assisted design, which was a much bigger issue than anyone thought it would be, and I am very impressed that they are getting to grips with it, but they had not initially, and there were lots of things wrong and that is very unfortunate. I think British industry at times has been its own worst enemy and I am glad now that people in the ship building area seem to be getting their act together, which is great.

Q51 Mike Gapes: Following on from one of your earlier answers about the reduction in the number of vessels, the mine counter‑measure vessels, one has been paid off, two more are to go in the near future, and, because of the situation improving in Northern Ireland, three patrol vessels are due to go in the next two years or so?

Admiral Sir Alan West: In fact two of the SNVs have gone already. That is my point. These things have been going. I am sorry, this is me having a little moan about this. I am losing regiments and things like this and the great British public do not seem to care. I am very sad, and my sailors are very sad as well.

Q52 Mike Gapes: We are giving you the opportunity today to raise the profile a bit! I understand that there has been no agreement yet, or discussion in detail, with the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the question of fishery protection vessels in future. I would like you to tell us whether you are confident that there will be enough of the smaller vessels available, particularly given the complex range of tasks that they might have to be engaged in. You have already mentioned in an earlier answer the fact that we have to have oil rig protection, or things of that kind, which we saw in the Gulf. Frankly, we have got oil facilities around the UK. I would be interested to know whether you feel we have enough of the smaller vessels to do the jobs that we need?

Admiral Sir Alan West: In terms of Defra and fishery protection, I am sure there will be on‑going work there, but I would be surprised if we did not keep the role of fishery protection working for them with our three river class and occasionally using some of the SNVs looking to the future, but I think the contract for the three rivers, for example, runs out in 2005, I think ‑ I would have to come back with the exact figure ‑ something like that, and that will have to be renegotiated, because, as you know, they were bought and constructed on a new scheme, effectively, where the company built them and we effectively rent them and have contracted logistic support for them and we would have to renew their contract, but I think that will continue.

Q53 Mike Gapes: That is three vessels to replace--- There used to be five?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes. Those are the three Rivers, and a huge success they have been. They are much bigger, they are faster. They caught our clever fishermen out initially because fishermen are not silly and they worked out what the speed of the old ships was so they knew that if they saw one how long it would take to get to the guy who was cheating. Initially we had great success, because, of course, it goes about five knots faster. I think they have now twigged with the speed, but they have been a great success and it is useful to have them and the MCMVs around UK waters, because, like you, I do believe we need to have grey ships around the UK. We have the fleet ready escort, we have the very worked up mechanism for maritime counter‑terrorism. I do not know if you remember the MV Nisha incident. I think that showed how well that works, which involves special forces, which involved the fleet ready port, which involves helicopters and everything, and it worked very well. There might have been some issues as to exactly which bit of the police were responsible because the Home Secretary is responsible in this country for our territorial seas, but that worked well. We have ships working up at places like Portland; so there are other ships around at varying degrees of worked up status, some of them pretty worked up, some not, so they are available to deploy in UK waters. I think the loss of the three Northern Ireland patrol craft, which was one on station at any one time, makes sense in the Northern Ireland context, but when one looks at UK waters I think we will have to look at how we deploy some of our units to make sure we have got coverage. We are doing a lot more work now with all the various Government departments, Sir David Owen and his team talking about maritime security, looking in intelligence terms at what is the maritime risk, and that is good because I think when one looks back to 9/11 we were not well joined up at all, I think very badly, and I think that has come on hugely. Looking to the future, are we going to need to set aside ships specifically on top of the fleet ready escort, for example, for this task? I think that is still open for further work. I think that is something we have to look at, do some more exercises practising it and perhaps we might find we would like some more. Instinctively one feels it would be nice to have more grey ships around, but at the moment probably around UK waters on any given day we have enough around to be called on if necessary. We also, of course, have the ODTs, the Royal Marine Group based in Faslane, which can go places, and other fleet diving teams; so there are other groups of maritime who are available to help in these sorts of instances.

Q54 Mike Gapes: Were you concerned that the reduction in the number of vessels overall will have an impact in personnel in terms of opportunities for younger officers to have an early experience in their career of the command of a vessel?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Absolutely. Mr Hancock raised that issue and it is absolutely right. It is a wonderful opportunity for a young officer to learn his trade, to make mistakes which are not going to be too devastating and to learn things that will let him go on and become a much better officer in the future. So, as I said before, we are looking hard at how we can adjust things to make allowance for the fact that we have got reduced opportunities there.

Q55 Mike Gapes: But it is a real issue?

Admiral Sir Alan West: It is an issue, yes, absolutely.

Q56 Rachel Squire: Admiral, can I come back, surprise surprise, to the consequences for industry. You said just a little bit earlier that British industry can be its own worst enemy and needs to get its act together, and you have referred to these talks that are now taking place between the MoD and ship builders to identify ways to arrest industrial decline and ensure the UK industry can manage the Navy's ship building programme over the next 15 years. I am interested in whether the Navy has any direct representation on such discussions. For instance, I gather there was a meeting held and another one at the beginning of this week, but also you seem to be thinking that this is a positive thing that has happened, whereas what I am hearing is that it is developing into yet another vague talking shop which may not, in fact, facilitate and achieve progress. I am interested in any further comment you want to make?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I have to be careful because I could fall back on CDPs role, but I refuse to, as I am Chief of Staff in the Navy and I think that everything to do with maritime I have a responsibility directly through the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister for the fighting capability and morale of the Navy, and I think that takes every single line whether it is to do with procurement, or whatever. So I am probably going beyond my remit in some ways, but that has never stopped me in the past. Yes, there are naval officers who are involved in it, for example, the controller who works for CDP, Adam Cheadle, is one of the driving forces. So there are naval officers there, but clearly he works within the DPA and for CDP, and not directly for me. I had not heard this had become a talking point. I would be rather sad if that were the case. I do not know because I do not keep very close alongside it, but I will certainly ask the question when I go back there, and I think that will be sad because I think there is an opportunity there, and, looking at the programme we hope to have in terms of building, we do need this sort of discussion if we are to smooth it out properly and not have these huge peaks and troughs and all the problems that that causes. So, I hope that that is not the case and I hope it will go on. Discussions like this are always terribly difficult, are they not, because people are talking about profits and goodness knows what. So I imagine it is very difficult at times. Of course from our perspective and the MoD perspective we want to get the best value for money, and there is only time and cost - quality, time and cost - and I am sure that is what the CDP is demanding. As I say, I hope it does not become a non‑event, because I see that with the maritime coherence work as rather important.

Q57 Rachel Squire: The points that have been made about the importance of maintaining short and medium term ship building skills for the future planned naval programme, some of the concerns about the impact that it will have as much on the Navy potentially as well as actually on the yards themselves. Also it almost leads me to say that, if we ended up not maintaining those skills, would you ever see an admiral advocating that work should in fact be taken out of Britain if we no longer have the skills available here because of the talking shop rather than the actual action?

Admiral Sir Alan West: If within the UK it was impossible to build the equipment that was required, then I am sure that a First Sea Lord would say, "We will have to go to wherever we can get it", because if that is the requirement it has got to be done. I personally think that would be extremely unfortunate. That is my own view. There are some people who say it does not really matter in this global world what way you go. I do not believe that. That is my personal view. I am not saying that is the personal opinion of the MoD.

Q58 Mr Hancock: May I ask you a supplementary? I share Rachel's view on the ship building capability, which is important, but I am also concerned about the ship repair and maintenance facilities. With only two ships due for major work next year, three yards, all of them desperate to have at least a share of that work, poses some real problems for the Navy. I would be interested to know what the thinking is about how that is going to work out, because it is a grave consequence to one or other of those yards who are not going to have a Royal Naval major ship refit underway, and that is potentially going to put a lot of people out of work very quickly?

Admiral Sir Alan West: This is another part of this package in terms of looking at industrial capabilities. It is not just builders; it is also that as well. I know that the Defence Logistics Organisation in particular, what is the Warship Support Agency, but which will be changing from agency status, is looking very carefully at that, because we have to balance that also with supporting where our ships are and where our people are, and that is very, very important to us. Again, it becomes part of this total package. I would quite to like see the build, repair and all of this become one, where we are looking carefully at that whole balance, looking at the yards there are and the work there is around to keep numbers of skilled workers and to meet our requirement, as I say, to time and cost and all those things, and also helping the yard, because otherwise, if you have these great peaks and troughs and things dropping away, at the end of day, if you have got huge overheads, people will charge you for those overheads anyway. You have to be quite careful about that. What we have managed to achieve over the last few years is to really drive down the costs of how much it costs to get these repair periods done, and that has been a huge success. Having done that, I think we need to get a nice balance across the piece so that we can get a sensible balance of work in the various yards still delivering the efficiencies and the value for money that we require in defence.

Q59 Mr Hancock: Do you see a time coming where one or other of those yards are going to be so under stress: because (you are right) the price has been driven down so competitively that there is a suggestion that some yards might take a loss just to keep work, and that is great for the Navy and the MoD but hideously bad for the future of the yard if it has to do that? There is a very real crisis about to hit the yard. One or other of them is not going to get a job, and there is not much on the horizon. I would be interested to know what the internal thinking within the Navy is. If you want to maintain a strategy of having three base ports for ships, then you have to have a policy where the facility is maintained there, and that will not be done through the largess of the companies that operate them; it will only be done if they can see that they are going to get enough income out of looking after war ships in their port?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There is an over capacity, which is effectively what you are saying, in terms of warship repair in the UK. That is why it is important to tie this altogether with the build aspects as well. I would have thought that it was not beyond the wit of man to achieve something there, which is what I had hoped might come out of some of this work that is going on. You are quite right, there is more ship repair capacity than there is warship work, and it is impossible to get other work to fill the void, although some of the yards have tried very hard on that and have done quite well on bits and pieces, but it is not enough to cover them. So it is an issue that we are well aware of, it is one that we are concerned about and I hope that in discussions we can come up with an answer. I think the answer to that is to actually get it as part of the package with build as well, and I think something could be done; and that is why I hope they achieve what people are talking about as they move forward.

Q60 Mr Roy: Admiral, the Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability project MARS, as it is known, in February last year the Minister for the Armed Forces said that the first element of the MARS programme is expected by the end of the decade. The PPA website now says that the first MARS ship is expected to enter service early in the next decade. What are the operational consequences of these delays?

Admiral Sir Alan West: If I can answer it in a round-about way, part of the reasoning for this, you remember I mentioned maritime coherency work, and this was looking at the amounts of money available for all these various things and, in terms of the maritime, stretching this out to make it affordable over a period. That is why MARS has slipped. What is the impact of this? The bit of MARS that is required for CBF - that is not such a problem. Where my problem lies in the short‑term is in the tanker gap. We have some very old tankers, and a number of those are single hull. Rules come in, I think it is 2010 ‑ I will have to confirm that with you ‑ where basically all tankers have to be double hull. Our new ones, the waves, both are double hulled. That does not apply until 2010. Government for military shipping, you do not have to abide ‑ there is a letter clause ‑ but generally in the UK we do not like doing that sort of thing and there is a real issue that some countries might say, "I am sorry, I am not having you coming here", so there is an issue there, plus some of our orders are getting extremely old and therefore they are costing more and more to run and maintain, and we are actively looking at the moment at this tanker issue. Is there some way of us replacing the tankers in the shorter term, some of the tankers, to enable us to get round this problem? That has not been resolved yet and it is part of some of this maritime coherency work. The actual deep MARS part of it, this is the support for the CDF, the float logistic support for exhibition, or that bit of it, all of that has been slipped, as you rightly say, as part of this maritime coherency work and those timescales are still acceptable on that basis.

Q61 Mr Roy: Why is that timescale between the end of the decade and early in the next decade?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I do not think there is a final date on that yet. I do not think they have a final date. That is what is going on with this work at the moment. The other parts of it are the casualty replacement ship. At the moment we use Argos for the fitting there. Again there is an issue over funding for that, and we might have to look at options of maybe running Argos longer. Always when you run things, of course, your running costs get higher. That is always a problem. So there is that and that is being looked at as part of this work. No final decision has been made. The other thing is Diligence. We have just had a refit, not a refit but a lot of work done to her, but again we have to think about replacing her. I think the acronym for that is OMAR, which I am damned if I know what OMAR is. Anyway, basically Diligence is there to repair ships at sea and is invaluable.

Q62 Mr Roy: Why do not you give things the proper name so we all know what we are talking about?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Someone invents these, I think. The basic repair ship was invaluable during Telic. We found it invaluable there, so we will need to replace that, and again there is no funding at the moment for that. This is all being looked at in terms of maritime coherency. That is why I think we need to speak to the industry and look at this building, because there is a lot of stuff that is needed there. If we string it out and get the money and as long as we are getting the right value for money and things to time and cost, if we can manage to get that right, we can have a good steady drum beat of work which I would have thought must be a good thing for everybody.

Q63 Mr Roy: All things being equal?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Absolutely.

Q64 Mr Hancock: Can I ask you about the future of the Royal Marines and how you see them fitting in? Does it annoy you, as the head of the Senior Service and very much the head of the Royal Marines as well, that they are sometimes seen as part of the Army more than they are of the Navy?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I think, again, we go back to this thing, the average man in the street, when they see someone in a camouflage suit, assumes he is a soldier, do they not? Actually, when one looks at Telic, the whole of the right flank was taken by the Royal Marines, who, having done that, stopped any pollution going into the Gulf and enabled the Americans then to strike into Iraq followed by the 7 Armoured Brigade, but, you know, the man in the street would have assumed that was all soldiers. So you are absolutely right about that perception. I think within defence that is not an issue. We all understand quite clearly about the Royal Marines, and they have this very specialist amphibious skill, and that is something that takes a lot of training and a lot of work. They are one of the R2 brigades ‑ so they are ready for quick deployment ‑ but it is that amphibious focus and skill that is so important, and they in that sense form the lead echelon to enable us to have a short access, to get theatre entry and then enable more of the Army to come moving on through. We have spent money on their shipping, and I think one of the great success stories over the last few years is replacing amphibious shipping, and the HM Ocean is a super ship. I do not know whether you have managed to visit her. She is a wonderful platform. I would love to have two of them, as you would imagine. She is a wonderful platform, very capable and an amazing price. No‑one else in the world could have got an LPH at that price. The two landing platform docks: Albion and Bulwark, Albion now fully at R2: she has done all her work-up exercises in north Norway, out off the Americas, an amazing commander control capability; her ISTAR set up there, her intelligence officers, they have really set up a network enabling a capability for running major operations. Again, there are hiccups and problems getting it dragged out of builds late and this sort of thing, but at the end of the day, for the amount we paid for it, it is amazing. It is an amazing ship. We should be very proud that was knocked up and Britain built and is there. The same sort of platform, the LPD17 in America, I think is almost twice as much, to give the flavour. So we have done well on the amphibious shipping. The Marines, we restructured them in Commando 21 to enable them to have a bit more punch within the group that they have got. We have given them, effectively, covered type protection with the Viking vehicles, which is a bit like FRES in a sense; it gives that sort of same capability. We have not really reduced their size. They are still at the same sort of size. The Fleet Protection Group do a wonderful job in terms of nuclear protection. We have focused a lot on that, because when I took over as Commander in Chief, before I did this job, I was concerned, when I became First I was even more concerned. We have now focused on that and they do a very good job there and I am much reassured. They are very good in terms of their embarkation of ships and boarding and this sort of thing. We see a very clear role for them. What of the future? It would be quite nice, possibly, to look at maybe enhancing to a square type brigade format. This will all depend on the future Army and how that all goes, but we very clearly need a separate organisation to be specialist at amphibious and literal warfare, which is a very specialist thing. We have learnt from bitter experience in two world wars and elsewhere that if you do not have people who are specialist in it then you become unstuck.

Q65 Mr Hancock: You are right about Ocean and the work on Albion. You have talked glowingly about them. The real issue for the future is the replacement of helicopters, and that surely is going to come. Do you see that as something that is going to be on the new horizon, the replacement of the Sea King and Lynx in a way in which it is going to enable them to become even more deployable, more usable?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There is a lot of work going on at the moment looking across all of defence where we go with our helicopters, because quite a lot of them are getting quite old now, and that relates particularly to the support helicopter fleet but also to some of the lighter helicopters like Lynx. That work is going flat out at the moment to see where we go in the future, to see exactly what should be done. From my perspective in the Navy I am very pleased to have 42 Merlins. It is, without a doubt, the best ASW helicopter in the world. I have no doubt about that. It is due to have a CSP, which is a sort of update that is due to come along. That update has to be looked at as part of this total package for what we do with all our helicopters. There are issues over the air frame life for my Lynx helicopters, and in the Army case it is the same, and they need to look at where we are going to go on this. Are we going to replace this? How is that going to be done? All of that is part of the big package of work at the moment.

Q66 Mr Hancock: Taking Rachel Squire's point about British capability, is there a replacement for those helicopters that you see readily available from within the UK or on the horizon from within the UK manufacturing base?

Admiral Sir Alan West: It is almost too complex. I think the answer is, if you are saying, "Can Augusta Westland build them?", I think there are ones they can. It depends on what the final package is of what we want. There is no doubt that I would like all helicopters marinised, but that costs money, and I do not think we could afford that. For example, things like Chinooks, to go for something like a rotofold and for us to be the only people in the world doing it, I think, is too great a risk. We cannot afford to take risks like that. All of these things will have to be part of the equation. I have to say, I do not know where that will go. I am sure that Augusta Westland and what they can produce will be a very key part of any decision‑making, and, almost inevitably, there will be a political aspect to it as well as a military aspect, I am sure.

Q67 Mr Hancock: Is there a real struggle within the Naval Corp to keep the Marines at their current size?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No, I think what we have looked at is the right numbers to meet the commitment we think we have. In the old days when there was a naval target heading, that meant other things had to be adjusted to allow for that. Now that those do not exist, it is a cross‑all defence, I think it is not really a problem. In terms of recruiting I think there is an interest in terms of what you raise. I think, strangely at the moment, we are not recruiting as many Royal Marines as we would like to. I think that is because about 18 months ago we stopped all those massive adverts saying "99 point whatever per cent of you need not apply", or whatever it was, those ones, and when you stop ads it is amazing, that sort of advertising does actually get people in. So I do not think there is any more fundamental issue than that. I am sure we will get recruiting back up, and that number is the number we need to have, the brigade plus the Fleet Protection Group.

Q68 Mike Gapes: Can I ask you some questions about personnel. You told this Committee eight months ago that, although the overall manning levels shortfall was not too worrying, there were some serious gaps. What progress have you made so far in filling those gaps?

Admiral Sir Alan West: We are getting better in some areas, but there are still pinch points that are worrying. Sadly, one of the ways we have resolved some of them, for example, 909 maintainers are not half helped when we have three less ships, in other words six less 900s. That is not the way I always like to do it, but it does make a difference. The business of a nuclear panel of watch-keepers and people like that, the money that was thrown at the FRI for that has helped there because of the bonuses and extra money they get, but we still do have shortages. For example, leading OMs, LOMs, and things like that, there are shortfalls there. There are a number of areas where we got have problems. We are addressing them. We are working at them. Overall we are in an even better position than we were before in terms of manpower. We are well within our line. We have to lose, I think, about 1,250 by 2008. We will manage that. I think at the moment something like 37,500 people trained strength, young trained strength, takes us up to about 40, and we will be coming down to about 39, including the untrained strength, by 2008 with the reduction because our numbers tie exactly to course platform. We are very, very taut in the Navy in terms of numbers, and it relates directly. So if you pay off six destroyers or frigates, three MCMVs, three Northern Ireland patrol vessels, that line of numbers go out and that is how you end up with a smaller number.

Q69 Mike Gapes: Is there a problem, however, if you get a new vessel in and it is available for a longer period of time, which means that people are away from home for a longer time and there are fewer surer jobs than there were because of civilianisation, the use of contractors, and so on, and so you are in a situation where the pressures upon the people that you have got are greater than they were in the past. Is that a problem?

Admiral Sir Alan West: It is, but I think often it is more apparent than real. For example, in terms of squad manning, focusing people on a particular base, the various initiatives we have done - the Navy Board Personnel Initiative - we are helping to resolve a lot of those problems. Basically we are meeting our commitment for 660 over three; in other words no more than 660 days away over three years, which is quite a lot more than the Army and the Air Force, I have to say, but then historically we have been expeditionary and deployable. To make us expeditionary is not difficult because we have always been expeditionary, and that is the sort of figure work we work to. We do not break that. I think there was something like 5% that had done more than 220 in one year was the last figure I looked at last week; so we actually are managing that, and the business of squad manning, trying to get everyone into a certain naval base area to be there, enhancing their quality of life, treating people as individuals, waterfront manning offices where a sailor can walk up and say, "I am getting married in August next year. Is it possible to adjust my leave?" All of those things are beginning to pay off. That does not mean everyone is absolutely happy as Larry, but things like premature voluntary release figures are down for officers and down for ratings, and that is a very good way of gauging that things are working. I would not want to be complacent ‑ that would be very dangerous ‑ because people are working hard. I quite like them working hard, but not too hard, and I think at the moment we have got the balance about right. Looking to the future with ships can that stay away longer, we might have to look at ways of operating more enhanced sort of batch type manning. For example, the Scott, which is a serving ship, I think, last year she spent something like 340 days away at sea, but, of course, she has got 60 in her ship's company of whom 45 are on board at any given time, and, as she goes through the year, people rotate and go home, and some of them rather like that, because they have a whack of a time at home to do courses happily and then come out to rejoin the ship and someone else goes home.

Q70 Mike Gapes: Is there a case to move towards the American model of rotation of crews to keep the ship at sea for a longer period of time? We have actually had, in effect, a change of crew throughout that period?

Admiral Sir Alan West: In a sense I think in Scott that happens. We have not got there yet with the more complex ships. Of course extra people cost money as well, so it is a very fine balance between how much you pay for the extra people to keep it out that long compared to the cost of the ship itself. Even in the old days, I remember in 1966 when I went to join my mine sweeper in Bahrain, it was me and the ship's company of 34 arrived, and we arrived on board and there were a couple of other officers, and the 35 who were there all said, "Tough luck, mate, we are off", and then climbed into an aeroplane and flew home. There was a drop in operational capability, I have to admit, while we tried to find our way around, and I do not think we will ever go back to that.

Q71 Mike Gapes: You have mentioned network enabling capabilities, and so on. Are you confident that we have got the necessary people with skills to deal with that as it comes through, and have you identified the specific skills which we need?

Admiral Sir Alan West: The answer is there are very specific skill sets. We are looking at restructuring within the Navy, having a new branch. So, for example, rather than communicators, actually what are our communicators now that we are all working digitally on a sort of intranet, internet type things? You are actually data managers, and these people now are really data managers and they need special skill sets. There are shortages of these people, but we do get high quality people and our trainees are exceptionally good. As with other areas, when you train people very highly in these areas it is a concern, because people elsewhere are willing to pay more money, but I am glad to say very often for the people who join the Services money is not the sole driving factor or they would not join the Service, but it is always a balance. So the answer is, yes, there are shortages. I think more widely, and it is an interesting point, in the Ministry of Defence, for example, I think we have a shortage, for example, of financial staff and people with the skills for change management across MoD. I have noticed this because in the Navy we have been at the forefront of driving down overheads. We have "Fleet First" where we completely re‑organise the fleet headquarters. We are now pushing to get Second Sea Lords on fleet and making huge savings, but the financial staff with the qualities to go and make this happen quickly, it is quite difficult to hold and train those. So your point about certain areas where we are short of the right quality of people is absolutely valid, and we have to keep a very close eye on that.

Q72 Mike Gapes: You are talking about reducing the total amount of manpower from 37,500 to 36,000 by April 2008, if I have got the figure right?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I did say that. You have got it absolutely right, apart from the 128 ‑ 36,128.

Q73 Mike Gapes: Okay. Do you think that will require any compulsory redundancies?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No, not in the Navy.

Q74 Mike Gapes: Not at all?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No.

Q75 Mike Gapes: A couple of questions related to the question of pilots and air crew. Once the Sea Harrier has been withdrawn, I understand that there are not going to be any more fixed wing naval pilots?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Not at all. Absolutely not true, no. Basically, our people will go and man two of the squadrons of, as I say, GR7s, or, hopefully, they will be GR9s, two of the stable squadrons. There will be two which will be light blue heavy, and two which will be dark blue heavy. So 800 squadron I paid off earlier this year - and I went to their paying off day - in 2006, when 801 squadron pays off, they will form, as part of the Joint Force Harrier, with the new aircraft, the GR9s. These are primarily focused on land attack with a bigger engine, bigger wing and all those capabilities, and we will have, in fact, more fixed wing pilots than we used to have.

Q76 Mike Gapes: Will these pilots not then be converting to fly RAF Harriers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: There is complete cross‑training between the two. We have RAF chaps flying from our carriers and we have our chaps‑‑‑ One of the first guys going into the western desert in Iraq was a Lieutenant Commander flying the GR7s with the RAF in the fighting during Telic. There is complete interchange between the two, and, I have to say I think the Joint Force Harrier has been a huge success story, it has worked really well, and the joy of this is that these aircraft will deploy on the carrier and it means that the Airforce and the Navy pilots will be able to get to where the action is, and that has to be good news.

Q77 Mike Gapes: Do you foresee a time when you will actually have RAF officers in charge of flight deck operations on the new carriers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I would not rule out anything. I think it depends on skill sets and this sort of thing. I could envisage that the flight deck officer or the chap running the sights and landing aids and everything might well be. I think we are completely flexible on this. What I will say, however, is that we do need maritime aviation skills, and that is why we need dark blue officers involved in flying. We must not make the mistake that was made before the Second World War where we lost those aviation skills, which is why we were up a very steep climb throughout the Second World War with lots of losses involved to try and catch up with it, and I think everyone is aware of that, and I know the GBS staff agrees with that; so we need that maritime capability. There is no reason at all why an RAF officer cannot come on the squadron and do this - these guys are interchangeable - and the youngsters are very excited about it. When I have gone up there they have been very excited.

Q78 Mike Gapes: The Royal Navy will continue in recruiting fast track officers?

Admiral Sir Alan West: Absolutely right.

Q79 Mike Gapes: Can I ask about ground crews who service the Harriers? What is going to happen to them? Are they going to be absorbed into the RAF?

Admiral Sir Alan West: No, exactly the same, exactly the same routine. They will be split. So two squadrons will be dark blue heavy and two will be light blue heavy and there will be a mix in the sort of OCU and that area. Indeed, at the moment, I have to say, we have been helped dramatically by the Air Force because they had an overbearing number of maintenance staff and we had an under bearing, and what is the great joy with this Joint Force Harrier is that we are able to move people across and do this. We are actually in the process of rationalising our air engineer training, cutting what used to be a rather large number of skills down into a smaller number. That is going on at the moment as well and about to be fully introduced.

Q80 Mike Gapes: When the JSF comes through, there will be still Royal Navy PSA‑‑

Admiral Sir Alan West: Yes, absolutely right.

Q81 Richard Ottoway: Switching from hardware to software, I have heard concerns expressed over the use of Windows in operating systems, which is a closed system. I do not know if this has come across your desk. It has been suggested we should be using a system other than Windows. Does this ring any bells with you?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I have tried rather hard to know, but this is really‑‑‑ This is the Type 45, is it, Windows 2000 possibly?

Q82 Richard Ottoway: Yes. We have all been flooded with correspondence about this.

Admiral Sir Alan West: Have you?

Admiral Sir Alan West: I would need to go and‑‑‑ You almost caught me out, but I was aware of it.

Q83 Chairman: Not almost caught you; we did catch you out. We will write a letter.

Admiral Sir Alan West: I will need to come back to you on that.

Chairman: Thank you very much.