Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend asks a very perceptive question. We are satisfied that, despite a reduction to 72,500, we still have a very significant cohort of professional military. We are satisfied that we can discharge all the obligations falling upon us, whether in conflict, peacekeeping, or MACA requests for domestic resilience at home.

We have seen, through the response by the Armed Forces to the Covid pandemic, what tremendous respect and affection the public have for our Armed Forces, and I hope that that will endure. There may be other occasions where we deploy our Armed Forces on MACA tasks or other civil support tasks at home, and that will reinforce not only the professionalism they possess but the affection with which the public rightly regard them

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

I draw attention to my interests in the register. As our Armed Forces move from a platform-centric approach to capability to one focused on technological advantage, it is ever more important to connect the operational requirement to the best available technology quickly. In the world of romance, we would be advocating the need for a speed dating agency.

Previously, the romance has failed because the potential match is broken between the cautious process of defence procurement and the monopolistic position of defence industry primes. The relationship has in fact been an obstacle to the rapid achievement of technological advantage. So I ask the Minister: which part of the new defence industrial strategy establishes the dating agency? Who is in charge of it and how does the wider world of technical opportunity sign up to it?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I say to the noble and gallant Lord that I love the analogy; it is very apposite. He identifies an important point. He is aware that there is constant consultation and discussion within the MoD with our single services about what their needs are. In the past, the blockage has been in translating need into the production of kit or equipment. This new strategy makes it clear that there will now be a much smoother, clearer progression. The early engagement with industry is critical to establishing that we have identified what the single services want—and then we have to make progress in delivering that as efficiently and as swiftly as possible.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I can only commend my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on two of the most powerful, if terrifying, contributions to this Bill’s proceedings so far. In particular, I shall be having nightmares about their projections for the potential dissonance between varying international approaches to the definition of autonomous weapons and the way in which their deployment and development matches, or does not match, traditional approaches to humanitarian law.

Regarding the Bill, my noble friend has a very good point. He makes a specific observation about the fact that a drone operator in the UK will suffer many of the traumas and risks of a traditional soldier in the field but, on the face of it, that is not covered by this legislation at all. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that in particular, but also to the broader questions of risk—not just legal risk in a defensive way to our personnel but ethical and moral risk to all of us. In this area of life, like every other, the technology moves apace, but the law, politics, transparency, public discourse and even ethics seem to be a few paces behind.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow on from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who always seems to be a great source of common sense on complex moral issues. I am similarly delighted to support the amendment in the name of my one-time boss, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. I will not seek to repeat his arguments as to why this amendment is important, but rather to complement his very strong justification with my own specific thoughts and nuances.

I will start with some general comments on the Bill, as this is my only contribution at this stage. At Second Reading I made my own views on this Bill quite clear. I felt that it missed the main issues regarding the challenges of Lawfare. Specifically, I felt that the better route to reducing the problem of vexatious claims was not through resort to legal exceptionalism, but rather rested on a series of more practical measures relating to such things as investigative capacity, quality and speed; better training; improved operational record keeping; more focused leadership, especially in the critical area of command oversight; and a greater duty of care by the chain of command. On this latter, I wholly support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Dannatt.

Having listened to the arguments deployed in Committee, I am struck by the seeming inability of even this sophisticated Chamber to reach a common view as to whether the many provisions of this Bill offer enhanced protections or increased perils for our servicemen and women. This causes me grave concern. How much more likely is it that our servicemen and women—those whose primary desire is to operate within the law—will be confused; and how much more likely is it that are our enemies—those who want to exploit the law for mischief—will be encouraged?

I hold to the view that the law, in any formulation, cannot be fashioned into a weapon of decisive advantage in our bid to rid our people of vexatious claims. Rather, the law will increasingly be exploited by our enemies as a vector of attack, both to frustrate our ability to use appropriate force and to find novel ways of accusing our servicemen and women of committing illegal acts. The solution to this problem is a mixture of functional palliatives and better legal preparedness. This amendment addresses one element of this preparedness.

As we have already heard, one area of new legal challenge will undoubtedly be in the realm of novel technologies, particularly those which employ both artificial intelligence and machine learning to give bounded autonomy to unmanned platforms, which in turn have the ability to employ lethal force. We are currently awaiting the imminent outcome of the integrated review, and we understand that a defence command paper will herald a new era of technological investment and advancement: one that will enable a significant reduction in manned platforms as technology permits elements of conflict to be subordinated to intelligent drones and armed autonomous platforms.

However—and this is the basic argument for this amendment—the personal liability for action in conflict to be legal will not cease, although it may become considerably more opaque. We must therefore ask whether we have yet assessed the moral, legal, ethical and alliance framework and protocols within which these new systems will operate. Have we yet considered and agreed the command and control relationships, authorities and delegations on which will rest the legal accountability for much new operational activity?

Personally, I have a separate and deep-seated concern that a fascination with what is technically feasible is being deployed by the Government, consciously or unconsciously, primarily as the latest alchemy by which defence can be made affordable. It is being deployed without properly understanding whether its true utility will survive the moral and legal context in which it will have to operate. I therefore offer my full support to this amendment, in the hope that it will assist us in getting ahead of the problem. The alternative is suddenly waking up to the fact that we have created Armed Forces that are both exquisite and unusable in equal measure.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Browne, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, for bringing forward this important amendment and debate. I understand my noble friend Lord Browne’s concerns about the mismatch between the future-focused integrated review, which has had long delays but will be hopefully published next week, and the legislation we have in front of us.

Technology is not only changing the kinds of threats we face but changing warfare and overseas operations in general. In Committee in the other place, Clive Baldwin of Human Rights Watch neatly summed this up by suggesting that

“we are seeing a breakdown in what is the beginning and the end of an armed conflict, what is the battlefield and what decisions are made in which country … The artificial distinction of an overseas operation with a clear beginning, a clear theatre and a clear end is one that is very much breaking down.”—[Official Report, Commons, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill Committee, 6/10/20; col. 67.]

How is this reflected in the Bill?

When the Prime Minister gave his speech on the integrated review last year, he rightly said that “technologies …will revolutionise warfare” and announced a new centre dedicated to AI and an RAF fighter system that will harness AI and drone technology. This sounds impressive but, as my noble friend Lord Browne said, as military equipment gets upgraded, we do not know how the Government plan to upgrade legal frameworks for warfare and what this means in terms of legal protection for our troops.

We must absolutely tackle vexatious claims and stop the cycle of reinvestigations, but how will claims against drone operators or personnel operating new technology be handled? Do those service personnel who operate UAVs not deserve to be protected? And how will legal jeopardy for our troops be avoided?

As new technology develops, so too must our domestic and international frameworks. The final report of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence stated that the US commitment to international humanitarian law

“is longstanding, and AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems will not change this commitment.”

Do the Government believe the same?

I would also like to highlight the serious impact on troops who might not be overseas, but who are operating drones abroad. A former drone pilot told the Daily Mirror:

“The days are long and hard and can be mentally exhausting. And although UAV pilots are detached from the real battle, it can still be traumatic, especially if you are conducting after-action surveillance.”


The RUSI research fellow Justin Bronk also said that, as drone operators switched daily between potentially lethal operations and family life, this could be extremely draining and psychologically taxing. What mental health and pastoral support is given to these troops currently? Drone operators may not be physically overseas, but they are very much taking part in overseas operations. With unmanned warfare more common in future conflicts, I would argue that failing to include those operations in the Bill may cause service personnel issues down the line.

I would like to hear from the Minister how this legislation will keep up to date with how overseas operations operate, and whether she is supportive of a review along the lines of Amendment 32—and, if not, why not?

Integrated Review: New Ships

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

My noble friend raises an important point, which effectively goes to the heart of why we have Royal Naval assets and what we think their primary purpose is. I reassure him that we are actively expanding the model of permanent forward deployment of ships such as “Montrose”. For example, HMS “Forth”, like her predecessor “Clyde”, is currently forward deployed to the Falkland Islands; a further Batch 2 offshore patrol vessel “Medway” is operating in the Caribbean region; and the recent operations of HMS “Trent” in the Mediterranean and Atlantic have been centred on our permanent joint operating base in Gibraltar. We intend to build on this model in the coming months and it is a key consideration for the role of the new Type 31.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I draw attention to my relevant interests in the register. Despite the very welcome uplift in defence spending announced last year, the affordability of much of the new capability promised, such as new ships, rests on the need to retire current capabilities quite quickly—some arguably prematurely. Will the Minister inform the House of when such decisions will be made and which capabilities will be affected?

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

My Lords, in the timetabling of shipbuilding and the estimated dates for taking delivery and for vessels being in service, a close eye is kept on the need to maintain our key operational obligations. That eye is vigilant and I reassure the noble and gallant Lord that the issues to which he refers are very much at the forefront of MoD thinking. We consult our industrial partners frequently to ensure a smooth transition.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I sense that no-one who speaks on the Bill today will not have the interests of British service men and women at heart, and that is certainly my primary consideration. Undoubtedly, the situation that many service people have found themselves in over recent years in respect of vexatious claims absolutely demands government action. I seriously worry, however, that the political desire to resolve this problem has primarily resulted in a wish to change the law. My worry is twofold. First, I believe that this issue is a practical not a legal one. Secondly, I worry that legal solutions may bring with them unforeseen consequences, some of which will be absolutely contrary to the stated intent. I will summarise my views in five points.

The first is context. As we have heard, much of the source of the current problem has nothing to do with shortcomings in the legal framework. Rather, it is due to the Government’s inability to properly resource adequate investigative capacity and a weakness—indeed a failure, I admit—of the whole chain of command to ensure that investigations have been pursued with vigour and integrity. As a priority, we should correct these deficiencies.

My second point concerns the legal framework itself and the dangers of exceptionalism. It is true that the framework is a complex aggregation of historical conventions and both international and national law, but it is an acceptance of this evolved framework and a determination to function within it that gives our Armed Forces both their legitimacy and their moral authority. To seek to legislate to make ourselves exceptions to this framework, even in cleverly construed legal ways, produces multiple risks: to our international standing; to our reputation as a trusted ally; to the true status of our moral authority; to the justification of reprisals from our enemies; and ultimately, as many have mentioned, to the unquantifiable risk that our people will be brought before the International Criminal Court rather than our own national ones.

My third point concerns effective training. As I have said, the legal framework for the use of force and wider conduct of operations is complex. It is a challenge to convert this framework into a set of rules and procedures that are easy to both teach and comprehend. Our Armed Forces have, over the years, developed some very effective means of simplifying the legal framework and of employing sophisticated methods of judgmental training in how to operate within it. The aim has always been to make what is legal and what is morally proper also that which is natural and instinctive.

Therefore, to introduce even greater complexity into the legal framework, complexity that at least appears to differentiate between the gravity of certain acts—between murder, torture, rape and sexual violence for example—all of which are illegal, seriously prejudices the intuitive understanding of service men and women. I have heard it said that the Bill presents some external presentational challenges. It would also create some significant and potentially dangerous internal ones.

My fourth point is about command responsibility and leadership. Recent experience clearly shows that, particularly when operations are intensive, prolonged and conducted from remote and isolated bases, the requirement for strong leadership and command oversight, while more difficult, is even more vital. I do not believe that the law has ways of holding the chain of command to account, but I am absolutely certain that the chain of command cannot distance itself from the responsibility to actively mitigate the conditions that can contribute to individual failings. I am interested to know what lessons we have learned about this for the future and what action we intend to take.

My final thought on this issue is more esoteric. In the military, we often say that the nature of warfare endures, but the character of warfare changes. Perhaps one recent facet of this changing character has been the advent of lawfare. This represents a new vector of attack, where our enemies will exploit our vulnerabilities to delegitimise our use of force and the moral authority we hold. If our response to this threat is a recourse, however well intentioned, to legal exceptionalism, I fear we will actually be showing weakness. We will risk surrendering our moral advantage and our enemies will be encouraged, not deterred.

I will finish where I started. No one who speaks today will not have the interests of our servicemen and women at heart, but my strong view is that we will not legislate ourselves out of this problem through amendments to the law. There is a very strong chance that, regardless of good intentions, we may make things worse for the very people we are trying to protect.

Armed Forces: Covid-19 Deployment

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

In times of nationwide civil emergency, the two most relevant military capabilities are a pool of disciplined manpower and a system of command and control, optimised for turning strategic aspirations into co-ordinated tactical action. A recurring lesson from past emergencies, from foot and mouth to Olympic security, indicates that this latter experience is not well understood by Government. Can the Minister confirm to the House that the military’s expertise in command and control is being properly harnessed?

[Baroness Goldie (Con) [V]]

I would like to reassure the noble and gallant Lord that it is. He will understand, from his own knowledge, both the level and extent to which the MoD has provided advice to the highest levels of government. Much of that advice has been welcomed by government precisely because of the attributes that the noble and gallant Lord identified in relation to the MoD and Armed Forces’ experience of command and delivery.

HMS “Queen Elizabeth”

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. I am unable to comment in detail as to future deployments for the very same reasons that I am unable to comment in detail on the immediate deployment of HMS “Queen Elizabeth”. He identifies an important point. The south Atlantic is strategically significant and is becoming more so. That is an aspect of our global approach that we keep under constant review.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

The Minister will be aware that the proposed deployment of HMS “Queen Elizabeth” was conceived when there were many justified concerns about the overall size of the surface fleet and its ability to meet the Royal Navy’s standing maritime tasks at home and around the world. Can she therefore confirm what risks are likely to be taken against those standing tasks to provide adequate escorts for the deployment of HMS “Queen Elizabeth” next year?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord will be aware that, in contemplating any deployment, we make an extensive and robust assessment of risk in all respects. That is what we do at the moment and what we shall continue to do.

Armed Forces: Racism and Diversity

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie [V]]

I listened with great interest to the point raised by my noble friend. I have no specific information about the appointment of chaplains or the backgrounds from which they are appointed. I shall investigate and write further to him.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I have never thought it entirely fair to hold the Armed Forces to account at an individual level for being a mirror image of the society from which they are drawn, with all the imperfections that implies. It is an inevitability. However, I absolutely agree that, in institutional terms, our Armed Forces should strive to be exemplars of the very best that can be achieved in values and standards. Can the Minister therefore inform the House what has been achieved since 2016 in policy terms in the areas of bullying, harassment, discrimination and opportunities for women?

[Baroness Goldie [V]]

I reassure the noble and gallant Lord that various initiatives and programmes have been deployed within the Armed Forces to cover these very areas of concern. If we want to prevent this unacceptable behaviour, we must create a culture within our civilian and military workforce that represents, includes and celebrates all elements of the society that we defend. Within the MoD, we need to institutionalise anti-racism.

Reserve Forces and Cadets’ Associations

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this short debate on the health of the nation’s Reserve Forces. I declare a specific interest in reserve matters, based on my leadership of the 2011 independent commission that reviewed the country’s Reserve Forces as follow-on work to the 2010 defence review.

It is worth recalling that the context of the review that I led in 2011 was a set of Reserve Forces in accelerating institutional decline. Our reserves at that stage were primarily being used as individual operational augmentees for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were failing to make an attractive offer to encourage reserve service more generally. The reserves still had very much of a Cold War feel about them; they were still structured for supporting major intervention operations. The potential utility of the reserves for modern homeland security, UK resilience, cyber defence and stabilisation was not at that stage remotely recognised. Perhaps more seriously, at that stage we were not exploiting either reservist talent or the nation’s volunteer ethos to the full. We were failing to create a more cost-effective regular/reserve manpower balance, and we were actively contributing to the erosion of the vital links between our Armed Forces and wider society.

Why did this situation come about? To an extent at least, because, at a time of scarce resources and high operational demand, what I might call central authority saw the reserves as assets not to be sustained but plundered. Some might recall that reservist pay was taken as a savings measure. Alone among developed nations at that time, we viewed reserves as a quaint, historical, inefficient luxury, not the vital expression of society’s voluntary contribution to national security.

So, although I know little about the detail of the review that has stimulated this short debate, like other noble Lords I am instantaneously made anxious by it. I understand that, as others mentioned, the review concludes that the current devolved mechanism for the governance of reserves and cadets—the RFCAs—offers excellent value for money. Moreover, as we have heard, defence has entrusted the RFCAs with additional roles to deliver wider engagement with society and the business and civic worlds.

However, somewhat remarkably, the review also wants to neuter the local autonomy of the RFCAs. It wants to supplant the benefits of a regionalised, delegated model with a centralised system, or so I am led to believe. Why? As far as I can ascertain, as has been pointed out, it is purely to satisfy the bureaucratic requirement for the senior governing body of reserves and cadets to be put on a statutory basis. That is fine, but why does this need a dramatic upheaval of the entire decentralised model?

My fear is that a bureaucratic nicety involving a minor issue of governance is being used as a vehicle to centralise the governance of reserves and cadets. In doing so, it risks adopting a system devoid of localised sensitivity and insight, in turn risking a return to a mindset that, as I well remember, nearly brought about the collapse of reserve service 10 years ago. I therefore join other noble Lords in asking the Minister whether she can reassure the House that such a risk is not being contemplated.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, it is already well-covered ground, but I want to offer a few words on the interconnected issues of defence and security. During the election campaign the Prime Minister pledged the most profound review of Britain’s defence and security needs since the Cold War, and I welcome such an undertaking. As vice-chief in 2010 and as Chief of the Defence Staff in 2015, I experienced both of the last two reviews at close quarters. Both were very much creations of their time.The former was a response to the strategic shock of austerity. The latter was a far more hubristic affair, linking security to prosperity but, in respect of military capability, without ever closing the gap between ambition and resource reality.My honest view of both reviews is that they were exercises in prioritising the affordability of military platforms, garnished with a veneer of strategic insight. They were not that strong on intellectual analysis of a changing strategic context, nor on a redefinition of the UK’s place in the world. I sense most contributors thus far agree.

Permit me a few relevant observations. Contrary to the view currently peddled by some, we do not live in the most dangerous of times. Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that there has never been a better time to be alive; that societies have become more peaceful; and that we are experiencing historic and sustained low levels of personal and interstate violence.

However, the raw statistics do not necessarily translate into how we perceive our own sense of security. This is partly because we now enjoy a media that is addicted to the sensationalisation of human anxiety but, more significantly, it is because the traditional format of war has been replaced by more insidious forms of interstate rivalry. New vectors of attack, as they are called, have supplanted formal warfare: such things as proxy terrorism, cyberwar, political assassination, disinformation and hybrid warfare, to name the most obvious. When combined with some of the mega-trends of our dynamic planet—climate change, urbanisation, increasing maldistribution of wealth and opportunity, the pace of technical change, the change in demography —we are left feeling very vulnerable at a personal and even at a collective, national level.

I am not so sure about whether this strategic shift from interstate warfare to interstate security malevolence is permanent. What I fear is that we may have started to forget that the relative peace we have enjoyed for the last 70 years or so is not naturally occurring. It is brought about only by the willingness of nations collectively to secure that peace.

The starting point for any profound review of the UK’s defence and security posture is to answer two questions. First, if we want to retain, by and large, the rules by which the world is currently organised, we need to decide how big a role we intend to play in the collective defence of those rules. Secondly, having recognised that, in the new security context, even a relatively peaceful world remains a dangerous one, how much national resource should we devote to ameliorating the new security threats to our people to an acceptable level of risk or societal tolerance?

The first question undoubtedly offers us some strategic choices, which will go a long way towards defining “global Britain” and may offer the opportunity to resolve some of the most serious incoherences of our current defence capability. The second question offers us far less discretion for inaction, and we are already well behind where we need to be in terms of organisation and capability.

Either way, I hope that this House does more to inform the debate than simply deploying nostalgia in support of military interest or supporting the view that some form of procurement alchemy will suddenly make all things affordable. I say this because the Armed Forces consist of sensible people. Institutionalised underfunding is not good for recruiting, retention or morale.

D-day: 75th Anniversary

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate, the opportunity to make a short contribution to it, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, getting the energy back into it. I am still getting used to the customs of the House, but I think it is a shame the debate was subject to an interruption; I am sure it was for a good reason, but it is lost on me.

As the debate so far demonstrates, many want to recall the historic importance of D-day, the scale of the endeavour, the context of the time and particularly, as we have just heard, the bravery and fortitude of those who took part. I come from an old and proud regiment, the Green Howards—now part of the Yorkshire Regiment—and we featured significantly in the D-day story. The 6th Battalion that landed on Gold beach early on D-day itself made the most progress of any unit of any nation on that day, reaching the small village of Crépon. We have a fine regimental memorial in the middle of Crépon: a statue of a soldier sitting down, looking exhausted, having a smoke. It is a great place to go. En route to Crépon, the sergeant major of B Company, Stanley Hollis, earned the only Victoria Cross awarded on the day for repeated acts of bravery. He is still remembered as probably our greatest regimental hero, as much for his humility and quiet demeanour as for his remarkable example. He is also remembered because D-day does not feel so very long ago, particularly to the officers and men I grew up with, many of whom were, or served under, Normandy veterans and could tell first-hand tales.

My thoughts today are more about the lessons that D-day holds for us—particularly, why did so many countries have to pay so much in human terms to re-establish peace, stability and freedom? Do we take peace, stability and freedom too much for granted today? My strongly held view is that the United Kingdom has become somewhat complacent about its defence—not about its security; the two are different. Indeed, as a society, if anything we have become far more sensitive to the so-called novel threats of the age, which are, in truth, largely a reflection of the relative weakness of our enemies. These novel forms of conflict—so-called—such as cyberattack, disinformation, proxy-terrorism, hybrid war, political assassination and fake news are the asymmetric tactics of the weak; they do not represent existential threats. They are not the true wars of our time; they are security challenges which breed a wholly understandable societal anxiety.

To me, the lesson of D-day is that we should guard against complacency about our national defence—a complacency borne of the forgetfulness that peace and stability are not naturally occurring. They have to be earned, paid for and, occasionally, fought for. People need to remember that, to a large extent, armed forces are built on an expensive paradox: the better they are at fighting wars, the less likely it is they will have to. Most importantly, as many have said, the more like-minded friends you have, the safer you are far more likely to be. Security challenges, I fear, are the natural symptoms of a restless and dynamic planet. Strong and collective defence is what keeps them in that perspective. D-day should remind us of that.