What are the overarching challenges that you face? Is it getting the forces you need? Is it training the forces you need? Or is it having them be interoperable?

The challenge is the fact that the world now looks, at best, competitive if not contentious. You have the ill-advised imposition of statehood in areas of quite significant tension. By that, I’m clearly meaning the Russians. But there is activity that can be both misconstrued and could be misunderstood happening all the time. And therefore we are having to think what that means and what might happen next. You then have the dramatic rise of Daesh, which is not a cultural organization, or an organization with a soul who will could be negotiated with and brought back to our fold. Their whole fundamental creed is to hate us and hate what we believe and what we love to do. So, whether it requires facing up to the Russians – whether it’s northeast or southeast – is one task requiring one set of mentalities, and handling Daesh, which is a completely different set of mentalities. And both of them worry me. The thing that really scares me is the contagion between the two. So it is armed cells getting out of control and reaching the wrong people. It is inadvertent behavior heating an already heavily-simmering cauldron and causing a sequence of inadvertent mistakes that lead to a strategic mistake. And doing that at a time when our politicians are wrestling with some quite big other issues. Our politicians have a huge number of things to worry about and that require a deeper understanding and knowledge, which takes time. a capacity to understand. So we have to structure a single maritime response with a single voice, but many facets. And that requires an incredible level of sophistication that we’ve never tried to achieve before, and a level of partnership that is absolutely the fundamental heart of NATO. It’s absolutely why NATO exists. But it requires to step a bit more deeply into this NATO partnership, because the only way we’re gonna handle this is by doing it together. My challenge is to bring the voice in, and then create value back to nations that they feel it’s worth investing in NATO because we’re giving them something back that they couldn’t achieve by themselves.

 

That seems like something that member nations would support.

We’ve only been a headquarters for four years. And we sometimes argue that NATO is an organization that you must support, because we’re here, and we look slightly affronted when people go, “Well, actually, I’m not sure you’re any good.” That’s one thing we get wrong. The other thing we get wrong is we, as nations, treat NATO as a shiny ornament in a nice silky box that we take out once a year when the relatives come over. I’ve got to offer nations value. And nations, then, have to use NATO so it becomes more valuable. And everything I’m doing – absolutely everything I’m doing – is that double-sided equation. So I’ve directed the headquarters to concentrate on operations. It is the only thing that matters. What’s the threat and what will think about it, and do about it? And I’m doing that because I’ve got to take this headquarters from being a gangly and gawky adolescent into an organization that can be trusted to deliver operational success and earn the confidence of the nations. I need to convince nations to be quite prepared to put the four BMD shooters, as an example, under my command, because that allows them to think about and do something else and they trust me to do it completely. So my sole driver is to do that and drive that operational focus and operational credibility through the headquarters.

 

Just touching back on BMD again. What is it that other nations can bring to this BMD problem today, besides those four ships that are equipped with purpose-designed capability that’s added to their Aegis combat system?

We must remember that the BMD ships will be operating in an incredibly complex architecture where there are at least five or six disciplines happening around them at the same time. Now not a lot of nations can either afford or have the aspiration to do BMD shooters, but most nations, if not all of them, have an ability to collect information and make it into intelligence. Almost all the nations have an ability to conduct AAW, or ASW, or ASUW, so therefore to protect the BMD shooters. Some of the navies’ [have] air defense capabilities that can handle the very, very highest end of the threat that may be aimed against the BMD shooter to prevent it from carrying out its mission. So this is a game for everybody. I don’t think the U.S. could afford to do BMD without NATO putting the “wraparound” around it. Or if it was to do that, it would have to give up other tasks that would be expensive to the overall American policy position.

 

Can some of these nations acquire the ability to do surveillance and tracking, and create a track or provide a fire solution for a BMD shooter?

The British Type 45, the German Saxon class, the Dutch De Zeven Provincien class all have components of radar or sensor capability that act over the overarching picture. These nations are investing now in the information connectivity component that will allow them to contribute to the BMD battle space. And then we know that there are certain ships – Type 45 is one of them – that has launcher space to go to a different missile set. And indeed, I’m a U.K. officer talking about U.K. business, but I reflect three or four other nations. And as they’re building or upgrading their hulls, kind of as a classic example, they’re making sure that they can take a launcher that can fire a missile that’s capable of doing BMD shooting. We recently conducted a very successful BMD firing off the Scottish missile ranges in the U.K. It represents a wonderful advance in our missile technology and a huge leap for NATO.