Creating a workable military doctrine for BDF

Richard Moleofe | Friday August 19, 2016 15:16

One of the things that Lt Gen Galebotswe has achieved was to appoint a committee that he has tasked with developing a doctrine for BDF.

I will not hesitate to repeat myself in an attempt to educate my readers by explaining what military doctrine is all about.

The basic definition to this would be; military doctrine is the basic expression of how a military organisation intends to conduct its campaigns and major operations at peacetime and during hostilities of war. These are written in manuals and they clearly stipulate all courses of action for military commanders.

Doctrine does not only inform military commanders, it also functions as an important tool for civilian planners who seek to achieve a political goal through military campaigns. For both the military and civilian principals, it provides a common lexicon for the two groups of planners who are empowered to make strategic decisions for their country.

The BDF team that has been selected to work on this document is undoubtedly filled with a lot of experienced officers. Of course most of them are senior and have had thorough interaction with other armies of the world.

Almost all in the team have done a military course or two in the United States or so. Some of the senior officers seating in this team have actually done Staff College and War College in the US. But the team has taken too long to publish its work when taking into consideration the fact that they started work in 2014. The following year in August was the time when I started raising issues about our military doctrine.

At the time I had no idea that there was work in progress but I am glad I raised the issue at the appropriate time. Of course it is the concern of every citizen that wants to see things done in a professional manner.

I am impressed with the work of the doctrine team and it really reflects the maturity of those men. Even though most of it is cut and paste from this and that military manual, the end product looks promising. From my last sneak preview of the document, I could tell that it is leaning more to what the US Army has as its doctrine.

There is really nothing wrong with this when taking into account the fact that most of these officers have had their training in the US. Furthermore, the US government has invested heavily in raising BDF to its current levels with the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programme.

It was not only with academic furtherance, the US government has also donated several equipment that included the V-150 armoured vehicles and an assortment of weapons systems.

I strongly believe that the commander should have appointed a few female officers into the team so that they can add that feminine texture to the product. That is forward looking because female soldiers are here to stay.

BDF has awakened to the need to formulate a military doctrine rather too late. Imagine that this has come at the point of the fifth commander for the defence force. I would have expected this initiative to have come from Lt Gen Fisher whose approach was more academic than the rest of the five commanders.

In fact Gen Fisher owed BDF this piece of document because he arrived at a time when the tradition was for the middleman to knock at the commander’s door and present his preferred set of equipment and weapons.

Fisher arrived at a time when the waters were mucky in as far as arms procurement is concerned. He became commander in 1998 and at that point the organisation had just been flooded with several equipment that arrived obsolete.

The arrival of the Alvis Scorpion tanks opened up a torrent of other obsolete equipment to follow. Then followed the SK105 from Austria. This tank was overheating on its first trials in this country. During Ex-Matsubutsubu 1, the Mechanical Engineers Regiment worked overtime recovering the SK105 tanks from all over the bushes of Kweneng District. The situation was so bad that the only ones of these tanks that reached Shoshong Firing Range were brought on the backs of the low bed vehicles.

During this exercise, the Alvis Scorpion tank was severely limping on its old tracks. A majority of them could not take part in the exercise because their tracks were failing. The new ones that had been sourced from a South African supplier were a serious imitation so much that they could only last for the duration of the exercise.

With these examples I am really building my case against Gen Fisher in that he should have called for the setting up of a committee to write up our defence doctrine. He was in charge when things started falling apart.

Gen Fisher was the first BDF officer to be admitted to the Fort Leavenworth War College of the US Army. Therefore he was the first officer to know of anything called “doctrine.”

It is unfortunate that Gen Galebotswe has had to come and clean after some of his predecessors who turned a blind eye when our approach to military procurement was surely not serving the best interests of this country.

It is now the work of the incoming commander to complete the work that Gen Galebotswe has started. Certainly there is going to be fierce resistance on the establishment of a defence doctrine.  The opposition will come from those who have benefited greatly from the current dispensation. And the prevalent politically connected middleman is surely not going to take it lying down.