In 2009, former Chief of Defence Materiel Sir Bernard Grey wrote that ‘acquisition reform … is a subject only about five minutes younger than the acquisition of military equipment itself’. The same could be said for the reform of Defence management in general. From the 1904 Esher Committee, appointed in the aftermath of the Boer War, through four separate Central Organisation of Defence white papers commissioned during the Cold War, to the most recent Levene Reforms in 2011, there have been seemingly no end of studies aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of Defence management. However, while some initiatives have undeniably delivered improvement, few, if any, achieved all the change that was originally intended.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, politicians seldom invest sufficient time and effort to understand, and then oversee, the activities of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the armed forces. Secondly, the single services, the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force, have the power either to rework unpalatable reforms to the extent that they become acceptable, or resist them altogether. Unless these two issues are addressed, the successful reform of UK Defence management is likely to remain an impossible task.
The Political Problem Space
The government is responsible for articulating why the nation needs Defence and what is expected from it. It sets the defence budget and is answerable to Parliament for the actions of Defence’s constituent parts. However, since the end of the Cold War, both Conservative and Labour governments have had a particularly poor track record at successfully discharging these responsibilities. This is because politicians are reluctant to confirm precisely what they expect from Defence, preferring instead to hide behind expansive but vague policy statements that are difficult to cost but are invariably under-resourced. Very few take the time to learn the detail of Defence, and, as a result, governments are unable to provide credible political oversight of Defence activities.
The most serious political failing is the lack of direction on what is expected from Defence. This should start with the government’s articulation of national strategy. Throughout the Cold War, the cornerstone of UK national strategy was the prevention of war with the Soviet Union, through deterrence and as part of NATO. While the size and shape of the armed forces changed considerably from when deterrence was first publicly acknowledged by the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1955, to the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, their primary task remained deterring the Soviets from invading Western Europe.
Since the end of the Cold War, however, successive governments have struggled to articulate convincingly what is expected from Defence. The 1998 Strategic Defence Review saw the UK’s challenge of the twenty-first century as helping to prevent or manage crises worldwide as a ‘force for good’. After 9/11, the focus shifted to combating international terrorism, and, most recently, the 2021 Integrated Review recognized the need to react to the intensification of competition between states and with non-state actors. While it is difficult to argue with any of these broad strategic ends, none of them were accompanied by the detail needed to confirm the associated ways and means expected from Defence.
American military historian John Lewis Gaddis suggested that governments should think of national strategy as being ‘about how one uses whatever one has to get wherever it is one wants to go’. For a middle-ranking power with finite resources, like the UK, this means politicians must make difficult choices about what is important and then prioritize the activities of defence and security departments accordingly. When the list of resources is shorter than the list of strategic ambitions, it is the non-discretionary tasks, followed by discretionary activities in priority order, that should be resourced. In reality, the demands placed on the relevant departments to deliver defence and security policy consistently outstrip the resource the government is prepared to allocate. For example, the 2010 National Security Strategy confirmed that ‘Britain’s national interest requires us to reject any notion of the shrinkage of our influence’, even though the Comprehensive Spending Review that accompanied it reduced the defence budget in real terms by 7.5 per cent over the following four years.
More recently, the 2021 Integrated Review sought to increase UK engagement in the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and the Gulf, while, at the same time, pledging to be the leading European nation in NATO. However, as former National Security Advisor Peter Ricketts pointed out, there was no recognition that resources are finite, and no effort was made to allocate priorities. The Integrated Review’s wish list of ambitions far exceeded the capacity of the funded force structure, which left the armed forces woefully short of the capability needed to deliver the output expected of them. Not only are politicians notoriously reticent when it comes to articulating precisely what the nation needs from Defence, they are also disappointingly poor at resourcing it.
Making strategy should be a whole-of-government activity, led by the Prime Minister and senior members of their Cabinet. But politicians should also be affecting the management of Defence at a more granular level. Since the end of the Cold War, in addition to the Secretary of State for Defence, governments have maintained at least three junior ministerial appointments within the MoD. These are the politicians who should be challenging the power and influence of the single services and making sure that important policy decisions are being made for the good of Defence as a whole.
Government interventions can only be credible if they are made from a position of authority, which, in turn, flows from a thorough understanding of the subject. Defence practitioners, especially those in uniform, do not make that easy, often overwhelming their political masters with the use of military jargon and incomprehensive abbreviations in the simplest of discussions. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon these junior ministers to gain sufficient expertise on the subject of Defence, and the easiest way to achieve that is through longevity in post. During the period of Labour government between 1997 and 2010, however, ministers within the MoD were moved on after an average of less than two years. Since 2010, the turnover has been even greater. Political expediency clearly outweighs the oversight of Defence. The result is that those whose job it is to question military decision-making, particularly decisions over managing the business of Defence, and hold senior officers to account for their actions consistently have insufficient knowledge or experience to do either.
The Military Problem Space
Following the Levene Reforms in 2011, the MoD headquarters – known as Head Office – was supposed to set the strategic direction for Defence, impose a strong, pan-department corporate framework and hold others to account. However, as part of the reform’s implementation, considerable personnel resources were moved out of Head Office and into the single service headquarters. This has resulted in a lack of both capacity and expertise within the Head Office to discharge all the functions demanded of it, and its staff officers are regularly overmatched by their counterparts in the single services.
In addition, the Levene Reforms significantly strengthened the hand of the single service chiefs. Specifically, they confirmed the chiefs’ responsibility, accountability and authority for the development of their service now and in the future. As a result, the single service chiefs control the majority of resources within Defence. Everyone in the armed forces is a member of one of the three single services and is loyal to that service, rather than Defence as a whole. Furthermore, the chiefs also oversee the capital expenditure, equipment support and infrastructure budgets for their own service, which, together with personnel costs, amount to approximately 80 per cent of the Defence budget. The combination of this empowerment and the inability of the Head Office to punch at its weight has given the single services tremendous freedom when it comes to developing military capability as well as significant influence over pan-Defence decision-making.
Within the UK, the custodians of military expertise for the three traditional warfighting environments of maritime, land and air are, of course, the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force, respectively. As the only organizations legally permitted to wage war on behalf of the nation, they are uniquely placed to determine what military capability is required to support the aspirations of their political masters. Moreover, it is in each of the single service chiefs’ interests to do everything they can not only to make sure Defence develops and maintains military capability relevant to their environment but also to ensure that their service’s ability to contribute to successful warfighting is recognized, understood and, therefore, valued by both the government of the day and the public at large. And therein lies the problem. Although the Levene Reform’s disaggregation of responsibility, accountability and authority has better aligned incentives to deliver military capability, it has also facilitated single service advocacy to the detriment of Defence as a whole.
Associate Professor at Cranfield University Bryan Watters argues that Defence is not about structures, it is about people. Furthermore, it is about people, the majority of whom owe their allegiance not to Defence but to one of the three single services. Even those military personnel working in the Head Office or within Strategic Command have one eye on the needs and aspirations of their own service. There are two reasons for this. Ultimately, they know they will one day return to serve within their own service, and, more importantly, it is their own service that promotes them. From their first day in uniform young people are moulded to become sailors, soldiers and aviators through exposure to the histories and traditions of their chosen service. As Watters points out, ‘they wear different uniforms, have different designations of rank, address each other differently, have different published values, and have very different ways of seeing and interpreting the context around them.’ Over time, they become thoroughly inculcated in the culture of their service, and, in most instances, that results in unswerving loyalty to their tribe. There is no ‘Team Defence’.
While the single services will readily agree that they share the same primary purpose – to support the first duty of government to defend the nation and keep its people safe – their approaches to discharging that duty differ greatly. Again, Watters explains this well: ‘each military tribe competes to gain credence for its description of the problem and its resolution, to influence the ruling political tribe and thus gain a greater share of scarce resources’.
The reason for this competition between the services is simple. There are never enough resources to go around, and the management of Defence is a zero-sum game. The result is a constant and often bitterly fought battle to secure the greatest possible slice of the defence budget. This battle largely takes place behind closed doors; however, every so often, the ugliness of inter-service bickering spills out for all to see. This occurs most when money is tightest. For example, self-serving behaviour and inter-service spats have been the hallmark of every defence review, for which a reduction in defence spending has been a driving factor, since the end of the Second World War. Professor of British Politics Robert Self suggests that ‘inter-Service rivalry has proved remarkably damaging for the effectiveness of the British defence effort and the value for money received by the Treasury and taxpayer’.
Conclusion
There is no silver bullet that can fix Defence management. Instead a series of focused organisational and process reforms are needed. However, even the most all-encompassing change programme is doomed to failure if the problems of political oversight and single service agency are not tackled first. Unless the government faces up to its Defence management responsibilities, and the power and influence of the single services are suitably restrained, the successful reform of UK Defence management will forever remain an impossible task.
