PARIS — An open dialogue about cultural and technological differences among allies is key to having effective command and control, a British Royal Air Force (RAF) officer has said.
Air Vice Marshal Paul Atherton said he came to this conclusion during Griffin Strike, a large Anglo-French exercise held in Britain.
“Awareness is key and dialogue is the tool to fix it,” he said April 21 at a conference about the future of air forces, organized by France. The high-level conference, Air Forces in 2030: Trends and Possible Shocks, followed two days of meetings held by staff officers from the American, British and French air forces partnered in the trilateral strategic initiative.
There was a need to cut red tape and understand cultural and technology differences, and the British and French acquisition of the A400M airlifter opened opportunities for cooperation, according to Atherton, who is the RAF chief of staff operations.
Griffin Strike showed the British practice of giving verbal orders, while other nations, such as France, relied on written orders, he said. “The written order is entirely valid but it is important to understand the cultural difference,” he said.
“That came out loud and clear on Tuesday afternoon when there a little degree of confusion over exactly who was going to do what,” he said. “C2 is absolutely vital.”
In the Griffin Strike exercise, an officer in a “C2 land node” talked to a commander in the navy component, Atherton said. That required some six different nodes, four firewalls and three satellites for the land commander to talk to the navy commander, who was just some 75 miles off the coast of Cornwall, southwest Britain.
Those handling procurement “in the capability world” need to factor in the US, French and NATO forces, with whom the British use secure communications, he said. “All too often we miss that right at the outset.”
Griffen Strike consists of an April 10-23 exercise in Britain, with 5,500 personnel, of which some 2,000 are from the French Air Force, Army and Navy. Some 20 aircraft and 10 ships are committed, including the French Dixmude helicopter carrier.
The need to slash bureaucracy could be seen in British and French air-to-air refueling, a key “force multiplier,” Atherton said.
UK and France both will fly their fleets of Airbus A330 tanker aircraft. The French Air Force will clear Mirage and Rafale fighters to refuel off their tanker jets, but “why can’t they read that across to the UK?” he said.
“That would avoid a test, trials, clearance process that would take weeks if not months," he said. "There has got to be a better way of doing this.”
Bureaucracy hits other areas such as RAF arming the F-35 joint strike fighter with the Paveway 4 bomb, he said. That will take six to eight months of a trials process rather than an approval based on clearance for the US F-35.
“We’ve got to get smarter doing this,” he said.
