Mrs Hercules May

This picture from the PM's FB made me smile.

It is of herself plus several suits in the back of a Hercules military transport aircraft in Canada although, their not being strapped in, one can't tell whether it's before the beast was actually airborne, or after.

From the healthy pink tinge and placid looks on their faces, I'm guessing it hasn't taken off yet.  Because here's the thing.  Flying in the back of a Herc is, for the first-timer, a seriously unsettling experience for the skull and, errrr, the stomach.  So much so that it is usual to have a big plastic dustbin lashed down in the centre of the floor ... with a small circle of ashen-faced victims worshipping at its orifice.  When the Iron Lady journeyed thus to the Falklands it was in the comfort of a specially fitted-out, vibration-limiting portacabin in the hold.   It doesn't seem Mrs May gets the benefit of such considerate treatment - or maybe she has an even more robust constitution.  Respect!

And on the subject of riding in Hercs; for those foolhardy readers who supplicate for my military memoirs ...

*  *  *  *  *

Many moons ago I was in charge of a small section en route to a big field deployment.  My outfit were (we liked to think) among the better educated of the soldiery and we used to deploy in very small numbers, attached to bigger formations.  We were destined to fly by Herc, and so we had gone through the usual ritual: turn up at a large airfield in Wiltshire one evening:  bed down wearing full kit in a gigantic hangar arranged with row upon row of bunks resembling a nightmare version of the field hospital at Scutari:  roused at 4 a.m. for a hearty, greasy breakfast, and then out onto the pan.  Boarding the Herc - the five of us - we couldn't but notice it was just us and the RAF loadmasters in the back (capacity about 90 seated troops).  Guessing that they wouldn't be putting on this flight just for us, we enquired and were told we were headed for Glasgow where we would be picking up a company of Scottish infantry, Heaven help us.

The flight north, at low-ish altitude on a clear dark autumn morning, was magical: we were allowed to wander around in the back (avoiding the dustbin - I had flown in Hercs many times before and was by now inured, greasy breakfast and all) and gaze out of the bubble-glass observation windows.  There was a short turnaround delay at Glasgow and we were told to wait in the ordinary civilian departure lounge, where we made ourselves comfortable with coffees etc. 

Then, in came the jock infantry, and took their seats in serried unsmiling lines.  I became aware of a bristling figure marching towards me, so I stood up to greet whatever message was coming my way.

It was their Company Sergeant Major, who saluted me crisply and said, in accusatory tones:

Surr!  Yurr meyn!  They're ... READING NEWSPAPURRS !!   

One of the lessons of life is that it's just too easy, and not at all clever, to be sarcastic to children and irate NCOs.  And so, surpressing the obvious urge to reply, yes sarntmajor, we need to be able to read in our unit  -  I said we'd be sure to clear up after ourselves.

The dustbin was well-utilised on the next stage of the journey.  But not by the soft Sassenach newspaper-readers.

ND 

Weekend Essay: Women in the Front Line

There are several legitimate issues to ponder in the odd business of wanting to allow women into front-line combat psoitions, and a couple of lamentable ones we can quickly dismiss.

The pressure to conform to Euro equality strictures need not detain us.  What does the EU know about soldiering?  Likewise, citing shortage of recruits is a silly gambit at a time when seasoned infantrymen are being axed in large numbers.  As we will conclude below, the numbers of women who will ultimately qualify for infantry will be fingers-of-one-hand per intake cohort, and irrelevant for serious numerical purposes. 

The two questions that matter are: can women do the job?  and what is the effect on the men and units in which they would serve?

Can women be individually effective in front-line jobs?

We are talking about combat here: I don't know of many who would dispute the perfectly adequate success women have had in non-combat roles for many years.  At one end of the spectrum, we can start with the simple empirical expedient of setting high standards in selection and testing and see what falls out - or rather, who drops out.  Nowadays we learn that women are allowed to be fighter-pilots, and good luck to them: the pass-rate for male fast-jet pilot applicants is very low indeed, and since no-one (I trust) is about to let these exacting standards drop for doctrinaire reasons in this part of the military empire, I would give a fully-qualified female fighter pilot the benefit of the doubt without a second's thought.  They same reasoning applies to (e.g.) the SAS: if a women qualified in that exalted company, I'd assume she was chosen for specialist duties (as many in the special forces are) and think no more of it.

To address the question: yes, but even when fully trained, are they aggressive enough, could they fight and kill? - I have seen men go to pieces under 'ordinary' operational pressure, including cases which surprised everybody.  (One day I will recount the story of the CSM who cracked.)  No one really knows ahead of time.  There are plenty of aggressive and competitive women on the planet, and historically no shortage of killers amongst their ranks.

The real issue is line infantry.  The simple fact is, good infantry soldiers are hard to raise in large numbers, and always have been.  A major strand of miltary history has been how technology and organisation have been used to overcome this difficulty.  The crossbow was deployed against the vastly superior longbow because it was easier to train men in its use: and likewise the firearm in its turn.  When, from the 19th century onwards, nations needed to recruit by the million, they inevitably had to lower their standards from the already-rough raw material of old, and devise ways of turning puny clerks into fighting men.  Often, they failed, certainly at the level of individuals (see Spike Milligan passim) and sometimes en masse.  Still, more-or-less serviceable armies have been put in the field on this basis.

It could be argued that pressing women into service is the logical conclusion of this 'progress': ever-weaker people can be bolstered by technology, training and organisation to fill the front-line ranks in a broadly satisfactory manner.

There is an obvious counter.  No longer do we seek to field an army measured even in divisions, let alone millions.  For decades we have wanted a high-calibre, volunteer-only service: and as many a perfectly healthy 17-year-old schoolboy will attest, the standards of strength and fitness achieved on the sportsfield, in the gym, and scrapping in the street are by no means sufficient for a volunteer infantryman in a professional line regiment:  we have no need or desire to accommodate the weakling clerk.

Or the woman?  In my army days I knew two women (out of many, all trying hard) who were 'gym-fit' for soldiering: they were never caught out for fitness on exercise - which, in my day, was as far as they were allowed.  (One was crap at map-reading, but there is no shortage of men in that category.)   And - they were a rarity:  so far out in front of their sisters in uniform as to be numerically not significant.  The rest were passengers, directed to other duties when the going got heavy.

I conclude that provided standards are maintained, the 'can-they-do-the-job' issue is the same as for fire-fighters, bin-men and rugby-players.  The answer will be: a tiny number can.  But should they?

Even if they can, what effect does it have?

There are so many non combat units with extensive experience of mixed-sex deployment, we should assume the basic issues are known and have been catered for.  The old WRAC culture was *very strange*, if I may put it that way, and full integration works better (which begs the question, of course, but we're beyond that point now).  As such, even if someone could make a case that having women around has degraded effectiveness in some subtle way, the pass has already been well and truly sold.  Of course, absolutely anyone in uniform has to ride a torrent of merciless banter at all times, but if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined, as they say: and the right type of woman can.  (Even the Grauniad's Decca Aitkenhead got this one - see the 12th paragraph in this interview.)

The day-to-day atmosphere in a line infantry regiment in peacetime, during the training cycle, is not uniquely different to that in many other teeth-arm units where women have been fully integrated for years.  (I can't speak for ships or submarines.)   The specifics of actual infantry combat (which, incidentally, I have never experienced) are such that my guess would be, if you had 2% fully-capable women in the ranks - which is probably about the most you'd ever get if you set the same physical standards for all - you have no materially different a situation as when you have 2% gays, or 2% who start gibbering when the bullets start to fly, or 2% who are love-sick, or 2% who are worried about their families, or 2% who were rat-arsed the night before ... in other words, it will be just one among many complex real-life dynamics and potential sources of 'friction' (in the military-theoretical sense), and by no means as problematic as the gibbering.

So why not?

I see four cogent arguments against:  (a) it's a cost and potential risk we can do without;  (b) unless we drop our standards - which would be literally a fatal blunder (like, errr, the Snatch Land-Rover and inadequate body armour ... ) - it will make no meaningful difference to numbers; (c) who is pushing for it anyway?  and (d) the probable follow-on developments.

Finding out the answer to (c) could be very revealing.  I really can't imagine there are any serious rumblings within the ranks of currently serving female soldiers to be allowed to serve in a line-infantry platoon: there are so many worthwhile openings for them already, I just can't see the current restrictions as a career-blighting, soul-destroying barrier.   Purely a guess, but I suspect we are in gay-marriage territory here: an "issue" that's in no party's manifesto; has no great lobby behind it; but seems to Someone like a great piece of gesture politics ...

And should be roundly booed off the stage accordingly?  If we could be certain standards won't be lowered, it would be hard to work up much of a head of steam on it. 

But we know how these things go.  After a few years, someone will demand to know why only 2% of front-line infantry are women.  Then there will be targets; then quotas ... and eventually, the standards will be dropped.  (It is interesting that the whole matter only gets raised at the point where politicians have lost their enthusiasm for combat anyway, we are retreating to barracks at a rate of knots, and no one is expecting to see their pointless experiment put to the test.)

So I'm agin.  I served alongside excellent female colleagues in uniform, who did a fine job of work.  Very few of them could jog eight miles with a rifle and a 25-lb pack. It didn't matter.  Leave it at that.

ND 

Territorial Army Expansion: Interesting Details

A couple of years ago we commented that strategic expansion (and deployment !) of the TA was all well and good, but only if it were done properly, i.e. playing to the strengths of what reservists can do best. I wrote then:

 Medics, HGV drivers, helicopter pilots, civil engineers, linguists etc etc can be ideally placed to make tremendous and cost-effective contributions with relatively little purely military training. But not infantry. Why ? Because modern conflict requires that infantry be trained in formation, for manoeuvre warfare. This can't be done at weekends. The Army long ago realised that TA tank units made no sense, and the same is true of infantry.

If you are interested in detailed military stuff, take a look at this:  an almost complete new TA Order of Battle (the omission is rather obvious ...).

Unfortunately, numbers are not given, which limits the deductions we can make.  But here are some quick inferences:

• Army Air Corps and REME both being enlarged.  Good
• Sappers and transport units apparently being reduced.  Not so sure about that.
• No new infantry units, so if numbers of bayonets are to be increased it will be by pumping up the existing regiments.  If you insist on doing so, this way makes sense: most line battallions are under strength now. 
• Medical Corps essentially unchanged in every detail.  The reservist medics have performed brilliantly in theatre (pun intended) from 1991 onwards and it is no surprise nothing needs to be changed.

Forearmed ...

Finally, a really interesting one: the reservist Intelligence Corps is being doubled, from 2 to 4 battalions. Some of the increase comes from absorbing some Signals units which is logical, SIGINT being central to modern intelligence, as we well know from recent *ahem* revelations.   This is the way of 21st century warfare and a big increase in these resources looks like a smart move.  

Whether they can get the quantity and quality of personnel to carry out any of these plans is another matter ...

ND

Expanding the TA: Must Be Done Right

David Cameron reckons the expansion of the numbers of the Territorial Army that can be deployed on operations is something to boast about - as opposed to getting defence on the cheap, which might be suspected. "Our plan to increase the trained strength of our Territorial Army from 14,000 to around 40,000 in the next few years is something that all Conservatives can be proud of", quoth he.

As it happens, this seems to me a broadly feasible objective. But it has to be done correctly if it is not to be merely a numbers game. Because here's the basic truth: reservists don't make good 21st century infantry.

Of course, almost anyone who can be taken to one side and given 6 months training in formation can make the grade: whole armies have been raised in less time and infantry skills are not rocket science. That's not the point. The point is to use reservists in those roles where they bring specialist and directly useful skills to the party without needing extensive training: in the words of last summer's Future Reserves report:

"Employing Reservists as specialists is a cost-effective way of importing civilian expertise rather than replicating expensive training pipelines."

Thus, medics, HGV drivers, helicopter pilots, civil engineers, linguists etc etc can be ideally placed to make tremendous and cost-effective contributions with relatively little purely military training.

But not infantry. Why ? Because modern conflict requires that infantry be trained in formation, for manoeuvre warfare. This can't be done at weekends. The Army long ago realised that TA tank units made no sense, and the same is true of infantry.

Now folk will rightly laud the performance of TA infantry, deployed in penny packets, in many a recent conflict. So will I: but it doesn't alter the basic point, because they have been taken aside for several months training beforehand: they don't deploy as formed units. It may also fairly be pointed out that 10 Para was a redoubtable outfit (it certainly was: headbangers all, just like their regular counterparts), and that the TA SAS squadrons are frighteningly effective (they are - but they are virtually full-timers, truth be told). But these are not the thousands or more of which Cameron speaks.

So - beef up the number of ops-ready specialists, and we'll be well served. Oh - and whatever you do: don't even think of deploying reservists against rioters and strikers in Blighty, as some have suggested. That really would be the beginning of the end.

ND