After a period of calm in the fight against Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) terrorist attacks, killings and destruction in the country’s North East, the storm appears to be back with Boko Haram resurgence. In the last few weeks, we’ve had a series of attacks and killings in Borno and Yobe states as well as daring invasion of military locations, killing troops and carting away weapons in some cases. In some instances, the terrorists used drones to attack the troops. With attacks escalating and military locations increasingly targeted by drones, Saturday Vanguard had an interview with the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Bala Abubakar, as Nigeria marks the 61st anniversary of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) where he spoke about the threats, the challenges of counterinsurgency, and the path forward for both kinetic and non-kinetic solutions
Between January and April this year, over 2,000 Nigerians have lost their lives to insecurity and about the same number kidnapped for ransom. In particular, in the North East, there is a resurgence of Boko Haram. Why is this so?
The question is why are we actually losing many Nigerians due to insecurity? You gave some statistics; I’m not sure how accurate those statistics are on the issue. But obviously, there has been a resurgence particularly in the North East, and quite a few people have lost their lives in the past three months or so. Now, we need to understand a couple of fundamentals.
Generally, once insurgencies grow, they take a very long time to solve despite all the efforts. So, it is a work in progress. You will recall that sometime in 2023, a lot of terrorists surrendered as a result of heightened operations. As far as we were concerned, the issue of the North East theatre was over because there was virtually nothing happening. And that was when the North West banditry was picking up, and then the federal government and security forces concentrated a lot of efforts there, because apparently, the impression was that the North East region had, of course, been stabilized up to a very minimum level. But then, of course, we saw that that’s not the case. So, it keeps going and coming. And because of the environment, for example, there is a limit to what we can do. I mentioned earlier that you need a lot of intelligence.
So, for us in the Air Force, we cannot carry out operations with general purpose ammunition because of the effect and the likelihood of collateral damage for instance. So, it’s a difficult challenge. We also have our challenges, but I can assure you that we are doing everything that we can to make sure that this region is stabilized and that all the nooks and crannies return to peace and prosperity by working jointly. We’ve also come a long way as far as that is concerned, because it’s something that requires a lot of joint efforts. The Air Force alone cannot address the challenges alone, neither can the Army or any other service. So, we are working more closely than ever before with the other security agencies to be able to address this.
One very important point that we have not been paying attention to in the past, which I have said in a couple of forums, is the fact that anywhere you have insurgencies, the security forces can only tackle 25 to 30 per cent of the problem. Research has shown that up to 70-75% of the solution lies in the non-kinetic approach, addressing the fundamental problems of economic and social causes including poverty, unemployment, and meaningful engagements. Only about 25% of internal security challenges or issues can be solved through kinetic means.
The other aspect has to be done by what we call the whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. Even when the military goes in and tries to solve a problem, if this whole-of-society approach, which includes solving the problem from the root cause, is not addressing the symptoms, then this problem will persist just like it has happened now. No matter the success achieved by the military, it is just a matter of time, the efforts will be lost.
I think that is what we are seeing particularly in the North East. This is why even at our own level, in the Air Force, we are putting a lot of effort to make sure we have more robust civil-military relations, where we can bring people close to us, and then do a lot of civil-military activities including free community projects, medical outreaches, and educational outreaches. We have started engaging with a lot of the state governors in a lot of the areas where these things are happening. I think we are beginning to be able to convince them that that is the approach that they must also take.
Give us an idea of how expensive it is to carry out air strike operations to defeat the enemies of the state in terms of the cost of fueling and acquiring bombs and rockets?
I will just give you one example. We have an unmanned aerial system (UAV) from China which is armed with a bomb and a missile, it doesn’t carry guns or cannons. Now, the cost of one missile is $150,000 while the cost of the bomb is about $95,000 or $96,000.
So, the UAV takes off, it sees a couple of terrorists and that is why these things are very complex and delicate. How do you balance this? You see a couple of terrorists, even if it’s a verified target, it may be 10 or even 20 insurgents and we are taking maybe two missiles of $300,000 to neutralize 10 bandits or terrorists. That is just one platform, and it’s similar for other platforms in the Air Force. Now, the cost doesn’t stop at that, that is just the armament or the ammunition that the airplane carries. For any time that the airplane flies, you are looking at the cost of flying hours. The cost is calculated before you are flying towards the mission.
There is overhaul or maintenance that is done. After every 20 to 25 hours, you have to carry out some cable maintenance, whether there is a problem or not. And so, when you calculate the cost of everything including consumables, the maintenance, fuel, the cost can be as much as $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000, depending on the airplane. The more complex, the faster and more expensive. The bigger, the more expensive. We have the small, we have the big, we have the complex, and we have the simple. So, when you combine all that, the cost for running and maintaining the Air Force is actually very huge.
Terrorists are using drones in Nigeria now and Nigerians are wondering if our Air Force is actually investing in this technology and the use of Artificial Intelligence and not just acquiring platforms
Every day and with every event, we learn more to make sure that that kind of weakness or lapse does not happen again. We are aware of the challenges and we are working round the clock to address them. A lot of things are going on there, but in terms of impact, the operational environment is constantly dynamic. Things change and that’s why for us, this fleet renewal is very important for us in the NAF. Of course, we can see the adversaries also getting more sophisticated.
They are able to modify over-the-counter drones to make them able to fight. The operational environment is always dynamic, you have to be ahead of it all the time. If you just buy an airplane, this is going to make it even more expensive. For example, go back to the example of the UAV I gave you, it means you need to have a satellite subscription to operate artificial intelligence. All that is part of the ecosystem. You need to have a cam unit, so that whatever the camera is seeing,you that is in the operations control centre will be seeing it and you can take your decision; so all that is part of the ecosystem.
In fact, a lot of investment and a lot of expenditure is involved. As you are aware, despite the NIGCOM SATs, we are not able to provide effective radar coverage for some of these activities. So we have to procure a satellite, it is in millions of dollars for our activities. Regarding the adversary being able to use unmanned aerial systems (drones) to carry out attacks, the best check for that is also to have a very robust counter unmanned aerial system. And we have some of these in some of our operational buildings. But to have a bigger picture, there is what we call the two-thirds radar coverage of Nigeria project, which has a civilian and a military component.
Since the civilian component was established, we now have radar coverage virtually across the nation, operating from the three international airports of Port Harcourt, Lagos, and Abuja. But as we speak, the military component has not taken place. We have been waiting for this.
The military radar coverage will encompass a low-level air defense, a mid-range and a high-level system, which means the capacity to see very far and very high. With the low-level, which is a component of the military total radar coverage, you will be able to see many of those things coming in because we have air defense operations centers and they are able to see, foresee and engage. That is the system that will address these challenges.
Not only in any particular sector, but any foreign thing in the whole of Nigeria’s airspace, both at the low-level, middle-level, and high-level, any object flying that is not authorized, you are able to see and you can challenge it and even engage it. But we don’t have that system in place. So, we are pushing for it. Hopefully, it will be implemented one day. That will give us that protection. But for now, the best way is to find a smaller system that protects your immediate environment. With what I’ve been discussing with the Army, I think I’ve been able to link some of those systems to some of their locations. I believe where those systems are available, it will be difficult for those kinds of drones to come there. But that will be the best way forward. It’s very difficult for the Air Force to fly over every location through our ISR, to provide ISR 24/7, the areas are vast, the logistics of doing that is very high.
That’s why you need a lot of intelligence. If you have intelligence that this is going to happen around this place, then you engage. But if you don’t have any intelligence, you can’t just set your assets up and just fly them. You also talked about artificial intelligence and cyber warfare or cyber security. Because all these are evolving; we are following our legacy systems and also moving into these challenges. Just this week we had a colloquium with the Bradford, University Centre for Artificial Intelligence and then thereafter we signed a Memorandum of Understanding for them to develop our capacity in terms of manpower and their research in AI. So, we are addressing all these according to resources that are available.
Following the recent terrorist attack on a military base in Marte, Borno state, why is it difficult for the air force to immediately scramble fighter aircraft to assist the soldiers clear the terrorists whenever such attacks occur?
We have talked about the synergy and I think we have made a lot of progress looking at where we are coming from and where we are today. We are much more integrated in terms of our operations, but it’s also something that is a work in progress. We still have a long way to go to achieve that seamless synergy in our operations and that is why we took the step on our own side by establishing the Air-Ground Integration School.
That is one of the schools that I said was going to fall under the Air Force Centre of Excellence, and we train officers and men from the Army and other sister services in flight operations.
The whole idea is for them to be trained and then to be integrated into the theatre and they are the ones that will really help a lot in this synergy. We have challenges as far as individual operations or aircraft activities are concerned, like the one of the mapping. Some of the challenges or some of the issues are not things that we can discuss now in the media, but suffice it to say that I think we are making a lot of improvements as far as synergy or cooperation is concerned.
What are you doing to have more manpower in the Nigerian Air Force?
We have the approval to beef up the manpower across the services but, the recruitment comes with a lot of issues. It’s not about going to recruit individuals and bring them into the service. You have to think of how you are going to train them, how you will accommodate them, how you will equip them and administer terms and conditions of the service to them.
So, recruitment is a simple thing for you to do. But, all the other things that have to be done to ensure that recruitment makes sense are the challenges, and they require not only a lot of resources in terms of money, but a lot of thinking and a lot of analysis is required. So, when we are trying to beef up, we don’t want to bring people into the system that will end up being a problem, those that won’t be properly trained, that don’t have the right attitude, the requisite capacity and so many other qualities.
