Summary

39.  Despite heavy commitments to operations, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force continued to exceed readiness targets and the Army's performance continued to improve. New performance management systems are being put in place to measure our ability to deploy, sustain and recover forces on operations. The development of the Joint Rapid Reaction Forces was generally satisfactory.

Readiness

40.  The Armed Forces must be prepared to undertake operations and other Military Tasks, but not all Force Elements (defined as, for example, an Army brigade, Royal Navy ship, or Royal Air Force aircraft and crew) need to be at high readiness all the time. A system of graduated readiness ensures that the right Force Elements are ready to deploy when they are needed. Each Force Element is therefore set a 'readiness target', and performance against these targets is used as a measure of military capability. Performance against the Spending Review 2000 PSA readiness target remained strong (see Table 2).

41.  Work continued throughout the year to improve our ability accurately to assess performance against readiness targets. However, there are limitations in reporting only on rapidly deployable Force Elements. For that reason, reporting against the Spending Review 2002 target from 1 April 2003 will cover all Force Elements, giving a more accurate picture of overall military capability.

42.  During the year, the Royal Navy made a major contribution to operations in the Gulf, with nineteen ships and submarines and fourteen Royal Fleet Auxiliaries deployed, whilst also providing forces for Afghanistan and for emergency fire-fighting cover, and meeting its key standing commitments. Readiness performance remained strong at 91%. However, it was down from 93% in 2001/02, reflecting the high number of personnel committed to operations. In particular, commitment of personnel to fire-fighting duties meant that some ships were under-manned and not available for other tasks. A shortage of trained personnel, mitigated in part by the use of Full Time Reservists, posed further challenges to the readiness of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

Equipment defects (particularly in the submarine fleet) and the shortage of some helicopter spares also limited fleet availability.

43.  The Army successfully fulfilled all its operational tasks in 2002/03, including two large and demanding Operations: in the Gulf (where it deployed over 28,000 personnel and their equipment, including over 100 Challenger 2 main battle tanks) and fire-fighting. It also improved its performance of rapidly available units at the required states of readiness to 84% (against the PSA target of 90%) from 81% in 2001/02, despite under-manning and continuing specific sustainability challenges.

44.  The Royal Air Force continued to meet all of its Out of Area commitments and enduring Military Tasks in 2002/03. It, too, was heavily committed in the Gulf region where it had 8,000 personnel and 150 aircraft. Nonetheless, its overall readiness performance was some 94%, an improvement on 2001/02 performance of 90%. Concerns remain, however, over equipment shortfalls and manning shortages in some critical branches and trades. Work continues to address these issues and there have been a number of successes, especially in the areas of personnel recruitment and retention.

Sustainability and Deployability

45.  The Armed Forces' ability to meet readiness targets, however, does not offer a complete picture of whether those forces could in practice be deployed and sustained on operations. For this reason, work was undertaken during the year to develop a process that assesses our ability to generate, deploy, train-in-theatre, sustain and ultimately recover those forces required to undertake a range of operations, from peacekeeping to combat. This is a challenging task but an embryonic system is now in place, which we will continue to develop, and these assessments are captured under a Sustainability and Deployability Measure.

46.  During 2002/03, several major work programmes were initiated which focused on better identifying the requirements to mount and sustain operations. Our operations in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq show how important such work is. As a result, the Department was able to address some of the identified shortfalls, particularly those relating to operational stocks. But the demands placed on Defence vary over time, so the Department continued to improve the processes to better forecast sustainability needs in order to plan to meet future requirements.

Joint Rapid Reaction Forces (JRRF)

47.  JRRF development was generally satisfactory and the PSA target, Phase 2 (Operational Capability) of the JRRF by March 2003, was largely met. However, there were some weaknesses and it was judged that it would not be possible to generate and sustain some Force Elements for medium-scale warfighting within the planned timescales. Operation TELIC underlined deficiencies in operational stocks and equipment support and lessons identified from the Operation will inform the continuing review of the JRRF balance and structures.

Last Updated: 3 Dec 03