{"id":19825,"date":"2015-04-20T12:15:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T02:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=19825"},"modified":"2015-04-20T13:44:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T03:44:47","slug":"contesting-contestability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/contesting-contestability\/","title":{"rendered":"Contesting contestability"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Andrew Davies\u2019 three First Principles Review (FPR) posts on contestability (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>) make interesting reading for anyone who has been on both sides of capability arguments. While I agree with most of what Andrew wrote, there are two assumptions of his I would like to contest.<\/p>\n The first is the assumption that only non-military issues are the subject of contestability (such as cost and schedule). In many cases uncontested \u2018professional opinion\u2019 is the root of the evil, even when the mechanics of capability projects are well executed. The \u2018Service Position\u2019 often becomes synonymous with the professional military opinion, but in reality, it\u2019s no more than the opinion that happened to prevail in the intra-tribal (read: service) debate. It\u2019s sometimes based on individual or group prejudices and seniority. Once the service chief has formed an opinion, the organisation swings into uncontested decision-based evidence-making rather than evidence-based decision-making.<\/p>\n The second assumption is that the government\u2019s own guidance is a suitable foundation for contesting force structure wishes. In practice, however, it\u2019s all too easy to link a favourite capability to strategic policy by means of a reverse-engineered concept of operations or employment. All the armed services do this and each is free to fight a different war to the other two. It would not be difficult to fill an entire page with examples of the inter-service disconnections. Air Force puts little priority on sustained air defence of surface forces at the distances at which they expect to operate. It has little real expeditionary capability, unless operating from a pre-established base in friendly territory counts as expeditionary. Navy puts little priority on supplying fuel to forces ashore, but they could argue that neither of the other Services has much ability to receive serious quantities of it anyway. Army is getting steadily heavier with little regard for whether the other two services will be able to support its increased logistic demands and even less regard for its suitability for amphibious operations from the helicopter-centric LHDs. Perhaps contestability could usefully be extended downstream from strategic guidance to the operational concepts stage.<\/p>\n