NBCUK

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :27/06/2007 11:43:52

Representing the UK’s world beating capability

A trade interest group for the NBC defense industry, NBCUK acts as a point of contact for suppliers, the MoD and the Government. Tim Otter, NBCUK’s Chairman, spoke to James Hurley about the nature of the threat, the UK industry’s world beating excellence and how the group is working with the government to further improve UK and global defense capabilities

Written by James Hurley & Produced by Alex Smith

In an age when terrorist groups and their activities are becoming increasingly high profile and destructive, the way that Government, academia and businesses plan for and react to the threat is crucial. Trade interest group NBCUK ensures complete and co-coordinated information is available about the UK NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) defense capability, and it provides information on equipment availability from UK specialist suppliers, the UK Government and the MoD. While the group was established in 1994, its relevance has never been higher.

“It’s a recognised world leader in what it does,” says Tim Otter, Chairman of NBCUK. “It’s unique in that it has got government, industry and academia all in the same boat. It’s only when you pull it all together that you can literally get the world beating capability that the UK has – and the UK does have a genuine world beating capability; it is the world’s leader in the subject.”

Civilian targets

Otter has had a fascinating professional background. Beginning his career in the armed forces, he gained experience in a wide variety of roles, from counter terrorist work to programme management and operational command and analysis. Critically, Otter also did a lot of CBRN defence (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear, the term that’s currently in vogue in place of NBC). “It was not planned,” he says, “but I went through a succession of jobs which were not CBRN based, but as soon as I got to them, for reasons beyond my control, they became CBRN activities.

“I went through six consecutive jobs which started out as non CBRN but which all ended up with a large chunk of NBC involved – it was as if somebody was trying to tell me something,” he jokes.

Leaving the army in 1987, Otter worked in the construction industry for two years as a commercial and contracts manager, an occupation that he describes as “like watching concrete set”. However, it was a position that put him in contact with the marketing director of a company that made chemical warfare sensors. Otter was subsequently offered a position with the firm, and he’s been with company, Smith’s Detection, in various guises for the past 20 years.

“I’ve seen a huge amount of change and probably the biggest has been the recognition once again that the civilian population is the likely target of a CBRN attack,” he says. “In 1936, people recognised that, so when the Second World War came, they all carried gas masks. What do you gain from attacking a well protected army or navy other than making them very angry?

“The civil population is the target. However if the armed forces ever drop their guard they will become the target again - a lesson from the past we would do well to remember. In the new scenarios where the target is the civil population, you have to understand what terrorists, and indeed prank individuals, are all about. Sometimes they can cause more terror by not making an attack than by making one because people are living in expectation.”

A state of preparedness

Tim Otter believes that the UK is better prepared for a CBRN attack than any other country in the world, including the United States. He says that Britain’s long history of dealing with CBRN warfare and terrorist attacks has led governments, academia and businesses to develop advanced strategies and responses to the threat.

“Everybody forgets that Empire troops were the first target of chemical warfare in 1915. There was an urgent need to set up a capability and we have never lost that, including during the cold war. Similarly, we have a world leading counter terrorist capability, which manifested itself partly in Northern Ireland, but has developed through Mau Mau in Kenya, in Malaysia, and elsewhere. We are very good at it as a country because we take the long term view. You cannot deal with counter terrorism in anything other than the long term. There are no short term fixes.

“The police national CBRN centre, the Health Protection Agency, the Association of Chief Police Officers, and their counterparts in the Ambulance and Medical services have all done outstanding jobs. However, and it’s a big however, more needs to be done. There is recognition of this, and work is going on to do it.” Of course, Otter is not going to say what that work is in a public forum. “That would make it very easy for the terrorists to work out what their next step is,” he says.

“I’ve heard the basic principle of counter terrorism described in two ways. Either it’s an onion, and the closer you get to the centre, the stronger the onion becomes, or, it’s like a 3000 metre steeple chase that has obstacles that constantly change in shape, type and degree of difficulty as you go around.”

It’s Otter’s job, in both his Smith’s Detection and NBCUK capacities, to help police, fire and ambulance services respond to the threat of CBRN attacks on major infrastructure. “We like to think that we contribute as much as we possibly can to the Government’s counter terrorist strategy (which is called CONTEST) and the P’s of CONTEST - prevent, pursue, prepare, protect. As a trade association we’re committed to that.”

The early engagement cycle

There are essentially three pots of money in the CBRN technology research and development area - the government’s direct control money, where they employ establishments such as the government and military's research establishment at Porton Down to do research for them, non-government organisations paid by the government to do research and industry investment. “Head for head, the UK industry puts more money in than any other country in the world. That’s why we are so successful worldwide,” says Otter.The MoD’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), which was launched at the end of 2005, aims to improve how military equipment, supplies and service, are procured and supported. It aims to provide greater clarity of the military industrial capabilities that need to be retained within the UK.

Under the strategy, the strengths and weakness of key sectors are being evaluated and decisions made on how they should develop in the future. “One of the leading sectors of the DIS is CBRN,” Otter explains. “We’re looking for that research and development money to be more coherently utilised. We don’t want government and industry researching the same thing , or academia researching something and industry doing the same.

“We need to get the best value for money. Although the CBRN sector already has very early engagement with the MoD on issues like future technologies, there still needs to be better engagement than there is at the moment as to what MOD perceives to be the threat, and their concept of employment and operation. Industry can then get on and design and develop things that don't just deal with the threat but also help the operators to be more effective. Following the research stage, we want deployment as early and as cost-effectively as possible. If there was a criticism that industry has always raised with the MoD, it’s that we do not have that engagement early enough.”

However the UK market for CBRN equipment cannot sustain the quality of the businesses that it has, so they have to export. Otter says this cycle is crucial to the UK’s CBRN capabilities. “Providing we can get export licenses, we get the profit back, which allows us to re-invest in research and development which allows us to improve UK capability. That cycle is what it’s all about.”

Getting these export licenses hasn’t always been an easy process for the companies that NBCUK represents. “Nobody in industry in their right mind has got any issue with the desire to prevent the proliferation of CBRN devices, so we know why there has to be an export license control in place. You do have to be careful about what you export, because if it gets into the wrong hands, it gives the terrorists an understanding of what your capability is. It needs to be worked carefully. But one of the faults of the current system, and we are working very closely with the government to resolve this, is that the clause that they’ve used to catch all of the proliferation activities, also catch all of the defence activities.

“We’re working very closely with the DTI on the review of the UK Strategic Export Control Act 2002, which came into force in 2004,” he says. The act is currently going through its mandatory three year review and revision. “There are no doubts that some of the provisions within it were not sensible. But through sensible discussion of the issues, such as the ability to grant open and individual general export licenses, we have got around this.”

When the legislation first came into force, it meant that companies had to apply for a license every time they wanted to talk to the MoD. This was hugely costly in time, money and effort for both the CBRN industry and the government. However, Otter says that a “sensible solution” has been reached. “I can’t stress enough that it has been a joint activity between the DTI and the executive committee of NBCUK that has allowed us to get to a position where we can work more sensibly. That doesn’t mean there’s total unanimity on the way the export control regime is enforced or that everything is rosy, but we’re getting there. The review that is going on at the moment will further assist in sorting the issues out.”