Sir Jock Stirup - Stand down?

John A Silkstone

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Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: feeling is growing that a soldier, not an airman, should head the Armed Forces

Britain’s top military commander faces mounting pressure to step down from generals who believe that he lacks the necessary experience to lead the war effort in Afghanistan.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, is expected to be asked to retire earlier than planned to allow one of the two most senior army commanders to take over the role of principal military adviser to the Government.

There is a growing view in Whitehall that a soldier, rather than an airman, should run the Armed Forces up to 2014 — a period when the Army will absorb an increasing amount of the MoD’s resources because of its leading role in the Afghan land war.

Labour and the Conservatives are both committed to holding a strategic defence review if they win the election. Senior Whitehall sources said that it also made sense for a new man, from the Army hierarchy, to head the Armed Forces — both to bring fresh ideas to the review and to help to implement its conclusions.

A Whitehall source described Sir Jock as “dead meat”, whoever won the general election. Ministers had only avoided forcing him out because Labour wanted to avoid another damaging row with a senior military figure, the source said.

Bernard Jenkin, a member of the Commons Defence Select Committee, warned that the row threatened to destabilise the military. “I am aware that there are some quite senior voices in the military who are very critical of Sir Jock Stirrup, but it would be a mistake to allow a scrap to develop between the different Armed Services over personalities.” But he added that it was a “valid criticism” of the most senior defence chiefs that they had failed to confront ministers with “realistic strategic choices against the background of limited resources”.

The Government’s decision last year — supported by the Tories — to make Afghanistan the prime defence commitment for the foreseeable future is increasing speculation that one of two army candidates will be asked to take the top job. They are General Sir David Richards, who succeeded as Chief of the General Staff in August last year, and General Sir Nick Houghton, who became Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff around the same time.

Both have command experience “in the field”, seen as a crucial ingredient for the Government’s most important military adviser over the next four years. General Richards is a former commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, based in Kabul, and General Houghton was deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq, based in Baghdad.

If the Tories win the election, one of the incoming defence ministers is expected to be General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former head of the Army, who is currently a military adviser to David Cameron.

There is little love lost between Sir Richard and Sir Jock, who was part of a “fix” in 2008 that prevented Sir Richard from being considered as a candidate to succeed him as Chief of the Defence Staff. In a deal masterminded by Downing Street, Sir Jock agreed not to retire last year but to stay on as Chief of the Defence Staff until 2011, keeping him in the most senior military post for five years. He took over in April 2006, before troops had been sent to Helmand province, and would normally have retired in 2009. The move scuppered the succession hopes of Sir Richard, who was viewed by Downing Street as too outspoken, and of Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, then First Sea Lord. The Iran fiasco, when 15 sailors and marines were taken hostage by Revolutionary Guard gunmen in the Gulf in 2007 put paid to his chances.

Sir Richard is expected to be made a peer and a defence minister in a Cameron government, and good relations with the Chief of the Defence Staff will play an important part in the formulation of future defence policy.

In the next few years more resources are bound to be switched to the Army, with the Royal Navy and the RAF suffering as a consequence, and the speculation in Whitehall is that a general is likely to be put in overall charge of the Armed Forces sooner rather than later.

An MoD spokesman said: “Afghanistan is rightly the operational priority of the Army, the Navy and the RAF, and is the MoD’s main focus under the military leadership of Sir Jock.”

Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said: “It has been a very tough year in Afghanistan ... We have learnt quickly and reacted with exceptional speed in very difficult circumstances. This could only be done because of the command team we have in place. They have my full confidence.”
 
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