Tuesday 12 November 2013

A review of Army 2020

I don't know about you, but I find it quite instructive to go back and read old books and material at a later date to see what I can glean from them that I might have missed first time round. This is especially the case with military books, be they historical works, personal accounts, or studies of tactics and strategy. Often I find that subtle points - lost on the first reading as you come to grips with all the information being presented - will become apparent on a second or third reading, as your brain is now able to process a lot of the technical information and jargon in a more efficient manner, peeling back these layers to reveal the core points underneath.

There's probably a name for this process already, but personally I refer to it as (if you'll indulge a few words of the dreaded management speak, which I normally avoid) "developed understanding". In line with that I went back and had a read of the Army 2020 report that lays out the structure and purpose of the future British Army organisation.

On first reading I, like many others, was left a bit perplexed at how the numbers were all going to add up and the reasoning behind some of the decisions, like the Reaction Force/Adaptable Force split. Having gone back over it at a more leisurely pace I think it's all a bit clearer now. Indeed, it's actually a pretty good solution for the resources given.

So in todays article, I'm planning to lay out some of the stuff that I've learned. Hopefully this will help others who were as confused as I was when the paper was first released. For those who already have a firm grip of Army 2020, you probably wont learn much from this.


The basis of Army 2020 is the cut backs forced by financial pressure placed on defence since 2010 and the Strategic Defence and Security Review. The MoD saw its budget fall and as a consequence the army had to pay its pound of flesh into the kitty, which resulted in a number of redundancies, cutting the size of the regular army by around 20,000 while the size of the Army Reserve (formally the Territorial Army) would almost double to a strength of 30,000.

At the same time the army is drawing down from operations in Afghanistan and preparing itself to face future challenges, which could range from another large scale operation like the initial phase of the war in Iraq, to less demanding operations such as working with key allies to build their future military capacity and capability. This broad range of tasks has led the army to come up with a rather clever solution.

In future the army will be split largely into three sections; the Reaction Force, the Adaptable Force, and Force Troops Command. The Reaction Force will be made up of three armoured infantry brigades, a logistics brigade and 16 Air Assault brigade. The Adaptable Force will be made up of seven regional brigade headquarters, controlling a variety of light cavalry regiments, light infantry battalions and light protected mobility battalions. The Force Troops Command will be made up of eight brigades providing a variety of supporting functions to the main combat arms, such as artillery, ISTAR and communications.

The specific make up of the Reaction Force is fairly straightforward. Three armoured infantry brigades, supported by 101 logistic brigade will fall under the purview of 3rd UK division. The three armoured brigades will rotate through a 36 month cycle (known as the Formation Operational Readiness Mechanism - FORM) which involves a year doing intensive training, building up to combined arms battlegroup level, a year spent on contingency tasks, essentially "on call" ready to respond wherever in the world they might be needed as the lead armoured brigade (while maintaining collective training up to Company level), followed by a year of less intense "other tasks", which will involve individual courses, platoon level training, training support for the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Canada, and providing training support in the UK. With only two parachute battalions, 16 air assault brigade will have to alternate between training years and contingency years.

Of note is that the Reaction Force will be in the first line of the UKs military response overseas. In theory 3rd Division should be able to provide a full armoured division for overseas campaigns (two armoured brigades) in the same vein as the first phases of both the 1991 and 2003 Iraq Wars. In addition, the plan seems to be that the three armoured brigades will form the first three roulements of any future, enduring operation. 

A key to this is that the Reaction Force is not as dependent on reserves as the Adaptable Force will be. There is some reserve support, but it's not a major component of the strength of the Reaction Forces. The Adaptable Force on the other hand should see much closer integration, with most of its regiments/battalions bar a few exceptions being paired off with a reserve unit of a similar size.

And it's the Adaptable Force that caused me the most head scratching at first. It's funny how when I went back and read the plan it became clear that all the answers were pretty much right there in front of me in black and white. First time around I struggled to work out how the units - spread unevenly across the seven regional brigades (plus 102 logistic Brigade) - were going to work in practice.

But as the document makes clear and the numbers show, it's actually quite simple. The Adaptable Force (AF) will work on a roughly similar 36 month FORM cycle to the Reaction Force (RF). In this case the units in the training year will build up to battlegroup level, in the contingency year they'll be available for various tasks defined as "defence engagement", and in their other tasks year they'll do platoon training, provide support to the Falkland Islands and provide training support in both the UK and to the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK).

If you look at the make up of the AF, it has three light cavalry regiments, six light protected mobility battalions, and nine light infantry battalions. From there it's easy to see how at any one time you could have a light cavalry regiment, two light protected mobility battalions and three light infantry battalions all in the same stage of the FORM cycle. The fact that many of them will hail from different brigades is largely irrelevant. There will also be spare units to deal with long term commitments such as Cyprus, Brunei and public duties in London.

The Adaptable Force represents probably the most innovative advancement achieved by Army 2020, as the MoD shifts towards defence/upstream engagement in order to head off problems before they become unmanageable, a sort of 'prevention being better than the cure' deal. The theory is that by working with the armed forces of nations in risk areas to develop their own ability to deal with problems, the government should be able to prevent problem areas of the world from becoming long term issues requiring major, sustained deployments in the nature of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I think it's an admirable aim, if difficult to achieve in practice. The army simply can't be deployed everywhere and predicting which areas will flare up and cause issues requiring a long term military solution is going to be almost impossible. But building the capacity of various regional allies could mitigate somewhat against the need for persistent UK interventions. Africa provides some good examples of this, where the African Union is taking progressively more and more responsibility for its own affairs, deploying peacekeepers to places like Somalia and Mali, which certainly lifts the main burden off of Western powers to intervene. 

The Adaptable Force also has a role earmarked to provide the 4th and 5th (and presumably the 6th) roulements of any enduring operation. This much longer lead time gives the AF units plenty of warning to prepare, which makes the integration of their reserve units much easier. The only problem I see with it is that the 6 month deployment cycles that we would expect from such an enduring operation will cause a lot of disruption to the 12 month based FORM cycles. 

Overall though, Army 2020 isn't a bad piece of work at all. The cuts have been turned into an opportunity to reorganise, allowing the army to prepare itself both for rapidly developing contingency events and for longer term engagement. Given the numbers they've been left with and the much greater emphasis on reserves, this is the best that could really be expected. The "Austerity Era" is forcing the armed forces to squeeze every last drop out of the resources at its disposal and the army certainly appears shaped to do that.

14 comments:

  1. An excellent summary - one of the best I've seen.

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  2. The Reaction Force depends much on not just 1010 Logistic Brigade, but Force Troops as well, both which contain a sizeable number of reserve units. And within the RF, only company-sized units can be placed on alert. The fully battalion and brigade can only respond a few days later.

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    1. How many situations have we been in where it was "respond in two days or its all over"? The Reaction Force should be fine.

      Force Troops Command will support Reaction forces as well, but most of they key logistic requirements are contained in 101 brigade.

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  3. Yes - if I have one criticism is the reaction force isn't exactly Rapid Reaction. The armoured units would take a month(?) to get into theartre (depends of course on where they're going) - Paras of course could be a lot faster but only one battalion?

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    1. But what is Rapid? When you consider the wrangling that often takes place over things like UN approval, NATO structures etc, that gives you a time window to get the ball rolling.

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  4. The only problem I see with it is that the 6 month deployment cycles that we would expect from such an enduring operation will cause a lot of disruption to the 12 month based FORM cycles.

    Actually, I'd have thought they would fit fairly nicely. By the time you've been through beat-up training, six months on tour, then POTL, that's pretty much a year.

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    1. The problem is that you have 3 brigades doing yearly cycles. So one is training, one contingency, one rest. Let's say you call up the contingency brigade first. After six months they're pulled out and the brigade in training is inserted, having only done six months of their planned annual cycle of training. Meanwhile the 3 brigade is due in six months time, but still has six months of their other tasks year to go. So their cycle has to be brought forward as well.

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  5. A good job shining a light on the make up of Army 2020 and I agree on paper it seems to make sense. The Elephant in the room though os going to be weither the equipment programme if fully funded to allow units to be properly equipped for their roles and not just be given a mixed bag of left overs form Afghanistan. I especially abhor the idea of units using a pool of assets and only being fully equipped whrn on operations but I fear this may be where the MoD wants to go. It will provide short term savings but increased wear and tear will agian hurt the budget down the line.

    From a personnel stand point I believe we should refrain from persistent operations unless they are directly related to the UK's security. These sort of operations are ideally suited to the large number of 2nd tier nations with large manpower resources rather than 1st tier western forces which are becomming more and more restricted in available manpower.

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    1. The equipment program makes sense I think. Not everyone is going to be training at the same time so you don't need everyone to have large pools of kit. They can rotate through the available training vehicles, which themselves can be rotated in and out over time. That kind of fleet management should make the resources go for longer, which in this budget environment is pretty important. There really is no other prospect.

      The trouble with asking 2nd tier nations to do persistent stuff is that often their manpower and kit is poorly prepared and many have no interest in joining the club. It's like when people suggest that Germany should do the heavy lifting on land while we focus on air and sea. That's fine, until we want an armoured division to go somewhere and Germany decides it's not interested, as they so often do. At which point we become f**ked.

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  6. The third battalion of the Para's needs to be released from the"Special Forces Support" role so as the "elite light infantry" rapid reaction capability can be on the same 3 year cycle as everyone else, including the 3 RN Commando's - that way the Rapid Reaction element of the Reaction Forces at any given time would be 1 Battalion of Para's and 1 Commando, with support from Para / Marine arty, engineer, signals and medical as required.

    Make SF Support a separate unit, and let them recruit from wherever, staff the army personnel budget as required. I really don't think the cost would cripple the defence budget, or the country !

    Jed (who just found out his Grandfathers brother was a Para who died at Arnhem !)

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    1. It's a possibility I guess, making the SFSG a new cap badge with a modest entry requirement. It would be a nice break for the Paras to get a year off (or at least, a less intense year) every now and again. Do they need it though?

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    2. Just thinking more on this Jed, I guess you could work a bit of jiggery pokery with the composition of the SFSG. So you have at the minute the HQ company (1 PARA), 3x Para rifle coys, 1x para support coy, a Royal Marine coy and then some RAF Reg types as air controllers.

      You could keep one Para company and have the three battalions rotate members in and out. You keep the Royal Marine company. Bung in the Guards Para company to get them aboard. Stick the whole of 2sqdn RAF Reg in there (if they're gonna be para trained, might as well make use of that expense), with a Joint HQ.

      With the exception of the support coy, which could be Joint as well, you've got almost the whole thing back again, but now freed 1 PARA.

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  7. 2x things blew people's minds over this. And neither is hard to grasp. First point: an armoured division in the Reaction Force. Days of armour are over, it can't get anywhere rapidly and so forth. I've argued before an armoured division is appropriate as it means we can make a powerful (relatively speaking) contribution to any operation and it takes a generation to re-generate a capability from scratch like that. Also, rapid is relative - you can have firepower and persistence, or you can have speed. You just can't have both at our level. Spookily enough we have light and rapid and slower and persistent forces in the RF. The second thing that blew people's mind was the Adaptable Force - it does not lend itself to nice ORBAT documents and it upsets the tidy minds of ORBAT collectors and internet wargamers. A pool of forces that can be deployed in adaptable packages? Exactly what the Army has been doing for decades but now its institutionalised it's messed with some people's heads. Nearly all the objections I have read about it concern people not liking it because they can't work out how it is organised or generates its forces. It's a wonderfully simple concept though to get your head around if you accept that the force generation process will by its nature remain mysterious.

    Phil

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    1. And if really, desperately needed, the AI could always leave the Warriors at home.

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