Describing the onset of the First World War, the historian A J P Taylor referred memorably to great powers acting under the 'dead hand' of forgotten military plans.
In modern times, the dead hand can be even stronger. Military needs and technologies change more rapidly, but at the same time military systems have longer lead times and longer service lives. Defence decisions which were rational when they were taken can easily become irrelevant, expensive and even counterproductive 20 or 30 years down the line. Moreover, in the modern era defence decisions are rarely taken for pure military reasons: they are typically influenced by domestic and international politics, special pleading, and short-term economic and financial factors.
However, new thinking in defence offers the possibility of escape from the dead hand. A recent addition to the bubbling alphabet soup of defence acronyms, TLCM stands for Through Life Capability Management. Based on successful approaches in civilian industries as diverse as public transport, telecommunications and energy, it represents a holistic approach to decision-making in defence which analyses simultaneously all the factors which shape the need for a military capability and the ability to maintain it throughout its lifetime. In this context, capability has a wide definition. Going beyond the notion of specific platforms or weapons systems, capability means the ability to achieve a chosen military objective against any prospective opposition in any theatre where it is thought necessary. Capability is therefore a relative term; military technology which may be useless against a superpower may be effective against lowly-armed terrorists (and vice versa). Technology designed for the Arctic may not work in the desert.
Specifically, the UK Ministry of Defence defines TLCM as 'an approach to the acquisition and in-service management of military capacity in which every aspect of new and existing military capability is planned and managed coherently across all Defence Lines of Development from cradle to grave'. Although it brings a new focus to the choice of equipment, and the priority of containing its lifetime costs of maintenance and adaptation, its scope is much wider. TLCM offers the prospect of new rigour at the highest level of defence decision-making: the actual choice of a particular defence capability and the trade-off between that and other desired capabilities. It may also help to inform another important trade-off, between meeting immediate operational needs and being flexible enough to meet new circumstances or exploit prospective improvements in technology. TLCM can help decision-makers to factor in developments which can change the need for a capability or its relative power, such as new enemies, new weapons systems or new commitments in new battle environments. It also allows decision-makers to factor in long-term changes to the defence environment, such as population and migration pressures, energy needs or climate change.
Below that top tier of decisions, TLCM keeps under permanent review all the lines of development which sustain a capability; not only equipment but also doctrine, training and personnel, information, organisation, infrastructure and logistics. These factors have often been siloed in defence planning, but they are interconnected and a change in one influences all of the others.
One example may serve to illuminate the way in which TLCM can provide new thinking. The Army may be able to exploit exceptionally exciting potential technological change in the area of FRES – the Future Rapid Effect System – tanks and armoured vehicles in everyday language. The change is based on a three-fold use of electricity - as a fuel for the vehicle, as a firing mechanism for its guns and even as part of its armour. Taken together, these changes allow for far greater simplicity and space in the design of vehicles, they have lower maintenance costs, they minimize recoil, and they make vehicles better able to adapt to different terrains. Most, if not all of these changes, are 'benign' in that they tend to improve a particular capability and reduce its cost. But to capture their full benefit, one needs to look at their impact on all the lines of development. Doctrine: will it be possible to get more armoured vehicles onto any given battlefield and allow them to fight for longer periods? If so, what consequent changes will be needed in organisation and command-and-control structures? Training and personnel: will the Army need to recruit and train more electrical engineers? Infrastructure and logistics: what new maintenance skills and capabilities will be required by this new generation of vehicles?
TLCM can bring all of this kind of thinking together, but it also illuminates the higher level of decision-making. Unfortunately, the FRES in-service date is a number of years off, and the Army needs armour now. TLCM offers new insight into interim solutions to meet that present need without committing excessive resources to equipment, doctrine, training and all the other lines of development which may be obsolete in a short period. It also offers some rational guidance on the new trade-off between capabilities. TLCM analysis could suggest that the Army’s battlefield armoured capability is set to become cheaper and more effective. Should defence planners therefore invest more in that capability, to get the proverbial bigger bang for the buck? Or should they maintain the same level of that capability for less money and transfer the savings elsewhere? This kind of debate attracts high emotions on both sides. The emotions may well persist but through TLCM both sides may also have some informed and realistic numbers to discuss.
In all of these ways, TLCM can generate more informed decisions in defence. Moreover, TLCM offers new confidence to defence industry and more opportunities for creative partnerships. By focusing on capability rather than equipment, it can facilitate new methods of defence provision such as contracting for availability, in which private industry makes a defence resource available for a determined period in a set location. This model is being used to provide patrol vessels in the South Atlantic, with significant savings in development and maintenance costs.
TLCM also gives industry far more understanding of the factors which influence defence decisions and far greater confidence in making its own long-term investments in providing particular defence capabilities or supporting lines of development. Because it is a holistic rather than a siloed approach it allows industry the chance to bring its own insights and experience over a much wider range of defence issues than before. It allows such contributions from small and medium-sized defence enterprises as much as from large ones.
To capture the full benefits of TLCM, government and industry must work together even more closely to share expectations, insights and plans. Major industrial players must do the same with all their partners in their supply chains to ensure that SMEs can contribute their ideas to the process and to achieve the greatest impact from R&D and innovation. This entails new relationships between the MOD, industry and the extended supply chain, based on shared, mutually supporting objectives, performance incentives to deliver greater capability at less cost, and management frameworks which support more collaborative working. Essentially this entails a shift away from traditional contracting relationships to a more mature partnering relationship, more common in long-term complex procurements.
Partnering arrangements are widely acknowledged as a way of improving the effectiveness of relationships and generating improved outcomes; however, unless they are carefully managed, both in their establishment and indeed on an ongoing basis throughout their lifetime, success can prove elusive. Each partner in the relationship should assess the current effectiveness of the relationship and identify areas to be developed for enhanced collaboration on a regular, iterative basis. These include not only ‘hard’ contractual and process issues but the equally vital ‘softer’ issues of culture, attitudes and commitment. It provides all the parties with the means for continual evaluation, adaptation and improvement of their relationship.
When effective partnerships are in place, TLCM has the potential to bring both greater logic and greater flexibility to defence decisions. It has a long way to go but it has become a part of UK defence planning and the Ministry of Defence is putting in place the structures required to sustain it and promoting the cultural changes required to embed it. TLCM represents a determined and coherent attempt to make decisions on defence capability which make sense
throughout their lifetime.
