In place of flesh and blood

We need to remind ourselves occasionally that, while it is very easy to deride the efforts of journalists, those who are embedded with troops in the field do take very real risks.

That is brought home by the latest piece from Tom Coughlan, doing what he does extremely well, reporting from the front. And this time, out on patrol south of Garmsir with the Fox Company of 2nd Battalion, 8th US Marines, he nearly gets blown apart by an IED for his trouble.

This, however, is no derring do account. Coughlan manages to weave this into a clinical account of the difficulties encountered by a squad on foot in hostile country, ambushed by enemies who refuse to show themselves and resort to multiple and increasingly complex IED ambushes.

The bomb which nearly ended Coughlan's life was two devices strapped together, buried at the base of the wall on the corner of a compound, to which the Marines were advancing. Two men were badly injured: one, a Marine with shrapnel injuries to his face and hands, would survive; the other, an Afghan interpreter, would later die.

They were part of a force of 40 Afghan soldiers and 70 Marines, supported by two (Cobra) attack helicopters and a UAV. One hour into the patrol, at 6.45am, the ambush began. The thump of the first bomb detonating and sound of enemy small-arms fire was quickly followed by a call for casualty evacuation.

As the Marines began to run for cover, their commander, Captain Junwei Sun, senses a trap, telling his men: "Watch right, we could be being baited for another IED." He was right. There was a second IED placed so as to catch the squad as they ran for cover.

Fortunately, although smoke and debris enveloped the men, there were no injuries. The Taleban bombers had made several mistakes in the way they had made and buried their devices, the result being to channel their force upward rather than outward.

They had also incorrectly wired what was to have been a third bomb. Discovered and destroyed by US combat engineers some minutes later, it was 30lb of fertiliser-based explosive that sat directly under the commanders of Fox Company. Had all three blown correctly it is likely that a dozen or more soldiers would have died or been badly injured.

Despite this, the presence of the bombs give the tactical advantage to the Taleban. Caught in a spider's web of bombs, the men have to move out into the exposed fields rather than take cover. But, notes Coughlan, if the Taleban were still around they remained hidden, wary of the Cobra helicopters overhead.

This enables the unit's bomb disposal engineers to sweep methodically with metal detectors. They find naked, hair-thin copper wires in the soil, trailing towards the treeline and a compound 100 yards away. But, as the Americans prepare to advance on the compound with ANA soldiers, the Taleban deploy another "weapon": a group of women and children emerge, moving into the middle of the unfolding battle and making for the same compound. The attack has to be halted.

Then, as the troops move forward again, engineers find a fourth bomb, buried in a wall. This is defused and the advance resumes. But, as they traverse a field, one soldier spots two stakes buried in the ground. They are a marker for a watching bomb triggerman. The unit halts and explosives experts moved forward with their minesweepers. They find a command wire and two separate 40lb cylinders of explosive. These are detonated, scattering earth over a 100 yard area.

As they pull up the wire they discover it appears to lead to the village mosque. And, as had been the case all day, none of the locals appeared to know why.

From all this, though, Coughlan draws certain conclusions, which are not entirely in accord with his own experience on the day: "... firepower," he observes, "can become meaningless when the enemy makes skilful preparation of the ground and has no scruples about cloaking itself with the lives of the local population."

On one level, of course, he is right but he himself notes that the Taleban are reluctant to follow through their ambushes with direct fire attacks, owing to the presence of the Cobra attack helicopters. Firepower has its uses.

Furthermore, while firepower does not influence the placing of IEDs, technology certainly assists in detecting them, as does the fieldcraft of one of the Marines. Here, though, one must ask why it is that the UAVs were not of more assistance in this endeavour.

Coughlan's colleague on The Times himself reports on the utility of UAVs in detecting bomb emplacers. One wonders whether the UAVs were used merely as "top cover" once the operation had started and whether they were over the area well in advance, in an effort to detect the enemy's preparations.

One also has to note the use of hand-held detectors, which are only deployed after the first IEDs are detonated, even though their presence in this area must be assumed. And it is here that we wonder whether the Americans are much better prepared to deal with the IED than the British.

In a previous piece we drew attention to the use by the Rhodesians of the Pookie mine detection vehicle, which was used to clear the way down bush trails, ahead of food patrols. In this instance, we have the photographs of Jack Hill which shows a considerable element of open country.

The terrain maybe would not permit the use of equipment such as the Buffalo or even the Husky, but a vehicle similar to the Pookie (with the advanced technology available today) surely would be of value. As in the past, where tanks were used to shield foot soldiers advancing on the enemy, in this different type of a war, it does not seem untoward to argue that a different type of armour should be used for a different but nonetheless deadly threat.

Such technology is not always the answer and, in some cases, even dogs are being used by both the British and the Americans. These animals, though, have their limitations in a kinetic (combat) situation, not least because they become the targets. This leaves again the question as to why the military seem so keen to expose flesh and blood to the perils of IEDs when steel could do more of the job.

COMMENT THREAD

The trouble with armoured vehicles

Originally published by Defence Management
Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Several of the MoD's newest armoured vehicles already have major design flaws according to defence author Richard North. The old way of thinking has to change.

The MoD and Armed Forces are unable to learn from their mistakes or admit erroneous decisions in the design and procurement of armoured vehicles resulting in a string of inadequate vehicles being sent to the frontlines of Afghanistan and tragically as a result, large numbers of casualties, a prominent defence author has said.

The death of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe last week in a Viking armoured vehicle brought a renewed focus to the MoD's armoured fighting vehicle strategy. Although IEDs and landmines have proven to be an effective weapon utilised by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MoD has only been partially successful in buying better protected vehicles. .

Richard North, author of the book "Ministry of Defeat" and the editor of the Defence of the Realm blog, outlined to Defencemanagement.com a series of poor procurement decisions and strategies that have resulted in a widely ineffective fleet of armoured vehicles coming up against IEDs and landmines.

"The concept of risk has been ignored," North said in an interview. As a result this premise is "eroding the ability to field certain vehicles."

The vehicle protection problems faced by British troops today in Afghanistan can be traced back to various campaigns during the Cold War era including in Rhodesia. The effectiveness of using IEDs on vehicles became clear yet military planners in the US and Britain for the most part ignored the new threats. Heavier armoured vehicles have to be transferred by ship because they are too heavy to fly. Military planners felt that this negated the advantages that an expeditionary force would have.

Even after the use of IEDs became a prevalent tool of the insurgency in Iraq, procurement officials in Britain continued to buy the same types of vehicles for operations in Afghanistan.

The Snatch, Viking and Vector were all sent to Afghanistan in the first year of major British combat operations but are now all being withdrawn from service due to their flawed designs and a lack of adequate armour to deflect explosions. Dozens of British servicemen have died in the vehicles during operations due to poor protection even though Snatch was upgraded with additional armour and the Viking and Vector vehicles were procured in 2006.

Protection has been the primary focus of vehicle designers in an effort to overcome casualties caused by bomb attacks. While there have been some successes such as the Mastiff and Ridgeback armoured vehicles, which the Taliban have effectively given up attacking, there have been widespread concerns with other models in the new fleet of vehicles the MoD has procured under an urgent operational requirement.

The Jackal has attracted the most concerns due to its design according to North. The front seats are over the front wheels making the driver and front passenger vulnerable to any explosion. Problems with the weight distribution have made the Jackal susceptible to rollovers, and bolt on armour has proven to be ineffective and has taken away the little mobility the vehicle has.

Army commanders have also been forced to use the vehicle, originally designed for off-road reconnaissance, for fixed road reconnaissance, supply escorts and patrols.

Already ten servicemen have died in the Jackal, despite the MoD spending hundreds of millions of pounds procuring it.

But the problems do not stop there. Last year the MoD ordered 262 Husky armoured vehicles from Navistar Defence, to be used as medium sized command and support vehicle in less dangerous areas. But according to North the deal came just as it was confirmed that the Husky had failed a blast test during a US Army vehicle contract competition. US Army officials are alleged to have expressed concerns over the "basic" design of the hull bridge which resulted in the Husky failing the mine test.

Given the success of v-shaped hulls on vehicles in Afghanistan, it is not clear why the MoD is procuring a standard hulled vehicle. Word of the US Army test failure was not announced until after the MoD had signed the £150m contract with Navistar.

There are also concerns over the new Panther armoured vehicle which North calls fundamentally flawed and "stupidity beyond measure". Panther is a designated command vehicle which will allow the Taliban to target higher ranking officers and field commanders in greater numbers than ever before.

The MoD is scheduled to buy 400 of the vehicles which North describes as "a fine modern product of the Italian automobile industry, and therefore completely unsuitable for military use."

The outside of the vehicle is made from "crushable" or "deformable" materials. While the Panther is well protected, any attack by an IED or mine will cause significant damage to the vehicle resulting in it becoming non-operational.

Procurement officials spent £400,000 per vehicle but it did not come with adequate protection for the engine, no electronic counter measures equipment and it only held three people. North estimates that by the time the full upgrades are completed, the MoD could be spending up to £700,000 on a vehicle that the insurgents can destroy with £20 worth of explosives.

The MoD for its part has argued that a number of upgrades have made the Husky, Jackal and Panther better protected and more able to deal with the operational challenges in Afghanistan.

The number of vehicle design flaws is part of a wider debate on mobility v. protection. Many vehicle design experts have argued that you cannot have both. If you have an agile vehicle it is limited in how much armour it can have. If you have a heavily armoured vehicle, case in point the Mastiff, you lose the element of surprise and ability to rapidly descend on the enemy or exit an operational centre.

North disagrees.

"I think it is a false paradigm. The Army doctrine says that you optimise on mobility and for specific theatres or specific threats you add on protection. Protection is seen as a separate issue added on after the event with design parameters," North said.

The problem is that when a "mobile" vehicle needs additional protection, engineers use bolt on armour which prejudices mobility. Vehicle engineers and procurement officials in turn conclude that mobility and protection are mutually contradictory.

Bolt on armour in many cases has proven to be ineffective against IEDs and mines.

Engineers should instead be "optimising for protection and then adding mobility" in vehicles according to North. A mobile well protected vehicle is possible but it would require a different mindset throughout the MoD's project teams and within industry.

There is still a large adherence to the successes of the past, North argued. Using mobile armoured vehicles to defeat Rommel in North Africa in the 1940s is still a primary reference point for today's armoured vehicle fighting strategies even though the scope of warfare has changed dramatically since then.

As a result, of the hundreds of new vehicles the MoD is rushing into service, many are plagued with design flaws or are used the wrong way.

"They are repeating the same mistakes and are doomed to repeat them over and over again," North said. With problems and concerns already arising in the Husky, Jackal and Panther vehicles, more mistakes could be on the way.

Richard North is the author of "Ministry of Defeat" and the website Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

The Americans understood ...

In the Mail on Sunday is an op-ed from veteran journalist Philip Jacobson, under the heading "The Americans understood the danger of IEDs – why didn't we?"

That statement is not without irony as today we learn that four US soldiers were killed on Saturday in an IED explosion in Helmand province, apparently in two separate incidents - the number now reduced to two killed, after officials reported there had been a double-counting error.

Whether two or four, these latest US death underline the deadly peril of this weapon and, in getting Jacobson to write about it, the Mail on Sunday has chosen well. He is not new to the subject and wrote a long piece for The Sunday Times Magazine in September last year, called "The success of the home-made bomb." Even after this elapse of time, it is still fresh and worth reading.

In his current article, Jacobson revisits his previous work, telling us of Lt-Gen Thomas Metz, director of the US Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), the organisation established in the summer of 2005 when the IED threat was growing to epidemic proportions in Iraq. While Metz's organisation currently enjoys a budget of $15 billion, Jacobson charges that our soldiers in Afghanistan are "facing a tough, resilient enemy with demonstrably inadequate resources".

To develop his thesis, Jacobson reminds us of the Snatch controversy, noting the "start contrast" between the US "no-expense-spared programme” and the reluctance of the MoD to provide a sufficient number (or any) armoured vehicles capable of surviving heavy IED blasts.

This remains a burning issue, he writes, recalling how in 2004, the US Marines were enthusing about an RG-31 which had sustained severe damage from an IED while the crew had escaped unharmed. Jacobson's memory is faulty here, as the incident happened in early 2006 (as late as November 2005, the Marines were still mainly concerned with up-armouring Humvees) but he recalls correctly that the incident was brought to the notice of the MoD by "Conservative politicians" (via this writer), only to be told that the RG-31's "size and profile" did not meet their needs.

Readers will recall the hostility and prevarication we encountered then, over three years ago, when the Army's idea of a protected vehicle was a Pinzgauer Vector. This has continued undiminished, where the Viking's mobility was seen as far more important than keeping soldiers alive and where the Jackal again elevates mobility to supreme status and relegates protection to a poor second. Now we see the substandard Husky being chosen in preference to the better-protected Oshkosk M-ATV and the even better Cheetah.

Jacobson argues that it is crucial that we adapt to the real threat we face and regards it as not merely unintelligent, or negligent, that a "front-rank industrial nation" cannot do better for its endlessly gallant soldiers. It is criminal, he says. Yet, the "criminals" continue in place, and the men will keep dying, while the politicians attempt to "park" the issue in the hope that it will go away.

It won't.

(The pic, incidentally, is something the MoD got right-ish – despite the panning of the media. It is an armoured JCB High Mobility Engineer Excavator, blown up by an IED while it was digging a culvert. The driver survived. Pic courtesy of El Tirador Solitario.)

COMMENT THREAD

A tale of two armies

Primitive British mine/IED clearance methods, compared with their US counterparts, may have been responsible for the death of Private Robbie Laws, 18, of the 2nd Mercian Regiment – to date, one of the youngest soldiers to die in Afghanistan.

On 4 July, Private Laws was attached to a squadron of the Light Dragoons which were operating Scimitar light reconnaissance tanks taking part in operation Panther's Claw. Laws was part of a four-man "dismount" team carried in a Spartan armoured personnel carrier (pictured below right), his and his comrades' task being to carry out mine/IED sweeps on foot, using hand-held detectors, ahead of the armoured vehicles, whenever their commander suspected a possible trap.

Recounted in detail by The Daily Mail, after Laws and his comrades crossed the start line in their Spartan on 4 July, they were soon called into action but, as they dismounted, Taleban fighters opened up with small arms. A Scimitar armed with 30mm Rarden cannon moved up to engage them, setting a pattern for the operation. The advance thus continued in a stop-start fashion as Laws and his comrades painstakingly cleared the route with their detectors.

Come the late afternoon as the light and intense heat began to fade, Laws and his comrades had been resting by the side of the vehicle for an hour or so, then helping to unload another Spartan which had come in from a water resupply run. Small arms fire started coming in and the Light Dragoons started their vehicle engines. Laws and the three other dismounts piled into their Spartan, which began to move.

Some 200 yards on, the squadron commander ordered two men to dismount to carry out a sweep ahead. Laws with one other completed the task and remounted. As the Spartan started to move off, there was a "massive bang" and the cabin filled with smoke. The vehicle had been hit by a Taleban RPG. Laws was killed instantly, another soldier was very seriously injured and one other was slightly injured.

It is of course the case that the Spartan could have been targeted at any time during the operation by a Taleban PRG, with fatal consequences. But the main defence of this lightly armoured vehicle is its speed and manoeuvrability over a wide range of terrain. Its constant stop-start progress, and pauses to allow manual sweeping, thus made it a predictable and highly vulnerable target while it was stationary.

Compare and contrast, however, the experience of the US Marines further south, confronted by multiple IEDs impeding their progress. In terms of delays, their clearance team was no less impeded. But, unlike the British using lightly armoured personnel carriers with infantry using hand-held detectors, working on foot, the Marines were properly equipped.

Their 10-vehicle clearance team included a vehicle equipped with a mine roller, pushed ahead to detonate pressure-pad actuated mines and IEDS, a Husky mine detection vehicle (pictured below) and a number of MRAPs, all manned by specialist combat engineers.


After 72 "tough hours" on the road, the first IED destroyed an anti-mine roller being pushed by the convoy's lead vehicle. The explosion sent the roller's pieces flying into the air, and flipped the 17-ton onto its side, nearly toppling it into a canal that ran beside the dirt road. The crew, however, escaped unharmed.

After an overnight wait, a recovery team with specialist lifting equipment was despatched along the same route, only to hit an IED that had appeared to have been planted overnight specifically to strike them.

The explosion wrecked their vehicle but fortunately, it was another MRAP and the crew escaped unharmed. Then, and only then with the scene secure, did the Marines used hand-held mine-sweepers to check the road between the two blasts and then destroyed burnt damaged equipment to stop it falling into Taleban hands.

The convoy finally got back on the road by the evening but within an hour it was hit by a third IED that destroyed the Husky. The crewman survived. In between that point and the first of the blasts, the team had covered only a couple of miles of road and had discovered and dismantled seven further IEDs.

Said the convoy commander, Lieutenant Dan Jernigan, "Vehicles are being blown apart but the Marines inside are being kept safe. Not to sound cavalier, but it is better we take the blast than Humvees or someone else such as villagers." He was surprised that there had been no Taleban ambushes targeting his convoy when it had been stranded, but the vehicles were well armed and armoured – unlike the Spartan – and able to protect themselves.

The clearance process here was being applied to a supply route, but exactly the same process could have been applied to the route taken by the Light Dragoons. Typically then, the route is kept under observation after clearing – by UAVs or even infantry stationed along the route. As a final safeguard, an MRAP precedes the tactical convoy – a process known as "route proving" – to take the blast from any device that has been missed, or where emplacers have managed to evade observation and plant another bomb.

With a route almost guaranteed free from emplaced explosives, light tactical vehicles can then exploit their mobility and speed, without being tied to the stop-start routine that dogged the Light Dragoons, making their vehicles such vulnerable targets.

With such procedures in place, even the lightly armoured Vikings could be used with impunity, their routes through danger areas cleared, allowing them to exploit their off-road performance once they safely reach open country.

Ironically, the clearance and proving procedures – and the equipment to carry them out – were pioneered by the British – and used with great success in Bosnia in the early 90s, being copied by US forces and applied to both Iraq and now Afghanistan. Since Bosnia, however, the specialist equipment acquired by the British has been sold or otherwise disposed of. The need for such now again belatedly recognised, more equipment was ordered last October under the "Talisman" project, but deliveries are not scheduled to commence until next year – although the vital Husky is not being procured.

That is the measure of the shortfall in the British operation, but this is not a shortage of finance – clearly, as the equipment is now on order. More likely, it reflects the failure of the British Army to recognise and pre-empt the threat of mines and IEDs, with tragic consequences which stretch back into the Iraqi campaign, where troops in Basra and elsewhere faced similar threats and were similarly ill-equipped.

In this day and age, while there is still a valid and extensive role for the hand-held detector, there is no excuse for the excessive reliance on dismounted teams to do a job which could often be done more safely with armour and machines. That they are not available is yet another of those scandals, for which there should be a reckoning.

COMMENT THREAD

Half as much with more protection

With the results of the closely-fought M-ATV contract to supply off-road protected vehicles to the US armed forces being announced yesterday, US Armed Forces are to get their protected vehicles for Afghanistan at half the cost paid by the British MoD, which has selected one of the unsuccessful bidders.

As reported by The Financial Times, the clear US winner is Wisconsin-based vehicle manufacturer Oshkosh – already a major supplier of trucks to the US and supplier of the HET and tanker fleet to the British Army.

In winning the contract, the Oshkosh vehicle (pictured above) beat off a bid from BAE Systems, from Force Protection – which had teamed up with General Dynamics to work as a consortium called Force Dynamics – and Navistar International.

The value of the contract is $1.1 billion for an initial 2,244 vehicles, working out at just over $490,000 per unit, or just under £300,000 at current sterling exchange rates. This compares with the £600,000 being paid by the MoD for the Navistar Husky, one of the unsuccessful entrants, which is reported to have failed the mine resistance test.
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This puts the MoD in the classic position of spending twice as much as it needs to, for substandard kit, when it could have saved money and lives by joining in with the Americans on the M-ATV programme – with the added benefit of achieving logistic commonality.

Needless to say, with the BBC already having delivered its "puff" for the Husky, you will not get a squeak of protest from Britain's favourite broadcaster – which, after all, knows a thing or two about wasting money.

COMMENT THREAD

Propaganda corner

The MoD publicity machine has been hard at work over the last few days, selling "puffs" on the latest kit for "Our Boys" out in Afghanistan.

Leader of the pack of respondents – with actually very few takers so far in the MSM – is the BBC, which has a gloriously uncritical report from Robert Hall extolling the virtues of the latest tactical support vehicles procured, including the Husky, Wolfhound and Coyote.

These were unveiled today at the DVD fest at Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, the Defence Equipment & Support's (DE&S) "key stakeholder event" where Hall obligingly told his audience that the MoD had learned a great deal from its experience in Afghanistan, then happily being driven away in a Husky.

Equally obligingly, Hall gives defence equipment minister Quentin Davies plenty of air time to tell us how this new stable of vehicles would provide troops with high-quality and versatile equipment to give a "battle-winning edge in Afghanistan".

"We are working tirelessly to ensure they have the right equipment for the right job and ensuring that we respond quickly and innovatively to equipment requests from the frontline," Davies adds.

Hall's online piece also features a new lightweight textile-based armour to protect vehicles from rocket-propelled grenades. This is called the Tarian system, developed by Dorset-based company Amsafe, and is intended as a partial replacement for bar armour.

This is given a good airing by Deborah Haynes in The Times, telling us that the main benefit of the product is that it is 85 percent lighter than steel blast protection and 50 per cent lighter than aluminium bar armour. Thus we learn that troops can take advantage of the weight saved to fit other protective measures to their vehicles, "making them more survivable in Afghanistan, where the greatest risk to lives is posed by roadside bombs."

The idea of saving weight to add weight elsewhere is recognisably MoD propaganda, reflecting exactly that unchanging mindset which equates protection with weight of armour rather than design.

But what is interesting – to put it in as neutral a way as possible – is how willing the media seems to regurgitate the official line, without in any way questioning what they are told. This is especially the case with the BBC who in Robert Hall had the ideal propagandist, worth his weight in gold.

COMMENT THREAD

A mountain to climb

Sometimes you get the feeling there is no hope. No sooner do we record Dannatt's plea to protect defence spending then up pops the answer to a parliamentary question from Ann Winterton on defence spending.

Specifically, this was a follow-up to our piece in late May when it was revealed that an additional £20 million had been spent on preparing the Panther command vehicle (pictured above) for operations in Afghanistan.

What we did not know then – but have now found out – is that this £20 million has been spent on a mere 67 of the fleet of 401 vehicles, equivalent to £298,507 for each vehicle.

That of course is the additional expenditure for a vehicle which, in the first instance, cost a ridiculous £413,000 each. That means that supplying 67 four-seater armoured patrol vehicles is costing nearly £50 million, or just over £710,000 each.

Readers will recall that, in May 2005 the Swedish Army bought the near-equivalent RG-32M for a cost of approximately £152,000 each. More recently, the Irish Army bought a batch, the price having increased to about £210,000 each for battle-ready vehicles.

Even at the higher rate, therefore, this vehicle costs less to buy than the cost of converting the Panther to operational status, each Panther costing in total more than three RG-32Ms.

If this profligacy was an exception, then it would be remarkable enough in itself but it is just another example of the most extraordinary wastefulness of the MoD, a ministry that has recently committed to spending over £93,000 each on the Springer "beach buggy" and over £600,000 each on the converted SUV called the Husky.

Time and time again we hear the mantra of how the armed forces are deprived of resources, the government accused of "underspending". But again and again we see these examples of egregious waste. Clearly, whatever problems the MoD and the military might have, cash is not one of them. All the evidence points to the singular fact that, the more they are given, the more they will waste.

To get anywhere near efficient operations, we have a huge mountain to climb. And mountaineers there are none.

COMMENT THREAD

Failure is not an option

In June 2006, Gerald Howarth, shadow defence procurement minister, posted on his own website: "We welcome the Government's announcement that the Vector vehicle will enter service next year." He did, however, add: "It is more manoeuvrable but, according to the Secretary of State, is not much more armoured than the Snatch Land Rovers."

Not quite a year later, we reported that the same Gerald Howarth was praising the Pinzguaer Vector, even to the extent of appearing on the company's website (now defunct), giving it his endorsement.

However, to be scrupulously fair – something for which we are not famous – Gerald did later complain that the vehicle was not suitable for Afghanistan, and he did draw attention to then procurement minister Lord Drayson that the driver was exposed by sitting over the front wheel.

Now fast forward to yesterday and we see Gerald in Defence Questions asking: "Does the Minister agree with the former Secretary of State, who described the Pinzgauer Vector as 'an excellent solution to our soldiers' requirements', or does he now accept that, at a cost of more than £100 million, it was a massive defence acquisition fiasco".

And, to give credit where it is due, Gerald also recognised the role of Ann Winterton in drawing attention to the defects in this vehicle, then asking what had been done "to improve the technical evaluation process to restore our troops’ confidence in the acquisition process".

This is real politics, the opposition challenging the executive on a very specific issue, bringing attention to a serious defect which needs addressing and without remedy will cost lives. We would have preferred earlier intervention but at least the system is now working.

As for the government response, this came from Quentin Davies. It can be said that he did not acquit himself with honour – this being his reply:

The hon. Gentleman should wake up a bit, get with it and start to look at the realities of life. The fact of the matter is that those who invest in a portfolio of armoured vehicles, as we are doing - or, indeed, in a range of equipment for any purpose in this world - will want to ensure that they have the best, in terms of meeting different requirements in terms of mobility, capability, fire power, protection and so forth. We will inevitably have some vehicles that are less effective than others; we will inevitably have some successes and some failures; that is what a portfolio policy is all about, by the way. Vector was not a success and it is being withdrawn. Its problem has been its "operationability": it has great difficulty carrying some of the loads that it is required to carry on the Afghan terrain. It has not been able to live up to expectations there, and we will be replacing it with the new tactical support vehicles that we have ordered - the Coyote, the Husky and the Wolfhound -which I have mentioned in the House in different contexts. That is one more example of this steady process of flexibility, improvement and enhancement, which is the policy to which we are committed.

It would take far too much space in this post to deconstruct, word for word, Davies's statement but there are three points which can be dealt with. Firstly, the MoD is in denial about the Vector, refusing to admit that the vehicle failed primarily because of its lack of protection. Its load-carrying problems came with the stupidity of adding a great weight of armour in an unsuccessful attempt to improve that protection.

The second point is that Gerald is quite right in drawing attention to the "technical evaluation process". There is clearly something drastically wrong with the process, as a result of which the MoD is consistently – at ever-increasing expense – making the wrong choices on vehicles.

Contrary to perceived wisdom, mine protection and off road-performance are not mutually incompatible. The mistake has been - as with the Vector - to take an existing, non-protected vehicle and then to try to add protection by means of "bolt-on" armour. This can never succeed and degrades the original vehicle with the addition of weight.

The MoD is thus working to the wrong paradigm - to optimise protection without prejudicing performance, the protection must be designed in, not added on.

From that stems the third point. The same false paradigm is being applied to the successor vehicles, not least the Coyote and the Husky. That these are actually Vector replacements come as no surprise. Particularly with the Husky, with a ton and a half load space, this was never a credible support vehicle. It is, in effect, the new Snatch.

As to the effect of this flawed approach, the figures are stark. Approximate figures for deaths in unsound vehicles are: ten in Snatches, fifteen in Wimiks, at least six in Vikings, nine in Jackals and five in Vectors. At 45 deaths, these account for one in four of the total of 165 troop deaths in Afghanistan, almost all of them preventable.

Thomas Harding in The Daily Telegraph points out the hazards of the Jackal, estimating that, in addition to the deaths, at least of quarter of the 100 Jackal fleet in Afghanistan has been severely damaged or destroyed by enemy action. By contrast, in an earlier post, we showed a picture of a Mastiff which had taken a serious explosive strike. Yet, despite the damage, it was easily repairable – not so the Jackals, each costing close on to £400,000. We are thus dealing with a serious equipment issue, as well as the death and injury rate.

Clearly, neither the MoD nor its ministers are up to the job of sorting these problems out. The long-stop is Parliament, and it is beginning to stir. This is the only hope of keeping people alive. We need this system to work – failure cannot be allowed to be an option.

COMMENT THREAD

Boy Racer procurement syndrome "killing soldiers"

Recent deaths of soldiers in military vehicles in Afghanistan are the result of poor procurement choices, influenced more by looks and performance than operational needs claims Richard North, author of Ministry of Defeat published later this week. Many of the vehicles pressed into service in Iraq and Afghanistan would be more at home amongst the middle aged boy racers on Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear programme or tearing round city centres late at night than on a modern battlefield.

The Army policy appears to be to buy vehicles for their looks, "uparmour" them at great cost but still leave them as effective as chocolate fireguards against the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) – the insurgency weapon of choice in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the worst examples is the Army's new Jackal high mobility gun platform, described as a "Land Rover on steroids" and dubbed the "Mad Max monster machine" when it was unveiled by the Army in June 2007.

Hugely popular with troops for its speed, manoeuvrability and comfortable ride, it's nonetheless lethal! Including the two soldiers tragically killed on Saturday May 30th in Helmand Province, already eight soldiers have since been killed in these £400,000 machines, many more have been seriously injured and over 20 vehicles have been written off after mine strikes or roadside bomb damage.

The loss rate is not surprising says North. The vehicle was originally designed as a high mobility truck and gun tractor and has since been converted into a "weapons platform" with the addition of two machine guns. First introduced into Afghanistan without armour, it has since been "uparmoured" twice, each time because it could not withstand Taleban attacks.

Modern protected vehicles are custom-designed and can withstand bombs as large as 300lb, something which converted vehicles can never do. In the Army's dedicated mine protected vehicle, the Mastiff, no lives have been lost, despite it being in service in two years longer than the Jackal.

An even worse example is the recently ordered Husky "support vehicle". It is based on the US-built International MXT pickup, a civilian competitor to the Hummer. Launched in 2004, it was decribed by the manufacturers as a "sleek and dominant truck geared for the 'image' truck market, a growing niche of truck owners who want to make a powerful statement about who they are."

With 200 ordered by the MoD in April this year, at a cost of £120 million, the Husky has been converted for military use with "bolt-on" armour. The same version was offered to the US Army for a procurement competition for an off-road mine protected vehicle to serve in Afghanistan. But, in the same week of the MoD order, it was learned that the US Army had failed the vehicle during its compulsory mine protection test and had been ruled our of the competition.

Again, North is unsurprised. Without what is known as a "v-shaped hull" as a basic part of the design, it is difficult to protect vehicles properly. Yet, with the right design, even light vehicles can withstand blasts that cripple tanks ten times their weight.

The Army, he says, is regressing in its approach to armoured vehicle design. The first ever production armoured car was built by the French in 1904. It was a commercial vehicle with bolt-on armour. After the Second World War, new technologies and experience enabled far more effective vehicles to be built, incorporating the armour into the basic structure. Now, the Army is going back to pre-war technology – pre First World War. And men are dying as a result.

Ironically, the British were the pioneers in mine protected vehicles, building army trucks in 1966 for the Aden campaign. The technology was further developed by the Rhodesians for their Bush War in the 1970s and then by South Africans. It has since been adopted by the US which is currently running a competition for a high-mobility mine protected vehicle.

It was in this competition that the Husky failed which means that the MoD is buying vehicles rejected by the Americans. But, with its chunky, macho looks, on the Top Gear show, it would win every time.

COMMENT THREAD

The fearless Dunn rides again

It used to be said that Sun journalists were the most skilled in what used to be called "Fleet Street". Their skill was in writing one hundred words of accessible prose what took broadsheet writers several thousand to do, while getting accurately to the heart of the story. Then the paper employed Tom Newton Dunn as defence "editor".

He, like many of the hacks today, writes up a story puffing the latest pronouncements of General Sir Richard Dannatt, missing the point completely, and thus reinforcing the paper's unenviable "comic strip" reputation, as it reduces defence matters to the status of a soap opera.

Thus does the fearless Dunn parade his superficiality under the heading: "Army chief: Spend more on Our Boys", telling us that the "outspoken" Army head last night accused the MoD of squandering precious billions on outdated equipment."

This was Dannatt preaching to a sycophantic audience at Chatham House, finally catching up with a reality largely of his own making, arguing that "Britain was still gearing up for a Cold War-style conflict against other powerful nations". But, he said, troops were far more likely over the next 30 years to find themselves fighting terror groups like al-Qaeda.

In the deathless prose of the fearless Dunn, this is translated as "Sir Richard" – there's grovelling for you – warning that "Our Boys in Afghanistan would suffer — or even fail — unless more cash was channelled towards their urgent needs."

The perspicacious Dunn then wisely informs is that this "landmark speech" was last night interpreted as a thinly-veiled attack on PM Gordon Brown's decision this week to buy 40 new Typhoon fighter jets at £60 million each. "And the hugely-popular general's comments will provoke more in-fighting between the RAF and Royal Navy over Britain's dwindling military budget."

What of course we do not get from Dunn – and, to be fair, from any other hack either – is that when it comes to "squandering precious billions", Dannatt has been right there in the thick of it, presiding over the waste of hundreds of millions on dangerously inadequate vehicles, not least the Vector, the Tellar and, to come, the Husky.

This is the man who also blocked the Army from obtaining cheap but entirely adequate helicopters for Iraq and Afghanistan in order to safeguard one of his fantasy projects, the Future Lynx, a helicopter that will cost 2-3 times a more than a suitable equivalent. It will not be available until 2014 – and not in service until 2016.

This is also the man who delayed the response to the catastrophic failure of the Phoenix UAV, leaving the Army devoid of a vital surveillance capability, preferring to wait for the advanced "Watchkeeper" project instead of insisting on buying perfectly capable UAVs off-the-shelf when they were most needed.

Most of all though, this is the man who in mid-2007, when US defence secretary Robert Gates was declaring the MRAP programme as his "highest priority" was declaring that £16 billion FRES programme was his "highest equipment priority". By July 2007, Dannatt was insisting that FRES should acquire a completely unrealistic in-service date of 2012 which, he said, was "non-negotiable", thus blocking the wholesale provision of more suitable, mine protected equipment.

Yet this was also the man who, having decided on one specific armoured vehicle to fulfil his dream, presided over an active conspiracy to block the provision of an equivalent vehicle, available off-the-shelf, the only one which could have met his 2012 deadline and which, within his own terms, could have given the Army the capability which he claimed was so desperately needed.

Now, having been largely responsible for the impoverishment of the Army, Dannatt has the nerve to insist that: "Much of our planned investment in defence is of questionable relevance to the challenges we face now and in the future. The balance of our investments remain heavily skewed towards industrial warfare. Many of these look simply irrelevant."

He also says, with not even a blush, "We must not take the commitment of today's Tommies for granted. We have an obligation to understand their needs and provide them with tools and training, not squander scarce resources," then concluding that, "We are in an era of persistent conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations, they are signposts to the future."

As to the latter assertions, Dannatt is, of course, playing catch-up – these very points were articulated by Robert Gates over a year ago. More specifically, Dannatt is bending to the wind, having spent most of his three-year tenure as Chief of the General Staff preaching the doctrine of the "balanced force", the very antithesis of what he is now embracing.

Nevertheless, such nuances, are beyond the likes of Dunn, Not having reported the Gates speech - The Sun doesn't do US defence politics - not having the first idea what FRES is, and certainly never having reported it intelligently, and having evaded any scrutiny of Dannatt's dire tenure over the equipment programme, Dunn is content to indulge in gushing hero-worship of a man who has perhaps done more damage to the Army than Mike "macho" Jackson.

Unfortunately, Dunn is not entirely alone in allowing Dannatt a free hand, with Thomas Harding The Daily Telegraph also offering an uncritical account of Dannatt's attempt to join the real world.

But here, in a much more measured account, Harding does allow something that Dunn, champion of "Our Boys" could never permit. He writes that Dannatt admits that Britain's performance in Iraq had led to its military reputation and credibility being "called into question" by America." Thus we also hear, via Harding, Dannatt telling us that, "Taking steps to restore this credibility will be pivotal – and Afghanistan provides an opportunity – key to doing so will be an honest self-appraisal of our performance in Iraq."

This is the man who, in December 2008, dismissed criticisms of the operation, telling us that "We have been quite clear about what we had to do and we have done it and we are going to leave in the early part of next year because the job is done". Now, at last, we are hearing a call from that same Dannatt, this time for "an honest self-appraisal of our performance in Iraq" – exactly the call made in my book Ministry of Defeat. Where we lead, Dannatt follows.

Whether the Army can rise to that challenge, or is even capable of carrying it out - with the accent on "honest" - remains to be seen. But that the outgoing CGS should at last ask for it is a step forward. One wonders though, whether his performance will be included in such an appraisal. If it is, though, you can be sure that the fearless Dunn will not report it.

COMMENT THREAD

Boys and their toys

"With a barrage of ear-shattering bangs, the British Army showed off the full array of firepower it has at its disposal during a Land Combat Power Display on Salisbury Plain last week."

That is the current offering from the MoD website, under the heading: "Army shows off its firepower", describing in near lyrical terms how:

With Guns N' Roses music coming from loud speakers in the grandstand, out came the Armoured Fighting Vehicles. Skidding around in the gravel with their drivers encased within their heavily armoured bodies so that no human presence was visible, the vehicles looked like Transformers from another planet as their gun turrets menacingly surveyed the audience and the undercarriages danced around in a mechanical ballet.

The demonstration culminated in a display, "to the music of 80s TV show Airwolf", as:

… an Apache attack helicopter descended in front of the grandstand before most of the audience jumped out their skins as a Tornado jet screeched across the skies from behind, dropping its explosive payload onto the hills and sending shock waves heavenwards.

Thus we are told, "the combined use of all this equipment during the final live ammunition 'attack' on enemy compounds was ferocious and frightening, as well as deafening!" And, of course, this "attack" was completely successful, as they always are against a compliant, hypothetical enemy in front of an invited audience in Salisbury Plain.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Taleban has unveiled its new bomb detonator, which is cunningly defeating all known counter-measures. It is constructed of string and a wooden clothes peg. This has US Gen Thomas Metz admitting frustration at being forced to build "million-dollar solutions to $100 problems." That's just isn't smart business, he fumes.

Back on Fantasy Island, the MoD has invoked that great military authority, Trooper James Hawley, to talk up the Jackal (only 18 plus destroyed so far). Hawley was deployed to Helmand last year where he went out on reconnaissance patrols for up to three weeks at a time using Jackal vehicles. He tells us, courtesy of the MoD spin machine:

The Jackal is an awesome bit of kit. The speed and ground you can cover makes it ideal for reconnaissance. You can only have so much protection before you loose manoeuvrability but they do offer a lot of protection.

Doubtless, next year, the MoD will be able to get another obedient Trooper to enthuse about the wonderful Husky, again telling us that "you can only have so much protection".

That MoD kit so often comes with free body parts, however, is something they are less keen to tell us. Still, if you play Guns N' Roses music loud enough, no one will hear the screams.

COMMENT THREAD

As rejected by Americans

On the very day that the MoD has announced its order for an American armoured SUV for our troops in Afghanistan, analysts are suggesting that its performance "did not meet US military's expectations". It is thus unlikely to enter US military service.

The vehicle was chosen by the MoD last October as one of a range of new "tactical support vehicles" for Afghanistan. It is to be called the Husky. The preferred bidder was Chicago-based Navistar Defence.

When details were released in November, we were considerably less than impressed. It is not a custom-designed MRAP, with the classic v-shaped hull. Instead, the MoD has picked a conversion based on a civilian SUV pick-up truck known as the International MXT 4x4. To equip it for its warlike role, we have yet another Army/MoD bodge, with appliqué (i.e., bolt-on) armour.

Undeterred, the MoD has now announced that it is going ahead with the order, having awarded a contract for just over 200 vehicles at a cost of £120 million – close on £600,000 each.

The contract for modifications to the US-built vehicles, and systems integration, has been awarded to the Malvern firm Dytecna, which has had the local newspaper twittering that some "50 new jobs will be created at following the award of a prestigious equipment contract for the Ministry of Defence."

Needless so say, the MoD is in full propaganda mode, with Lt-Col Nick Wills at the helm. He is the MoD's, Tactical Support Vehicle Programme Manager in the "Defence Equipment and Support's Protected Mobility Team", and is telling us that, "The Husky vehicle provides a robust and very mobile protected support vehicle for operations. The design has picked up on many of the lessons from current operations."

However, this same vehicle has been under consideration by the US forces, as one of the four competitors for the prestigious MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) contract. And, with unfortunate timing Reuters today announced that Navistar had filed a complaint with the Pentagon over the evaluation process.

Since, in a typical government bid, contractors may file a formal protest only after government action has been taken, analysts have taken this to mean that the vehicle has been eliminated from the competition. The suggestion is that Navistar's engineering performance on this contract did not meet the military's expectations.

Given that this is a commercially engineered vehicle and road legal, the most obvious inference is that the vehicle has failed to meet the protection specifications laid down by the US Army. But, for whatever reason, the rejection by the US military casts a major shadow over the MoD choice of the vehicle for British forces.

If it were not so tragic, costing the lives of many brave men and women, there would be something endearingly comic about the MoD's unerring capability to get it wrong. But then, of all the sins of which the MoD is manifestly guilty, inconsistency is not one of them.

And now, contrast with this.

COMMENT THREAD

"Same old failings"

The starting point of this piece is the assertion that we will never get sensible military procurement until or unless MPs and the media start to take the subject seriously.

Only then, do we assume that they will make the effort to understand the issues and put the pieces together. And, if they do so, they will be able to target their criticisms accurately and fairly. But they must also come up with clear ideas of what should be done. There is no point whatsoever relying on the MoD – or the military. Time and time again, it has become demonstrably clear that they have very little idea of what they are doing.

The illustration of this broader thesis comes with today's media coverage of the annual National Audit Office (NAO) report on MoD project management, which has featured, amongst other things, the problems in bringing "Terrier" battlefield engineer vehicle into service – a project slated at £300 million, each vehicle costing £5 million.

The focus on this machine in the report has prompted three media articles dedicated specifically to the subject of the Terrier.

In no particular order, there is a piece by Chris Irvine, in The Daily Telegraph, another in the same paper (online both) by Thomas Harding and a piece in The Daily Mail by Matthew Hickley. Then, in each case there is comment by an MP, Edward Leigh, the Conservative chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

To understand the scale of the problem, we first have to look at each article individually. Then we need to look at the bigger picture, Leigh's response to the newspapers and the role of the NAO.

Taking Hickley's Mail piece first, the headline (which would not have been written by the author) proclaims: "Army forced to buy JCBs and paint them in camouflage colours to clear warzones." The message, however, accurately reflects the copy, which tells us:

Plans for new armoured bulldozers to help British troops to clear obstacles in warzones have been hit by such long delays that the Army has had to buy JCB diggers instead and paint them in camouflage colours.

This assertion is then reinforced by the picture (above), which shows a line of ordinary, commercial JCBs.

Taking that one point (we will return to the others) – that the Army is, in effect, using ordinary JCB diggers, with a new paint job - this is a cheap shot, and wholly wrong. The vehicles being bought are the state-of-the-art JCB High Mobility Engineer Excavator (HMEE) - pictured below, right.

They were purpose-designed, initially for the US Army and are custom-built military machines. Furthermore, the version to be fielded is armoured, which adds to the differences – although we have reservations about this, as these machines are not mine protected. Nevertheless, they bear no more relation to the civilian machine than does an Army truck to a Tesco delivery vehicle.

Moving on to Chris Irvine's Telegraph piece, he also writes in similar terms that "The Army had to buy JCB diggers and paint them to camouflage them after plans for new armoured bulldozers to clear warzones were met by long delays."

The issue we need to address here is the inference that the Army bought the HMEE because of the delays in procuring the "new armoured bulldozers" – the Terriers (picture, below left) to which the NAO report refers.

Once again the assertion is wrong. Although ostensibly based on the NAO report, that is not what the NAO actually says. The passage is here:

2.17 Terrier will replace the Combat Engineer Tractor that was withdrawn from service in March 2008 because of concerns about the safe integration and operation of the Bowman communications system, reliability and obsolescence problems. The delays to Terrier will extend this capability gap; but users have been willing to accept that the vehicles will not be available to support operations until 2012 rather than risk a lower level of reliability. The Department does not believe that the delays will have an operational impact in the short term because of Urgent Operational Requirement action to purchase alternative engineering vehicles for current operations, including the JCB High Mobility Engineer Excavators.

The most relevant sentence here is the last, where the MoD argues that the delays in the Terrier procurement will not affect operations because, inter alia the HMEE has been bought. From this, it is a long way to go to assume that the HMEE was bought because of the delays in the Terrier programme. And, in fact, that was not the case,

Those that have followed this issue will know that the HMEE is to be purchased as part of the £96 million Talisman package, devised as a "specialist route clearance system", which "will provide a new high-tech way of dealing with the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) threat."

In this role, the HMEE brings to the table capabilities which the Terrier cannot supply. Specifically, the HMEE is a development of the JCB Fastrac, a machine which is optimised for (relatively) high-speed road use. It is thus capable of travelling long distances at convoy speed, keeping up with other vehicles without the need for specialist transportation. It can also operate freely on a wide variety of roads.

Strangely enough, when the concept was first announced in 2005, it was much lauded, not least by Sean Rayment in The Sunday Telegraph as the US Army's "latest secret weapon in the war against terror". How times change. But it is a pity that Telegraph writers do not read the Sunday version of their own newspaper.

The contrast with the Terrier, to anyone who thinks about it, is obvious. A tracked vehicle, if it is to travel any distance, has to be transported on a low loader. Furthermore, it is not by any means ideal for working on metalled roads – tracks tending to tear up the tarmac. It may have a limited role in Afghanistan, its design use being to carry out engineering works in the "indirect fire zone". But it is not an equivalent to the HMEE (and vice versa).

At best, the two machine types have overlapping capabilities, which is probably what the MoD was getting at when it argued that there would be no "operational impact" from the delay in the Terrier. Most of the jobs the Terrier would have been called upon to do, the HMEE can also do. But the HMEE can perform tasks for which the Terrier would be wholly inappropriate.

With that, we now come to the next point, majored on by Thomas Harding, his article headed: "Mine clearing vehicle that could save lives of British troops delayed for two years." Unfortunately, he has been misled both by the MoD and the NAO, which position the Terrier as a "mine clearance vehicle", which is actually only a secondary role.

Harding thus writes: "The armoured vehicle can clear minefields and make routes safe for following armour and is likely to have proved a significant asset in Afghanistan where dozens of soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs." He then goes on to say, "As a result of the hold-up the MoD has been forced to buy 10 off-the-shelf Buffalo route clearance vehicles as part of an urgent £96 million project."

The juxtaposition of these two issues is not altogether a happy one. In the mine clearance role, the Terrier is mainly what is known as a "breach" vehicle. Usually, to clear mines, it tows a bit of kit called Viper minefield breaching system (now replaced by the Python) which it uses literally to blast a way through a known minefield, paving the way for armour.

In insurgency warfare, the mine is used as an ambush weapon and, therefore, a different approach is used, needing equipment to investigate suspect locations, to determine whether there is an explosive package hidden there. Once one is detected, it is then identified and dealt with.

Thus, the distinction is between "breach" and "clearance". The Terrier is used for the first, the Buffalo for the second - as one of a suite of vehicles, providing part of the detection capability. There is no comparison. The Terrier can be used for the one (as an ancillary function) but cannot perform the role of the Buffalo. There can be no question, therefore, of being "forced" to buy Buffaloes because of delays in the Terrier programme. The two are completely different animals, used for different jobs.

However, as between the Terrier and the HMEE, there can be an overlap. Both vehicles can be fitted with mine clearance rollers (pictured right). But this kit is also currently fitted to Mastiffs and can be fitted to virtually any other armoured vehicle (in Oman, rollers were fitted to Saracens), so one hardly needs a £5 million, specialist engineering vehicle for the purpose, especially as the Terrier is not mine protected. Futhermore, this equipment - unlike the Husky detector gear - will only deal with pressure-plate activated devices, and not those triggered by command wire or other remote actuation mechanisms.

This brings us to the problem of the "bigger picture". The limitation of the NAO is that it looks at individual projects, mainly from a cost perspective. It does not look at projects in context (how they relate as part of a system, with other equipment), nor does it consider whether they are necessary or whether an alternative would be more appropriate. It simply looks at the situation "as is".

The trouble is that no one else is looking at the bigger picture either. Perhaps the Defence Select Committee should be doing this, but it does not. And neither does the media. As we see with this story, it dissects the information served up to it on a plate and goes no further. But, if you examine the "system" as a whole, a different and altogether more disturbing picture emerges.

Looking specifically at the HMEE, the question has to be asked, what is it for? An excavator, with or without armour, cannot be used to look for mines or other explosives. That is the job of the Husky (see left) in combination with the Buffalo. You would not expect an excavator to dig up a mine or explosive device once found. For a start, the HMEE armour (and design) is not up to that, which would make it far too dangerous. Explosive devices, invariably, are hand-cleared or blown up in situ. The only role one can think of, for which the HMEE is particularly suited is filling in the craters after a device has been blown up.

The question that devolves is why, in the £96 million Talisman project, the Army is buying HMEEs - 13 of them at a cost of £6.2 million – when it is not buying Huskies, an essential component of any route clearance operation? Another question is why the Army is spending £6.2 million on buying HMEEs at all, when it has already has a fleet of 25 armoured mine clearance vehicles, which it is now trying to sell off, unused, at the knockdown price of less than £4.5 million.

If the NAO is interested in value for money – which is its purpose in life – then it needs to look a bit closer at the Talisman project. Tucked into that, as Ann Winterton discovered, are some additional Mastiffs. Their role will be to function as armoured bomb disposal vehicles.

Only last year though, the MoD replaced its entire overseas fleet of bomb disposal vehicles, spending £7.5 million on 18 Swiss-built Bucher Duro vehicles, called the "Tellar" (pictured right). As we pointed out at the time, these unarmoured vehicles are totally unfit for purpose and now, surreptitiously – disguised by another project – these are being replaced.

Thus, we find ourselves in a position where, after the waste of nearly £20 million, we are going to end up with route clearance teams which still lack the essential Huskies to make them truly effective. But the NAO has no comment about that, and the media – entirely heedless of what is going on – is chasing after hares, making false points about JCBs, missing the real story.

That leaves Edward Leigh, who comments on the NAO findings. He complains of the "same old failings", which threaten to leave British troops poorly prepared for frontline action. He condemns what he calls "a lack of realism" and then declares: "This is about more than money. This kit will sooner or later be operated, perhaps in anger, by our men and women in the forces."

That latter sentiment is one with which we would agree. But, instead of offering any more detailed critical evaluation or himself looking at the bigger picture, Leigh is mouthing sound bites in response to an agenda dictated by the NAO. We are indeed – to use his words – dealing with the "same old failings", but there are far more failings than those identified by the NAO. As an MP, and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, it is his job to root them out.

Instead, from our parliamentary representatives, we also get the "same old failings", which means that money will continue to be wasted and "our men and women in the forces" still won't get the right kit.

They – and we, the taxpayers – deserve something better.

COMMENT THREAD

Let loose the dogs of chores

So far, reported only by one obscure (to me, anyway) online business site, the MoD has at last given some more details of its new £700 million armoured vehicle package announced by John Hutton last month.

This is the Tactical Support Vehicle (TSV) range – all given names from the canine genus, as has become customary in British Army armoured vehicle nomenclature. These, though, are to be the workhorses, doing the fetching and carrying and other chores, rather than fighting.

At the heavy end – very much as expected – we see the Force Protection Inc nominated at the preferred bidder with the Cougar flatbed. The MoD offers a photograph (above), which includes the vehicle being dressed up with the characteristic Barracuda Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) which we see adorning the Snatch Land Rovers and Vectors, so one might think that this is the final form, without bar or additional side armour.

However, once the wonks back home get at it, we could see it come out in a very different form. The MoD is, in fact, saying that it will be "up-armoured and integrated with UK specific equipment such as communications systems and protection measures in a similar way to Mastiff."

Less impressive is the nomination for the Husky – the "medium" vehicle. The preferred bidder is Navistar Defence with a vehicle based on the International MXT-MVA (pictured). As a cargo truck, it will have a four-man cab and a cargo capacity in excess of 1.5 tons. It will, however, come as three variants: utility, ambulance and command post.

This vehicle does not come with rave reviews. It is not a proper MRAP, with the classic v-shaped hull, but is a conversion built on an International MXT 4x4 pick-up chassis, with appliqué armour.

The last thing the Army needs is yet another truck type on its inventory. An alternative is the cargo version of the Bushmaster called the Copperhead. With the Bushmaster about to enter service with the special forces, there would be some commonality but, it appears, this is not to be.

The third and least satisfactory of them all is the Coyote TSV (Light) which is to be a 6x6 derivative of the Jackal designed by Supacat Ltd. We are told that it will also have a cargo capacity in excess of 1.5 tons and a four-man crew.

The MoD does not offer a photograph of this, but it may well be similar to the Supacat "Extenda" seen in Paris earlier this year (pictured). There are no indications, as yet, as to whether this will be armoured in the same way as the Jackal but, if it is not, soldiers would be better protected going to war on bicycles.

The best thing that can be said of this vehicle is that it will share the same degree of vulnerability as its smaller cousin. Frankly, if the extreme mobility for which this vehicle is famed is really needed in the supply role, then the best option would not be a ground vehicle at all, but a helicopter or even – as was adopted by the LRDG in World War II - light aircraft (spool down to fifth picture).

Of this new package, John Hutton tells us the vehicles "will give the troops in Afghanistan the additional bite they need in the fight against the enemy. They do a formidable job and deserve nothing but the best." Despite these fine words, it is by no means clear that they (the troops) are about to get what they deserve.

COMMENT THREAD

That's politics for you

One of the most bizarre aspects of the war in Afghanistan is that, despite almost universal agreement that more helicopters are needed in theatre, the British government seems entirely unable to fill this urgent capacity shortfall.

Not so the Canadian government which, faced with a similar shortfall, is doing something about the problem, as with other aspects of its procurement policy – purchasing RG-31s when the British were patrolling in lightly armoured WIMIKs and "Snatch" Land Rovers and providing mine clearance sets, including the Husky and Buffalo, when the British were investing in hand-held mine detectors.

Their response was actually announced in July by our own defence secretary, the details recorded on this blog, including – as was then stated – purchasing six additional Chinooks and eight Griffin helicopters. In the interim, we were told, while fitting out those Chinooks for deployment, the Canadians were to lease eight Mi-17s (aka Mi-8MTV).

There were some queries about the details and it seems that the Griffins, far from being newly purchased, were to be upgraded from the existing military inventory. And neither, it seems, is the Canadian government to lease eight Mi-17s. But, if that is the bad news, the good news is that it is still leasing Mi-17s, although the number is to be six.

This we glean from the Canadian Press website, its story headed, "Canadians to use civilian helicopters in Afghanistan in stopgap measure".

Until they get their own helicopters next year, the report reads, Canadian troops in Afghanistan will have access to six civilian choppers to lessen the risk of coming under insurgent attack while moving along the country's notoriously dangerous roads. The Mi-8 helicopters are being contracted from Toronto-based SkyLink as a stopgap measure. The first flight of the aircraft took place at Kandahar Airfield on Monday.

Says Col. Christopher Coates, air wing commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan: "As a task force, it allows us to transport with the Mi-8's cargo and with the Chinook's personnel, with a view to try and get Canadians off the roads here in Afghanistan where they are exposed to all the dangers of this country - ambushes and IEDs and the other things that all Canadians are aware of."

The decision to contract the Mi-8s, which will be flown by civilian pilots, is the result of a recommendation from the Manley report last spring, officially entitled the "Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan". This recommended that Canada should have some air capabilities for its operations in Afghanistan. In particular, during its investigations, it heard that:

… the safety and effectiveness of Canadian Forces in Kandahar would be markedly increased by the acquisition and deployment of new equipment. In particular, added helicopter airlift capacity and advanced unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles are needed now. No equipment can perfectly protect Canadian soldiers against improvised explosive devices. But helicopters can save lives by reducing reliance on transporting troops by road, and aerial surveillance can more effectively track insurgent movements.

So seriously did the Panel take this evidence that, in its report, it also recommended that, "if the necessary equipment is not procured, the Government should give appropriate notice to the Afghan and allied governments of its intention to transfer responsibility for security in Kandahar."

In other words, it was saying to the government, either pull the troops out of Afghanistan or provide more helicopters. It was as blunt as that and, in the face of strong public pressure to withdraw, the government knew it had to do one or the other. It chose the latter.

The British government could, of course, have done the same and the option of leasing Mi-8 aircraft has been available since before British troops first deployed in Afghanistan, at a fraction of the cost of operating military helicopters.

This we have rehearsed many times on this blog, for instance, here, here and here. But, to be fair to the government, while it has in certain quarters energetically pursued this idea, it has been totally frustrated by a total lack of enthusiasm from the military, a wall of indifference verging on hostility from the media, and the overt opposition from the Conservative defence team.

The biggest concern is the possibility of the loss of one of these helicopters packed with troops. Indeed, one SkyLink Mi-8 was shot down in Afghanistan in 21 April 2005, with the loss of 11 lives, so the fear is very real. The bigger political problem, though, would be the ensuing outcry from the media – and opposition – charging that "Our Boys" had been palmed off with "substandard" Russian helicopters, which had led to their death. You can just imagine The Sun in full flow on this, complete with "outraged" comments from the Tory defence team.

However, instead of sitting on their backsides whining about the lack of helicopters, the ever resourceful Canadians have come up with a solution to this problem.

They are going to pool these helicopters under the Joint Task Force Afghanistan command. Thus, when they need to move troops, they will be able to call upon fully equipped British Chinooks, in return for which they will transport British cargo which would otherwise have been moved by the RAF aircraft.

Given that the British forces have a massive requirement for moving cargo – and sometimes we see precious Chinooks used just for delivering the mail – there was and never has been any reason why we could not have acquired Mi-8s for cargo moving. Not only is this option safer, it acts as a force multiplier reducing the need for expensive and manpower intensive resupply convoys.

Of course, this issue is not about politics, in the minds of the chatterati except when it suits them to complain about under-resourcing but, in fact, this is the very meat and drink of politics.

Had the opposition put its weight behind this issue, I have very good reasons for believing that we would have been seeing Mi-8s in the British sector some long time ago, saving money and possibly lives, as well as significantly enhancing our capabilities.

But then, they have some many other important things to do, like trying to get the ridiculously expensive and generally inadequate Future Lynx in service earlier, pushing complaints about “delays” into the media. It ain’t going to happen but, despite assertions by a certain MP, there are other games in town which will help resolve – albeit less than satisfactorily – the tactical helicopter shortage in Afghanistan.

The solution will be found, but without the intervention of the opposition. But, if we can't get rid – in the longer term – of this overpriced white elephant – at least, it seems, FRES is going to be allowed to wither on the vine. What a tale there is to tell there – the battle of FRES, that the chatterati didn't even realise was happening.

Funny that - the most interesting stories never appear in the papers. And that, dear reader, is politics for you!

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