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Some catching up needed

30th October 2015

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Over the years, I have been to quite a few defence technology and industry conferences in South Africa. Invariably, they include lots of fascinating presentations and show just how impressive and high-tech the South African defence industry is. It certain areas, South Africa is one of only a tiny number of countries to possess such capabilities. Guided missiles and other precision guided munitions (air to air, surface to air, antitank, air to surface) are two such areas.

However, while the project and technology presentations are always good, all too many times the overview presentations on global defence issues, developments and trends seem to be a little out of date. The world is a big, complex place and international politics and its concomitant defence concerns can evolve with amazing speed. Official defence analysis in South Africa all to often seems to lag behind actual events.

And so it was again. At a defence technology session at a recent conference, a senior official in the Department of Defence gave an overview presentation on global defence issues. He talked about “asymmetric warfare”, insurgency and how insurgents were flexible and acquired weapons quickly, while armed forces had long (sometimes very long) acquisition periods, and so on. He made – if my memory serves me correctly – no mention of inter-State warfare nor of the latest trendy jargon, ‘hybrid warfare’. Moreover, a distinguished member of the audience made an (admittedly rather throwaway) reference that conventional war was not happening any more.

Well, nearly all wars are asymmetric. The Second War World saw combatants with symmetrical technologies but they used them asymmetrically (the Allied bomber offensive and the German U-boat – submarine – offensive being good examples). It is probably true to say that the greatest and most successful exponent of asymmetrical warfare, at both strategic and tactical levels, over the past 500 years has been England/Britain/the UK. The Americans recently coined the term to provide an alternative to insurgency (a term that would bring back bad memories of the Vietnam War).

But what we’ve seen over the past couple of years has been the reappearance of de facto conventional and inter-State warfare. The conflict in Ukraine has been fought with tanks, other armoured vehicles and artillery on both sides, with aircraft and surface-to-air missiles also used. The war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) is effectively an inter-State conflict. The term ‘so called’ qualifies the word Islamic, not State. The IS is indeed a de facto State: it has a territory, government, administration, economy, population (albeit unwilling; but that is not unprecedented) and army. Those fighting against it seek to conquer its territory as well as destroy its structures. (Of course, the Western powers and Russia are fighting IS asymmetrically.)

Of course, Ukraine is in Europe and the IS in Asia. But, in Africa, Boko Haram came alarmingly close to setting up a de facto State in north-east Nigeria, and the campaign to regain control of that area seems to have been pretty much a conventional war operation, with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and air support. And the war against Al Shabab in Somalia has involved conventional and well as counterinsurgency operations. Indeed, back in 2012, the Kenyan Defence Force carried out an amphibious landing at Kismayu, with troops landing from the Kenya Navy’s two landing ships under cover of shelling by gunboats and air strikes by the Kenya Air Force. So inter-State-type conventional operations are something South Africa is going to have to consider again – just in case.

However, from an industry point of view, the question of acquisition is perhaps more interesting and important. And here, too, there have been major developments overseas. The UK has moved, and the US is moving, away from centralised defence acquisition systems to return acquisition authority to the heads of the respective armed forces – the navy, army and air force, with a twenty-first century modification to include joint forces. For many years now, both countries ran centralised defence acquisition systems in which the individual services requested, but did not oversee, the acquisition of systems. (Some time after 1994, I think, South Africa adopted the same approach). Now, with the experience of acquisition during two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), both London and Washington have concluded that the centralised approach doesn’t work well. In the UK, the legislation bringing in the new (or, if you prefer, bringing back the old) system was passed last year and is now in effect. In the US, equivalent legislation – an initiative of the Congress – should pass into law in the coming weeks and come into effect in 2017.

The British concluded that the centralised system undermined responsibility and accountability. To put it at its most simple, those responsible for drawing up the specifications and those responsible for buying the systems reported to completely different chiefs, meaning that no one, single person ever had a complete overview of, or was ever ultimately responsible for, the programme. The decentralised system vests responsibility for acquisition in the First Sea Lord/Chief of Naval Staff (head of the Royal Navy), the Chief of the General Staff (head of the British Army), the Chief of Air Staff (the head of the Royal Air Force) and the Commander Joint Operations (who covers what the British call “joint enablers” such as cyberwarfare systems). A few, strategic, systems will fall directly under the Chief of the Defence Staff (the most senior British military officer). This does not mean that the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) acquisition agency, Defence Equipment & Support, has broken up. It continues, but it serves and supports the four top-level commanders mentioned. Also, the reforms have included a significant downsizing of the MoD Head Office (as the British call it), because it is now focused on truly high-level strategic and policy matters. (The four top-level commanders and their staffs have moved out of the MoD in Whitehall and, indeed, out of London.)

Has South Africa’s experience been similar? Or has the fact that the country has not been in conflict for some 25 years now hidden the weaknesses of the centralised acquisition system? I wonder how long I will have to wait see these developments – the return of de facto, if not de jure, inter-State conflict and major defence acquisition reform overseas – appearing on defence overviews in local conferences.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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