CIAO DATE: 02/02

Emerging European Power Projection Capabilities

François Heisbourg
Head of Interagency Working Group on the Study of International Relations, Strategic Affairs and Defence Issues in France, and, President of the Foundation Council, GCSP

GCSP-RAND Workshop Papers: "NATO's New Strategic Concept and Peripheral Contingencies: The Middle East"
Geneva, July 15-16, 1999

The Geneva Centre for Security Policy

The Kosovo air war was an eye-opener for many Europeans, particularly for those who normally follow defence issues at a distance. There was no escaping the realisation that close to three-quarters of the aircraft and more than four-fifths of the ordnance released against Serbian targets were American. America's massive dominance in C31 was similarly spectacular, with media commentators using the over-simplified but effective equation: "Fifty U.S. military satellites, a single European ₁ satellite". Under such circumstances U.S. influence on all strategic and operational aspects of the war could only be overwhelming, for better or for worse, a situation summarised by the syllogism "no capability-no responsibility". Despite deep strategic flaws, questionable tactics and occasional rank incompetence (the Apache episode, the China Embassy bombing), the U.S. edge is so great that it can afford even serious blunders.

Europe's collective weakness in the war was both quantitative and qualitative, with the latter outweighing the former. And although the Kosovo operation was highly specific (an all-air campaign for the first 78 days, subsequently an all-ground intervention in a "permissive environment"), a general comparison of US and European capabilities confirms the evidence provided during that conflict. At the same time however, the war demonstrated major discrepancies in the performance of individual European states, with some clearly having done much better than others. Thus, a number of national benchmarks (mostly French and British) emerge from this conflict, against which other European can measure their performance, with hopefully a collective convergence of future policies towards best individual practice. Thus the Kosovo war may have helped to convince European leaders that not only part of the "gap" ₂ needed to be filled but that it could be filled in a politically and financially acceptable way. It remains to be seen whether the "Kosovo shock" will prompt the Europeans into a major new effort, and if so how; but before entering into that discussion, a review of current capabilities is in order.

I. Current force projection capabilities

The first observation to be made is that there is no such thing as a "European" force projection capability. Each European country's capabilities are its own, as parts of purely national defence establishments. Some of these capabilities may, in a small number of cases, be a permanent and dedicated part of NATO's integrated command structure, i.e. those assets which are under SACEUR's or SACLANT's permanent command and control (e.g. SACEUR's air defence capabilities). Substantial portions may be earmarked for assignment to NATO - such is the case for the vast majority of the European NATO integrated countries' force structure, with the frequent exception of their territorial forces; - but if and when such forces are actually assigned to NATO (as was the case for European - including France's - assets brought under SACEUR's purview in the Kosovo war), they ipso facto do not come under a specifically European command. Even forces earmarked for assignment to the WEU, such as Eurocorps, cannot be considered as belonging to a (currently non-existent) collective European force structure. This reality may change over time, but such as balkanisation of assets reduces further the capabilities which European countries can bring to the table, since outside of the context of a fully NATO operation - an occurrence which has never presented itself in a Middle Eastern contingency - they have to be considered as separate national entities, not as parts of a collective whole. Organisational duplication, lack of critical mass in the performance of onerous tasks, and limited interoperability are the result of this state of affairs. Therefore, the picture of relative weakness which follows may overestimate the actual extent of European capabilities.

Conversely, national capabilities of individual countries - notably France and the UK - described here may underestimate the real extent of their capabilities. This is suggested by France's performance during the air war : with around 9 % of NATO's defence spending, France generated 12.8 % of strike sorties (with a major share conducted with laser-guided munitions) and 10.8 % of all sorties.

Since the five largest members of the European Union (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) represent more than 80 % of its defence spending ($ 140 bn, out of some $ 165 bn in 1997), their aggregate can be used as a reasonable proxy for an EU-US comparison. ₃

Naval ships:

- US tonnage is three times that of "European Five" for both surface combatants and SSBNs.

- US tonnage is four times greater for operational transport and logistical vessels.

 

Number of ships	US	European 5
- SSN	66	18
- CV (catapult launch)	12	1 (three times smaller than the average US carrier)
- cruisers	29	1
- helicopter assault ships	12	5

- The "European 5" field substantially more frigates (ca. 100) than the US (40). However, the US vessels are of a single type and average 2 800t each, versus a medley of European ships averaging 1 300t or less.

 

Aircraft:

	US	European 5
modern combat aircraft	3 100	1 200
	(F15, F16, F14, F18, AV8)	(F1, Mirage 2000, Jaguar, Tornado, F18, Harrier)

 

This ratio of 2.5 to 1 in modern combat aircraft (and the adjective "modern" may be over-generous in a number of cases) is better than the situation of airlift, where the numerical ratio is of 3.5 to 1. Furthermore, fully two-thirds of the "European 5" transport aircraft are C-160 Transall which are one-third smaller than the smallest U.S. transport aircraft. The ratio is of 30 to 1 in terms of in-flight refuelling. The naval and air platform ratios are worsened by even a cursory examination of their payloads. In the Kosovo war, which relied essentially on the use of smart weapons, from the longest range missiles (Tomahawks and CALCM) to the shortest range laser or GPS-INS guided bombs, the Europeans were at a massive disadvantage. Only the British have Tomahawks; only the British and the French have laser-guided bombs in significant numbers. A number of countries only had anti-radar missiles in their airborne PGM inventory. Some had no airborne PGM inventory whatsoever. For the most part, it would have served little purpose for the European air forces to be much more heavily represented in the already crowded Yugoslav airspace, since they didn't have the ordnance adapted to the low-loss / low-collateral damage conflict which was being waged. As the Europeans have foregone (rightly so, in this author's opinion) the option of dedicated strategic bombers (B52, B1, B2), only PGMs can make up for the lack of reach of many of their aircraft. The situation will improve after 2002, with Britain (Storm Shadow), France (SCALP) and Germany (Taurus) acquiring high accuracy airborne cruise missiles, as well as GPS-INS bombs (in the UK; and in France with the French ASM programme). Overall, the capability gap between the British and the French on the one hand, and most of the other European countries on the other, is likely to widen in this field during the years 2002-2005.

Ground forces equipment:

Even in an area such as main battle tanks, where one would expect the territorial-defence oriented Europeans to be "heavier" than the force-projecting Americans, the ratio is unfavourable to Europe:

	US	European 5
modern main battle tanks	7 600 (of a single make, the M1 Abrams, and its variants)	4 800 (of six highly different models - Challenger 1 & 2, AMX-30B-2 and Leclerc, Leopard 1 & 2 - many of which don't equal the M1)

 

As for attack helicopters, a weapon of choice for high-tempo in-depth three-dimensional operations, the quantitative ratio is unexceptionable and the qualitative one is awful:

- US	1 664	(+ 366 A-10)
- European 5	977

 

753 American machines are AH64 Apache. To the US number of 1664 combat helicopters, one should add the 366 A-10 ground attack aircraft for which there exists no European equivalent. Existing European attack helicopters (mostly Gazelles and Bo-105) are ageing, and vastly inferior in fire-power to the American arsenal. New acquisitions (British and Dutch Apache, Franco-German Tiger) will improve the European picture in the coming years.

The number of unarmed transport helicopters is in a 3 to 1 range, whereas tactical transport (Puma, Chinook, Blackhawk...) machines are in a 4 to 1 ratio. These ratios are all the more surprising given that the world's n°1 helicopter manufacturer is European (Eurocopter).

C4ISR ₄ :

Europe has one high-resolution optical reconnaissance satellite, Helios IA which is shared between France, Italy and Spain, and whose imagery can also be purchased by the WEU imagery processing centre. A second one (Helios IB) is due for launch later this year. Britain fields a dedicated modern military telecommunication satellite (of the current generation of the Skynet family) and the corresponding surface-based network. France has a dedicated military share of the Telecom family of communications satellites and the corresponding set of Syracuse surface stations.

There are no European military radar or infra-red observation satellites. Britain and France have national versions of the E-3 Sentry AWACS (7 and 4 respectively). France (Sarigue DC-8, Gabriel C-160), and Britain (3 Nimrod R-1) have some ELINT capabilities, and France has an interesting strategic photo-reconnaissance capability with 5 Mirage IVPs (reconverted Mirage IV A strategic bombers) which provided good service in Yugoslavia. Britain alone has a mobile command post for theatre-scale joint operations, with France aiming to possess its own Poste de Commandement Interarmées du Théâtre by 2002. These CPs are not specifically configured to handle large multinational operations (corps level and above): only NATO and the US currently have that ability. However, the Kosovo war has convinced a number of European observers and practitioners that the command gap is not as great as has been sometimes suggested. Other areas of force multiplication have displayed possibly greater European weaknesses during the air war, e.g. offensive electronic warfare (German ECM Tornados being a partial exception), all-weather ground detection capability (the French heliborne Horizon system providing a limited contribution), real-time airborne data transmission, and in-flight refuelling (with Britain doing better here than others).

II. The reason why

The European Union countries spend $ 143 bn on defence versus $ 264 bn ₅ by the US, in effect a 1.8 to 1 ratio in favour of the US. With defence spending close to 60 % of America's, the Europeans could in theory be expected to achieve 60 % of US capabilities. They are probably below 10 % in the realm of strategic reconnaissance and theatre-level C4ISR, at substantially less than 20 % in airlift capacity (by volume or tonnage), and possibly at less than 10 % in terms of precision guided air-deliverable ordnance.

Some of the discrepancy is of a structural nature, and cannot be eliminated as long as each European state has its own national defence establishment, with the associated duplication and overhead costs. However, this is clearly only a limited part of the problem, as is proven by the fact that some European countries achieve relatively much greater efficiencies than others. Furthermore, some the balkanisation of Europe's defence effort can be mitigated by limiting national sovereignty in specific areas (such as the cross-border restructuring of the defence-industrial base) where this has become politically acceptable.

However the single most important cause of the massive discrepancy between US and European capabilities flows from European force structure policies, and the associated spending priorities. Indeed, the Europeans reign supreme in one area, that of unusable and ultimately unaffordable manpower.

The forces of the European Union countries field 1.9 million under uniform versus 1.4 million in the US, whereas the US has global military responsibilities. The net effect is that after spending for the corresponding force structures, there is little left for European R&D, acquisition or for O&M spending. An extreme case is provided by Germany, Greece and Italy, which together field 800 000 military personnel (close to 60 % of the US total) whereas they spend 12 % ($ 8 bn) of what the US does on procurement (NATO definition): in these countries, the average soldier's firepower intensity - surely an important measure of military productivity - is five times less than that of his US counterpart.

Thus, there is little left to spend on what is most relevant to Post Cold War conflict, i.e. operations outside of one's own territory for important but generally less-than-vital interests . The reason for this situation is straightforward enough. During the Cold War, continental Europe had to focus the bulk of its effort on territorial defence relying on large, conscript-heavy, standing armies. The US, notwithstanding its major troop commitment on the Central Front (around 325 000 military personel in the mid-eighties) was for obvious reasons of geography, always reliant on force projection (notably in the shape of the Reforger ₆ concept) rather than on territorial defence. Conscription, never a permanent nor a welcome feature of the US military landscape, died with the end of the Viet Nam war.

When the Cold War ended, the US found it comparatively easy to adapt to the changed strategic circumstances, by the more or less proportional downsizing of its forces (the "Bottom-Up" review, despite its name, wasn't zero-based) and the more than proportional reduction of its Central European based forces (which had dropped to 110 000 by 1996). Military personnel cuts of 36 % (1.4 M in 1998 versus 2.16 M in 1989) were deeper than the overall budget cuts (the DoD budget fell by a quarter in constant dollars between 1986 and 1998). The remaining force structure was thus sheltered from the direct impact of the budget cuts. The DoD spends today as much on defence as it did in the early eighties, with a force structure downsized by more than a third. This means that defence spending per soldier has sharply increased: not a bad position for picking the fruits of the RMA.

Apart from the United Kingdom and little Luxembourg, all of NATO's European allies relied on conscription until the end of the Cold War. This had several adverse consequences in adapting to post Cold War conditions:

- first, major force structure reductions will usually entail the prior abolition of conscription, since national service generates more bodies than can be used in force projection (continental style conscription is not usually based on US-style selective service recruitment, but on a reasonably universal sharing of the burden). Thus in France, we could either keep conscription, with 10-months service, and therefore have to maintain an unaffordable and unusable 230 000 plus-army, or we could abolish the draft (as we decided to do in 1996), with an all-volunteer force pegged at 135 000 or less: there was no politically and militarily viable solution between these two figures.

Abolishing conscription - and here again continental traditions differ from US and UK traditions - is often politically costly: it took a major act of political courage to do away with it in France, and abolition would require a greater act of courage in Italy or Germany;

- second, abolishing conscription, as the British and Americans are well placed to know, initially costs money. In a constrained budget environment, professionalisation may occur at the expense of R&D and acquisition (as has been the case in Belgium), with the risk of worsening, not improving, the situation in the short run;

- abolishing conscription doesn't save nearly as much money as do the sort of professional force cuts which have taken place in the UK and the US. Infrastructure, upkeep and some O&M savings will occur, but direct savings on personnel costs will be limited, given the serf-like wages of conscripts in most countries.

It is therefore not surprising - although not desirable - that conscription is taking so long to go. Belgium (1994) ₇ , the Netherlands (1996), France (2002) and Spain (2002) have not yet been followed by countries such as Germany, Italy or Sweden. At the rhetorical level, force projection is generally recognised as the new priority whereas territorial defence is nearly everywhere regarded as a secondary mission: but the practical consequences have not always been drawn.

III. Improving capabilities

Britain and France had not waited for the Kosovo war to initiate a major push for European defence. What was called the "Blair initiative" in the summer of 1998 helped generate the French-British Saint-Malo Declaration (December 4th, 1998) which is characterised by two major innovations:

- capabilities, not identities or institutions, are singled out as the main objective. This represents a Copernican revolution, in view of previous European propensities

- the European Union, a deep-rooted, broad-based, high-powered organisation will henceforth become the receptacle of European defence initiatives, more or less absorbing the comparatively weak Western European Union.

Under the German presidency of the EU, these changes were endorsed by the EU 15 (including the four non-NATO members) and given substance at the European Council meeting in Cologne in June of this year.

It now remains to be seen what the EU and its members will do to make European defence capabilities more relevant to the post Cold War era. The new Amsterdam Treaty, the new Common Foreign and Security Policy representative - Javier Solana -, the new Commission -under Romano Prodi-, the newly elected Parliament, and the decision to absorb the WEU form the institutional backdrop to whatever decisions will be made.

Naturally, deep national reforms - such as the French undertook in February 1996 and which were vindicated by the French showing in the Kosovo war - will continue to be of the essence: the effects of such reforms should not be underestimated. During the Gulf war, France was able with difficulty to deploy a light division of some 12 000 soldiers; at the time it only had 6 000 immediately available troops for force projection. Today, those numbers have more or less doubled (21 000 troops which can be deployed overseas on a sustainable basis, of which around 12 000 are immediately available). By the time we complete our reforms in 2002, they will have risen by more than 50 %. At a pinch, Britain and France together could by then be able to field close to 100 000 fully-trained, fully-equipped professional soldiers in short expeditionary operations. As stated earlier, some of the gaps in the RMA inventory are also being filled on a national basis.

In addition to such national initiatives, there are at least three areas in which collective European wide decision-making can make a difference.

1) convergence:

The expression "convergence criteria" is one which Europeans recognise as the method used to establish the Euro. Irrespective of the Euro's prospects, this sort of approach is one for which the EU is well equipped for. The EU is not a government nor a state, and it therefore cannot be expected to readily conduct day-to-day crisis management. Conversely, as a tight regional organisation, its members can set themselves binding long-terms goals. The net effect is that a European-wide initiative - such as the Single Market or the Euro - makes it possible for individual states to undertake domestic reforms which would be politically unsustainable in a purely national framework. France, Italy or even Germany, could not have cleaned up their budgetary act by 1997 if it hadn't been for the existence of a European discipline leading to the Euro.

This method is currently much talked about in the field of defence, although little detailed work has been made public at this stage. However, it isn't too difficult to imagine what sort of criteria could be used if the aim is to enhance force projection at the expense of territorial defence (and if the aim is not a Single European Army, a politically unrealistic proposition). Furthermore, experience tells us that the criteria have to be clear, few in number and they have to bite - this inevitably leads to a degree of arbitrariness or unfairness; but excessive complexity is the enemy of effectiveness.

Such criteria could for instance, focus, on two areas over a five-to-ten year period. ₈

One would consist in aligning military manpower as a share of overall population on a ratio similar to that of the highest performer in this field, the United Kingdom.

The following table shows just how wide the gap currently is:

EU 1998	Best (UK)	3,6 %0
military manpower / total population (%)	Average	5,1 %0
	Worst (Greece)	15,9 %0
	divergence ratio	4.4 : 1	(Minus Luxembourg)

 

The resulting of downsizing would entail the abolition of the draft nearly everywhere. As has been the care for the Euro, Greece may not find possible to adhere to the criteria (its military emphasis will remain mass territorial defence against Turkey).

The other aim would be a commitment to structure defence spending so that the aggregate of R&D, acquisition and O&M would reach a level comparable to that of the European benchmark. The comparison here does not include Ireland and Sweden, for which O&M figures for 1997 or 1998 are not readily available.

EU (figures for 1998 except Finland and Austria 1997)	Best (UK) Mean (Austria) Worst (Portugal)	61,2 % 35,5 % 19,6 %	(US = 58,1 %)
	Divergence ratio	3.8 : 1	(Minus Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden)

 

If the focus were put on the technology gap per see the table of acquisition plus R&D would read as follows:

11 EU members of NATO (1998)	Best (UK) Mean (Germany)	27,9 % 12,6 %	(US = 24,8 %)
	Worst (Belgium)	5,4 %
	Divergence ratio	4.7 : 1	(Minus Luxembourg, except for calculation of mean)

 

An "acquisition plus R&D" commitment could be a sub-criteria within the broader O&M plus equipment criteria.

Such criteria would have several advantages:

- they don't force the EU to resolve theological issues about article 5 (WEU and/or NATO treaties), since the force structures they would help generate would be compatible with all Petersberg-tasks, which the neutrals have subscribed to;

- They don't cover the same ground as NATO-style force planning and DPQs. NATO's Defence Capabilities Initiative could dovetail with an EU-convergence approach.

In addition to convergence criteria, an immediate commitment could be made by all EU members not to reduce defence spending, expressed (for instance) in $ (or Euro) per inhabitant. Under current political and economic (the Euro constraints) conditions, a frontal attempt to force budget increases on military underperformers would probably meet with failure. Conversely, a commitment to stop reductions would be a first step. Regular meetings of the EU Council of Defence Ministers (a body which has yet to be created) would over time, help exert peer pressure - traditionally a powerful lever in EU affairs.

2) actions communes

In EU parlance, this designates collective initiatives conducted by the EU in specific areas. In the military realm, this could involve, for example, the pooling of all or parts of EU members' airlift capability (along lines already in practise between the French Armée de l'Air and the German Luftwaffe). This is an area where NATO is not involved, and which can be made compatible with the non-allied status of several EU members.

Other initiatives - such as a multinational theatre command post, the development of strategic reconnaissance capabilities, notably spy satellites, or the adaptation of the Eurocorps to force projection tasks - could probably not be shared by all EU members. However, there is more latitude for EU-wide initiatives than is sometimes recognised: an example of this is the Galileo project for a European GPS system, whose strategic and military implications would be considerable.

3) defence industrial base:

There are several initiatives which can be taken at the EU (or at a collective European) level:

- The so-called LOI (Letter of Intent) process whereby the Defence Ministries of Europe's largest arms - producing countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden) attempt to harmonise issues (including security rules and clearances) which make it difficult to merge defence industries on a cross-border basis and conduct cooperative programmes. This could eventually become an EU-scale agreement. This is an essential area, given the growth of cross-border joint companies.

- The ratification of the OCCAR (Joint Armaments Cooperation Organisation) treaty between Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which will establish an integrated, supra-national, contract office for the conduct of cooperation programmes. This could be widened to other EU countries and could be extended to the competitive contract management of selected other (i.e. national) programmes.

- The increase of the EU Commission's power to apply EU competition rules to a broader range of defence purchases than is currently allowed for under the current interpretation of article 223 of the Rome Treaty.

These or other initiatives are useful. They are not a substitute to the necessary rationalisation and consolidation of European defence industries. Although that process picked up speed only several years after the American defence industrial reforms, it should not be discounted. It would be unwise for US defence firms to underestimate the competitivity, creativity and reactivity of firms such as New BAe, Aerospatiale Matra or DASA-CASA; or to downplay the establishment of cross-border companies covering specific areas (the merging of Aerospatiale's and Alenia's missile activities with those of Matra-British Aerospace; the merger of DASA's and Alenia's Space activities with those of Matra-Marconi). The suggested measures do not prejudge the existence or absence of strategic transatlantic partnerships between first-tier defence contractors. Presumably, if such links are to emerge on a sustainable basis, there would have to be some sort of EU-US negotiation on the removal of structural impediments to transatlantic cooperation, between today's real "Fortress America" and tomorrow's virtual "Fortress Europe".

It is not yet absolutely clear whether Europe will move towards much more substantial force projection capabilities. But given the progress being made by the British and French governments (and the corresponding defence industries) there is a strong chance that the Europeans will do so as a whole. The Kosovo war has provided them with additional reasons for doing so. Furthermore, during the last six years, Germany - without which there can be no serious talk about a European capability - has brilliantly succeeded in its endeavour to become a "normal" country in terms of its ability to participate in out of area, non-defensive military operations. Its defence spending may be too low and those expenditures may be going to the wrong places; but that can be corrected. Germany's ongoing strategy review is of particular importance in that regard.

Greater European capabilities will not necessarily lead to a greater European willingness to act with the US - within ad hoc coalitions or via NATO - in Middle Eastern contingencies. Such willingness is not systematically absent as was demonstrated by the Gulf War which included the participation of several European countries. But European and US interests and attitudes on Middle Eastern issues continue to be as frequently diverging today as they have been in the past. Action with the US in the Middle East will therefore remain a matter of choice, not of obligation. Greater European capabilities may also make it easier for the European to turn down US requests for support in the Middle East, insofar that a more capable Europe would be somewhat less dependent on the US for security in Europe itself.

We should however be able to field a more effective posse the next time around, if a new Gulf War were to bring us together again in the region.

______________________________

Endnotes:

Note 1: the French/Italian/Spanish Helios I reconnaissance satellite Back.

Note 2: to use the word contained in the title of timely book, "Mind the Gap: Promoting a Transatlantic Revolution in Military Affairs", David Gompert et al., National Defence University, Washington DC, 1999 Back.

Note 3: Concerning the "Euro 5", I have drawn heavily here on IISS data as analysed by François Cailleteau in "E Pluribus Unum", Revue Internationale et Stratégique, Paris, Summer 1999 Back.

Note 4: Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Strategic Reconnaissance Back.

Note 5: IISS, "The Military Balance", 1997/98 Back.

Note 6: Reinforcement of Germany Back.

Note 7: The dates in parenthesis are those of the last year of service of conscripts in each country. In the case of France, only conscripts who were on deferral have been drafted from January 1998 onwards. Back.

Note 8: For more detail, see F. Heisbourg "L'Europe dans l'Alliance atlantique", Politique étrangère, Paris, summer 1999. Back.