Westminster Miscellany

Submitted 6 April 2006 for THE OFFICER Apr/May 2006 edition

by Tony Purton

The defence committee has continued to work at a smart pace. In six sessions during February and March it completed its enquiry into the Defence Industrial Strategy, questioned defence secretary Dr John Reid on operations in Afghanistan and turned the spotlight on the future of the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent.

Background

Precision and information technologies are changing air power concepts. Strategic attack was previously seen as the primary role. Finding and attacking targets on the battlefield was often seen as a secondary and inefficient use of resources. But in recent air campaigns, air power has demonstrated a remarkable new dominance over the battlefield. The definition of the battlefield has also greatly widened. Air power’s new found precision, coupled with exploitation of today’s information technologies, means an enemy can now be attacked with devastating effectiveness across the whole theatre of operations. Many old doctrinal definitions may now be redundant as a result. Terms such as CAS or even “battlefield” itself may no longer really apply. At the same time, a growing family of highly capable ground launched weapons are blurring distinctions between air and ground firepower in support of military objectives. So we perhaps need to adopt a much more “effects based” outlook towards military operations.