Fine words ...

"I find it so distressing to hear lavish praise being heaped upon the procurement of vehicles that are potential death-traps and to listen later to expressions of condolence to the families of those who have perished in them."

So said Ann Winterton in a debate in the House of Commons on 4 June this year, but her distress might easily apply to the expressions so freely offered (and repeated) every time troops are killed.

"Fine words butter no parsnips" – a phrase which seems to have its origins in antiquity - seems an appropriate response to these gushing outpourings, so easily trotted out every time a soldier is killed.

Thus we see, yet again, the MoD website tell us that: "It is with great sadness" that it must confirm that one soldier from 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Duke of Wellington's) and one soldier from 2nd Battalion The Rifles have been killed in Afghanistan.

The soldiers, we are told, died as a result of an explosion that happened whilst on a routine foot patrol, not connected to election security, near Sangin, northern Helmand province, on the morning of Thursday 20 August 2009.

Yet the "great sadness" phrase is just words, pulled off from a standard MoD template, to be pasted in against the details of whichever incident is then current.

Even now, the media team are rushing around collecting statements from the colleagues and relatives of the deceased, to paste into the increasingly lengthy eulogies that are in the process of being written, but they too will be just words. They butter no parsnips – they do not bring the dead back to life and nor do they prevent troops yet to die from being killed.

Furthermore, built into the brief announcement from the MoD is a "lie" – a circumlocution, if one wants to be charitable. The incident happened while the troops were "on a routine foot patrol" says the MoD.

We saw this "routine patrol" lie in November 2006 when the MoD described the deaths of four military personnel on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Iraq in terms of them being engaged in "a routine boat patrol".

In fact, they were in a "water taxi", sent to their deaths, wholly unprotected when it was thought that this was the safest way of transporting personnel between bases. It certainly was "routine" – and that is what killed them – but it certainly was not a "patrol". These were lambs led to the slaughter.

Nor indeed was this current incident a "routine patrol" – at least, not wholly. In fact, according to Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, it was not one incident, but three. The first may have arisen from such an event, although the whole idea of a "routine" is an anathema in counter-insurgency. Routines kill, as they did on the Shatt al-Arab.

The first soldier, writes Harding, from the 3rd Bn The Yorkshire Regiment, a unit sent out as emergency reinforcements to Afghanistan last month after the very high casualty rate this summer, was killed instantly after his foot patrol was targeted.

The second soldier, from 2nd Bn The Rifles, died as a force was sent out to retrieve the body of their dead colleague. Then, as the remainder of the force attempted to evacuate both fatalities a third device went off. Two soldiers were wounded in addition to the two killed in the attack, bringing the total number of British fatalities in Afghanistan to 206.

These facts immediately elevate the incident into a different league. We note that the location is what we have called the mincer of Sangin and that these two deaths bring the total in this area to 57, and this year to 22, with nineteen of them arising from IEDs.

With the grand total of 206 fatalities now recorded, an estimated 176 of these are KIA, which has Sangin and its immediate environs accounting for nearly a third of all deaths in action (32.4 percent).

That, in itself, is remarkable, as the area is often cited as one of the government's key targets for its "co-ordinated delivery of military and civil effect". Its aim has been "to provide a secure environment to allow stabilisation activity to take place", an aim in which it seems singularly to have failed, despite numerous intensive operations - although the MoD claims otherwise, one observer "noting" that ISAF is making "small baby steps" that, if continued, will soon pick up greater pace and confidence.

But what has marked out the most recent casualties – and magnified the rate of attrition – is the Taleban tactic of employing multiple IEDs in complex traps, with secondary devices aimed at killing rescue parties when they come to the aid of those caught in the primary blast.

With this current incident, this is the fourth time in the Sangin area since 10 July that troops have been caught out with fatal effect. That is not to say that similar tactics are not being used by the Taleban elsewhere – they are. Earlier this month we saw a soldier killed near Gereshk (although not so very far from Sangin) when he sought to recover an Afghan soldier's body. Then there was the incident in December 2008 when a soldier was killed after a complex ambush on a Viking near Lashkar Gah.

From other reports, though, it would appear that complex IED ambushes are now theatre-wide, these also having been experienced by USMC patrols further south in Garmsir.

Nor indeed is the slaughter confined to British troops. While we have lost 15 so far this month, the total losses for all coalition forces have now reached 50, not so very far short of last month's rate, when the total reached 76.

Public (and therefore political) acceptance of this continued toll of fatalities – which admittedly by contrast with previous campaigns is relatively modest – requires us to trust that the Army knows what it is doing, and the casualties are a necessary and unavoidable consequence of war, all in the context of the military making progress towards achieving its aims.

Sensitised by the saga of the Snatch Land Rover, however, and many other subsequent episodes where it has been demonstrated that the military (with or without the dereliction of the MoD – and it is difficult to assess where the responsibility lies) has been somewhat cavalier in its responsibilities, we are less than convinced that the Army has a grip on the situation.

Looking down from this end of the telescope – lacking the context and broader appreciation of the campaign in Helmand – all we see is a progression of casualties, some of which are evidently caused by the same Taleban tactic, for which the Army seems to have no obvious counter.

The Army response (and that of so many of its fellow travellers) is to retreat behind the wall of OPSEC (operational security) oblivious to the very obvious fact that the enemy clearly knows a great deal about its operations, with so many others directing sneering condescension at those who have the temerity to question or even doubt the wisdom and professionalism of "Our Brave Boys".

So often are our soldiers cast as "heroes" that there is virtually a cultural taboo against offering even the mildest criticism of soldiers, even though there is nothing particularly heroic about being blown apart by a hidden IED, or having limbs ripped apart. In fact, it is a squalid, miserable way to go.

Somehow, though, the military – or perhaps the politicians – are going to have to come to terms with the legitimate, but often overstated demands of OPSEC, and the need to provide enough information to assure its critics that the Army is responding effectively to the different threats in theatre, and is taking them seriously.

Fine words are no longer good enough – if they ever were.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting minced

General Stanley McChrystal, the US military commander in Afghanistan is at least being candid, readily admitting that the Taleban have gained the upper hand in the fighting.

His widely reported statement came from an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Hours after it appeared, the Taleban launched a major attack on a provincial government and police headquarters near Kabul - 10 days before nationwide elections.

This episode rather confirmed McChrystal's view that the Taleban strength had grown as they had moved beyond traditional areas in southern Afghanistan to threaten formerly stable regions in the north and west.

Within the heartland areas of the south, however, the strength is matched by what commentators are beginning to acknowledge is an increased professionalism, with defence correspondent Robert Fox in today's London Evening Standard suggesting that the deadly ambush of the three members of the Parachute Regiment in Helmand indicated a great improvement in their tactical skills.

This is particularly the case in the use of their basic weapon, the buried IED, which emplacers seem to be able to lay at will, using greater imagination and skill in how they lay their traps.

That much is evident in the account of the latest British death, where we are told that Private Jason Williams was caught by an IED as he and his unit returned to the site of a previous ambush in an attempt to recover the body of one of three Afghan soldiers who had been killed. In what appears to be becoming something of a pattern, the Taleban had got there first – unobserved – and had prepared the ground, with devastating results for Pte Williams.

What is also evident is that both the British (ploughing up the desert in their Jackals - pictured right) and the better-equipped US forces in Helmand have been caught out by the scale and inventiveness of the Taleban bombing tactics. Thus, while the British lost 22 soldiers last month, the Americans lost 45. This month, while we have lost five, the Americans have so far lost 18.

Interestingly though, the national responses, seen through the prisms of their respective media, seem to differ. In The Washington Post today, we see staff writer Ann Scott Tyson offering an informative account under the heading "Potent Bombs Slow Marine Offensive", describing the experiences of US Marines in dealing with the IED threat.

The bombs, we are told, have forced Marine commanders to put long stretches of road off-limits, requiring troops to walk instead of drive. Marines on foot patrol must keep a keen eye out for dug-up dirt and "ant trails" that could cover a wire.

All of that, Tyson reports, has made for delays in supplying the troops - and, she writes, as one Marine company discovered in late July when its mission went badly off track, it has also required a diversion of manpower to the mundane but vital task of watching the roads, hoping to ambush anyone who attempts to plant a bomb.

This a carbon copy of the situation vividly described by the anonymous Captain, whose report we analysed yesterday. It is instructive, therefore, to look outside the narrow national perspective of the British media to find that US forces are facing exactly the same difficulties.

On the one hand, though, the Tyson piece points up the utility of the MRAPs, recounting how a Humvee is ripped apart by an IED, despatched to help recover a mine-resistant vehicle that had become stuck in a canal.

The bomb went off under the Humvee as it was returning with chains to hitch to the MRAP, preparatory to towing it out. And in one of those tragic ironies of war, the crew were only riding a Humvee because their own MRAP had been disabled by an IED. Two died and two were seriously wounded.

Had been in an MRAP, they probably all would have survived, was the view of the unit commander, 2nd Lt. Brendan J. Murphy. The battalion's weapons company commander, Capt David Snipes, was shortly to test that thesis when he approached the shattered Humvee, riding an MRAP. It too struck the bomb. The impact was like "hitting a brick wall," Snipes recalled later. The vehicle reared up and crashed back down.

Tyson records that, as Snipes made his way through choking dust to open the rear hatch, he was amazed to see the vehicle's 50-calibre machine gun sitting in the sand. "The 50-cal somehow went from the mount, past [the gunner's] head, and landed behind us," said Snipes. Surprisingly, the gunner was not badly injured.

Even the US forces are struggling with this attrition rate and, it would appear, lack enough surveillance assets to enable them to keep watch over the stretches of road down which they must travel. They too must commit to the manpower-intensive work of keeping watch 24 hours a day.

Seemingly uncomplaining – at least to Ann Scott Tyson, although the Marines reflected with some bitterness over the loss of their friends, and questioned whether many Americans appreciate, or even know of, their daily grind in the windswept purgatory of Helmand – an entirely different "line" is taken by the London Evening Standard.

Here, the paper has John Geddes, a former SAS warrant officer complaining that "futile" vehicle patrols during daylight were leaving troops as sitting ducks for the Taleban and costing lives.

His antidote is to learn the lessons of earlier conflicts, such as Northern Ireland and he thus calls for better intelligence — including gathering crucial information from paid informers — so that targeted night-time operations could be mounted to "take out" the insurgents' leaders. In the interim, troops should be moved by helicopter or only at night in targeted raids.

Once again, therefore, we see a one-dimensional approach to a complex problem, but with an added sour twist. Geddes blames the military's failure to adopt such tactics on interference from "grubby politicians who think they are generals".

This theme is expanded as Geddes argues that the fundamental problem is poor tactics. He adds: "Don't waste fuel on high-visibility patrols that turn into Taleban bomb runs; better spend the money on paying informants, so we can target the Taliban in their beds."

"Get their identities, the location of their arms caches and the co-ordinates of their encampments then go after them, turning the terror tables the other way round," he advises. "Carefully planned, covert night-time raids on known targets should replace the endless patrols."

Geddes then claims that the failure to pursue a more effective approach is because military chiefs were being restricted by political meddling. "Untie the hands of the army and unleash them on the enemy," he demands.

It is this willingness to focus blame on the politicians, or the amorphous MoD which seems to mark out the British "debate". This latter target comes under fire in The Daily Telegraph, which has Col Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, attacking the MoD for keeping hundreds of armoured vehicles "parked up doing nothing" in Ashchurch. "You have to ask why our troops are still running around in Vikings, when they could be using the types of vehicles parked up in Gloucestershire," he says.

This focus perpetuates the narrative which, in its most simplistic form, paints the black and white picture where "Our Boys" and their gallant commanders, are the good guys, much put upon by the heartless bureaucrats of the MoD and the uncaring, penny-pinching Labour politicians.

Not for one moment does the narrative deviate to allow that, under no circumstances, do politicians interfere with Army tactics – as Geddes alleges – or that, when it comes to the paucity of mine-protected vehicles in theatre, this as we have reported is most definitely the results of decisions made by the Army high command, in defiance of the politicians' wishes that the protected vehicles should be deployed early.

Such is the power of the narrative though that, for want of informed comment, The Daily Telegraph enlists the ever-willing renta-mouth, Patrick Mercer, to blame "cost concerns". "This is outrageous," he shrieks. "I have been talking to men who are out in Afghanistan. They are crying out for these armoured vehicles." Then we get the narrative: "The vehicles are not being sent where they are needed because of tight defence budgets – no more, no less than that."

In truth, both the US and the British military have been caught out, in what was an entirely predictable development. Once again, we have to recall that, in June 2006 – over three years ago – Ann Winterton asked the defence secretary:

As our forces appear to be winning the firefights in Afghanistan, does he expect those who oppose our troops there and in other theatres to revert to the use of improvised explosive devices? If so, what vehicles are our forces to be equipped with to counter the threat?

The answer then was a classic in studied complacency. Defence minister Adam Ingram responded:

We have been very effective in Afghanistan. We have a potent force in the Apache attack helicopters. We are up against intelligent and capable enemies, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, and we know that they will continue to look for ways to attack land-based vehicles or air-based platforms. We have a lot of measures in place. The hon. Lady will understand that it is not appropriate to discuss all the detail, but where we identify a threat - be it a new or technological threat - we identify a quick way to deal with it. Sometimes that takes time as we come to understand the threat before developing the technical response. Our focus at all times is the protection of our personnel, whether it involves fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, land-based systems or maritime systems.

Then, in November 2006, it was being openly acknowledged in the media that "Taleban minelaying tactics [are] worrying Nato" (above left - click to enlarge), when it was all too clear that this was the direction the campaign was going to take. Three years down the line and troops of both armies are getting "minced".

Of course, the man in charge of the British Army at that time was General Sir Richard Dannatt. Yet it took him until July of this year to say that: "It is time for expenditure on counter IED to move from UOR to core business. If we accept that we will be in Afghanistan for three to five years and beyond, there is no doubt that this is now our core business."

This is the man who, in support of his FRES project had, to that date, resisted including IED protected vehicles in the Army's "core business". Now that IEDs are indeed "core business" (certainly of the Taleban), we are paying the price of three years of neglect.

COMMENT THREAD

Cutting corners

In March of this year, Ann Winterton asked the defence secretary (then John Hutton) how much it was going to cost to upgrade the Merlin fleet to theatre standard, to allow it to be used in Afghanistan. At that time he replied that the upgrade would cost "in the region of £50 million". This equated to an estimated average of £1.8 million per aircraft.

The same question asked in July, however, elicited a slightly different response. Then, the price for upgrading the 28 Merlin Mk3/3a helicopters had miraculously dropped to "the region of £42 million", equating to an average of £1.5 million per aircraft.

Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth explained this unusual as "due to improved maturity in our cost estimates following work undertaken in the intervening period." However, there may well be a different explanation – in part, at least.

According to Thomas Harding in The Daily Telegraph, in order to get the Merlins out to Afghanistan by the end of the year, Kevlar armour has been omitted from the load compartment – thus producing a saving of £100,000.

The armour, similar to that fitted to a Snatch Land Rover, protects troops from small calibre weapons and fragmentation from RPGs, and has been a requirement in operational helicopters ever since June 2003. Then, a Chinook attempting to land a relief force to aid embattled troops in the Iraqi town of Majar al-Kabir, took heavy gunfire which injured seven, some seriously.

Writes Harding, the lack of armour will severely restrict the operational use of these helicopters. Possibly, they will be restricted to "safe" areas (if there are any) and for the transport of supplies rather than personnel. At over £30 million each for the six ex-Danish Merlins, this would make them the most expensive delivery trucks in the world.

The one consolation (one must always look on the bright side) is that, without the armour, the Merlins will be able to carry considerably more supplies than they otherwise would and, when flying empty, the carbon footprint will be slightly reduced. Al Gore would be proud.

COMMENT THREAD

A question of balance

Predictably, in the "touchy-feely" media of today, dominated by "human interest" stories, almost all the newspapers play the current soldiers' compensation drama "big", with the broadcast media also running the story as their lead items.

Inevitably, therefore, we see – as in The Times - the devastating experience of young Ben Parkinson brought up again, the Lance Bombardier who suffered 39 injuries including brain damage in Helmand in 2006, after his Wimik was blown apart.

In other times, he might well have died – as did Jack Sadler in very similar circumstances – and that would be the end of it. But it is the very success of the medical support system which is generating what, by comparison with earlier wars, is a disproportionate number of severely injured, who then need support for the rest of their lives.

One cannot question the well-meaning media coverage. It is right and proper that we should care for our war wounded and, whether we agree with the war in Afghanistan or not, those soldiers who are placed in harm's way should be adequately compensated.

However, one can question the balance. Not for the first time, we have observed that, if the media had devoted but a fraction of the energies it expends on lamenting the poor treatment of the wounded in seeking to prevent them getting wounded in the first place, perhaps there would be considerably less of a problem than there is now.

In that context, the case of Ben Parkinson is something of a touchstone. Sent out in a scandalously vulnerable Wimik, it is undoubtedly the case that, had he been equipped with a better-protected vehicle, he would now be fit, healthy and uninjured.

Yet, for all the media focus on Snatch Land Rovers (and then only a fraction of that expended on the war wounded), there has never been any real coverage of the deployment of this vehicle (not a few media outlets do not even know the difference between a Wimik and a Snatch). Similarly, despite the toll of injuries sustained in the Pinzgauer Vector and the Viking, there has never been any serious, high level media scrutiny of the bizarre decisions to deploy this equipment.

And, while there has been limited coverage of the Jackal, neither has that vehicle really been exposed to the full glare of media scrutiny, despite the death toll in Afghanistan exceeding that of the Snatch, and continuing.

On sees the contrast most acutely with the likes of Jeremy Clarkeson, a very public and high-profile supporter of the "Help for Heroes" charity. Yet, on the other hand, he is the embodiment of the boy racer syndrome that is killing and maiming "Our Brave Boys", and not at all ill-disposed actively to co-operate with the Army in projecting the "gung ho" image that is doing so much damage.

What applies to the media – and its celebs who line up to be photographed with the injured (pictured – Ben Parkinson with "soccer star" John Terry) – also applies, in spades, to the political classes, and especially the Conservative Party. Under the leadership of David Cameron, it has quite deliberately set its face against rigorously pursuing "hard-edged" issues such as equipment performance and instead has concentrated on the more "compassionate" topics such as compensation and medical care.

Again, this is a question of balance. It is absolutely right that the Conservative Party should pursue these matters, but not to the exclusion of the other side of the equation – ensuring that our troops are better protected. Instead, it has been left to a 68-year-old "granny" on the back-benches – the redoubtable Ann Winterton – to make the running, while the big, brave, macho men bleat about the "Military Covenant" and care for the wounded.

If this is an unfair parody of the Conservative Party stance, so be it. One sees in the current policy line a deliberate attempt to play down the "nasty party" image and cultivate the idea of "Compassionate Conservatism", which my erstwhile co-editor so detests (as do I).

Thus, we end up in the situation where the "bleeding heart" feminised agenda of the popular media, lacking a political lead, drenches itself in the suffering of "Our Brave Boys" taking relatively little interest in preventing that suffering in the first place.

This speaks of a society where values and priorities are distorted and where maudlin sentimentality is overtaking hard-edged realism, doing more damage than enough. It wears its heart on its sleeve, proclaiming its compassion to the world, turning a blind eye to measures which could mitigate the very suffering it so deplores. Whichever way you look at it, this is not a healthy society.

COMMENT THREAD

Dead soldiers tell no tales

One of the things that is possibly upsetting the defence establishment is this blog's pursuit of the story about the Iveco Panther – the latest development I have been sitting on, while other more pressing issues were dealt with.

As it stood, we had found that this absurdly expensive machine, ordered in 2003 at a cost of over £400,000 each, had to be converted at an additional cost of £300,000 to make them suitable for use in Afghanistan, bringing the price to well over £700,000 each for a four-seater protected patrol vehicle.

However, we had also established that only 67 of these vehicles were being put through this conversion process, leaving 334 from the original batch of 401 that are basically unsuitable for deployment. Thus, it was left to Ann Winterton to ask what was to happen to the rest.

Answer there came from Quentin Davies that the remainder would be used for pre-deployment training individual and collective training, and trials and development. Never in the field of human conflict, he might have observed, have so many been used to train so few.

The more serious point is that, while the Army is crying out for protected vehicles, we have these useless machines stuck at home, when a fraction of the cost could have bought decent protected vehicles and had them in theatre.

Apart from Booker, however, only Defence Management was taking an interest in this procurement disaster. The rest of the media, so full of faux concern for "Our Boys" isn't interested in getting its hands dirty and actually reporting what is going on.

But then, an in-house cock-up by the MoD does not fit the narrative. Unless the story is about Gordon Brown and his "penny pinching", leaving "Our Boys" without the kit they need, the popular media does not want to know.

It is actually too much to hope for a responsible media though. Even if the story was handed to it on a plate, it would probably get it wrong and, if anyone gets near reporting the truth, we see the result .


However, one of the pieces can still be found on Google cache. This is what you are not allowed to see:

Hundreds of Panthers cannot deploy
Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The MoD has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on a new armoured vehicle that will mainly be used for training in non-operational settings.

Only 67 Panther armoured vehicles are in suitable condition to operate safely in Afghanistan according to the MoD.

Yesterday the minister for defence equipment and support Quentin Davies admitted to MPs in a written answer that 334 of the Panther armoured vehicles "will be used for pre-deployment training, individual and collective training, and trials and development."

The Panther Command and Liaison Vehicle (CLV) was procured earlier this decade to provide commanders and combat support services with better protection when they are on the battlefield. At £400,000, it will undoubtedly serve as one of the most expensive Army training vehicles, ever.

The vehicle has been riddled with problems from the outset, resulting in just 67 being available for Afghan operations due to a lack of capability requirements.

In May Defencemanagement.com revealed that none of the vehicles had originally been delivered with the required capabilities for Afghan operations, despite extensive field tests in Afghanistan earlier this decade. As a result, procurement officials were forced to spend an additional £20m upgrading just 67 vehicles.

This resulted in further delays to a programme that was already running over a year late.

The vehicle additions included a better protected engine compartment, the addition of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment, air conditioning and adding space for a fourth crew member to the vehicle.

Richard North, author of "Ministry of Defeat" said recently that the Panther "is a fine modern product of the Italian automobile industry, and therefore completely unsuitable for military use."

The outer portion of the vehicle, when hit by an IED or landmine is likely to be permanently damaged.

According to a National Audit Office Report, the MoD originally planned to buy 486 of the vehicles but due to "affordability" issues, was later forced to reduce the order to 401 Panthers. It is not clear whether the MoD will pay for the other 334 Panthers to be upgraded to combat standards.

As the threat from IEDs and landmines has grown, so has the demand for better protected vehicles. Ministers insist that they are sparing no expense in ensuring that troops have the best protection money can buy. However problems with the Snatch, Vector, Viking, Jackal and now Panther, leave these claims in doubt.

Even this fairly anodyne report, however, is too much for the defence establishment. It is far more important to stifle criticism than to protect "Our Boys" from getting murdered by the Taleban. In one of the more recent strikes, they only pulled the top half of the driver out of the vehicle. There was nothing else of him left. But hey! Dead soldiers tell no tales.

COMMENT THREAD

Impotency writ large

Jon Lehman, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, has a pop at spiralling inflation in defence costs in the WSJ today.

When John McCain was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, writes Lehman, he was flying an A4 Skyhawk. That jet cost $860,000. Inflation has risen by 700 percent since then. So Mr. McCain's A4 cost $6.1 million in 2008 dollars. Applying a generous factor of three for technological improvements, the price for a 2008 Navy F18 fighter should be about $18 million. Instead, we are paying about $90 million for each new fighter. As a result, the Navy cannot buy sufficient numbers. This is disarmament without a treaty.

This, as readers will know, is a theme we constantly revisit, in which context the reference to the Skyhawk is rather appropriate. In March, two years ago we quoted Ed E. Heinemann, designer of the Skyhawk as well as the B-26 Invader and the A-1 SkyRaider. He was lamenting:

The obstacles to any simplification may seem insurmountable, and the reasons for more complexity are many and powerful. But if we permit this Frankenstein of complexity to continue to work at its current plodding, insidious rate, it will slowly overwhelm us to impotency.

That is, of course, what is happening now, if you think about it. Despite our current financial travails, we are still one of the richest nations on earth and, here we are taking on the rag-tag Taleban in one of the poorest nations on earth, and we are in the middle of a funding crisis over maintaining a reinforced brigade, with supporting elements, in the field.

Banging this drum, as one does, one wonders what it takes to drive the point home, one that comes into high focus when we look at the cost of the Merlin helicopters that Jock Stirrup is "busting a gut" to get into Afghanistan.

Ann Winterton and I have looked very closely at the costs of these machines and have established that the original acquisition cost of the RAF operated Merlin Mk 3 was around £19 million, with a total operating cost per hour of approximately £34,000.

Then there were six, unused Danish machines that were bought to supplement our fleet. These, we were told cost £29.3 million per individual aircraft. And, in order for them now to be despatched to Afghanistan, they need an "upgrade". That, we are told equates to "an estimated average of £1.8 million per aircraft".

Thus, Stirrup's Magic Merlins are working out at about £31 million each. I don't know about him "busting a gut" the taxpayers will be, in having to pay for them.

The Danish Merlins are, in fact, an interesting case study as their acquisition arose from the very strong pressure from government on the MoD to increase helicopter capacity in Afghanistan.

At that time, in late 2006/early 2007, the Mi-17 option was being heavily pursued, with an offer to supply a number of machines for an all-in cost, including military-trained pilots, of £3,000 an hour – with the further option that the RAF could acquire its own airframes at about £3 million each – perhaps £6 million by the time all the "bells and whistles" had been fitted. Up to twenty of these machines were being considered, each of which have the same load capacity as the Merlin.

Horrified at such a cheap solution being offered, the RAF went into overdrive, inventing every possible excuse as to why the Mi-17s could not possibly work - not to RAF standards, etc., etc. - despite already having secretly acquired six airframes for the arduous role of supporting the Special Forces.

Publicly though, with the help of its industry lobby and pork-barrel MPs, it managed to sell the idea of acquiring six new Merlins which had just been delivered to Denmark, which the RAF then proceeded to absorb into a brand new squadron. This was celebrated by a happy little ceremony in January 2008, when the MoD chirped that the Royal Air Force element of the Joint Helicopter Command had received "a substantial boost".

Unfortunately though, "Our Boys" did not get to see this "boost". The aircraft were completed ready for service in May 2008 but, although they had been bought specifically for Afghanistan, as set out in Defence Management, they were simply added to the existing pool of 22 aircraft operated by the RAF and used for churning up the skies around RAF Benson in comfortable Oxfordshire.

Then the RAF pulled a blinder. Having pitched for the additional Merlins as the solution to the capacity problem in Afghanistan - it "decided" unilaterally that it was too difficult to set up a logistics and support chain in that theatre to support a new type. It therefore intended to limit the type to Iraq, where there was in fact no great need for additional machines as the campaign there was in the throes of winding down.

As to the apparent advantages of acquiring a common airframe to add to an existing fleet, there are still substantial differences between the RAF and ex-Danish Merlins. The Cockpit layouts and the radar differ to the extent that additional training had to be provided, even for pilots who might not be flying these Merlins on a regular basis.

The result is that, some more than two and a half years after the government had told the RAF to sort the problem of helicopter capacity in Afghanistan, and committed the well over £180 million to make it happen, there are still no Merlins in theatre. The likelihood is that they will not arrive until early 2010 – and even then there will be operational problems.

Thus, fashionable though it might be to load all ills on Gordon Brown and his "penny pinching", we have a situation where money has been thrown at the problem of helicopter capacity – with the acquisition of an absurdly expensive machine – and it has still not yielded dividends. This is "impotency" writ large, for which the buck seems to stop at the door of an RAF which seems intent on its own brand of disarmament.

COMMENT THREAD

Brown envelopes galore

When it was raised in Parliament yesterday by the redoubtable Ann Winterton - the ONLY MP who raised the embarrassing report of a British-chartered helicopter ferrying military supplies to a British base getting shot down by the Taliban, Miliband and Ainsworth did NOT want to talk about it. The full exchange is here.

Of course, there is every reason why they should not want to be up front. Not only was the prime contractor Skylink subcontracting the work to dodgy Moldovan gun-runners – in breach of the contract requirements – the Moldovans were subcontracting the operating of the aircraft to an equally dodgy Ukrainian outfit, which explains why six of their number were killed.

Moreover, as more details come in, it is now very clear that this was a deliberate Taleban ambush, mounted directly under the noses of the British, aimed at bringing down a Chinook – one of the main strategic aims of the Taleban. The unfortunate Mi-26 happened to wander along, in company with an Mi-8 MTV. Both took fire and the Mi-26 bought it. Bad luck on the Ukrainian crew and bad luck for the Taleban. They wanted an RAF Chinook, and will keep trying until they get one.

As for Skylink, this is an aviation company that has no aircraft. It specialises in supplying aircraft in war zones for the UN and other tranzies like the EU, for NGOs and any shady outfit that happens to be passing with a dodgy cargo it wants moved in a hurry. It buys contracts top dollar, with brown envelopes passing freely. It is so corrupt that even the UN blew it out, until it bought its way back into favour by greasing the right palms.

The company then subs out the work down the chain to dodgy Moldavans, Ukrainians and the rest, mostly operating clapped-out ex-Soviet hardware with safety certificates that owe more to photoshop than they do any certifying authority, their aircraft banned from any and all Western airspace. These outfits work as a group, sharing and swapping assets when they get outed, forming and reforming companies, appearing and disappearing, and cropping up with new names and the same aircraft just as frequently.

These are the people that are working for the MoD, the contract carefully laundered through Nato to give plausible deniability, thus avoiding a Tory and media uproar when it was learned that the MoD was hiring dodgy ex-Soviet choppers to make up for capacity shortfalls.

The trouble was that the original arrangement was that the aircraft should serve the transport hub between Kandahar and Bastion. They were not permitted to fly into FOBs – that is military airspace, from which they were to be excluded.

However, once there, the mission creep set in and, with the desperate shortage of lift, the brief was extended to the aircraft uplifting into the FOBs like Sangin. The Ukrainians, desperate for cash, were squared off with generous bonuses and thus agreed to fly into hot war zones, where even RAF Chinooks will only fly with Apache escorts.

The MoD was happy, being able to release Chinooks and Apaches for operations, Skylink was happy with the extra hours and the bonuses, and the Ukrainians at the sharp end needed the money anyway. And hey! They are expendable.

As long as the contract was piggy-backed off Nato, and thus totally deniable, no one had to be told and everyone kept schtum ... including the Tories. And now, no one wants to talk about it. Says Ainsworth: "I do not want to trespass on to operational details." You bet he doesn't.

As for the Tories, having decided to make "helicopters" their cause celebre, the last thing they want to know is that the Taleban are parking outside the gates of British bases, waiting for an opportunity to down a Chinook. Rather shoots the Fox - to coin a phrase - about more helicopters saving lives.

So goes the conspiracy of silence. The British media ... forget it. E-mails from special advisors? MPs' expenses? Dead safe ... nay problem. If you look too deep here, you don't live.

COMMENT THREAD

DOTR in the media

The blog and its arguments are getting some attention and interest in the media, the latest being Defence Management, which has published a feature on the design of protected vehicles.

Booker, of course, has been a good friend, with several pieces mentioning the blog, and we recently made guest appearances in The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and even the Sunday Mirror - although the latter lifted a quote from the blog and attributed it to a "Richard Norton". Unfortunately, the Telegraph attributed its quote to Richard D North, who has taken it in good heart.

We continue to have the support of a number of MPs, most notably Ann Winterton, and communicate with others regularly. Some also tell me they follow the comments on the forum, many of which are of exceedingly high quality. I am also told that the blog is read widely in the MoD - not always with approval - and also in a number of other high places.

We are in turn informed by many people of far greater knowledge and influence than ever we will have, making us something of a sounding board for a wide constituency, some - but by no means all - military. We are happy to play that part and would not be ill-disposed to taking the occasional guest post.

The effort required to keep the blog running is huge - especially latterly - and, while other blogs have more spectacular success, in our quiet way, we are quite satisfied that we are having an influence and helping to highlight and steer the debate. We like to think that we are an example of how blogging can work, and that blogging itself works.

We thank our readers - and those sites who link to us - for making it possible. No honest blogger will deny that they live and die by their "hit rate". DOTR daily hits, modest though they might be, are building steadily - that helps give the blog its credibility. Thank you all again.

Back to work ... sigh!

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

A sense of proportion

"I find it so distressing to hear lavish praise being heaped upon the procurement of vehicles that are potential death-traps and to listen later to expressions of condolence to the families of those who have perished in them."

Thus said Ann Winterton on Thursday (pictured below right), to a near-deserted Commons debating chamber, addressing on the government benches the minister of state for defence, Bob Ainsworth (below left).

Spoken from the heart, with more than a hint of anger, that went entirely unrecorded by the MSM which 24 hours later was to be engulfed in a "day of drama", precipitated by the sudden resignation of James Purnell. Little did we know that, by the end of that day, John Hutton would have resigned and been replaced by Ainsworth as the new secretary of state for defence.

Why Hutton should have resigned so suddenly is not known. He claims "family reasons" but nothing is that simple in politics and, with only eight months in office, he had barely begun to make his mark. For him to leave at what is a crucial moment in the Afghani campaign, however, can hardly help matters. Unsurprisingly, it has been described by Field Marshal Lord Bramall, former CDS, as a " dereliction of duty ".

Back on the Thursday, Ann could hardly have guessed that she was addressing that man soon-to-be-king, when she complained to Ainsworth about the all-important "protected vehicle fleet" in Afghanistan, using General Dannatt's word to describe it as "unbalanced".

There were, she said far too many other vehicles in service (or about to arrive) without the basic mine protection afforded by the "v-shaped hull", those including the Coyote, Viking, Tellar and Warthog - and the Jackal (pictured above, being driven by John Hutton).

It augers ill that Ainsworth, now in the dominant position, did not get the point. The hon Lady, he said, "must accept that we cannot put all our people into the same kind of vehicles. We have to give them a range of different vehicles of different sizes."

There is no way that Ann was arguing thus. Simply that all military vehicles in a part of the world where mine strikes and IED blasts are tragically common should be suitably protected. It is not part of the case that the choice should be restricted to that which are – the point being that better vehicles are required to supplement the range.

Ainsworth, though, ploughed on regardless, heedless of this point, picking up the points Ann had made about the Jackal which, she averred, "highlighted the failed concept of bolting on armour, as proved by the American Humvee vehicle."

Repeating the tired and discredited mantra which he had been fed by his advisors, Ainsworth launched into its defence, declaring: "We have to try to mitigate the effect of using a smaller vehicle and that can be done only to a degree. The main protection of the Jackal is its massive manoeuvrability; it does not have to go down the well-trodden path. If the hon. Lady goes to theatre, she will know that it is a very well thought of vehicle among all ranks."

This invited the obvious retort from Ann: "I would not like to hazard a guess as to how many young men have been killed in it unnecessarily," she told Ainsworth. But the now defence secretary would not leave it there. "The hon. Lady is suggesting that there is some easy alternative that would give our people the capability that they need to do the job and yet remove if not the entire risk, a lot of the risk associated with the Jackal. I do not believe that she is correct."

Ann showed her anger once more. "I hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not think I was born yesterday," she responded. "War is bloody and people get killed in it, but what is desperate is the fact that this country has not supported its soldiers in conflict with the right kind of vehicles, which can be obtained, and has instead made major mistakes in procurement."

While we would not attempt to argue that the recent events have not been important, the "drama" embraced so enthusiastically compares poorly with the real-life struggle that lies out of sight and out of mind, ignored by an indifferent media and uncaring politicians – the real world where men and women are dying needlessly because of mistakes made in London by people who should know better – mistakes to which Ann was seeking to draw attention.

The stark peril facing those men and women is underlined by an article in The Daily Telegraph today, but as no more than a curiosity, detached from the political process.

Written by the paper's stringer, Ben Farmer, he records that troops in Afghanistan "are facing a major increase in the number of roadside bomb attacks as a surge of reinforcements has forced insurgents to shun direct attacks".

This is based on a Nato report that the incidence of IEDs has jumped 80 percent and last year killed 172 international troops. Hundreds more Afghan police, soldiers and civilians have been killed and maimed. Then cited is Gen Richard Blanchette, spokesman for the Nato-led forces, who says: "This is very serious business for us."

He adds that the increase was prompted by insurgents changing tactics and an influx of international troops patrolling on the ground, telling us that, "They are using this as a last measure".

The piece also tells us that armies including the British have been forced to abandon lightly armoured "patrol jeeps" and Snatch Land Rovers, and spend hundreds of millions of pounds on heavier, more cumbersome armoured protection. Yet, it then continues, "despite these efforts, casualties have still dramatically risen", with this year 28 British troops having been killed, 21 by bombs.

Had the paper tied in this piece with last Thursday's debate, the issue would really have come to life, as Ann Winterton told of the wasted money, the poor designs and those procurement mistakes, all explaining why the "efforts" in Afghanistan have not met with complete success.

Perhaps, like this blog, Ann was "too strident" and "too sanctimonious", or perhaps she is simply too detached from the real "drama" of politics. After all, how can the unnecessary deaths of soldiers begin to compare with the "tumultuous" events – as they have been described – of the last 24 hours?

One must, after all, keep a sense of proportion.

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

Not that important

Two more soldiers have been killed, probably in a Jackal, bringing the number eight who have lost their lives in this machine. Two more have died in Vikings, one in an incident on 14 May and the other on the 22nd.

Compare and contrast with the Mastiff (pictured above) after a mine or IED strike in Afghanistan. From the damage – not least to the bar armour on the sides - it looks to have been a very significant explosion. Whether there were any injuries, we do not know, but there were no deaths. Despite multiple strikes, not one soldier has ever been killed in a Mastiff.

What also comes over very clearly from the video grab – taken from a short film on the 2 Scots Mastiff Company – is the "v-shaped" hull profile. It is this that provides the degree of protection which has enabled the occupants of the vehicle to survive – a design attribute which cannot be "bolted on" after the event.

Other techniques can also be used. One is "distance" – maximising the distance between the expected location of the blast and the crew compartment. This can be achieved by putting the engine in front of the cab – the so-called "engine forward" design – and by ensuring the vehicle has high ground clearance. This latter attribute is, in any event, a feature of off-road vehicles.

The use of energy absorbing materials is also valuable – and not necessarily high-tech. The Rhodesians found that by half-filling tyres with water absorbed much of the blast from a mine strike, improving survivability. At the other end of the scale are deformable materials which, in the process of being deformed by a blast, absorb energy and thus reduce the force transmitted to the hull of the vehicle.

This technique is often combined with the use of "sacrificial" parts – like wheels and mudguards – which are so designed as to allow them to be blown off by the force of a blast, so absorbing energy.

Both the Jackal (right) and the Viking (below left), however, lack the "v-shaped" hull profile and although they are armoured, without this design feature, there is a limit to what armour can do. Up to a point, heavy armour can provide a degree of protection but, unless it is shaped to deflect blast, the weight requirement will end up being so formidable that the vehicle so equipped will not be able to function.

In each case, other protection features are absent as well, especially with the Jackal which has a "cab forward" design, making the driver and his front passenger particularly vulnerable to IEDs and mines which explode under the front wheels.

That these vehicles should be so vulnerable – by design – is an indictment of the MoD and its military "customers". In a theatre where the IED and mine are the weapons of choice for the insurgents, it is – to say the very least – unwise to field vehicles which cannot protect their crews from these basic weapons.

Basic principles, developed in the 60s by the British Army and industry, since developed and refined by the Rhodesians, the South Africans, Israelis and Americans, have been virtually ignored by the very people who pioneered them, with the inevitable result that troops have died and are dying unnecessarily.

But, if the MoD and military have been slow to embrace this – with successive defence secretaries failing to force the pace – theirs is not the ultimate responsibility for our troops being furnished with inadequate equipment. As we never tire of saying, the buck ultimately stops with Parliament as it – constitutionally – is the body charged with scrutinising the government and holding it to account.

To be fair, it is not just this Parliament which is at fault. The first mine-protected vehicles were taken on charge in 1966 and, when they were finally paid off, they do not appear to have been replaced. Then and subsequently, no one seems to have asked why not.

When in 1992 or thereabouts, the Army again found the need to purchase mine protected vehicles, the event seems to have gone unrecorded outside the military. And when again, those vehicles were paid off in 2003, and replaced by small numbers of different vehicles, again no one seems to have remarked on the event.

Yet, when the need for mine/blast protected vehicles is so evident, and the US is undergoing a programme of identifying the next generation, light high-mobility mine protected vehicles, there is very little evidence that Parliament as an institution is taking the matter seriously.

For sure, Ann Winterton has raised the matter again and again and again and again. But no other MP seems to have embraced the issue, the opposition front benches have remained largely silent and the Defence Committee has been worse than useless. And one MP endlessly "banging on" is not enough. MPs must "hunt as a pack" if they are to achieve anything. Without more support, this issue is going nowhere.

Now, at the end of this Parliament – some time next year, one assumes – Ann will be retiring. Almost certainly, we will have a new administration, drawn from the very MPs who have not yet stirred themselves on this issue. That does not auger well for the future. Whether the demoralised and much depleted numbers of Labour MPs will be able to mount an effective attack looks very unlikely.

On that basis, the prognosis for the future looks very poor – depressingly so. With the one consistent champion of properly designed vehicles departing the field, there does not look to be a replacement. Even if there was, one would not be enough. Parliament will be the weaker for the loss of its champion and it is a poor reflection on the institution that, when all is said and done, MPs do not really regard the unnecessary deaths of soldiers as that important.

COMMENT THREAD

A failure of supervision

As the publication of the book draws near - now scheduled for next Thursday, the same day as the euro-elections - we are beginning the largely thankless task of getting media attention for the launch. To that effect, the first of many press releases have hit the street, couched in terms that may interest the media.

Our first is entitled "Failure of supervision by MPs 'caused deaths of soldiers'". It makes the case - which we have so often made before - that Parliament, and especially the Defence Committee, owes a special duty of care to members of the Armed Forces, to which effect we rightly (in our view) hold MPs responsible for some of our soldiers' deaths - where they could have intervened to save them.

Such a charge is the mirror-image of the "expenses" scandal, where the argument is that, while MPs have been enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense, soldiers have been dying becuase they have not done their jobs properly. It is difficult sometimes to make a link between the comfortable, well-appointed committee rooms in Westminister and the arid deserts of Helmand, but link there is. This is what we are telling the media:

Failures by a powerful MPs' watchdog committee killed at least five soldiers with many more being badly injured, claims Richard North, author of a hard hitting book on the Iraq war entitled Ministry of Defeat.

The five soldiers included Sergeant Lee "Jonno" Johnson who was killed in December 2007 when his vehicle was hit by a mine, and Major Alexis Roberts of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who had mentored Prince William during his time training at Sandhurst military academy.

They and the others were killed in a dangerously vulnerable "protected patrol vehicle" called the Pinzgauer Vector which should never have been ordered, says North. Yet in 2006 the vehicle order was "welcomed" by MPs in the Defence Committee, chaired by James Arbuthnot, who has since been criticised for claiming expenses for "swimming pool maintenance".(1)

Although MPs were been diligent in claiming their tax-free expenses, when it came to watching over the safety of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, they did not pick up fatal flaws in the machines, which offered no protection to mines and roadside bombs, claims North.

The Ministry of Defence first ordered Vectors on June 2006 at a cost of cost £437,000 each, to replace the the Snatch Land Rovers* costing £60,000, in which 37 soldiers have been killed. But so poor was their design that it was incapable of protecting drivers and passengers from more than hand grenades, yet they were being earmarked for Afghanistan where 7.5 kg anti-tank mines were common.(2)

Even when David Gould, deputy chief executive of the Defence Procurement Agency, sitting alongside the then defence secretary Des Browne, warned the committee on 11 July 2006 that they would "actually provide not a great deal more in terms of protection than Snatch", MPs failed to respond.

The choice of the vehicle was not examined again until December last year, but committee chairman James Arbuthnot – himself a former defence minister – only asked a question about its ability to operate on rough terrain. He did not query the deaths and injuries.

Only in April of this year did Arbuthnot finally question defence secretary John Hutton about the safety of the machine, when he was told that the Vector had been the "least successful" of the armoured vehicles purchased by the MoD and that "Mistakes were probably made". On 1 May, three years after the vehicles had been ordered, the MoD officially announced that they were to be withdrawn because they were "too vulnerable" to roadside bombs. Military vehicles often have a service life of 20-30 years.

Bizarrely, the Vectors are being replaced by "uparmoured" Snatch Land Rovers, the very vehicles they were intended to replace. The MoD has spent nearly £50 million on purchasing Vectors so far, and has been forced to spend another £5 million on upgrading the Land Rovers to take their place.

Says Dr North, had the MoD deliberately sought out a design to maximise deaths and injuries, the Army, in selecting the Vector, could not have made a better choice. If Mr Arbuthnot perhaps had been more concerned about soldiers' lives than his swimming pool maintenance, five soldiers might now be alive and many more would not have been injured. He says the design defects were obvious before the vehicles were even bought.(3)

Other MPs warned about the dangers – including the retiring MP Ann Winterton in April 2007, before the vehicles had been deployed, in a debate attended by Mr Arbuthnot and other defence committee members – but the warnings were ignored. (4)

Conservative leader David Cameron has called for reforms to the select committee system, including banning former ministers from being chairmen.

ends

Notes for editors.

1. Defence Committee Report on Defence Procurement 2006, 28 November 2006.

2. The manufacturer's specification cites protection from "two NATO L2A2 hand grenades detonating simultaneously only 150mm below the floor pan" – 350g of high explosive. This vehicle was to be deployed into one of the heaviest mined countries in the world, up against Russian anti-tank mines housing 7.5 Kg of high explosive.

3. The Vector has a "cab forward" layout, with the driver and the front seat passenger sat over the wheel arches. If a mine detonated under a wheel, either the driver or the passenger would be directly in the so-called "cone of destruction", exposed to the full force of the blast. The Snatch has an "engine forward" layout and there is some distance between the front wheels and the occupants of the cab, allowing, as some have, soldiers to escape the full force of a mine and survive.

4. During his tenure as defence procurement minister, James Arbuthnot was responsible for giving the go-ahead to the Phoenix UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for the Army. With an original planned in-service date of 1989 and despite having even then failed to perform, production was approved in the summer of 1996.

Unable to cope with the heat of Iraqi summers, it was withdrawn from operation service in May 2006, leaving the Army without a vital capability. Phoenix was formally retired in March 2008 - at an overall cost of £345 million - after less than seven years of operational service. Mr Arbuthnot was also the minister who ordered the ill-fated HC2 Chinook helicopters at an original cost of £259 million and have since cost £422 million for eight aircraft which have yet to fly.

Other projects for which Mr Arbuthnot was responsible - in whole of part - were the Nimrod MR4 project, the Future Large Aircraft (Airbus A400M) which has now been seriously delayed, and he masterminded the privatisation of Armed Forces married quarters.

Perhaps it is unfair to single out one man - but there again, if this is not done, where does the buck actually stop?

COMMENT THREAD

Is this the best you can do?

At last, elements of the Vector story are emerging, drowned in the torrent of stories on MPs' expenses, even though we are seeing the waste of £100 million – roughly the sum paid to all 648 MPs in a year – the unnecessary deaths of at least five men and many more very badly injured.

The proximate cause for the publicity is a National Audit Office report, which has remarked that the vehicle has "limited under-belly armour to counter the evolving IED and mine threat in Afghanistan" and as a result "confidence in the use of the vehicle was low among commanders, both those in theatre and those who have recently returned."

This being an NAO report, the parliamentary end is Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee. It is thus to him that Deborah Haynes, writing for The Times, goes for a "cut and paste" comment. And what says the mighty Edward Leigh? It is a "woeful state of affairs" when confidence is lost in a new vehicle like the Vector so quickly, he tells us.

It is a "woeful state of affairs"? Is that really the best this man can do – a senior MP costing us £150,000 a year, and change? Is that all he can say about a procurement scandal that has cost us so dear?

But Haynes, not content with just Leigh, also fills her space with a renta-quote from Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary. He tells us that the NAO's findings confirmed "the gross mismanagement that has characterised Labour's decade of neglect of the Armed Forces".

Extruded verbal material then follows as Fox utters his all-purpose quote: "Due to a lack of strategic planning by this Government, our armed forces now have to play catch up by procuring equipment through [urgent operational requirements], instead of through a coherent procurement strategy. This leads to shortages of key equipment for training and use on operations. This is unacceptable and could cost British lives in the long run."

Yet it is this sort of low-grade rant that brings politics into disrepute. Apart from anything else, the UOR system is widely cited as one of the successes of the procurement systems. It is a rapid means by which the interminable bureaucracy of the MoD has been short-circuited and urgently equipment has been brought into service.

As to the Vector, as we know, this is not a reflection of any lack of strategy – it was purchased by the Army in direct fulfilment of its then current strategy. As even The Times now reports, the vehicle was bought to replace the Snatch Land Rover. The NAO report, however, makes this clearer, stating: "Vector was procured as a lightweight patrol vehicle for Afghanistan, to address the mobility, payload and capacity constraints of Snatch II, while improving on the armour protection."

That this could be taken at all seriously is belied by the fact that in 2006 the Defence Select Committee made several examinations of the Vector procurement, not least here. On one occasion, a member noted of the Vector that "there is a very welcome announcement that the MoD is to buy these vehicles to replace Snatch Land Rovers". Yet, on on 11 July 2006, alongside Des Browne, then secretary of state for defence, David Gould, deputy chief executive of the Defence Procurement Agency said:

We have the Vector programme, which the Secretary of State referred to, which will actually provide not a great deal more in terms of protection than Snatch but much more mobility and load carrying, so very, very suitable for the kind of terrain we meet in Afghanistan.

This, we reported the next day, after already having noted that the vehicle was dangerously vulnerable. Not then nor later did the Defence Committee ever question the safety of the Vector, even though it was quite obviously less safe than the vehicle it was replacing.

This is now confirmed by an article in Defence Management and another in The Financial Times which tells us that, after the weakness of the Vector was noted, the MoD spent £5 million up-armouring the Snatch Land Rover to produce the Vixen, to fill the capacity gap left by withdrawing the Vector.

We thus have the extraordinary situation where the MoD has spent £100 million on replacing a vehicle that was acknowledged to be unsafe – the Snatch Land Rover – only then to find that its replacement was even less safe, then to spend £5 million replacing it with the vehicle which it was intended to replace. And all the while, the Defence Committee failed to understand what was going on, despite having been given evidence of its weakness, well before the vehicle went into service.

On this basis, we can certainly turn to the MoD and complain about its suspect judgement but the long stop is Parliament in the form of the Defence Committee – and it failed to do its job.

Moreover, Fox himself does not come out of this at all well. Despite Ann Winterton raising the issue several times in Parliament, initially, Gerald Howarth, a member of Fox's defence team, supported the vehicle and when, finally, Howarth acknowledged it was too dangerous for use in Afghanistan, neither he nor Fox did anything about it.

Thus, while Fox so casually lays the blame – all blame – at the feet of government, he too shares the blame, with his parliamentary colleagues. They all had the opportunities and power to bring the MoD to book, and failed to do so. In our constitution, the buck stops with Parliament. In this case – and in so many – the institution failed to do its job.

And this really is the nub of the issue, which takes us beyond the child-like tendency to load all our ills on "government". Parliament must accept responsibility for its own mistakes and then it must improve its performance. Otherwise, there is no point in having it at all – at any price.

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