Procedure driven Operations (bureaucracy bollocks)... and self-help...

My unit used to work directly for the Ministry of Defence and as such was answerable effectively to the Chief of Defence Staff. It worked. We were flexible. We could feed information direct to the Strategic Level. And if the shit hit the fan in country, we could look to nobody but ourselves to dig ourselves out…

Unfortunately, the MoD – being that huge expensive building with 18,000 paper-pushers and office-chairs at £600 a time – were not comfortable with the proposition of answering the Parliamentary Questions about why ‘X’ men had been arrested, lost or killed in such and such a country. You see, the MoD is literally the – I was going to say Gear-box of the Military - but that would suggest that various offices interlocked and turned smoothly to drive something. No it’s more the ‘Engine-Management System’ that says to a car ‘Oh! The tail end is slipping out, reduce the power to the rear-wheels – you’re having too much fun!’ or ‘this machine is capable of producing 800BHP and doing 200MPH – but I’m going to give you just 500BHP and a 155MPH.’

You see – if the shit hit’s the fan, the MoD can’t respond – they have no ‘assets’ in their direct control. In fact they don’t even have a manned Ops Room to be able to respond - should they have had any ‘assets.’

So they handed us to someone who apparently can.

The Permanent Joint Head-Quarters United Kingdom resides in a Nuclear Bunker in Northwood. The entrance door is 3 feet thick steel, weighs an enormous amount, with air-tight seals and electronically controlled and monitored access. It is manned by Officers and Senior Rates who have been told that if they do 2 years in purgatory, they have a chance of getting promoted… one day… when Tony Blair is remembered as a War Criminal and Big Brother is simultaneously on all 5 terrestrial channels whilst X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Dancing on Ice share the other 27 Free-view channels…

And the poor bastards believe what they have been told - and so daily turn up for work at 0730, in the maze of corridors painted in pale blue and grey that stretch out apparently for miles, 200ft below Northwood. Some of them are so dedicated, that they don’t come up for fresh air until 2100 (9pm). No sunshine (no problem for the Submariners), no food (no problem for the fat Submariners) and no clean air (no problem for the dirty Submariners). Initially, for the Navy guys, it’s actually not much different from being at sea – accept they don’t spend 50% of their time puking into buckets (except on Friday morning after ‘big’ Thursday). For the Army and Marines, it’s actually quite luxurious as they don’t have to lie in their own shit and bag their chocolate wrappers. For the RAF it generally represents they only time in their career they can boast they have had to rough-it, living as they do in 5* Hotels, being hand fed by mummy and daddy with silver spoons and having their bottoms wiped by some poor ethnic fellow.

Initially.

And then, after a while, they realise that it’s actually NOT a nice place to work. You see, everyone working down there is trying to make their mark – whether by kissing senior ass, re-inventing the wheel (but better) or proving their leadership skills by pissing off every single person junior to them in the organisation as quickly as they can.

Oh and what an organisation! Headed by Commander Joint Operations – a 3* (Lieutenant General, Air Marshall, Vice-Admiral) it basically has the entirety of the British Armed Services at it’s disposal (so 3 riflemen, a paper aeroplane and a motorized bath-tub). And when the shit hits the fan – apparently, with a 24 hour Ops Room dominated by a 100ft square TV screen – the organisation can react!

Unfortunately, to react, they require you to inform them about what you are doing.

Now, to the laymen, you would take the 5Ws – What, Who, Where, When and Why. But for PJHQ, that is a process of estimates, OPORDERS, FRAGOs, Flapsheets, Budget Control Forms, e-mails and telephone calls which have to go through 5 levels of staffing which used to take a maximum of 5-6 weeks or in crisis, a minimum of 2-3 weeks - but now takes 105 days (16 weeks)to finally staff. Oh, and numerous man-hours and Trees for the originating unit. Each document can be up to 30 repetetive pages...

The result of this is of course that we now have no capability to flexibly respond anymore to the emerging needs of any given situation unless there is an absolutely confirmed activity – and then we have to apply a 16 week count-down. Oh, and as one of my teams found out when the shit hit the fan in their area of responsibility, PJHQ are wholly incapable of mounting any kind of rescue operation.

Bureaucracy bollocks.

Surprisingly, the team didn’t wait for the required sixteen weeks. They used their cash float to buy their way onto a freighter that was rightfully scarpering.

Fucking useless.