Singing in the Rain - the military and UK Flooding

Much of the news in the UK this Christmas has been occupied by headlines around the dreadful floods being faced across much of the north and west of the country. Within this there has also been coverage of the military contribution to trying to alleviate damage, provide flood rescue and try to reduce the impact on people around the region.

This is laudable work, and my thoughts go out to all in the military and MOD who have had to suspend their Christmas leave in order to provide help and support to others going through this most awful of event. But, at the back of my mind I cannot help but wonder why there is still a continued desire and reliance to call upon the military at times like this?

For many years the UK doctrine on operations in the UK has been governed by JDP-O2 - https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/28469/JDP02Ed2.pdf This document sets out in exhaustive detail how the military is intended to respond to emergencies, the different types of assistance that can be offered, from threats to life through to day to day support to the civil community. Its not an easy read, but its well worth glancing through to better understand how the MOD sees its role within the wider resilience community.

From a policy perspective the idea underpinning this is seems to be to minimise the so-called 'generic contribution' of troops on the street undertaking general duties which could be done by others. At its simplest, the role of the military should be to provide highly niche and discrete skills, not to have people to do general duties. This is because there is no cadre of manpower deliberately allocated to MACA (aid to the civil authority) general duties, rather it is drawn at risk from people based in the UK.  In reality this has meant that troops training for operations have been drawn off this training in order to do things as varied as Firefighting and flood defences (the 2003 fire fighters strike drew on personnel going to TELIC, and much HERRICK preparation was disrupted in the 2007 floods in the West Country).

The intent is to try and force local authorities to come to terms with their own emergency planning, rather than just rely on the MOD to send in the troops every time they have a problem. In part this is done by not providing guaranteed troops, and also by in normal circumstances sending the bill for military assistance (which can be extremely large) to the authorities involved. The aim was to ensure that troops were only drawn on as a very last resort.

Two things though seem to have halted this approach, which had successfully seen the MOD withdraw from much of the civil contingencies work. Firstly, the increase in flooding in recent years has seen a need for more manpower to support in a crisis - but this is often just bulk manpower, not specialists with skills and equipment that can be of niche value. Secondly, arguably the Army in casting around for a new post HERRICK role in order to justify its size has seized on this work as a means of putting troops on the ground to help support local authorities, and using regulars and reservists as a pool of manpower to do so.

The problem as I see it is that while calling on the military is rather like dialling 999 - you get a paramedic equivalent who isn't a deep expert on all things, but can do enough to keep you alive until more help arrives. Fighting floods isn't the ideal use of often highly trained manpower, particularly when people are improvising into the role as its not something they train for regularly.

It is an extremely expensive and often inefficient use of taxpayers assets to send the military, when better planning or investment elsewhere could see situations where flooding occurs prevented. Rather the military are called on as a sticking plaster without deep thought seeming to go into long term cure.

The use of the Army paradoxically highlights that also perhaps there are too many soldiers hanging around with too little to do? If it is possible to put hundreds, if not thousands of troops on the streets from barracks, where they've not been preparing for ops, then the question is, why do we need them and are they really the best solution to the flooding crisis? Keeping thousands of troops on just to occasionally be a short term 4th emergency service seems incredibly expensive, and not necessarily the best use of military manpower.

Finally, the question I'd have is if the tasks needed are relatively simple, and can be done with fairly little training, why are we expecting the military and not volunteers or local residents to assist? There seems to be call for an additional volunteer service which could be called on at times like this to assist, where manpower can come at short notice and provide the sort of support needed - it would need organisational skills to pull together, but given flooding in the north and west is becoming more and more regular, the time is perhaps right to consider it?  There is precedent in the form of the civil defence corps of the 1960s, designed to provide support in the aftermath of a nuclear attack; perhaps it is the right time to reinvent that, rather than rely on the military to come to the rescue?