Blood money

Belatedly, the media are beginning to take an interest in the Future Lynx – now improbably named the Wildcat - with The Daily Mail today complaining that:

Britain is buying 62 Lynx Wildcat helicopters from AgustaWestland at a cost of £27 million each but they will not be available to equipment starved troops until 2012 at the earliest - four years after they could have had cheaper US helicopters.

While we can applaud the fact that, at last, a newspaper is actually taking some interest in this issue, with some exasperation we note that we actually first wrote about this in June 2006 when there was an equally pressing need for helicopters in Iraq, and it was in April 2007 that we drew attention to the extraordinary cost of running the current Lynx fleet, and the availability of cheaper and more effective alternatives.

Now that the Future Lynx contracts are in place, and it is far too late to do anything about them without incurring massive cost penalties, we have the media taking an interest – effectively three years too late. Nor indeed has the Mail even begun to understand the complexities of the Lynx story, some of which we have been following on this blog.

Rather than deal with the issues, the Mail picks a political "line" with its deputy political editor Tim Shipman telling us that British soldiers in Afghanistan are paying a "blood price" over a deal for new helicopters, after the MoD handed a £1billion pound contract for the helicopters to a company that then hired the department's top civil servant.

The civil servant in question is Sir Kevin Tebbit, permanent secretary at the MoD when the Future Lynx deal was struck in 2005 (it was actually "struck" in 2006). He later joined the boards of two of the companies building the helicopter. Firstly, as the Lynx deal was being announced in June 2006, Sir Kevin was signed up as a member of the Smiths board. Then in May 2007 he was asked to be chairman of Finmeccanica, the company which owns AgustaWestland, a post he took up that July.

Company records, Shipman tells us, suggest that Tebbit is now pocketing in excess of £100,000 a year in his role as chairman of Finmeccanica and another £52,000 from Smith Industries.

This political angle comes from Tory MP Douglas Carswell, who seems first to have raised the Lynx issue in parliament in October 2007, reiterating many of the complaints raised in this blog (without acknowledgement, as is his habit), but has since raised it in parliament (according to the Hansard website) only twice.

This compares, incidentally, with the nine questions raised by Ann Winterton, who has been persistently probing inadequacies of the Lynx without the flashy, self-aggrandisement for which Carswell has become notorious.

In fact, the Tebbitt issue is irrelevant to the Lynx story. The idea that one man – even one of such high rank - could steer this contract in a particular direction is absurd. And, as the MoD points out, Sir Kevin was not involved in the decision to buy the helicopters. It was taken by ministers on the advice of the MoD Equipment Approvals Committee of which he was not a member.

What Carswell has done, probably unwittingly, is touch upon a bigger, more sinister problem, where the defence industry routinely buys influence by offering jobs, consultancies and directorships to civil servants, retired officers – such as the former CDS Charles Guthrie - and even former ministers, not necessarily to steer specific contracts but to shape policy and ensure that the industry voice is heard in the right quarters.

This, we came across in the murky tale of the Panther procurement, where the civil service desk officer administering the programme was subsequently given a consultancy by the vehicle manufacturer Iveco.

There is also the unexplained but highly suspect decision to favour the Piranha over the French VBCI for the FRES utility vehicle, while the decisions to purchase the British-built Pinzgauer Vector and the Jackal also smell of insider dealing.

This is not "corruption" in the sense that there are brown envelopes being handed under the tables in high class restaurants. It is more subtle than that, but it amount to the same thing. The defence industry is indeed buying influence, putting its interests above both the defence and national interests.

And, as we have seen, the industry is highly effective in censoring debate, ensuring that its critics are not heard.

Such issues, however, do not address the immediate problem of the Lynx. In fact, the deal is done and dusted, making the Mail indignation somewhat superfluous. But it does point up the vital role of procurement, and the effect murky decisions, made years ago in the corridors of power (and the fine restaurants and bars) do eventually extract a price when our troops are saddled with inadequate kit or, in this case, no kit at all.

Thus, The Mail is correct to write in terms of a "blood price", but one has to say that the media, in its refusal to take procurement seriously, is part of the problem. Neglect of such a vital subject also has its "blood price".

COMMENT THREAD

All you could ever want

It is revealing how, for all the resources and "skills" of the serried ranks of hacks, it takes a reader's letter to make the obvious suggestion to resolve the helicopter shortage in Afghanistan.

Thus does Huw Baumgartner write in the letters column of The Sunday Telegraph as follows:

There is a way to increase helicopter capacity in Afghanistan with relatively small expense. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of utility helicopters mothballed in the Arizona desert. If our American allies want greater support, they could reactivate a number of these and loan them to us.

Mr Baumgartner then goes on to write that there are probably sufficient serving and reserve military helicopter pilots to man a squadron for basic logistics flying. In the longer term, he says, more pilots could be trained on a basic, no-frills course, such as used to be run by the Army Air Corps.

Certainly, he is absolutely right about there being hundreds of mothballed airframes available but, whether they could be re-activated and brought to theatre standard at a reasonable cost is arguable. But the general point is sound, in that it would be perfectly possible to upgrade a number of airframes (from diverse sources) to relieve the shortages.

That, as we pointed out in March 2007 was precisely what the Iraqi Air Force was doing, the same option also being taken by the Canadians in July 2008, now almost exactly a year ago. It is even an option adopted by the cash-strapped Philippine Air Force.

What Mr Baumgartner does not realise, perhaps, is that if the Bell airframe was used, the training needs and support are considerably eased, as RAF pilots train on Bell 412s (and operate them in Cyprus) and the Army operated 212s in Belize and Brunei.

Furthermore, with the USMC operating alongside us in Helmand, and operating a similar type, it would be quite possible to tap into the Marines' logistic and maintenance programme, as indeed we do, informally and formally, with other kit in theatre.

What continues to make this an issue is that the despatch of six Merlins to theatre at the end of the year, with two or more additional Chinooks some time next year, plus the re-engined Lynxes, whenever they arrive, are not going to resolve the problem. For a fully mobile and flexible force, much more is needed.

What is doubly interesting is that the Armed forces suffered just as great a helicopter shortage in Iraq with similar devastating effect, this being discussed at great length in a debate in the Lords inJune 2006 but the issue gained no political traction and the media did not follow it up.

In my book, Ministry of Defeat, I make the point – with some force – that the lack of media engagement in the Iraqi campaign was in part responsible for the lack of resource. Had there been the same media frenzy over helicopters back in 2006, with strong political engagement, the government would undoubtedly have been forced to take some action then.

As it was, the totemic issue then was Snatch Land Rovers and, like the bear with a very little brain it is, the media could only handle one issue at a time. Then it was "protected vehicles". Now, with the need for more such vehicles just a pressing, helicopters are the dominant issue, with the vehicle problem being largely ignored. As for UAVs and surveillance systems, they are not even on the radar.

Even then, as Huw Baumgartner's letter illustrates, the media are addressing the helicopter issue at a dismally superficial level, "troops 'n' helicopters" acquiring much the same totemic significance as the "schools 'n' hospitals" mantra that has dominated the domestic political agenda.

Thus, we Christopher Leake wittering away in The Mail on Sunday about the Danish Merlins not being sent to Afghanistan two years after they have been bought. We did it better last week and comparison between the two versions readily demonstrates that Leake has only got half the story. He has little idea of what has really been going on.

To be fair, in-depth treatment is probably not the Mail's style. The issue cries out for the sort of investigative skills for which the Sunday Times used to be famous. In that paper today, however, we get a two-page spread on the experiences to two "blood brothers" in Afghanistan.

Short on detail but long on "human interest" it contributes nothing to the overall welfare of "Our Boys" or the more effective prosecution of the campaign. Without that greater significance, this is no more than cheap exploitation verging on voyeurism, no different from The Sun which forever lauds Our Brave Boys yet fails to use its considerable power to make their lives better and safer.

Would that they knew it, if the media really took the time out properly to research and understand the issues, and then went out of its way to inform their readers, then the traction so gained would go a long way towards forcing the government to take effective measures to resolve the real problems.

To that extent – and to my certain knowledge – many of those in power would actually welcome informed, well-directed criticism, not least because it would strengthen their hand against the vast ranks of vested interests which have their own agendas, in pursuit of which they expend vast capital in briefing an idle and gullible media.

One could avow that, had the media followed the helicopter issue from the start, had it picked up the game-playing and the internal politicking going on in the MoD and elsewhere, had it followed the Parliamentary debates and the many written questions on the issue, and had itself done its own research - and then undertaken a well-informed campaign - the current situation would be very different.

However, we remain with problems that are solvable but which are never addressed, simply because the media has vacated the field.

COMMENT THREAD

The tyranny of the narrative

One the one hand, you get Air Vice Marshall Martin Routledge, still in post, speaking out against what in media terms could be described as a "critical shortage" of UAVs in Afghanistan. Outside the specialist journals, all it gets is a brief mention in The Times and a cut and paste job in The Guardian.

Then, on the other hand, you get Brigadier Aldwin Wight, ex-SAS commander, retired from the Army in 1997, who has been "speaking with friends" and decides to "wade into the row over support for UK troops in Afghanistan", accusing the government of "spin" (shock!) and telling the world: "I do think, actually, the debate should be exposed - the additional troops, the numbers of helicopters." For good measure, he also accuses Labour of spending "the minimum they could get away with" on defence ... like, er ... £1.7 billion on Future Lynx.

The retired brigadier immediately gets a slot on ITN and, via the Press Association, his views can be found in most newspapers today.

It actually does not matter to the media whether we need more helicopters or troops in Afghanistan – whether the tactics are right, whether there are other equipment deficiencies, whether things could be done differently, to greater effect – or cheaper. What matters is the narrative. Talking heads who fit in with it get heard. Those who do not, languish in the wilderness.

This is how the debate is "framed" – how every debate is framed, distorting public policy and priorities. We have a weak minister, in a weak, unpopular government, rushing around "busting a gut" to dance to the media tune, while other issues, of equal or greater importance are ignored or given less attention.

In truth, this situation has probably never been any different, although the effects are possibly now more powerful. With 24-hour news and the multiplicity of media sources, it appears that many voices are clamouring – the multitude with but a single mind. In fact, they are all singing from the same hymn sheet – one statement, one press release and then one agency report, replicated mindlessly, a thousand times or more.

That, is why "spin" is such a central part of modern public administration. Governments not only have to govern, they have to respond to the narrative – they have to be seen to be addressing "popular" concerns.

Where the two are in conflict, "spin" fills the gap. The words are not real, but then neither is the narrative. It keeps the media wolves at bay, until the discrepancies between words and action are found out, generating another narrative of a lying, deceitful government. The truth though is that "government by narrative" would be chaos – which is possibly why we are in such a mess now, as our masters vainly attempt to restore their fading popularity.

Such is its power, that no government dare speak against it. No minister can stand up and say, "this is a load of tosh ... you are all wrong ... what we need to is this ... and I am going to ignore the clamour. " In that path lies political suicide and obscurity.

So, the politicians feed the monster. But it is never sated. They become its slaves and we too become enslaved – and to what? An agenda that has no more substance than the contents of the recycling bin. But we feed it all the same.

COMMENT THREAD

A dangerous self-indulgence?

Twice we've called "time" on the controversy over equipment for our troops in Afghanistan, yet it continues almost unabated. It was with more than some interest, therefore, that we watched author and analyst Michael Griffin on BBC News 24 yesterday, expressing similar puzzlement over the intensity of the "debate".

Viewed wholly objectively, with the focus narrowed down to whether troops have enough helicopters, there is nothing to sustain it. As it stands, there is no shortage of helicopters in theatre to support current operations. The prime minister is right on this.

That most of the helicopters are American is neither here nor there. But there are Dutch, Canadian and British as well, all "pooled" in a vast coalition fleet which is being used not for British or American operations, but for coalition operations, of which the national contingents are an integral part.

In that sense, complaining about the shortfall of British helicopters is about as rational as anyone arguing against the use of B-17s of the US 8th Army Air Force to extend the strategic bombing campaign against Germany in 1943. Allies work together, and harness their collective assets to the common cause. That is what we did then and that is what we are doing now.

In seeking to explain the furore, however, Griffin linked the campaign in Afghanistan with Iraq, suggesting that in the latter, the British Army had not performed well, to the disappointment of the Americans. And in Helmand too, its grasp of counter-insurgency had been maladroit, again leading to a less than admiring response from the Americans.

To an extent, ventured Griffin, the military were seeking to transfer the blame for their own poor performance onto the politicians. Similarly, he felt, the military had some considerable control over the types of helicopters purchased and their deployment. Problems could not be laid entirely at the doors of the politicians.

If that is one element which is driving the controversy, the other is clearly the Conservative Party, anxious to find yet another stick with which to beat the government. The attitude is summed up in the recent comment from Liam Fox, who declares: "It is abundantly clear that we are asking our troops to fight a war for which Labour has not properly equipped them."

Notice there, the use not of the word "government" but of "Labour", revealing an overt partisanship which puts the alleged default wholly in a political context. There is no room in Fox's kitbag for any equivocation or shared responsibility.

Gordon Brown, nevertheless, is playing his own political games, relating helicopter requirements to current operations, but the distinction between these and the "general campaign" is becoming clear, with an acknowledgement that, while troops are able to fulfil their tasks at the moment, there is an overall shortfall of helicopters. This, we are told, is to be redressed by the Merlins which will at last be despatched by the end of the year, by the re-engined Lynxes and, next year, by additions to the Chinook fleet.

That things could have been done quicker, better and considerably more cheaply is indisputable, but the fact is that issues are being addressed, further confirming the "totemic status" of helicopters. In other words, this controversy isn't really about helicopters at all – or even about equipment.

Returning to Griffin, at the end of the interview – to the evident discomfort of his BBC interrogator – he broke away from the script to express his concern over the exaggerated level of publicity about an issue which lacked that substance. He warned that the Taleban would be monitoring programmes such as these, and the furore would improve their morale considerably.

Therein does lie a huge trap, created by the concern over casualties and the focus on helicopters. We have alluded to this before, in that if the Taleban were successfully to bring down a Chinook laden with troops, it is very hard to see how continuing the campaign could be politically sustainable.

The problem is that the Taleban know that, and they will do everything possible to make it so, while seeking generally to maximise the British casualty rate. This much is being recognised, with Dannatt at last taking the IED threat seriously.

As to the remarkable controversy that we have been witnessing for the best part of three weeks, this – if Griffin is right – is a dangerous self-indulgence which we simply cannot afford, motivating the Taleban to greater efforts on the basis that the home front can be so weakened that British troops will have to be withdrawn. We are, unwittingly, sending them a message that there is everything to gain from killing British troops.

This is not a happy message, and one that is difficult to change, as these media storms tend to have a life of their own. But the military, the politicians and the media – and indeed this blog – need to think very hard about the message they are sending, and to whom.

COMMENT THREAD

The truth begins to emerge

Now it is the Observer's turn to pick up on the details that we've been running on this blog and DOTR for months, most recently here, here and here. I suppose I shouldn't keep saying, "you read it here first," but you bloody well did.

Defence ministers, we are told spurned three separate deals to buy American Black Hawk helicopters which would have helped to plug the dangerous shortage facing British troops in Afghanistan. The most recent rejection came only days ago, "the Observer can reveal."

The ministers are, of course, acting under the advice of their officials and the military. And there is only one reason why the Blackhawks are not being bought. There is not enough money to buy this (cheaper and better) helicopter and that pile of over-priced garbage otherwise known as Future Lynx so if the Blackhawks were ordered, the Future Lynx was junked.

The Army – as we have already said – blocked the Blackhawk because it is too heavy for the Army to fly. Under current arrangements, the RAF would operate them. The Army loses is organic utility helicopter capability – bye, bye Army Air Corps. And the Colonel Commandant of the AAC? Mr Saintly Dannatt, who made keeping the AAC more important than getting capacity into theatre.

We must remind readers that he had a lot of support – the lobbying has been ferocious on this, from across the board. Had ministers ignored their officials and Mr Dannatt's orchestra, there would have been the mother of all political rows, and the media would have pitched in ... on the Saintly Mr Dannatt's side.

Instead, having already pulled a fast one with the Merlin, the officials told the ministers to go for the only other option on which the Army and the RAF would agree - refurbishing Pumas. They should, perhaps have rejected the advice but hey! The narrative is that ministers should take the advice of the military.

So it is the Observer tells us that "under the initial offer from Connecticut-based Sikorsky in 2007, 60 Black Hawks would already have been available for British forces in Helmand province, where they have sustained heavy casualties from roadside bombs in their renewed offensive against the Taleban."

Yea ... and where was the media then, while an unpaid blogger has been doing the running? Where was the Tory opposition? Er ... lobbying hard for Future Lynx.

And then we have bandwagon rider extraordinaire James Arbuthnot, chairman of the defence committee, whose report last week "condemned the Puma refit" and expressed concern over its "poor survivability" in combat. He says: "The Black Hawks are extremely good, they could be acquired in large numbers and the cost of running them would be low." So why didn't he recommend getting them in his report last week?

Answer, there will be none.

COMMENT THREAD

Clear military advice

Such is the overwhelming fog of impenetrable distortion that, at times one is tempted to walk away from the Afghan War issue, perhaps to write an earnest piece about wind farms and energy policy – or a careful analysis of Booker's column, which indeed I must do later today, if only to express my horror at the events he reports today.

What impels one to continue – I suppose, because I don't really know why I invest so much time, energy and emotional capital into this, when I have more pressing things to do - is perhaps because of an overpowering sense of injustice, and an equally powerful sense of a story that must be told, for good or bad.

This is particularly provoked by a piece in The Sunday Telegraph today, headed: "Labour at war over Afghanistan." It makes the highly tendentious claim that, "Labour is bitterly divided over defence spending as the Government's Afghanistan policy suffers a series of fresh setbacks."

One point must be addressed immediately – the rest later in this post. Labour is not at "war" over Afghanistan, not in any sense that this mischievous headline implies. It is basing its assertion on a single strand, comments by former defence secretary John Hutton who, for reasons of his own, has chosen to write "exclusively" about Afghanistan for The Sunday Telegraph, calling for more troops and helicopters.

One should also note, that Hutton – whatever arrangement he might have had with The Sunday Telegraph - Hutton has also allowed himself to be interviewed by The Sunday Times where he "breaks silence to fight for the generals".

With this, there is clearly an element of calculation, which fits ill with Mr Hutton. If he cared so deeply, then he might perhaps have stayed in his post instead of quitting after a mere nine months, and fought from the inside. Instead, he walked out at a critical juncture, a decision he had made well before the current controversy reared its head.

Mr Hutton's current pitch, though, is that, "When it comes to the numbers and the equipment it is absolutely essential politicians listen to advice from the military. Politicians must not become armchair generals. They must make decisions based on clear military advice."

Matthew Parris put this in context yesterday, warning us that the politicians should not defer automatically to the generals. Furthermore, Charles Moore reinforced this theme, writing in his column:

And do remember that our top brass, patriotic though they undoubtedly are, are also engaged in inter-service rivalry. It does not hurt the Army, losing money to the Navy's carriers, to protest that it does not have enough for Afghanistan. Just because you don't believe a minister, don't automatically believe a general. Ministers have to adjudicate between competing claims: it is not easy.

So doth Hutton say that politicians should listen to advice from the military. Indeed they should. But that does not mean to say they should take it, or that they should not listen to other opinions, and modify their decisions accordingly.

It also does not mean that they should not take into account the broader political issues that are outside the remit of the generals – and to which they are not always privy – or that they should not take account of the views of allies and, in this case, that of the host nation.

Hutton also says that politicians must "make decisions based on clear military advice." And indeed, subject to the above caveats they must. It would be very nice to be able to do so. But, as this campaign has progressed, it has been clear that the military itself is divided as to the best or correct course of action, that there are different agendas and schools of opinion within the military, and that "clear" advice is not always the right advice.

Politicians, also, must not become armchair generals, says Hutton – not least, one assumes, because the current generation of ministers have no military experience.

However, from their successive statements in Parliament and elsewhere, it is highly evident that ministers – and politicians generally – are extremely deferential to the military, perhaps too much so.

If, for instance, military advice had been slavishly followed in June 2006, Mastiff protected vehicles would not have been ordered in August and rushed into service. Instead, yet another batch of Pinzgauer Vectors would have been purchased. That was the "clear military advice" at the time, which also counselled to keep the Snatch Land Rover in service as it was "mission critical".

In fact, of the many problems affecting the Afghani campaign, one is most definitely that too much "clear military advice" has been taken. It was such advice from the RAF that deterred ministers from ordering large numbers of Mi-17s in early 2007 – even though the RAF had purchased this machine for duties with the Special Forces.

Even though this would have resolved the helicopter lift problem, ministers instead took the RAF advice to buy the six Danish Merlins – at a cumulative cost of over £186 million – advice which – as we record in the previous post, has yet to deliver a single extra airframe to theatre.

Other attempts were made by ministers to bring extra lift into theatre, but ministers were also required to balance their budgets. How they do that is a political decision – it is not for the military to make. The deal was to delay or even scrap the Future Lynx project in order to divert the funding to meet the more pressing need. This aircraft was not due to deliver to operations until 2014-15 – at the earliest – so it had no impact on immediate requirements.

But each time, the "word" came back that the Army did not support any such arrangement. And, although you will not find his fingerprints on any document, that attitude went right up to Dannatt. His concern – as Colonel Commandant of the Army Air Corps – was to protect the Corps. The Future Lynx would ensure its survival. Support helicopters would go to the RAF.

Ministers could have pressed the point but, such has been the ferocity of the pork-barrel campaign to keep the order – with the full and very active support of the Tory front bench – that discretion ruled. The last thing wanted was an open spat with the Army and its serried ranks of supporters.

Yet other options were considered, as The Sunday Telegraph excitably reports, telling us that "the Government" turned down the chance to buy 12 "cut-price" SA 330 Puma transport helicopters from the United Arab Emirates (example pictured), at a cost – we are told - of about £6 million each.

This, as it turns out, was only one of many possibilities considered, and a very tentative one at that. Prices were never discussed and, since they had just been refurbished at £10 million each, the £6 million is a tad on the low side.

Anyhow, the idea was turned down on "clear military advice" from the RAF and MoD. Ministers are the first to acknowledge that they are not technically competent to make detailed appraisals as to the suitability of second-hand helicopters for service in the RAF – and they are not in a position to over-ride the advice they have been given. Thus, they took the "clear military advice" that it was more cost-effective to upgrade the existing RAF fleet of Pumas.

And then we come to the "boots on the ground" issue. Actually, there never has been any "clear military advice" that an extra 2,000 troops should be committed to theatre – as Dannatt has now acknowledged. And the "clear military advice " from the likes of US General John Craddock is that the priority is the provision of transport (particularly helicopters and mine-protected vehicles), intelligence and medical capabilities.

"Too often," he said, "the forces there now are relatively fixed, because we don't have adequate tactical mobility to move them around to be able to do the jobs we need them to do." Without that "tactical mobility", additional troops are either ineffective or, worse still, become additional targets.

Given that this is also a coalition operation, and that General McCrystal, on behalf of the coalition command has yet to complete his review of force requirements, and that the whole issue was marked down for an ongoing review after the August election, it is a tad premature to be discussing enhancements of British force levels.

But, says The Sunday Telegraph leader, "Troops are more important than political points." The paper is wrong. Troops levels are an intensely political issue and, in a parliamentary democracy, the civilian politicians make the political decisions.

It is surely right for the generals to warn of the consequences of any such decisions, but it is then for the generals to dispose the forces allocated accordingly. We are not a military dictatorship and, however much this current government might be detested and mistrusted, ministers – not the generals – are constitutionally accountable.

Advice is one thing – and not all of it is either clear or good. Demands are another.

COMMENT THREAD

In a class of its own

Tom Newton Dunn, writing in The Sun today has found out that the Army has given up the unequal struggle of trying to operate the Lynx helicopter in Afghanistan, and returned the entire fleet of six machines back to the UK.

This happened, according to Dunn, last May. They were "pulled out of the warzone because they cannot fly in the scorching Afghan heat."

This news is entirely unsurprising as the "hot and high" limitations of the Lynx have long been known, affecting operations in numerous overseas theatres where the British Army has been deployed. And not only were difficulties experienced in Iraq, when British forces had been sent to Helmand in 2006, the same difficulties were experienced there.

Thus, on 5 July 2006, The Independent was reporting that British forces were facing a supply crisis because nearly half of their helicopter transport fleet was unable to fly in daylight hours due to the searing Helmand heat.

Said the paper, with the 3,300 British reliant on six Chinook and four Lynx aircraft for all transport and supply, they were finding that "The extreme heat and thin, rising air of the Helmand desert has limited the Lynx ... to use between dusk and dawn, when temperatures fall to acceptable levels."

Shortly after that, on 27 July, a short report appeared on the forum of the Small Wars Journal Council, headed, "Hydarabad - Dawn Raid", describing an operation in Helmand. It makes for sober reading:

After three days in Panjawi the soldiers and equipment were sent to a staging area an hour to the east. This was to be the beginning of the biggest phase of Mountain Thrust, a joint operation of British, Canadian, American and Afghan soldiers. The British had already moved one of their units into place, to a northern point in the Helmund Province. The Canadians coordinated the move; American and Afghan units were under Canadian command.

The assembly area seemed like any other area of deserted landscape in this part of Helmund Province. Flat, dry, and littered with stones, life seemed to have left this place long ago, offering itself now as a parking lot for the columns of vehicles lined in a row.

We had left early to get here, with the instructions that we would move again in a few short hours. However, the British, in what was to become a recurring pattern during this phase of Mountain Thrust, had failed to plan, leaving their pre-positioned unit in the north without adequate supplies of water. With flights of their Lynx helicopters grounded due to its inability maintain aerodynamic stability in the hot atmosphere of the Afghan summer, the British had failed to provide effective resupply alternatives.

Complicating matters further was their lack of armored vehicles. Working from a military strategy that seemed to blend imperial arrogance with the tactics of the North African campaign under Montgomery, the British were under-equipped for the fight. Fielding open topped Land Rovers with two machine guns mounted forward and aft, it was not unlike viewing a scene from the series "Rat Patrol."

Thus, lacking the needed assets to move supplies or to ferry troops safely, the unit that had been pre-positioned to lead the attack, became the Achilles heal (sic). With only 67 bottles of water remaining amongst the 120 men, and with temperatures pressing above 120 degrees F., the entire operation was postponed while American and Canadian assets were coordinated to essentially, save the Queens arse...

We reported in detail on the unhappy experiences of the Lynx in April 2007, when we had discovered that, not only were the baseline costs per hour of operating Lynx Mk7s a staggering £23,000 but, because of its inherent fragility, additional costs were being incurred. These were, "as a result of the operational use and particular climatic conditions experienced in theatre." We wrote at that time:

These costs cover additional wear and tear, additional spares and additional equipment and are paid for by the Conflict Prevention Fund. A total of £11 million has been claimed against the fund in financial year 2006-07 for additional operating and capital costs for Lynx Mk7s operating in Iraq, of which six are believed to be in service.

At that time, we also discovered that, in order to deal with the "hot and high" conditions for its deployments in Belize and Brunei, the Army had leased Bell 212s, aircraft based on the Vietnam-era Huey. The type had been selected specifically because its "unique abilities include flying in hot and often humid conditions whilst also being able to carry considerable loads." That includes the ability to lift up to 13 troops.

Bizarrely, although the failed Lynx costs the Army £23,000 per hour, when it could actually fly, the cost per hour of operating the Bell 212 helicopter was a mere £2,000. According to official sources - six of these aircraft have been operated in these two theatres, since 1993 in Brunei and 2003 in Belize.

Similar types are operated by the US Marines and the Canadians in Afghanistan, the latter being the upgraded Bell 412, four models of which are also operated by the RAF in Cyprus, again because of the hot conditions experienced there.

As for availability, the world is awash with second-hand Hueys and, in March 2007, we noted that the nascent Iraqi Air Force had taken delivery of five "Huey" helicopters, the first of a batch of 16 donated by Jordan.

They had been refitted with modern avionics and new engines in the United States at a cost of $3.5 million each, funded by Washington. Fitted with Kevlar armour and missile defence systems, the full upgrade made them, effectively, new aircraft.

That option was available to the UK government, and for a modest outlay, the Army could have had effective Lynx replacements in Afghanistan from the very time it was deployed to Helmand. It is believed that this option was blocked because the Army preferred to wait for the upgraded Future Lynx – not due for delivery until 2014 – fearing that if a "good enough" solution had been found, the order would have been delayed or reduced.

As it is, the order has now gone through but, in desperation, the government made conditional on the order, the retro-fitting of the more powerful engine equipping the Future Lynx to 12 existing Mk 9 airframes. This was announced in December last year.

Although deliveries of the first four were originally scheduled for later this year, they will not arrive until April 2010, with the rest to follow later in the year. The ultimate scandal though is that the cost for the 12 upgrades is £70 million. At just under £6 million each, that is about £2 million more than it would have cost to procure refurbished Bell 412s.

In the annals of MoD incompetence, this saga must surely stand out in a class of its own.

COMMENT THREAD

Of course they need more helicopters ...

Challenged by Liam Fox as to why the defence secretary was not bringing more helicopters into Afghanistan, Ainsworth trotted out the "usual statistics" and then rounded on the shadow secretary, declaring, "I have yet to hear how he thinks we can get more helicopters in ... ".

Yet Ainsworth, in common with his predecessors, is fighting with his hands tied behind his back. He could bring more capacity into theatre within weeks – it could already be there, and could have been for years. But, for he or his predecessors to have done so would have been in the teeth of opposition from the military itself, which has blocked endless attempts to bring more machines into use.

Options on the table have included the leasing of Mi-8 MTVs and Mi-26s (pictured), of purchasing Blackhawks off-the-shelf from the American manufacturers, or buying and refurbishing US Huey-type machines – in use by US Marines and Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

Each time proposals have been made, they have been blocked – sometimes for good reasons, but none of the problems insurmountable. Mainly the blockages have been inter-service rivalry or because the military have been holding out for "better" machines, sometime in the future, as in the Future Lynx.

Maybe in 30 years time, historians will be able to get access to the government records and tell the full story of what has been going on, but the Future Lynx story also involves a strong element of "pork barrel" politics – keeping Augusta Westland in business – the future of the Army Air Corps, of which Dannatt is commandant general, and protecting Navy requirements for a light ASW airframe.

Perhaps a more robust, Churchillian prime minister could have cut through the maze of competing priorities and sectional interests and issued an "action this day" directive. But such is the febrile atmosphere that it would be a very brave – and foolhardy – politician who over-rode his "defence chiefs" and imposed his own choice on the military.

Any of the alternative options would have involved extra risk – over and above that of buying a fully kitted-out helicopter of a type already on the British forces inventory.

The Russian-built helicopters are not as reliable or as safe as the European and American machines, and there are problems integrating the full defensive suites into these airframes. Nevertheless, Mi-8s are in use with special forces in Afghanistan, flown by serving RAF pilots, and the users speak highly of them.

The Huey airframes are old, and have relatively limited capabilities, but they are better than the Lynxes in that they can operate in "hot and high" conditions, albeit with reduced payloads. As for the Blackhawks, they are currently on the US forces inventory, but even then there are problems with integrating the electronics and defence systems with the British fleet.

Thus are ministers handicapped. The British military has acquired a rare ability for finding "reasons" for not doing things it does not want to do, and then deflecting blame onto the politicians when the consequences become apparent, briefing all the while to a media willing to "out" ministers who "put troops at risk". They would just have to wait for one of the "minister's" helicopters to crash, and he would be toast.

The politicians have yet to find a way of dealing with this – a disease which was apparent in 1996 when Douglas Hogg deferred to his "experts" over BSE – which means government has become a process of ministers allowing their "experts" free rein, then acting as their spokesmen and taking the can when things go wrong.

Ainsworth is following in this long tradition and, in time, his successors will do the same. Fox could have put him on the spot, offering alternatives. But he too knows that, to promote them, he would have to take on the military – something he would not do, conscious that he would also be at risk of being denounced.

That in some way explains the current unreality of politics. Ministers and their opposition counterparts are emasculated, and cannot even explain why.

COMMENT THREAD

Narratives

It is Max Hasting's turn in The Daily Mail to pick up on General Richards' speech – and much else – using the topical hook of Armed Forces Day which is being celebrated today for the first time.

However, in common with most of the commentariat, Hastings distils complex arguments into a "biff-bam" knockabout routine about shortage of resources and underfunding, laying the entire blame at the door of Gordon Brown as the source of all ills.

It is very much these personality politics which blight the entire defence debate, as they neglect entirely the role of the military top brass in defining the shape of the armed forces and their equipment. Thus in the world inhabited by the likes of Hastings, the politicians are always the villains and the military the blameless victims.

This was the line taken by Patrick Mercer and embraced enthusiastically by James Forsyth, web editor of The Spectator. Commenting on Gen Dannatt's speech but relying exclusively on a report in The Times as his source, he writes on the Coffee House blog with his own views.

There, he gleefully picks on but one issue highlighted by Dannatt, declaring that "Dannatt makes clear that the reason the British operation failed in the south was that there were not an adequate number of troops on the ground." And, on that slender basis does this intellectual giant conclude that:

... we either properly fund and equip our armed forces or we retreat from our role on the world stage. If the Conservative party believes that this country should be more than just a peace-keeping nation, then it will have to be prepared to increase defence spending. The problems in Iraq demonstrate that fighting wars on peacetime budgets is not sustainable.

As it happens, we agree that the original occupation force in southern Iraq was undermanned, but it is not necessarily the case that more "boots on the ground" would have improved matters. As Dannatt himself said on a different occasion, specifically of Basra, "It's a city of huge size, however many British troops or coalition troops have been there we would never have been able to impose a regime and we had no intention of doing that."

Bearing in mind that US forces further north had considerably higher manpower levels, and were no more successful in the initial stages in containing the insurgency, Dannatt does have a point. More British troops might simply have led to more conflict and a higher casualty rate.

What must be remembered, of course, is that when the US finally mounted the surge, the extra troops operated in a different political environment, with new, theatre-specific equipment and to an entirely revised doctrine. Without those changes, it is arguable that the surge would not have succeeded and, as none of those preconditions were present in the early phases of the British occupation, the chances are that more troops would have had no measurable effect.

Here, one must again recall the observations of US General John Craddock, who noted – albeit in respect of Afghanistan - that the priority was the provision of transport (particularly helicopters and mine-protected vehicles), intelligence and medical capabilities. "Too often," he said, "the forces there now are relatively fixed, because we don't have adequate tactical mobility to move them around to be able to do the jobs we need them to do."

There, was the singular problem with the British in Iraq. With the absence of the right kit, they lost tactical mobility and, even with the troops strengths that they had maintained, ceased to be effective. Yet, when US forces came to the rescue in aiding the Iraqi forces recover al Amarah, they fielded only a fraction of the forces then available to the British.

Despite this, on the rare occasion that sites such as ToryDiary take on the issue of defence, the same trite agenda prevails. We get pleas for more funding (or the protection of current funding levels), with the charge here that Brown and Blair sent our armed forces to war on a peacetime budget, again calling in aid the same superficial analysis of Dannatt's speech, using The Times as the source.

So it is that "underfunding" is locked into the narrative, with not the faintest recognition that, in blocking new equipment for Iraq, Dannatt was in fact protecting a funding allocation of £16 billion for his pet project, FRES – to say nothing of the Future Lynx helicopter. Money was never the problem. What mattered was the way it was spent.

What makes all this so topical and important though is the expectation of a new Conservative administration within a year, which will be confronting exactly the same problems with which the Labour administration had to struggle.

It is Hastings in his Daily Mail piece, however, who puts his finger on a problem of which too many are painfully aware. "There is a deafening political silence about defence, because the Tories do not think the issue wins votes," he writes, adding that: "They have notably failed to hammer the Government as it deserves about its disgraceful treatment of the Armed Forces."

The nostrum about votes should be taken with a pinch of salt. Defence invariably attracts more electoral support that is given credit by the politicians. More likely, the reluctance to engage on defence stems from David Cameron's efforts to re-brand the Conservatives as a "caring" party, hence his determination to avoid hard-edged "macho" issues such as Armed Forces equipment.

But, if in the absence of such engagement, the Tories stand by the narrative of "underspending" – all in the context of Cameron admitting that he cannot realistically plan to increase defence spending when in office - then the option of cutting some big ticket projects begins to look extremely attractive.

Hastings targets the Trident nuclear deterrent, oblivious to the fact that this does not come out of core defence funding. Scrapping this would not necessarily increase the flow of cash to other defence projects.

Whether Trident, or some other project, the big problems will come if the Tories see the liberation of funds by this means as the answer to the current problems in the Armed Forces. We need a much more sophisticated and comprehensive narrative if we are to emerge from the strategic defence review that the Tories are promising with anything like effective Armed Forces.

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

Pratting about

As the political claque indulge in their endless prattling, with ever-more detailed scrutiny of their own navels, the real world goes on.

In that real world, real people die because these wastrels cannot concentrate on the jobs for which they are paid, one of which is to ensure that our troops are properly equipped, fighting to a workable strategy which has half a chance of success, and that the people running the show are properly scrutinised and brought to account.

I cannot estimate how much time and energy has been spent inside and out of parliament discussing MPs' expenses, but I can tell you exactly how much time has been spent on the floor of the House discussing current military strategy in Afghanistan – precisely none.

Thus we get the wages of neglect. MoD website, item 1:

It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that one British soldier from 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles and one member of 173 Provost Company, 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police have been killed in Afghanistan.

MoD website, item 2:

It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that a British soldier from 2nd Battalion The Rifles was killed in Helmand province yesterday evening, Thursday 7 May 2009.

MoD website, item 3:

It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that a British soldier from The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, was killed as a result of a gunshot wound in Afghanistan today, Thursday 7 May 2009.

Four soldiers in one day. We have been writing for months that the situation was going belly-up … it is going belly-up. The first two were caught by a suicide bomber, in a market area of Gereshk district. Twelve civilians were killed and 32 injured as a Snatch Vixen patrol was targeted, the two killed soldiers having dismounted.

In the next incident, we have a Jackal driver killed, the sixth soldier now to be killed in this "boy racer" toy. Of the soldier shot, we are still awaiting more details. And the "fighting season" is yet to start.

Yesterday, we had an inquest into the death of Jason Barnes, the fifth and hopefully last soldier to be killed in a Vector.

Major Joe Fossey, an explosive expert from the Royal Engineers, described the front cab as "mangled beyond comprehension". "The front axle punched up and there was a buckling of metal" that had "crinkled it like a crushed Coke can". Capt Boyd described the driver's side of the vehicle a "complete mess". Cpl Barnes suffered catastrophic wounds with the front plate of his body armour blown away.

The vehicle has now been withdrawn - £100 million pissed up against the wall for a useless killer of men. And just three newspapers bother to report it, in short, down-page items. None of them tell us it was a 6kg mine. The minimum specification for a Level I MRAP is protection against 7.5kg. If the MoD had bought decent vehicles, the man would have lived.

Yet The Daily Mail report has as its headline, "MoD vows to 'learn lessons' after death of soldier ….". And the "lesson" is? The same day that the US Army rejects the International MXT, after failing the mine resistance test at the Aberdeen proving ground, the MoD orders 200 at a cost of £120 million.

The MoD is pouring money down the drain. It is spending £93,000 each on dune buggys - the US forces buy theirs for $18,000. We fly Harriers which take 60 manhours maintenance per flying hour, compared with a quarter of that for an F-15. It is planning to buy Lynx helicopters for £14 million each. The comparable US helicopter is lighter, faster, can carry more, costs less than half that amount and is available off-the-shelf. We can have our overpriced garbage in 2014.

And where the hell is Parliament in all this? Where is the political blogosphere? When the hell are these prattlers going to stop wasting their time and ours on personality politics, as Jeff Randall complains, and get down to some serious politics, scrutinising the hard issues … such as why our troops are dying in Afghanistan, with some of the military warning of worse to come?

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started – Part 7

In this final part, where we have explored the reasons for the British failure in Iraq, we turn the tables and speculate on whether they, despite the handicaps, could have succeeded. Reviewing what actually did happen after the British had retreated to their final base at Basra airport, we believe they could.

That is the ultimate tragedy. Instead of attracting the contempt of the Iraqis and the disdain of the Americans – who will never really trust us again – we could truly have walked out of Iraq with our heads held high, without having to pretend we had achieved success. It was that close – and that far.

Could it have been different?

At the start of the occupation in May 2003, the decision to cut back troops levels to 11,000 was disastrous, but not fatal. However, with that, Blair's decision to throw his lot in with the Europeans - compensating, many believe, for his failure to deliver the UK into the embrace of the single currency - seriously hampered the ability of the Army to deal with the insurgency.

And, having pledged the nation's armed forces to the Europeans and Iraq, he offered troops to reinforce the campaign in Afghanistan. That made a tight situation worse.

Even then, defeat was not inevitable. Looking at the campaign in the round, the single most egregious failure was the decision to abandon al Amarah, walking out on a half-trained and poorly equipped 10th Division. That was a major strategic error. Yet that decision itself was not initiated by the politicians but by the military.

Strangely, at the time, there had been very little discussion or debate. Equally, there was virtually no evaluation of the strategic consequences. Then, the "retreat" was an administrative decision. The "road map" had already been revealed by Gen Houghton in March, over three months earlier.

But "repositioning" in order to concentrate on Basra was wrong. Al Amarah was the Mahdi Army's major armoury and it would have made more strategic sense to have cut off the supply of arms at source before dealing with the problem of Basra. It was a "downstream" solution, akin to mopping up a floor after the bath had flooded, without first turning off the taps.

Dealing with the indirect fire

Of course, to have maintained forces at Abu Naji would have required dealing with the indirect fire – one of the main reasons why the base was vacated. Here, the main problems were the lack of suitable equipment, in particular UAVs, helicopters and MRAPs, plus C-RAM for base defence. All three could have been provided. Most were eventually provided, but too late. This was not a problem of money. It was about timing – and commitment.

Even in 2006, at a very late hour, had Gen Dannatt been able to break free of the Army’s obsession with FRES, he could have negotiated a major MRAP package. In exchange for scrapping FRES or putting it on the back-burner, substantially larger numbers of Mastiffs could have been bought, together with other, smaller MRAP vehicles. When this happened anyway in October 2008, it was too late for Iraq – and may be too late for Afghanistan.

As to helicopters, the Army was again partly the author of its own misfortune. Many times, cheaper options than the Future Lynx were offered, and rejected. Had the Army been intent on acquiring tactical helicopters rapidly, it could have had them. It was occasionally able to borrow US Blackhawks and the Americans also provided medivac helicopters, but this was not a reliable foundation on which to carry out planning.

The Army was actually offered a new fleet of Blackhawks off-the-shelf. It turned them down. As for UAVs, the MoD already had in place a replacement programme for the Phoenix, called Watchkeeper, modified Israeli Hermes 450s – with deliveries scheduled for 2010. The modifications, incidentally, were part of the FRES programme. They included fitting extra communications systems fit in with the proposed "network" that was at the heart of the system.

Because of the urgency of providing the Army with a UAV capability, in May 2007 the programme was brought forward with the purchase of the basic Hermes system off-the-shelf, direct from Israel. What was done then could have been done earlier, but for the determination to incorporate FRES modifications. Similarly, with C-RAM being ordered by the MoD in 2007, and temporary measures taken to ensure its early deployment, it is not untoward to argue that this equipment too could have been procured earlier.

With suitable equipment, holding the base at Abu Naji could have been tenable, buying time further to train and equip the Iraqi Army 10th Division. That perhaps could have allowed the Army, with existing resources, to back the Iraqis in recovering the city that much earlier, possibly as early as February/March 2008.

A fatal error

Instead of holding the line in al Amarah, the Army committed its main strength to Basra. And there it made a fatal mistake. In September 2006, it launched Operation Sinbad – a last-ditch operation to recover the city. It was well-planned and executed, but the timing was wrong.

Very much later, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jock Stirrup, complained that the action had been "watered down" and lacked support from the Iraqi politicians, particularly Maliki. That was always going to be the case.

The British had misread the political situation in Iraq and had acted prematurely. Maliki was still in the grip of Muqtada's party and to have openly confronted the Mahdi at that time would have been political suicide. He had not by then secured his political base, weakening the political grip of Muqtada and could not take the same robust line that he took in 2008. The British would have been well advised to have husbanded their resources until a more propitious moment.

There were, though, the dangerous and debilitating attacks on the bases in Basra, but what held for al Amarah could equally have applied to them – with the probability that, without Abu Naji having been abandoned, the pressure on Basra would not have been as strong. Nor indeed would the insurgency in Sadr City been as troublesome, possibly liberating US resources for the fray.

A change in approach

One there had been a change in the balance of political power in Baghdad, things were possible which had previously been impossible. Then, had the British maintained their presence in al Amarah, a joint British/Iraqi move could have been made on the city, cleaning it out as happened with Operation Promise of Peace. This would have made dealing with Basra an easier proposition.

Arguably, with a British presence remaining in Basra, and the indirect fire being dealt with by technology instead of the wasteful use of manpower, the situation would not have deteriorated so far.

Instead of Basra becoming the battlefield in Charge of the Knights and al Amarah being taken without a shot fired, the situation might have been reversed. The battle would have been at al Amarah.

By June 2008, Muqtada was a busted flush and with British support, again using existing resources, the 10th/14th Iraqi Divisions could have walked into the Sadr strongholds in Basra without a shot being fired. The British, instead of skulking in their base in Basra airport, would have been central to the action, with a wholly different outcome to the one that has come to pass.

The tragedy is that this could have been done with existing manpower resources. Through the recovery of first Basra and then al Amarah, the US did not commit more than 2,500 troops – less than the British had available. What they had and the British did not, was the right equipment – and the right mental attitude.

A lack of commitment

To have won would have required the same degree of commitment injected by President Bush, Robert Gates and Gen David Petraeus. Yet, the Army - Dannatt in particular and Jackson before him - was not prepared to sanction what was required to fight a war that he and the rest of the Army no longer believed was winnable.

That was the real problem. Wars are won and lost in the minds of men. Even without the political drag, this war would have been lost because the Army had decided it was not worth winning. More to the point, it had decided that the price it would have to pay in order to win was unacceptable.

In Iraq, therefore, the Army was defeated by its own leaders. Indisputably, the major fault lay with the politicians, in particular, one man – Tony Blair. But the Army was not without fault. Its equipment was wrong, its tactics were wrong and, in the final analysis, it lost faith in its mission and gave up.

Whether Service chiefs could have made a difference lies in the realm of speculation. The indications are that they did not try. They accepted defeat and, in so doing, made it inevitable.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started – Part 6

In this part six, we look at the vexed question of under-resourcing. Throughout the Iraqi campaign, the mantras of "underfunding" and "over-stretch" were frequently in the media and came easily from the lips of opposition politicians. More "boots on the ground" and more money were the answers to all ills. However, as always, there are more to these issues than meets the eye.

Underfunding

In August 2007, L/Sgt Chris Casey, and L/Cpl Kirk Redpath were getting murdered. They were pointless and unnecessary deaths. They had been "top covers" in a Snatch escorting a convoy of large trucks out from Kuwait and had been hit by an IED. Two other soldiers were seriously injured. The insurgents had seen the vehicles going down and were waiting for their return.

After all this time, when the Army had been losing Bulldogs, Warriors and even Challengers to IEDs, it was still sending men to die in Snatches. Mastiffs were in theatre and the soldiers' platoon commander had asked for one. Despite Mr Blair's assurances that the armed forces were "extremely well equipped," none had been available. And, for all these soldiers' sacrifice, neither had many "hearts and minds" been won on the six-lane motorway out of Kuwait where the "size and profile" of the Snatch had so obviously and desperately been needed.

A day later, Col Bob Stewart - "former UN commander of British troops in Bosnia" – was on the Today programme. He ventured that the Army was taking the casualties because: "we cannot dominate the ground". The options, he said, were to "retake and dominate the ground, or abandon it."

However, Liam Fox, shadow defence secretary, said the Army was paying for the Government's mistake of not investing enough men, equipment or money into reconstruction at the time of the invasion. "It's tragic that our Armed Forces are paying the price of a lack of political care and planning," he said.

Six months later, L/Cpl Redpath's girlfriend, Sharon Hawkes, echoed this theme: "It was underfunding by the Government that killed him," she said. But she had been pre-empted by Lord Rees-Mogg, who observed:

Throughout the Iraq war, our Forces have been short of suitable armoured vehicles. For years, the Basra palace run had to be performed in vulnerable Snatch vehicles; these have only recently been replaced by the Warrior, which is itself vulnerable to roadside bombs. Unlike American vehicles, the Warrior is not air-conditioned and can get unbearably hot in the sun.

These problems, Rees-Mogg – together with hundreds of the commentariat - attributed to "underfunding", thus illustrating the shallowness of the public debate. The Army had been turning down immediate funding in order to pursue the Eldorado of its £16 billion fleet of medium-weight armoured vehicles, an issue that had almost completely escaped attention.

Even at a more prosaic level, Rees-Mogg was out of touch. Warriors had been available since before the occupation and the use of the Snatch had been a policy issue. There had been no funding issues. Not least, the cost of operating Warriors was £250 per track mile, in normal peacetime use.

Aside from the far better protection afforded by the Mastiff – which was also fitted with powerful and highly effective air conditioning – this vehicle was far cheaper to run. The operational savings alone would have justified their use. And, compared with buying a basic FRES utility vehicle at £8 million each, the Mastiff – and Ridgeback – comes out at less than one eighth the cost, with far more durability and real-world capability.

Significant savings had been demonstrated by US forces, primarily through reduced long-term medical care, rehabilitation, and death benefit payments arising from the lower casualty rate. Additionally, many damaged MRAPs could be repaired and returned to service while conventional vehicles would often have to be written off.

Vehicles with add-on armour were also suffering reduced servicability and shorter lives. MRAPs lasted considerably longer. These factors, together with the decrease in force replacement costs due to casualties and improvements in operational effectiveness, made the MRAP significantly less costly than legacy vehicles.

It would have been cheaper to have bought L/Sgt Casey and L/Cpl Redpath their own personal Mastiff and kept them alive. But the Generals wanted their toys.

Light aviation

The funding problem, of course, was far more complex than either politicians or media allowed for. Take, for instance, the need for airborne surveillance – for tasks as diverse as intelligence gathering and providing "top cover" for routine convoys.

One obvious answer, as part of a mixed package of capabilities, would have been the use of light aircraft. However, the British had no such capability. The Iraqi Air Force did – militarised two-seater, single-engined club trainers called the Sama 2000. Purchased for £363,000 each, their surveillance equipment was capable of detecting a man-sized target at two miles range from 2,000ft – or a hidden bomb.

They were occasionally used to support British forces in Maysan. Although the aircraft were limited in their capabilities, they carried exactly the same optical equipment as the giant, four-engined Nimrod MR4 maritime surveillance aircraft, one of which was so tragically to crash while on a mission in Afghanistan in September 2006.

A fleet of Nimrods was being operated out of Oman, flying up the Gulf and deep inland to provide support for ground operations. Costing £30,000 an hour to operate and flying sorties of twelve hours duration – more with air-to-air refuelling – three days-worth of flying set back the military budget £1 million. The Samas provided a “good enough” solution to the problem of providing low-level airborne surveillance.

But that was not the British way. While "good enough" was entirely acceptable as a military solution to Iraq, when it came to equipment, hugely expensive adapted maritime aircraft or £14 million Future Lynx helicopters delivered in 2014 or sometime never – with very similar camera equipment – were the preferred option. As so very often in British military thinking, the best was the enemy of the good.

This lack of flexibility and the determination to opt for the "best" long-term solution – even though it would not be available for many years - was to deprive the Army of crucial air support. Through the Second World War, it had enjoyed its own light reconnaissance capability with the single-engined Auster – another adapted club aircraft.

Operating in far more dangerous environments than Iraq, its losses were remarkably low. The type was used in Aden and Oman, supplemented by the more powerful DHC Beaver, which also provided welcome support in Northern Ireland where it was the Army’s primary surveillance platform.

In other Armies, light fixed-wing aviation also had a long history, with the Australian Army in the Vietnam War operating Pilatus Porter for reconnaissance, liaison and for communications relay, the latter function carried out in Iraq by the Nimrod.

The Porter was an interesting aircraft. With exceptional short-field performance, it is still in production and with an airframe cost of around £2 million and low operating costs (under £2,000 an hour), it or something similar could have provided a useful stopgap. However, a fixed-wing option was never considered. In the early 70s, the Army Air Corps had converted to an all-helicopter fleet, with a few exceptions.

Techology galore - but not yet

One of those exceptions, though, was the two-engined Britten Norman Defender surveillance aircraft. Four of these were purchased in 2003, at a cost of £4.5 million each. Some were deployed to Iraq but, despite extensive inquiries, no reports of their performance were ever released.

They cannot have been overly successful because in May 2007 the MoD announced the order of four highly sophisticated Beechcraft King Air 350 aircraft - designated the Shadow R - as replacements, costed at £14 million each. Not intended for service until 2010, these were far too late for Iraq.

Meanwhile, the RAF had been waiting for five R1 Sentinel surveillance aircraft. Ordered in 1999 at a cost of just over £1 billion, it was equipped with high performance radar based on the equipment used in the U-2 "spy-plane" of Cold War fame.

It could – without any trace of exaggeration – detect footprints in the desert sand from an altitude of 20,000 feet. Originally intended to be operational by 2005, the date was deferred to 2007 because of development problems, then to 2008 and finally to 2010, once again far too late for Iraq.

This was a disease affecting the whole military establishment. With no end of high-performance kit just over the horizon, the money had been committed yet the capabilities were not available. However, their very existence as projects blocked – both financially and intellectually – consideration of cheap stopgap solutions that were "good enough" to solve immediate problems.

Boots on the ground

In May 2007, "senior army officers" were worried that Gordon Brown – soon to become prime minister - was going to cut the number of troops in Iraq to such a low level that their effectiveness would be jeopardised and lives endangered.

One officer complained: "We are sitting ducks and have very little in the way of resources to react. If we mount an operation to deter a mortar attack it takes an entire battle group and ties up all our people." Any further reductions in numbers, said the officer, would leave British troops "hanging onto Basra by our finger tips".

This was the limit of the argument and the public perception. More attacks required more troops for defence or, at least, the retention of existing manpower, with an officer openly stating that it took a complete battle group – some 500 men – to "deter a mortar attack".

Between May and July, as efforts to counter the increasing mortar fire had failed, with attacks intensifying by the day, five men were killed by indirect fire and two on the fruitless task of deterring mortar attacks. Many more were injured. Thousands of man hours had been expended, and dozens of operations launched, to no avail.

Yet, in early July, USAF operators of a Predator UAV had observed insurgents fire two mortar bombs then load the tube into the trunk of their vehicle. They had launched a Hellfire from the Predator, hitting the front of the car and destroying it. This was the job for which the British needed an entire battle group.

The task that the British were attempting could have been accomplished by a small fleet of Predators UAV armed with Hellfire missiles. This would have required no more than a few dozen men who would never have been exposed to any personal risk. By contrast, the profligate use of manpower – and money - did not achieve results. It was not the only example, by any means.

A waste of resource

In May 2007 the MoD bought new fleet of "munitions disposal vehicles" replacing its existing fleet of very similar vehicles. At a cost of £415,000 each – a cool £7.5 million – these were 18 Swiss-built trucks called the "Tellar".

They were unarmoured vans. Like the Vector, they had a "cab forward" design, making them extremely vulnerable to IED attack. There was only concession to the fact that they going into war zones: they had "a level of riot protection" - mesh screens on the windows.

However, "Felix wagons", as they are called by troops, are always prime targets for insurgents. One common tactic is to set up decoy explosions and then mine the area where an vehicle might be expected to park when it arrived with its crew to investigate. Another was simply to ambush the vehicles en route.

The lack of protection had very significant manning implications. While the US was equipping its disposal officers with MRAPs – armoured, armed and self-supporting, with small groups of men - the British, forever complaining about "overstretch", had to keep available large numbers of mounted infantrymen to escort the unarmoured and unarmed bomb disposal vehicles. No wonder they were short of men.

Not the issues

Underfunding was not the issue. Waste was, and the obsession with buying absurdly expensive "toys" certainly was. Underfunding was too easy an excuse – as indeed was the manning issue.

Many will argue that, without more troops, the campaign could never have succeeded. Allan Mallinson, former soldier, writer and military historian, argues thus. He may be right. But he also argues that the strategy must be right. "Without a coherent strategy," he says, "even the best tactics are futile: casualties just mount." He then adds: "But there is no getting round it: strategy needs troops on the ground."

One can agree with that, but also suggest that the troops did not have to be British. In the successful operations to recover Basra and then al Amara, the bulk of the troops were Iraqi.

They had strong American support but the US Army committed just 2,500 troops to southern Iraq – less than the British fielded throughout the occupation. The fault lies in handing over to the Iraqis before they were ready – and indeed before Maliki had secured his political base and could commit them to the battle with the Mahdi Army.

The real answers

The real causes of failure ran much deeper but even now few understand or want to address them. To deal with the tactical situation, the British could not "dominate the ground" as Col Stewart counselled because, every time they left their bases, they were brought down by IEDs and the constant attacks. When they stayed in their bases, the insurgents killed troops there as well. When the British left their bases in an attempt to track down and destroy their attackers, they were also killed.

It had become a vicious circle, one that could have been broken had the Army applied its mind to the problem, but it chose not to. Better use of the cash available, better use of technology, better politics and more use of brainpower were the real answers. But it was easier to complain.

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