DCDC : Joined up Military Thinking ....at last.

The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) has responsibility for the development of the Joint Doctrine that guides how the UK Armed Forces conduct their operations, for the provision of long-term conceptual underpinning for the development of future capability and for an analysis of the future strategic context.


The DCDC (as the JDCC) was established as a result of the Strategic Defence Review in 1998 and, although mainly sited at Shrivenham, lies in the Policy and Commitments area of the Ministry of Defence. It is responsible for ensuring that military operations and capabilities, both now and in the future, are supported by leading-edge concepts, independent thinking and doctrinal best practice.

The DCDC is a truly joint establishment, with staff from all three Armed Services and the Civil Service. Our desk officers come from a wide variety of specialised backgrounds and combine their skills in project teams.

In order to bring greater coherence to doctrinal, concepts and futures work across Defence, the DCDC is in the process of enlarging (with effect from 1st of April 2006) to absorb additional manpower from all 3 Services, notably from the Army’s Director General Development and Doctrine at Upavon and from the Directorate of Force Development.

The JLC’s initial outputs are as follows:

1. The creation of a Defence repository of all authoritative UK lessons at the tactical, operational and strategic level.
2. The establishment of the UK Lessons Net in order to enable Defence-wide access to lessons material for research and analysis, whether for operations or training.
3. The provision, as required, of tailored Joint Lessons products to assist in planning, deploying formations and for military lessons studies and operational audits.
4. The maintenance of a reference library of documents on Land, operations and campaigns.
5. The facilitation of engagement between the wider-Defence community and the Corporate Memory, Naval and Air Historical branches.

JLC Project Point Of Contact:

DCDC Joint Lessons Manager (JLM)
Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre
MOD Shrivenham
SWINDON
Wilts SN6 8RF
Tel: 01793 31 [Mil: 96161] 4277
E-mail: dcdc-jointlessons1@defence.mod.uk

Doctrine

Concepts

Multi Agency Operations / Peace Support

Development and Experimentation

Policy

Strategic Concepts


This last section is the result of previous work and demonstrates that military intelligence is not an oxymoron. The results of this work were portrayed in a presentation at the Royal UNited Services Institute recently by Rear Admiral Chris Parry and encapsulated in an article in the Sunday Times June 11th 2006 Beware: The new goths are coming.

If a security breakdown occurred, Parry says, it was likely to be brought on by environmental destruction and a population boom, coupled with technology and radical Islam. The result for Britain and Europe, Parry warned, could be "like the 5th century Roman empire facing the Goths and the Vandals".

Parry pointed to the mass migration which disaster in the Third World could unleash. "The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns," he said. "Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned . . . [the process] acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet."

Finally it is exciting to see that some joinedup thinking has been at work .. expressed itself, and gets an audience. Parry foresees wholesale moves by the armed forces to robots, drones, nanotechnology, lasers, microwave weapons, space-based systems and even "customised" nuclear and neutron bombs .. so he may have been following Lord Patel's posts on UAV's , stealth boats, military robots and space based systems. Although we are already behind the curve, not being involved in the pan - European CUAV the Combat UAV nEUrone which is pioneered by the Swedes and the French.

Lord Boyce, the former chief of the defence staff, welcomed Parry’s analysis. "Bringing it together in this way shows we have some very serious challenges ahead," he said. "The real problem is getting them taken seriously at the top of the government."

Which sounds perilously like the situation with the country's energy policy which Tony Blair lamely now accepts is very, very serious. (see Lord patel's heading).

Parry predicts that as flood or starvation strikes, the most dangerous zones will be (already are ?) Africa, particularly the northern half; most of the Middle East and central Asia as far as northern China; a strip from Nepal to Indonesia; and perhaps eastern China.

He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America’s sole superpower status.

If interested follow what he says and go to the Strategic Concepts section of DCDC and don't miss Lord Patel's posts on the future.

Lord Patel said after carefully examining his crystal balls in April 2003

"Let's not forget that in this fog of war, Sharon will be consulting his roadmap, readying the bulldozers to push the Palestinians down the road to the seashore. No doubt the Zionist State department apparatchiks like Fieth, who has written about the land of Zion stretching from what is Syria to Ancient Mesopotamia will be fuelling their tanks. Condoleeza Rice announces today a 6Bn US$ grant to Israel, topping up their requests with the odd 1BnUS$ (BBC News)."

...and a little earlier before the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 in the Canadian Spectator

"Counting the cost... eventually

The course is charted, arrogant use of the military is all the US ruling class has to maintain its dominance. After Iraq, asymmetric warfare, "terrorism," will be directed at Americans, American institutions, American targets, and American allies. When the rest of the world recognizes how thinly spread the US military is, thinly spread physically, and economically, because it is not a sustainable institution in its current incarnation, rebellions will occur. Indeed they have already started. The response of the weakening US will be to lash out, often with unforeseeable consequences, just as the consequences of this impending invasion are unforeseeable, and unknown. "

"Military might is a sign of strength, but the US military is not invincible worldwide. America's use of force as both first and last resort is a sign of profound systemic weakness. "

Perhaps the British Armed Forces are starting to look at the next war instead if fighting the last one .. lets hope that they take the lessons .. the current shambles in Afghanistan suggest they haven't.