Guest Editorial: Col Alistair Houldsworth

Col Alistair Houldsworth

Though NATO continues to be pre-eminent in conventional warfare, the British Army is not one for being complacent. From his role in Force Development of Land Special Operations, Col Alistair Houldsworth discusses what the future might look like.

Imust admit I never thought that I would write the guest editorial in The Craftsman Magazine and if the thought ever did cross my mind, I would never have thought it would have so little to do with REME, but since being appointed as Comd ES of Force Troops Command (FTC) back in 2019, much has changed – we live in interesting times.

Many of you will be aware that threats in the world are changing. America and, by extension NATO, remain pre-eminent in conventional warfare. While it remains difficult to deal with low intensity, sub-threshold opposition, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as soon as these Armed Groups grow to become mainstream military powers, they cannot compete with the US military might and are soon defeated. Think Daesh and their caliphate, which soon collapsed when they tried to become a conventional military power. Our adversaries have taken note of this and have become ever more active in less conventional military activities, such as Cyber and Information Operations. In effect they seek to keep us at arm’s length, using Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) missile systems, find targets through electronic warfare and SIGINT and strike at distance using long-range rockets and artillery. All the while attacking the will of the Government to continue the conflict with information ops, cyber-attacks and sabotage; all areas in which they have developed the capabilities and the will to use them.

To address this, CGS gathered together the formations within the Army responsible for Networks, Intelligence, Cyber, Influence and Security and put them under FTC to kick-start our own Information Manoeuvre (IM) capability. At this point, I arrived as Comd ES with a dependency of IM, but also the wider enabling capabilities including Brigades of Gunners, Log Sp, Engineers, Medics etc. A month after I joined FTC, the Division was renamed 6th (United Kingdom) Division and reorganised to focus on Land Special Operations (LSO). Out went the Medics, Engineers Log Sp to 1 Div, the Arty Bde to 3 Div and with them went nearly all of REME. In came the Specialised Infantry Group to combine their skills in partnering local forces and on small operations with the existing Information and Electronic Warfare capabilities to deliver the new concept of LSO. As a Comd ES with no REME, my role moved to Force Development of LSO, getting experimental kit in for trials, and developing capabilities including Information Activities, Audience Analysis, Cyber, EW and SIGINT. I won’t deny this has led to a fair bit of late-night reading as I try to stay one step ahead of the pack in dealing with statements of requirement, assessing contractor bids and performance, fighting for money and accounting for it. I have a small, but really good team who have more experience in this area than I do and with the expertise from the units, we have been able to bring in new EW kit, capabilities to analyse social media (Cambridge Analytica we are not, but social media is a source of useful information in this area), new kit for the Specialised Infantry and so on. All of this needs to be backed up with training and support to deliver and maintain capability – just the same as traditional equipment, although these support costs involve data subscriptions, bandwidth rather than fuel and spares.

Our expectation is that the importance of LSO will only increase. We still need the Tanks and Armour Infantry to be able to beat the enemy if they decide to attack by conventional means, but we are now developing the tools to fight them on their own ground under the threshold of war.

I am writing this before the Integrated Review is announced and you will be able to read it with the full benefit of hindsight, but we expect LSO to be a key plank of the proposition. If so, we will need people with new skills; Spec Inf selection is expected to become an All-Arms selection course. We will need people with skills in Cyber, Data Analytics and Influence Ops. Some of this sits in particular capbadges such as Signals and Int Corps, but there are not enough of them. Opportunities will arise for you to volunteer and try your hand at LSO and you would be surprised at the number of REME already involved in this. Brig Steph Crossfield is the Army’s Chief Data Officer in DInfo and others are working in Cyber in Strategic Command and other areas.

Try it…what have you got to lose?