ON THE FALKLANDS
Lord bramall gives an Insight Into The Thinking behind The amphibious landings at san carlos
“The San Carlos landings were absolutely brilliant. The navy was incredible, and San Carlos was chosen because it cut down the chances of there being any sea-skimming missiles there, and they landed without [major] casualties. I was with the CDS (chief of the defence staff) at the time and I heard a lot of the thing coming over real-time over satellite, and we knew not only that they had landed, but that they had come up against virtually no opposition at all.
“We had stressed, the chief of staff had stressed, I particularly stressed, that once the landing happened they should get out of the bridgehead and get across to the vital ground, otherwise I had awful visions of them getting stuck and there being an international ceasefire or something, and we would be out and the [Argentinians] would all be in winter quarters. Poor [General] Julian Thompson [commander of 3 Commando Brigade], he reckoned that his job was to consolidate the bridgehead until the reserve brigade arrived, and he was encouraged not to do anything else because, shortly after his landing, the Atlantic Conveyer went down with all but one of the Chinook helicopters, which were going to lift the force.
“So he was rather static, and he said he thought his job was consolidating the bridgehead. Eventually he had to be told by the commanderin-chief that he must get out… So what did he do, he had two options: one was to go for Goose Green, which was quite strong, 1,000 men… which would have been a threat to the flank.
The other was to mask that and without the helicopters do a bash across to Stanley. Well I thought that he more or less decided to do both options together.
“When the chiefs had vetted the plan with our commander-in-chief and the general staff, of which I was the head, we weren’t too happy about San Carlos. We thought it was too far away from where they had to go and it would have been better to land [elsewhere]. I expressed my misgivings to the CDS and he said that we’ll talk to the commander-in-chief.
“The commander-in-chief convinced me that the reason they chose San Carlos, although it was a bit further than where they wanted to go, was that it was going to be much safer to do, with the air threat and the other threats, rather than if they’d been out in the open, where they would have been very vulnerable. I accepted that 100 per cent.”
“WE HAD STRESSED, THE CHIEF OF STAFF HAD STRESSED, I PARTICULARLY STRESSED, THAT ONCE THE LANDING HAPPENED THEY SHOULD GET OUT OF THE BRIDGEHEAD AND GET ACROSS TO THE VITAL GROUND”
When I was commanding a division in
Germany at the height of the Cold War, I had prepared, [and was] ready for the Soviet Union and their allies to come across the border. That is why we were deployed [there]. I didn’t think it was terribly likely, but the Americans thought it was going to happen the next day. But equally, the Soviet Union was convinced that we were going to do that to them [and attack]. Now it may sound ludicrous, but they thought that.
Now, to have NATO troops on their border, with no buffer zone at all, cutting off a bit of Russia, they think it’s a provocation and even a real threat. So some of the things that they are doing, like sailing a ship near the East Anglian coast, or threatening to cut cables… [Putin] feels strong enough to do these sort of things, as tit-for-tat to re-establish the balance of power that existed before. You have to bear that in mind.
So what threat is there? There’s a threat that he will do even more to destabilise Britain or Europe or something like that, attacking one of our various functions. There is a threat and we have to have tactics to deal with that, but that doesn’t mean that he’s contemplating a vast invasion of Western Europe.
People seem to think… that if we get things wrong we will end up in the Third World War. Well the Third World War as such isn’t really possible for a number of reasons, but there are so many other ways that one country can get it over another.
That doesn’t mean of course that all military action will be [focused] on smaller things – it’s happening in Iraq and Syria of course, but one has got to be very careful how one takes military action.
Could a similar common sense approach be applied to countries such as North Korea, for example?
You see there again, it’s awful. Kim Jong-un is not actually making or developing a nuclear weapon to use, because the last thing that he would want would be a war, in which he’s bound to come off worse. What he’s doing is the same that we’ve been doing over the last few years, to say, “Look, if you overstep the mark, we’ve got this that could be used.” It is to stop an invasion of North Korea.
You see the thing is that you’ve got to try and deal with this [situation] as it happened in the Cold War. In the Cold War, the people in the east gradually realised that they would be better off under a different system than they would be at the moment.
However, I often say that we won the Cold War but we lost the peace, because that was the moment when we should have put out the hand of friendship and helped them. You think of the terrible indignity of the crumbling of the Soviet Empire – morale and self-esteem must have absolutely gone. Imagine if it happened to us. Putin is now getting great credit from his people for trying to claw some of this back… This is hitting back at what we’ve done.
Would you say there is a case for a form of sensible, slow disarmament?
Yes. I believe [it should be done] in the long run, and people are even making measures of it. We consider whether possibly it would be a disadvantage to Britain when Iran won’t disarm, but Pakistan are now thinking about it.
We give lip service to it, but someone’s got to make a start, and I personally think that, if in the context of all this, the UK could say, “Look we’ve still got a nuclear deterrent… we’ve got it and that will last another ten to 15 years, but we don’t want to extend it for another 50 years because there’s no point.”
We would make this point, to say that we’re not going to extend our Trident [nuclear deterrent]. I think the UK would gain great credit out of this, and I think it would possibly start the ball rolling for people to do more of it.
“I OFTEN SAY THAT WE WON THE COLD WAR BUT WE LOST THE PEACE, BECAUSE THAT WAS THE MOMENT WHEN WE SHOULD HAVE PUT OUT THE HAND OF FRIENDSHIP”
What are your views on the UK’S defence budget cuts? How does it affect the
“WE’VE GOT TO SPEND OUR MONEY ON THE RIGHT THINGS, AND WE’VE GOT TO OBTAIN ENOUGH MONEY TO DO THIS, BECAUSE WE’RE LUMBERED WITH THE EXPENDITURE OF THE NAVY”
country’s status as a military power?
Even if the spending on the extension of Trident was to come out of the defence budget – it might possibly not, but at the moment it does – that means that the cake is smaller. [The UK is] also hoisted with two enormous aircraft carriers, for which there was no strategic requirement, which should never have been allowed to go forward, and which the country can’t afford. We can’t man and we can’t pay for things to go on them, and so we’re hoisted with that as it’s having to come out of the budget.
First of all there doesn’t appear to be enough money to go around. Now having paid for all of these things – some of which you don’t need – what else are you going to cut? I think if your military forces are going to be used more selectively, backed by dynamic diplomacy, which should include cyber warfare and all of these things, there appears to be some savings you can make in manpower, because the army spends most of its money on manpower.
The trouble if you cut too much… there is still a role for these forces in supporting and training other forces, such as in Iraq, Syria – you get terribly overstretched. I wouldn’t like to see the army cut much below that.
More money has got to go on intelligence and cyber warfare, because cyber [attack] is the biggest threat. Yes there’s a small terrorist threat, but it gets blown out of all proportion. When we had the IRA it was far worse than this. This is containable, but… you could get something like a dirty bomb and that would be unpleasant, but the biggest threat is cyber, the disruption of our infrastructure, and of course to be able to counter that requires money too.
Does the increased threat of cyber warfare diminish the importance of the infantry and conventional armed forces?
Well it shouldn’t, but I think it has been changing for some time and I don’t know whether [the United Kingdom’s armed forces have] changed…
We can’t compete with the Russians’ manpower… but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have elements in place to balance what Russia is likely to do.
The real trouble is the Baltic states – are we really going to go to war for them? But this is why we’ve got NATO forces. They are still needed for deterrent, they are still needed to back diplomacy and they are still needed to train friendly forces. All of this needs manpower and professional skills.
There’s a place for NATO, because it ensures solidarity. I’d hate to think that NATO has to fight… but for solidarity and deterrent purposes I think NATO is important.
Aside from cyber threats, what would you say are the main challenges to the British armed forces today?
We’ve got to spend our money on the right things, and we’ve got to obtain enough money to do this, because we’re lumbered with the expenditure of the navy… We should have kept the Harrier and we should have kept a smaller platform. We need a bit more money and we want to make certain that we have sufficient forces to back our diplomacy, and that includes a credible deterrent.
We want a reconnaissance aircraft, or frigates, because they can project power, but I can’t say because I don’t know exactly… I suspect we need a bit more money, but we need to make certain that the new types of threat, particularly cyber and intelligence threats, are covered. Whether we can do that and still spend billions… Of course if that doesn’t come out of the defence money, then the function of this deterrent is questionable.
As a former field marshal, what do you think are the essential qualities that a commander needs in modern warfare?
I think they’ve remained much the same… a robustness to stand not just the shocks of battle, but the shocks of political turmoil, and as you can imagine, being a chief of defence staff is quite a strain.
You’ve got to give your own forces confidence, and if they’re all being cut the whole time – and my opinion on this is they’re being cut – you’re going to find it really difficult to recruit. So you’ve got to give confidence that they are needed in the new setting, that they’ve got a job to do, which certainly they have in backing diplomacy. They’ve got a job to do and of course we don’t have enough of them.
Having joined the British Army during the 1940s, what are your reflections on how it has changed over the decades up until the present day?
I think the army has been quite good at changing progressively really. I think that the turning point was Suez… Yes we still initially thought of Suez in the form of the Normandy invasion, of course, when in actual fact we did it much more direct.
But I think my chapter on Borneo in the book is quite important. It was an ideal use of force… It did just enough to see that the opposition was thwarted and not too much to escalate the thing, which was important.
I suppose that is the way in which the British Army has most changed – realising that land forces have got to be viewed rather more selectively in support of foreign policy, rather than on a large scale.