Lt Gen Richard Shirreff CBE - Commander Allied Rapid Reaction Corps

So ends the ARRC’s annual exercise – ARRCADE FUSION 09 (link to web page): ambitious, ground breaking and designed to test HQ ARRC’s ability to integrate planning and execution with key non-military players in a complex and demanding scenario in order to achieve unity of purpose and effort in hybrid conflict. The hard work of drawing out all the lessons and implementing them started with the After Action Review and there remains much to be done to ensure that we extract every ounce of value. However, from my perspective, I can say conclusively that the experimental restructuring of HQ ARRC has been a resounding success. The exercise highlighted many areas we need to get right and there were inevitable shortcomings which we need to work on. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of all who contributed to the exercise, both from within and without HQ ARRC and both civilian and military from across NATO, I really think we might be on the edge of something revolutionary in terms of command and control.

      
For me the key takeaways were:
First, the success of my Commander’s Initiative Group. This group of four academics under the direction of Professor Julian Lindley-French added more value in a short time than I thought would be possible. Their task was to think outside the box, to inform and to challenge and they did this in spades.  Their intellectual honesty, their efforts and their willingness to engage with the staff at all levels added huge value and they held up a mirror of objective thinking for us as a HQ in a way no similar group of military staff would have been able to.

Second, I think we have genuinely been able to put influence at the heart of everything we do. This is fundamental to success in hybrid conflict where it is the mind of the people among whom we are operating, and particularly the leaders to whom they respond, which is the vital ground.

Third, the impact of the Civilian Planning Element was significant. Consisting of staff officers from the British and Dutch Foreign Services, DfiD, the Stabilisation Unit and the State Department embedded with my planners and, together with a broad range of experts in key civil disciplines in the Civil Support Branch, generated genuinely integrated planning and unified effort with a variety of important civilian agencies. The impact of these able, professional and focused civilian staff on a military HQ generated an exciting dynamic and hybrid vigour all of its own. 

I am now confident that we  have a structure, and equally important, a philosophy within HQ ARRC through which unity of purpose and effort can realitically and practically be achieved.

I owe a major debt of thanks to the unprecedented support we enjoyed from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Netherlands Foreign Service, the US State Department, the British Department for International Development and the British Stabilisation Unit for their contribution to Exercise ARRCADE FUSION 09. Warm thanks go also to my own staff and all, both from within and from outside the ARRC, who contributed to the Exercise Control organisation. We have learned much together and there is much to be taken forward together. The bottom line though is that HQ ARRC, together with the civilian institutions with whom we have established the closest bonds of professional expertise, trust, comradeship and friendship, is now a finely tuned, thoroughly capable Headquarters more than capable of delivering the high degree of integrated planning and operational
design needed to ensure mission success in the most complex of operations. The challenge for NATO is to exploit that capability where it is most needed.

Our next milestone will be the Commander’s Conference in December at which I intend to explore these concepts in even more detail.