Billiere: Well, I think first of all, that the tactics of conducting an operation are the prerogative of the commander and should not be directed from the Ministry of Defence, which is what happened in the early days of the air war. Strategy and the diplomacy of the war, that comes from the MoD, but not the tactics. And I think, that the interference in the Ministry of Defence with the air war in the early stages was unwarranted and should not happen. I hope that lesson has been learnt.

I think that the other thing, and perhaps not so much for the RAF, but for the British taxpayer, you know, how much are you prepared to spend on defence and unless you are prepared to spend a disproportionate amount of the national income on defence, you have got to accept specialised weapon systems designed for the war as perceived at a given moment in time.

And that means that if the war is not of that design, then the weapon systems are probably not going to be right for the job on the day. I don't think there is anything that can be done about that. I think that in the high tech weapon systems we've got now, you have to specialise, you can't afford to have something for everything that may never happen. And therefore you're going to take a punt on it.

Q: Do the RAF face greater dangers because we can't spend enough on equipment?

Billiere: No, I don't think so. I think, you're paid to face risks in the Services and if you don't like it then you shouldn't be there in the first place. But I do think that the commander on the spot though, has got to be the person responsible for looking after lives and taking the necessary decisions on the day. And that should have been my responsibility, and in this particular incident, I didn't have it.

Q: When the guys went up to medium altitudes, the higher altitudes, was any remark made to you by either Norman Schwarzkopf or Chuck Horner?

Billiere: No, they were clearly relieved. Chuck Horner did certainly speak to me and he said that he couldn't see the justification for this low level delivery and he thought it was the cause of some of the casualties that the RAF suffered. And I would agree with him.

Q: While the air war was going on, the SAS were in action. When did their role change? How did that come about?

Billiere: Well, Special Forces have to be infinitely flexible. And I deployed them for the role that I'd described. And when they got in there, of course, the Scud war against Israel began in earnest, and it was quite clear that unless this was contained, we were going to see Israel coming into the war with all the political dangers and effects that that was likely to bring with it.

And so it was critical to stop this. And Norman actually diverted something in the region of 75% of his entire air power to stopping the Scuds flying at his Israel. But you can't beat a pair of eyes on the ground. We know that from using special forces in Europe.

So I changed the role of the Special Forces after they crossed the border and I told them that their mission was to get the Scuds out of the battle.

Q: Do you recall any conversations with Norman Swarzkopf? Did he come to you and say, 'Hey, can your guys do anything?' Did you go to him and say we're going to do this?

Billiere: Well, I saw Norman once or twice a day for quite a long time. So you didn't sort of go and make a representation. You discussed events as they were evolving. Having got the SAS behind the lines on one mission, it became quite clear to me that they could play a critically important role in killing Scuds that were shooting against Israel and I therefore decided that I would change their mission. I went to Norman and I said I would like to change their mission. I said this is what I'd like them to do. And he said, you go ahead Peter. If you can do that, then you're doing me a great favour.

And so I issued the instructions to Andy Massey to change the role of patrols to getting those Scuds out of the war. The Scuds that were firing on Israel.

Q: When a lot of them were missing, you came under pressure. Maybe something was going wrong. Was there a critical juncture when you remember thinking maybe this isn't going right?

Billiere: Well, let's go back to where we put the SAS in. I'd promised Schwarzkopf that if the SAS went in they wouldn't need rescuing. Now if the SAS suddenly did start to need rescuing, then what I'd said to Norman Swarzkopf, was inaccurate and I'd got to do something about it.

So obviously when people started to go missing, which happens in war, I mean, let's be quite clear about that, I was concerned to know that the SAS had got it under control. And Andy Massey assured me they had got it under control.

And the second thing is, and I make no apologies, really, for coming back to this, every man out there, whether he was SAS, whether he was sailor, whether he was an airman mattered to me and I didn't like to see people going missing and not knowing what was happening to them. And so when people went missing, I wanted to know what was happening.

Q: And why were they going missing? Did you suggest a change of tactics?

Billiere: No, I didn't suggest anything at all. I told them they'd got to make sure that they'd got their operations in order, which they did.

Actually, there was a bad moment when a lot went missing. But SAS often go missing for 2 or 3 days and then turn up. And that's what most of them did do. But during that 2 or 3 days, you know, you do worry about them. You can't help it if you're a human being. And, quite a lot of them, actually, had gone off the air,. They weren't in radio communication. And until they turned up we didn't know what had happened to them. And so one wanted to know how things were progressing and whether there was any signs of them being picked up. And in fact most of them were picked up.

Q: On the eve of the land war, what's your memory of the mood on the eve of the land war? Were you very worried about casualties still?

Billiere: No, no. I mean, we'd done months of preparation and work and we reckoned we'd got a bloody good plan. We'd been given lots of resources by our various governments. And we were quite confident that it was going to go well.

Obviously there was this ever present concern to minimise casualties, not that there would be no casualties. You don't fight a war, I'm afraid, and not have casualties. Although, I must say that war was the nearest thing to it.

Q: But, what was the nightmare scenario?

Billiere: I think the great concern at the beginning of the land war was how effectively his troops were going to fight. I was quite confident that we were going to get through the minefields, and through the wire and all that. I thought we might lose some equipment and men in doing that. But there again, you don't fight a war without having casualties.

But, how hard and how effectively was he going to fight? Because upon that, depended the duration of the war. And from the duration of the war would depend the number of casualties there were going to be. And I'm glad to say that our plan was absolutely first class and we just went through them like a knife through butter.

I know, there were a lot of reasons for this. But very substantially it was Norman Schwarzkopf's strategic plan. Overall plan for the theatre that led to the success.

Q: And after all this worry...W hy was it so easy? Why, did everyone get it so wrong?

Billiere: There were several reasons for that. First of all, we had a damn good plan and some first class fighting forces, well equipped, well trained and well prepared for this particular battle. Secondly, Hussein had exactly the opposite, although we didn't know it at the time. He'd got a demoralised force. They hadn't benefited at all from eight years war, rather the reverse, they wanted to go home. They had poor equipment. They were badly led. They were directed from the center and not by commanders on the spot. And therefore unable to adjust when they found the attack coming from their right flank instead of a frontal assault which they'd been used to when they'd been fighting the Iranians. And they were taken completely by surprise.

So you had a demoralised army, taken by surprise by an extremely competent, well-trained coalition force that just swept through them.

Q: The intelligence operation out there ... effective in may ways, but did you feel frustrations with it?

Billiere: Oh, there were shortcomings in intelligence. I suspect that every commander who's ever been in any war, anywhere, will criticise his intelligence. And I don't have too much difficulty in raising some criticisms. I think though, they may be of a different nature to what many people would expect.

First of all, of course, intelligence is one thing. Information is another. Information is turned into intelligence. And we had so much information that we didn't really have the capability of turning it into intelligence. And, so a lot of the intelligence was missing. That's the first thing.

And the second thing is that intelligence has to be given to those who need it, and that means, particularly when the land war was about to start, the forward commanders. And I'm afraid the intelligence system was such that it served the senior headquarters very well, but it didn't provide for people like Rupert Smith, my divisional commander, the proper level of intelligence that he needed to plan and conduct his battle effectively. And that was a shortcoming.

Q: Did you feel strongly that they had a lack of intelligence?

Billiere: Yes, the information was there but it hadn't been turned into intelligence for Rupert Smith and his brigade commanders. And, there was a flaw in the system. And I think that needs addressing for future operations. And they certainly demanded, and didn't get, much more detailed intelligence than the system was able to give them.

Q: As a British soldier were you astonished by the scope and scale of American intelligence gathering?

Billiere: I was amazed by the scope and scale of the information gathering. I was disappointed at the ability of the system to turn it into intelligence.

Q: For Norman Schwarzkopf the Republican Guard was the great target...the prize....

Billiere: The Republican Guard were a prime target. They were kept in reserve. The poorer were put in the front line. The Republican Guard were going to come in and counter attack. And it was certainly a major objective during the build-up to the land battle to destroy as many of the Republican Guard as possible. Because then you'd have destroyed their, the Iraqi capability to counter attack.

Q: As the land war reached its conclusion, there was this tragic incident, with nine British soldier being killed. How did you hear about it?

Billiere: Well, I received it over my normal command net, and I'm afraid, and this sounds rather callous, but every war I've been in, there have been instance where our own troops have been killed by our own forces. And so I wasn't totally surprised that this had happened, when you consider the complexity of the operations.

I was deeply concerned that it wouldn't become an emotional crusade that would sidetrack people from the main purpose of the war, which was to defeat the Iraqis and get 'em out of Kuwait. Which if we delayed doing, would have caused yet more casualties.

And so when I arrived in the war room that morning, knowing that it was one of those things of war, I went to Norman and I said, look Norman, I'm very sad about this and I know you are. And he said yes I am, I'm deeply hurt about it. And I said we've got to get on with this war. And I said I'll have all the facts collected together so if we need it. But I want to make it quite clear this is not going to stand between the British and the Americans in terms of the effective prosecution of the war. And he said, well thanks Peter. I quite understand that. And he said I would have taken the same view. And we got on with the day's work.

Q: What happened? As far as you know, what went wrong?

Billiere: Well. I don't know the details. There's been an exhaustive enquiry. I haven't actually read the whole of that enquiry. I've read the summary of it. And, and, I think, you got a difference of opinion between the Americans and the British as to what happened. What I don't think there is any difference of opinion over, is the fact that an American missile destroyed a British piece of equipment.

But then the Americans were our allies and I'd far rather have had the Americans along to fight that war, than not to have them along and carried all the consequences of having a depleted air power to support our land battle. We'd have lost a lot more people.

And so, you could argue that these servicemen who gave up their lives paid that ultimate price and in doing so, saved the lives of other people because we had the American support along. And of course, we went on having American support along right to the end of the war.

Q: When it comes to friendly fire...what needs to be done for the future? The lessons of that incident?

Billiere: We've been learning lessons about how to deal with, blue on blue I call it, fire, ever since war began and I expect we'll go on learning lessons ever into the future.

And of course, at the end of the day, you come down to this business of costs again. You could equip every single British piece of equipment and American piece of equipment with an IFF, identification friend and foe, means of an aircraft identifying, electronically, whether that is a friendly or hostile piece of equipment. That would have cost many hundreds of millions, if not billions of pounds. Are the tax payer prepared to pay it? The answer is they weren't prepared to pay it. And if they aren't, then are you going to have that in preference to perhaps having a really effective piece of artillery to support you. Which if you didn't have, you'd lose more.

Q: The ending of the war. How did you first become aware that there were discussion going on that hostilities should be ceased?

Billiere: Well, it was quite clear, that as we swept towards the coast, that the war wasn't going to go on much longer unless we were going to change the whole mission of the war and start invading Iraq on a grand scale. So it wasn't a question of being surprised that the end of the war arrived when it did. It was really a question of assessing whether the moment that it did arrive, was the right moment. Or whether it should have been ended earlier or later.

Q: Was it ended at the right moment?

Billiere: In my view, on the information that I'd got, I think it was ended at about the right time. There is a long argument to support this. And I think give or take two or three hours, it was the right moment.

And I don't believe that extending the war far deeper into Iraq was an option at all. I think we'd have been illegal to do that. The United Nations remit had never authorised it to do it. And the Arab community would not have gone along with it. It would have been a Western invasion of Iraq. What would we have done when we got there? Saddam Hussein would certainly have nipped out sideways out of the back door, and he'd have been a hero up in the hills manning guerillas or a leader in exile.

Q: But, the Republican Guard have always been such a target.......?

Billiere: I'm not sure that's correct actually. The strategy of destroying Iraqi forces was much wider than destroying the Republican Guard. The Iraqi forces that were deployed against Kuwait, were to be destroyed to the extent that they only had sufficient left to defend their borders and not to use them aggressively against other nations. And that, in my view, has been achieved. It's been achieved because of the substantial destruction of Iraqi forces in the field and it's been achieved because sanctions have denied them the means to either have the money to train their present forces, or to repair and