The official version

Possibly stung by Michael Yon's trenchant report on the Battle for Pharmacy Road, the MoD has rushed out its own version of the operation, currently on its website.

The Yon version is better and much more detailed, but both bring something to the table. Neither, though, is complete and – it would seem – neither tell the full story of what happened or is going on. From the joint accounts, however, a picture begins to emerge which is more than a little disturbing.

The MoD account, by way of adding missing detail, tells us that the "battle" is codenamed Operation Flint and that 200 soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Rifles are involved, together with "experts from the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group". We also learn that this was one of two operations, the second being the clearance, a few days later, of a pathway known as "Route Sparta", also in Sangin. In total, 37 IEDs are discovered.

Interestingly, the MoD account relies on some of Michael Yon's photographs (some of which we have reproduced), acknowledging their source – which adds a further dimension to the apparent withdrawal of Yon's embed, after the publication of his despatch. The mystery deepens.

The MoD's account of the early stages of Operation Flint very much follows the narrative set by Yon, the MoD describing Pharmacy Road as "notorious", also telling us that it had "previously" claimed the lives of five soldiers in one day. This presumably is the incident on 10 July, when five were killed in the complex ambush.

Lt Will Hignett from 2 Rifles sets the scene, telling us: "The ground in Wishtan is made up of a maze of high compound walls and narrow alleyways. It is ideal for insurgents placing IEDs in cover and a real challenge for patrols trying not to get channelled or set predictable patterns for patrolling."

As to the operation, we learn that The Rifles surrounded the "one-kilometre stretch of road to provide cover for the specialist search and bomb disposal teams" and, as Yon describes, IED after IED is uncovered.

What then gets very interesting is the way that the MoD then describes (or more accurately does not describe) the blockage caused by two blown-up vehicles, about which Yon gives us some detail and provides photographs.

According to the MoD, the clearance teams, as they moved further down the road, "discovered the wreckage of two vehicles, clearly decimated by an earlier blast." The use of the word "discovered" is, to say the very least, puzzling. They did not know they were there? We are being fed BS.

Moreover, we are led to believe that the vehicles are "decimated by an earlier blast" – i.e., a single blast. Yet, we know from Yon that one vehicle is a "Jingle" – i.e., civilian – truck. The other is, from the look of it, an armoured wheeled loader. We know it is military – Yon tells us so - and, as a JCB (Yon calls it a "scooper") is part of the recovery effort, we are told (by Yon) that "the soldier who is driving the scooper is the same driver who got blown up on Pharmacy Road."

Putting the narratives together and making our own deductions, what appears more plausible is that the civilian truck was blown up and then, subsequently, the armoured loader was despatched in an attempt to clear the wreckage, only to get itself blown up.

Originally, we had assumed that this vehicle was another JCB but, on close inspection of Yon's photograph (above right), it appears similar to the much larger and better-protected Caterpillar loader - the very same type that the MoD are selling off (left). This might explain why the driver survived. But it also tells us the Army has a serious problem. At 37 tons, and a back wheel missing, this is serious heavy metal creating a major obstruction. (It could, however, be a Case 721B Medium Wheeled Tractor with a Penman armoured cab – weighing in at a mere 16 metric tons.)

With the two hulks blocking the road (and then booby-trapped), it must have been these which finally closed off Pharmacy Road, effectively isolating PB Wishtan, forcing it to be re-supplied by helicopter. And, when – as Yon but not the MoD tells us – a supply helicopter was attacked by an RPG, which cannot have been long after the Mi-26 had been shot down, one surmises that helicopter flights were suspended, leaving the base cut-off and under siege.

Thus, it would appear, Operation Flint was not simply a "route clearance" operation. It was an emergency relief force to break the siege of PB Wishtan, before its supplies ran out and it was over-run.

This is, effectively, borne out by the MoD itself, which tells us that, 22 hours after 2 Rifles deployed, the road was declared clear as the soldiers reached Wishtan. The rest of the night, we are then told, a "convoy resupplied Wishtan with everything from fridges to missiles." That detail is not mentioned by Yon.

That is what this convoy must have been all about. Several of the photographs show the convoy driving through Sangin market, which is the route to PB Wishtan from Jackson. We are looking at a relief convoy, breaking the siege – hence the elation of the Wimik driver.

Such is speculation, of course, but it all fits. And it explains the sensitivity of the MoD to Michael Yon's report – and its eagerness now to rush out its own version. The last thing the MoD wants is anyone to realise quite how desperate the situation really is in Sangin, with a Company base not three miles from the main FOB Jackson having been cut off by the Taleban.

That subsequently, the Taleban were effectively able to isolate FOB Jackson on election day also tells you a great deal about the security situation in Sangin, and the strength of the Taleban. Operation Flint – or at least the MoD version of it – seems to be hiding that in plain sight.

Things are perhaps now worse than even the growing casualty rate tells us. Yon got perilously close to revealing this.

COMMENT THREAD

Coincidence?

In July, we reported the shooting down of a Mi-26 as it was delivering supplies to the British military base at Sangin.

Now we learn from the MoD website that a convoy stretching for five miles and consisting of more than one hundred UK, US and Afghan National Army vehicles set off recently to resupply coalition bases in northern Helmand.

The 116-vehicle convoy, one of the biggest to ever leave Camp Bastion, was travelling a dangerous 40 miles to bases in the Sangin Valley via the outskirts of Gereshk and then off-road through open desert. It took a full day to get to the first base, with a Manoeuvre Operations Group [MOG] in Vikings acting as a screen for the convoy and clearing the path ahead (one of which took an IED hit).

The road convoy was mounted, incidentally, at a time that the US forces are increasingly relying on airlift. Since 2005, there has been an 800 percent increase in air drops – from two to three per week to seven to eight per day. In July, the USAF made 1,700 air drops over Afghanistan. That is the most since the start of the Afghan conflict, in 2001.

Given the considerable manpower required to mount extensive road convoys and the danger of attack, one would have thought that the British would be keen to use helicopters as force multipliers. But then, with 20 tons of lift capacity having been taken out, and the situation obviously very dangerous in Sangin, here we see land convoys being mounted.

Of course, this could be a coincidence. It could be that the British have so many troops that they are short of things to do with them.

COMMENT THREAD

A battle lost?

In our second look at the "Shotvarfet" report in The Independent today, we look specifically at our anonymous Captain's comments about equipment – which form a significant part of the piece.

Leading up to these comments, the human cost of flawed equipment is brought home as the Captain speculates on the effect on those who deal directly with the deaths and injuries, "who have to go into the Viking vehicles after the explosion to pull out the casualties, who have to tourniquet the remaining stumps after both the legs of a person have been blown off, those who have to pick up the leftover pulpy fragments of a disintegrated body and put them into a bag."

The reference to Vikings is especially significant here, as in a number of instances, we have seen recorded their use in supply convoys. Due to the pitiful numbers of support helicopters and Apaches needed to escort them, we are told, every day troops on the ground are forced to expend an enormous amount of hours and manpower just standing still.

They sacrifice their reserves of energy, motivation and willpower securing and picketing routes for the never-ending vehicle convoys that have to keep happening in order to resupply the patchy spread of patrol bases with water, ammo and rations; as well as recovering the vehicles that invariably go into ditches and securing helicopter landing-sites for the evacuation of casualties from improvised explosive device strikes.

The Captain then goes on to say:

If someone provided one of those garishly coloured (army) pie charts depicting the percentage of time and effort sucked up into the black hole of orchestrating these road moves, it would provide a statistic that would be both shocking and embarrassing. It might also partly explain why the military is struggling to gain an advantage over the Taliban and cannot hold a significant amount of ground.

Its energy, time and focus is bound up with those road moves, and our most vital asset, our troops, are either sweating on the sides of the roads, securing them, or sweating inside the vehicles of those often doomed convoys. I am not criticising the military on the ground, who have to deal with this dilemma.

Everyone seems to already agree on this issue of the equipment, in particular the lack of support helicopters – which rather begs the question of how on earth is nothing done about it? And how does the fact that nothing gets done about it seem to be the status quo and keeps occurring year after year, budgetary policy after budgetary policy, operational tour after operational tour?

If a magic genie were to appear in front of my eyes, who in keeping with the spirit of the present credit crunch cutbacks, could afford to grant me just one wish, I think I would simply choose a massive increase in helicopters and pilots – a wish that would have such a crucial influence on what is happening to the British Army out here.

Thus we have the helicopter issue writ large, in particular the logic of replacing time-consuming, expensive convoys and vulnerable convoys with helicopter supplies, the logic of which we explored nearly two years ago.

Here, first hand now, we have evidence of the extraordinarily debilitating effect of the shortage of support helicopters, forcing much of the available effort to be devoted simply to supporting outlying bases – effectively creating the "self-licking lollipop" phenomenon, of which we have written before.

What also comes over from the Captain is the number of troops deployed not only in the convoys, but in securing the routes down which the vehicles travel. Yet, as reported by the MoD website, there are other means of securing road security. The MoD report records how a US Apache helicopter chanced upon a bomb emplacement team, killing two of them, allowing ground troops to move in and remove the bomb.

This points up the role not only of support helicopters, to deliver supplies, but the vital role of airborne surveillance, a role for which light helicopters such as the Kiowa would be admirable, a point we have been making for something like three years.

However, to narrow down the issues simply to "one wish", calling only for more helicopters, is to over-simplify a complex situation and, in some respects, to miss the point. It is most certainly the case that more helicopters are needed but, as we argued earlier, it is important that British troops do not abandon the road network. Their presence is needed to provide security, not only for themselves but for the Afghan security forces and the civilians.

Thus, we need a whole range of measures and kit, of which helicopters are only part and, in some respects, not even the major part. Where the Captain sees our troops "sweating on the sides of the roads, securing them," a whole range of machines, from UAVs to Buffaloes, Huskies, mast observation vehicles and other aids to could the job, most often better without putting men at risk.

Emotive and powerful though the Captain's message is, therefore, it dwells on what is but actually offers very little insight as to what could and should be done. It is a cry to the heart, not an appeal to the brain.

Similarly thus does he frame his appreciation of the Taleban. "We are dealing here with a tenacious and stubborn enemy," he says. "Despite our dropping bombs on compounds that the enemy is using as firing-points, the very next day, new enemy fighters are back." Once again he continues, in a despairing vein:

On the one hand, perhaps the enemy command is so feared, authoritative and manipulative that they force unwilling fighters into those compounds as pure cannon fodder. On the other, perhaps, the fighters willingly go back, despite their comrades having been killed there, so strong is their faith in an afterlife, or so strong is their belief in the jihad they are fighting.

Whatever the reason, they come back undaunted to the same firing-points, despite our overwhelming fire power. Their numbers seem to stay constant, as opposed to decreasing – all of which gives a strong indication that we will not be able to reduce their numbers to a level where they are tactically defeated.

It seems increasingly true that a stable Afghanistan will only be possible with some sort of agreement, involvement or power-sharing deal with the Taliban.

However, as the British Army units here are increasingly sucked into the turmoil of the latest "fighting season" there seems little evidence that anything is happening on the political and diplomatic stage. In the meantime, tour follows tour, during which the most intense fighting appears to achieve not much more than extremely effectively inflicting casualties on both sides, whilst Afghanistan remains the sick man of Central Asia.

Such an appreciation, of course, is way above the Captain's pay grade. Officers of that rank are not employed to carry out strategic analyses, and neither are they qualified so to do. This is the classic example of where "being there" offers no more strategic insight than could gained from gathering the received wisdom of his peers. That it comes from the front line does not make it any more valuable.

The strong anti-war vein running through the "dispatch", however, clearly suits the Independent agenda, which is possibly why it has been given the prominence of its front page.

If the piece also tells us that war is "hell", as if we did not know, its other contribution is more subtle. In its tone, it is redolent of the diary of Lieutenant Mark Evison who, in respect of his routine patrol duties told us, "There is a definite lack of steer from above as to how to play this one. I am yet to be given a definite mission and clarity as to my role out here."

That same sense of lack of clarity of purpose pervades the dispatch of our anonymous Captain. To that extent, the Captain reveals perhaps more than he intends (or not). It is a cry of despair which speaks loudly of the inability of his superior officers to convey to him a coherent strategic picture, possibly indicating that they too lack that picture.

The worrying thing is that the Captain sounds like a member of a defeated army. If battles are won and lost in the hearts and minds of men, this one may be lost.

COMMENT THREAD

A torrid time

With one more soldier killed – yet another by an IED while on foot patrol – the total casualties for Afghanistan now stand at 196. In the deadly arithmetic of the media war, this is four short of the "magic" figure of 200, which will be the trigger for a torrent of media coverage.

With the current rate of loss, the bi-centenary could well come by the end of this week, giving the Sundays a free run. Given that we are in the middle of the "silly season" with very little competition on the news agenda, the likelihood is that the MoD will be in for a torrid time.

It is not untoward that the Taleban, conscious of the power of numbers, will be looking for a "spectacular" to maximise the media headline count. In The Sunday Times today, we have an intimation that the Taleban have a specially trained group, for precisely that purpose, its task being to mount attacks, to achieve a "spectacular" effect whereby several British soldiers are killed at the same time.

In effect, what we might be seeing is the Taleban setting out to "kill to order", aiming to maximise media coverage and thereby maximise the impact on the UK audience.

If that is the Taleban aim, then they will have been considerably assisted by the number of "own goals" perpetrated by the MoD and the Army, not least in the delayed deployment of the Ridgeback. The Dubai incident has very much lodged in the collective media brain, to be absorbed as part of the narrative.

Although it has not yet fully registered that the Army is responsible for some of the delay, the delays in getting equipment to theatre is a story that very much has "legs". It is given a boost today with the News of the World reporting that Ridgebacks and other armoured vehicles are being stockpiled at the depot in Ashchurch in Gloucestershire, instead of being sent out to theatre (pictured above).

What also has not yet registered is the extraordinary delays behind the whole Ridgeback programme. Mooted in October 2007, the intention to order was announced personally by Gordon Brown in December 2007. By June 2008, the theatre "fit" and been finalised and in August 2008, with great fanfare, the MoD announced that the first five vehicles had arrived in the UK for theatre conversion (picture below) - flown in to minimise delays.

With the vehicles not planned for deployment until October/November of this year (and then only some of them), this means that the best part of two years will have elapsed for what was an Urgent Operational Requirement to have been fulfilled. By contrast, when the Mastiff was ordered in August 2006, it was deployed in Iraq and in active service by the February of the following year – less than six months from the ministerial announcement.


Rightly or wrongly though, the media is making the link between the absence of the Ridgeback and the recently reported deaths in Jackals. Today, the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World, the Observer and the Independent on Sunday have all made unfavourable comparisons between the Ridgeback and the Jackal. Even the Mail on Sunday is pitching in.

The delays in fielding the Ridgeback, however, may not be purely the result of bureaucratic inertia. The Army has invested heavily in the Jackal and, to an extent, staked its reputation on its success. But, as we remarked in April 2008, there is doctrinal competition between the Ridgeback and the Jackal.

Although both have their niches, there is a certain amount of overlap between capabilities. Side-by-side on operations, the Jackal would compare unfavourably with the Ridgeback in any number of roles for which it is currently deployed, including convoy escort, for which the vehicle was never designed.

With the Army already having been forced to retire the Snatch, the Vector and now the Viking, to invite comparisons between the vehicles on actual operations, and to have the Ridgeback perform better, would be a mortal blow to the Army's pride, while being forced to retire yet another vehicle, in which so much has been invested, would have profound implications.

Thus, to delay the intoduction of the Ridgeback until the more heavily armoured (but still inadequate) Jackal 2 is fully deployed, gives the Jackal a better chance to shine against the competition. The Sunday People is already putting the pitch for the Army.

Furthermore, as it stands, on off-road mobility, the Jackal has the edge. But one wonders also whether the Army is deliberately attempting to maintain an unlevel playing field, by taking on charge the basic Cougar platform and not insisting on the upgraded suspensions which US forces are retrofitting.

Since the unique selling point of the Jackal is its mobility – which can only be degraded as more and more armour is added in an attempt to overcome its fatal weaknesses – it will do the Jackal advocates no harm at all of the Ridgeback off-road performance is less than optimal.

However, while the Army plays its games, and men die, the real world is catching up. The Taleban is completely uninterested in Army procurement politics and, since it has the measure of the Jackal, one can be sure that it will continue to exploit its weaknesses.

As the counter ticks towards the 200-mark, the media is not going to be interested (or even understand) the nuances. It will see the issue as Jackal versus Ridgeback in simplistic terms, and tear the MoD apart. Whether the Army gets caught up in the flak is moot, but it may have difficulty hiding behind the politicians this time, especially when they have been pushing the Army to get the vehicles into theatre.

Soon enough, we will know whether it is soldiers' lives or Army dogma that will prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

No wonder we are in trouble

An official involved in the design and engineering of armoured vehicles has denounced the recent criticisms directed at the Armed Forces' fleet, calling them "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous."

So says Defence Management, allowing the official to retain his anonymity, yet allowing him the claim that he "has worked closely on the design of several armoured vehicles including some of the MRAPs."

The man - let's call him Mr Smith - says that he felt it was time to dispel some of the running myths in the press about armoured vehicles and what does or does not make them safe.

Our Mr Smith starts by noting that criticism of armoured vehicles has grown over the last year due to the perception that they are increasingly vulnerable to IED plus, he says, "a number of procurement gaffes on the part of the MoD." These appear to include the Snatch Land Rover, the Viking and the Vector armoured vehicles - withdrawn from service due to their inability to protect passengers from explosions and the high number of casualties that have occurred in them.

He also notes that there have been questions over the design and safety of the Panther and Jackal vehicles - although they remain in service – and then acknowledges that the MoD and industry were not perfect. Nevertheless, he avers, criticisms of the [current fleet of armoured vehicles] are "largely untrue".

Without going any further, we can tell that we have an odd sort of a person here. Anyone inclined to address criticisms as "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous" is someone who is inclined to dogmatism. Then to brand them as "untrue" is bizarre. Criticism may be right, it may be wrong, it may even be misplaced, or any number of things, but truth does not come into it.

Looking then to win the one-sided debate, he employs the trick of the polemicist, framing the debate as one of "mobility v. protection." Vehicles ripped apart by IEDs and mines, says Mr Smith, are often the more mobile models that can quickly transport troops across the battlefield or help them escape a firefight.

Having thus established the desired framework he creates for himself a false comparator, defining the classic "straw man" alternative. This, predictably, is "using the heavier armoured vehicles such as the Mastiff and Ridgeback, which although better protected are far less agile."

The trick here is in defining these two vehicles as "heavier armoured", on which basis he attacks our argument that having one or the other is "a false paradigm." Says Mr Smith, "If you want more protection, you are going to be using more weight." Thus, "simple physics" wins the argument: "More armour equals more mass and more mass equals less acceleration. Essentially one cancels out the other."

Of course, we don't know Mr Smith well enough (or at all) to ask him any questions, but if we were to have the opportunity, we would like to know which he thinks is the better tank – the German Panzer Mk IV (Ausf H) at 25 tons, the Russian T-34 at 26.5 tons, the British Churchill at 38.5 tons or the US Sherman at 33.4 tons.

Then he might address the question as to which specific feature the Germans copied from the T-34 when they produced the Panther tank.

Straight from the Janet and John school of armoured vehicle design, however, Mr Smith's view of how to limit weight "is to make the vehicles smaller," and, not being averse to patronising his audience, he tells us: "People do not understand that there is a trade off between firepower and protection vs. mobility." I think we knew that, but that is not all there is to it.

Obviously unaware of the world around him, Smith then blandly informs us that "the chance to revise the vehicles after testing in order to make them more mobile is simply not possible." Clearly, no one told the Americans.

But he is right in one thing: "To go back and install mine protection is difficult. Unless you designed it from the start, the cost and operational compromises is not going to be worth it."

From there, however, Smith loses it. Advocates of more mobile vehicles have argued that protection should be built into the design of the vehicles such as V-shaped hulls, he says, adding:

The guaranteed safety that V-shapes hulls provide are something of an urban myth. For it to be effective, a blast must hit the vehicle right at the point of the V. If it hits anywhere else, the blast would not be properly deflected.

From there, he tells us:

Early mine attacks saw insurgents put mines in the middle of a road. Today IEDs are made up of multiple parts and explosives and can be placed anywhere in the vicinity of a road. For the V-Hull to be effective a blast would have to hit right under the point of the hull. Square hulls are therefore still a valuable design tool as long as they are properly armoured.

This is terrifying. This is a man who claims to be involved in armoured vehicle design, and he can seriously say that for a v-shaped hull to be effective, "a blast must hit the vehicle right at the point of the V." Thousands of soldiers, in thousands of MRAPs, hit by thousands of IEDs would say otherwise.

But it is also insulting. Blast protection is not solely a function of the v-shaped hull. There are other design principles involved, which we outline in another piece. If Mr Smith has heard of them, though, he does not mention them - yet our criticisms are "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous."

And as for the "properly armoured" square hulls ... fine – if you want your vehicle weighed down by massive armour plate and then flipped over on its back by the force of a blast. Mr Smith, one feels, would design ships with square bows.

At last, though, we get to Smith's pride and joy - the Jackal. This time, criticisms are not "untrue". They are "unjustified" since it is not actually an armoured vehicle, rather a vehicle that has armour on it. So that's alright then. Because it was not designed ab initio as a mine protected vehicle and is thus extremely vulnerable because it only has "bolt on armour", the criticism is "unjustified".

Similarly "unjustified" is the criticism of the "fatal flaw" of having the front passengers ride above the wheels. That, says Smith, is not the fault of the Jackal. The problems stem from the way the vehicle is used, not its design. "When it hit the market, it was designed for a specific task. It was designed to travel across country in off road conditions."

"Now it is being used to protect convoys and provide cover and protection. It becomes the focus of attacks. The Jackal was never designed for convoy protection," he adds, then declaring: "Weaknesses are bound to emerge. But you leave it up to the commanders at the front to use the vehicles as they see fit."

So does Smith rest his case. He came forward with his statements because "he felt it was time to clear up a number of inaccuracies reported in the press and to begin restoring the image of the armoured vehicle industry."

The 14 dead so far in Jackals will be mightily impressed. And, if they can hear Mr Smith, they will surely agree that that their premature deaths arose because of the way they used their vehicles. But then, they might have preferred to have driven in the type of MRAP pictured above, from which the crew escaped shaken but unhurt, after the v-shaped hull took a massive blast under a front wheel.

COMMENT THREAD

A reckoning

The MoD has now released the name of the latest British soldier to die in Afghanistan. He was Craftsman Anthony Lombardi of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), attached to The Light Dragoons.

In an unusually detailed report, the MoD goes on to tell us that he was killed on 4 August in Babaji, in the Lashkar Gar district of Helmand province.

He was attached as a vehicle mechanic to The Light Dragoons and was, at the time, driving a Spartan as part of an escort for a Viking supply convoy, moving between the company's two locations when the vehicle was hit by an explosion. The force of the explosion breached the hull, killing him instantly.

This appears, on the face of it, almost a re-run of the circumstances surrounding Lt-Col Thorneloe's death. He too was with a Viking supply convoy, only that time it was the Viking that got hit rather than a Spartan.

Had it been a Viking this time, and/or a high ranking officer, the media might have taken some more notice. As it stands though, very few media reports bother to mention the vehicle type. It is not one with which they are familiar.

The details, however, do beg a series of questions. One would like to know why a lightly armoured vehicle like the Spartan – which is an armoured personnel carrier – was being used as an "escort" for the more heavily armed and armoured Vikings.

Even then, as the Thorneloe incident – and others – demonstrated, the Vikings are highly vulnerable when used for routine tasks such as supply convoys, where they are unable to exploit their mobility, which is supposed to confer their protection.

The same also applies to the Spartan and it was only fate that this was the vehicle targeted rather than a Viking.

One would also like to know whether the convoy route was such that the high mobility of these tracked vehicles was really necessary, or whether a better protected vehicle – like the Mastiff or the Ridgeback – could have been used.

That, of course, we will never be told, especially as it now transpires that the Ridgebacks in Dubai were never intended for immediate use. This comes over from the BBC report and has been independently confirmed.

Although Ridgebacks are available in small numbers, the Army has no intention of deploying them until there are enough to equip the brigade group, with fully trained drivers and all the infrastructure in place.

This, the Army argues, is necessary to save lives, as fielding new kit prematurely – they say – presents its own hazards. Thus, the nine Ridgebacks that have been (or are being) "rushed" to Camp Bastion will stay there unused until the new roulement arrives in October and is ready for action.

The Army, therefore, not the MoD, is the blockage, rather confounding our earlier story. The Ridgebacks were left in Dubai because there was no hurry, as there was no intention to use them yet.

It does seem extraordinary that the Army itself should reject life-saving kit and, if it could be shown that Craftsman Lombardi could have been saved, had he been riding in a Ridgeback – and that such a vehicle could have been used – then the Army case for delayed deployment looks pretty thin.

What is salutary about this whole affair, however, is the willingness of myself and others to leap in on the basis of very limited information, and condemn both the politicians and the MoD – when it is now clear that the delay in deployment is a military decision, taken for what the Army believes are sound operational reasons.

Arguably, the Army is wrong. It is displaying a peace-time preference for having everything neat and tidy, and properly organised, instead of the untidy and more difficult to manage "trickle" deployment, releasing the vehicles to theatre as they (and their drivers) became ready.

Tidiness is not a luxury the military can afford in wartime. Imagine, for instance, in wartime Malta when a decision was made to replace the outclassed Hurricanes with Spitfires. New machines were rushed in to fill the gaps, with the two types operating side-by-side for a period.

Imagine what would have happened if replacements had been delayed until a "big bang" switch-over was organised. The battle would have been lost.

It will take a great deal of convincing for me to believe that the Army is right in its current policy. If men could be alive today, but were killed for want of better equipment, then there should be a reckoning.

COMMENT THREAD

A sine qua non

A lengthy report (351 pages, pdf) from the House of Common Foreign Affairs Committee gets an airing in the media today and we are seeing more reporting on the online editions.

Conveying the flavour of the report is Deborah Haynes in The Times, who fillets the conclusions to tell us one of the main findings, that "Britain has taken on far more than it can handle in Afghanistan and should instead focus on security, ditching its lead role in other objectives such as fighting the drugs trade."

She goes on to write:

A failure by different Government departments to coordinate their work has also hampered progress in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, where the majority of British troops are based, according to the cross-party report. In a damning indictment of Britain’s past eight years in the country, the ... Committee warned that the Government risked losing support for the mission at home and in Afghanistan by failing to set out clear and achievable goals.

This blog is very keen to see MPs take a greater role in criticising government performance, particularly through the select committee system, and then to contribute to the more effective formulation of policy. However, if the Committee's remedy for the lack of direction is to recommend that in the immediate future "the Government should re-focus its efforts to concentrate its limited resources on one priority, namely security," then its priorities are misplaced.

Nonetheless, while it may have a good point about the failure to set out clear and achievable goals having an influence on public support, simply then for concentrate on security, per se is unlikely to have the desired effect, not least because it has missed a crucial point: arguably the most powerful influence on public sentiment is the steady, high profile reportage of troop casualties.

To that effect, the absolute priority must first become – not so much as an objective as a sine qua non - force protection. Unless the military can contain what is seen as an unacceptable and unsustainable casualty rate, it will not be able to deliver on any other agenda.

Furthermore, the military must not only be able to protect itself, it must be able to do so with an economy of resource, without degrading its own operational capabilities. Otherwise, we end up in the situation which poisoned the Iraqi campaign where so much effort was devoted to countering attacks that almost all the effort was devoted to this end. Thus did the military end up describing themselves as the "self-licking lollipop."

In terms, force protection comprises three components: base protection; route security; and what might be termed operational security.

Compared with Iraq, where British bases were under constant attack from indirect fire – and even direct assault – base protection has not been quite so problematical in Afghanistan. Under the combined weight of IEDs deployed on an industrial scale, and the composite ambushes involving direct fire in combination with IED ambushes, however, route security is proving to be a major issue.

Similarly, "operational security" is giving rise to considerable concerns, some of which we addressed in the previous piece.

If there are failings here, none are more egregious than in the failure of the military to secure its lines of communication. A very significant proportion of its casualties arise while troops are transiting in vehicles, mostly prey to IEDs.

Here, the continued impression that the military is failing to treat this issue seriously is reinforced by a piece in The Mail on Sunday, where Christopher Leake records that: "A British anti-bomb device that has saved dozens of American soldiers’ lives is not being used by UK troops – despite a rise in the number killed in road-side attacks."

This is the "Self-Protection Adaptive Roller Kit", known as SPARK, equipment which is usually fixed to the front of military vehicles and has rollers which take the full brunt of any blast. Soldiers are thus protected from injury and their vehicle is left intact so they can drive away from the "hit zone" rather than suffer further attacks by insurgents.

The effectiveness of this equipment is well proven and there have been numerous articles in the American military and specialist press testifying to that (see: here, here, here and here), but this is the first time the equipment has been mentioned in the popular media here – although we have referred to mine rollers several times on this blog. Over two years ago, we even referred to their use in the 1970s, in Oman, attached to Saladin armoured personnel carriers.

Currently, Leake charges that the MoD bought 12 of the SPARK devices but, he claims, they have been mothballed because the Army does not have the mounting kit needed to attach them to vehicles. This appears perverse as one of the claimed advantages of this kit is the ease with which it can be attached to a wide range of vehicles, from Humvees to 5-ton trucks and different MRAPs, including RG-31s (pictured, top).

The perversity appears even greater when one appreciates that a number of new vehicle types have recently been introduced to theatre, such as the Ridgeback and the Mastiff 2, either or both of which could surely have been modified to use this equipment.

It is not the case though that the British Army is not using mine rollers, as one assembly was seen fitted to a Mastiff (thus demonstrating the capability of this vehicle) during the Kajaki convoy in August 2008 (pictured right). Whether this was a SPARK device is not clear. With only 12 sets bought, though, this seems a poor effort when then US forces have over 300 sets in use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is more worrying, perhaps is the response of the MoD to Leake's charge. "No single piece of equipment can provide complete protection from the changing threats posed by improvised explosive devices," a spokesman said, apparently not conceding that the mine roller is an essential part of any equipment package if the IED threat is to be defeated.

Our problem is that, if the MoD does not recognise this, and the select committees are not pointing us the issues – even though the MPs felt qualified to direct military priorities – then we are not even past first base.

COMMENT THREAD

We don't know the half of it

Two more deaths have been added to the growing list of fatalities arising out of operations in Afghanistan. According to the MoD, one was a soldier from The Light Dragoons, killed "as a result of an explosion that happened whilst on a vehicle patrol in Lashkar Gah." In the other incident, a soldier from 5th Regiment Royal Artillery was killed by an explosion whilst he was on a foot patrol in Sangin district.

Not untypically there is little extra detail, and the vague description of a "vehicle patrol" offers no clue as to the type of vehicle involved. The Light Dragoons operate Scimitars, Spartans and Jackals so it could have been either. If it is a Jackal, that would bring to 12 the number killed in this type.

But, if we get very little detail about the fatalities – although more information often seeps out – we know much less about the wounded and their circumstances – unless they themselves tell the media. One such is 2nd-Lt Guy Disney, also of The Light Dragoons, who lost a leg in the same incident in which Pte Robbie Laws was killed.

Disney's story is told in last weekend's Mail on Sunday, from which we also learn during the first phase of Operation Panther's Claw, the spearhead 700-strong Light Dragoons Battle Group suffered 55 casualties of all kinds, including heat exhaustion and battle shock.

The Mail journalist Richard Pendlebury, in his piece about Disney, estimates that the killed to wounded ratio – as high as 1:3 in Vietnam – has now plummeted to 1:8. This is the result, in part, of speedy evacuation and the heroic medicine performed by the highly skilled military surgical teams.

While the MoD claims to withhold the details of wounded soldiers for reasons of "patient confidentiality" there can be no doubt that that the absence of any reports is extremely convenient in concealing from the public the carnage happening daily, at a rate far higher than the fatality rate would indicate. If, for instance, if the Vietnam ratio applied to this theatre, we would be looking not at 160 killed in action, as the figure now stands, but at well over 400.

For those of us whose grim task is to monitor the welfare of troops in the field, and to ensure that they are a best protected as possible, the lack of broad casualty data may also distort perceptions, when the only metric available, to which any detail is attached, is the fatality.

Often, the difference between a death and a "very severely injured" is a matter of pure chance while, on the other hand, when the enemy is "trying out" a vehicle in the field, early attacks may be – in their terms – less successful, yielding only injured, rather than the deaths for which they are aiming. Only later, when they get the measure of the vehicle, does the death rate climb.

This was definitely our perception – based on anecdotal reports and other evidence – that in al Amarah in 2005, there were a considerable number of injuries in Snatch Land Rovers before a significant number of fatalities were experienced.

Equally, in Afghanistan, there have been a significant number of attacks about which we have known nothing, although details of two have recently drifted into the public domain.

One report told of Carl Clowes, 23, from Bradford who in July 2007 was in a Land Rover in Helmand when it drove over a mine. Both his legs were crushed and he suffered more than 20 injuries. His left leg was amputated below the knee 10 months later and he still suffers pain in his right leg. He can now walk only short distances without the aid of crutches.

Another told of Lance Corporal Jonathan Lee who, in October 2007 in Afghanistan, was riding in a Snatch Land Rover when a bomb blast threw him 50 yards into a minefield. He lost a leg.

Knowledge of such incidents would help inestimably to judge whether specific vehicles were too fragile for deployment, as indeed would information on near misses, where no injuries or even damage occasioned. Here, though, there are serious operational security implications. The Army is naturally reluctant to give free after-action reports to their enemy, only to have this vital information used against troops as attacks are refined and strengthened on the basis of the details supplied.

Nevertheless, we note that the MoD is quite willing to release details when there is a propaganda advantage to be gained, witness a recent MoD-inspired report on a failed attack involving a female Jackal driver.

From this we learn, incidentally, that the Jackal was "guarding a supply convoy", the very antithesis of the purpose for which this vehicle was designed - as a Special Forces "raider", relying on speed and mobility rather than armour for protection. Tied to a predictable convoy route, this type of vehicle is a highly vulnerable target.

Elsewhere, we learn, via Lt-Col Stephen Cartwright, CO of The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, that Jackals were used in the Panther's Claw operation, to seize ground at the top of the Shamalan Canal in preparation for the link up with the Welsh Guards. This is, again, not the purpose for which these vehicles were designed or procured. They are effectively performing the role of light tanks or armoured cars.

Then, also, we learn of a serious injury in a Jackal, from the Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News. It tells us that, on 16 July, L/Cpl Wayne Cox, of The 2nd Battalion the Rifles, was seriously injured by an IED while driving a Jackal in the Kajaki area. This, of course, is not within the Panther's Claw operational area, and amounts to yet another guerrilla-warfare type of ambush, against which the Jackal is ill-protected.

The paucity of detail, where details have to be culled on an almost random basis, has another effect. Recently, we learned of a court case taken by a civilian engineer wounded in a bomb blast in Basra in late October 2003, while riding in an unarmoured Land Rover Discovery.

This was Graham Hopps who lost a shoulder in the incident and was claiming for damages against the Ministry of Defence and his employer, arguing that he should have been provided with a better-protected vehicle,

The judge, Mr Justice Christopher Clarke, however, ruled that he did not believe that an armoured vehicle would have prevented Mr Hopps from suffering the same injuries. He also concluded that the security conditions in Iraq at the time were not bad enough to require his employer to issue its workers with armoured vehicles.

Considering that there had been three bomb attacks against vehicles that week – that we know of – and Army vehicles had also been attacked with fatal results, it is hard to see how Mr Justice Clarke could have come to that conclusion.

But it is also fair to say that, had we the information on all the incidents that had occurred, Mr Hopps might have stood a better chance of winning his case, especially as the route down which he was being driven was known locally as "bomb alley", which suggests that attacks cannot have been completely unknown.

If, of course, we had confidence that the Army was collecting the information and using it to effect, upping protection as vulnerabilities became apparent, then there would be no need for us to have any information. But we know this not to be the case.

Furthermore, on our own forum, we had an anonymous contributor – the authenticity of whom we have no cause to doubt – who informed us that, prior to its introduction, he had been asked to write an assessment of Jackal for a government department.

Then he had assessed it as a "death trap", saying in his report that he would not be prepared to risk his own life in one. His report, however, was discounted and his judgement considered flawed "because the manufacturers were able to make a convincing case as to why Jackal was the answer to everything."

Issues at the time which had influenced its acquisition were essentially political, based on a need to be seen to be ordering new equipment, the price (cheaper than a Mastiff) and industrial factors, maintaining employment in the UK defence sector and reducing imports. On top of that, there was the Army's obsession with the Land Rover, whence it wanted, "for some unfathomable reason" a replacement for the WMIK.

As more and more detail emerges, we find that the MoD (and Army) are being less than frank with the reasons for the purchase of many of their vehicles, the reasons they are deployed, the casualties incurred as a result and the reasons why deployment is continued, even when the evidence suggests they should be withdrawn.

Effectively, we don't know the half of it, that very lack of knowledge used against us by an MoD which cites our "ignorance" as a reason for ignoring our findings, claiming greater knowledge of a situation which it will not share.

That is unlikely to change but even the simple and crude death rate is sometimes telling a devastating story. If this latest fatality is related to a Jackal, it will add further to the growing evidence as to its dangerous vulnerability. We may indeed not know the half of it, but what we do know is occasionally enough.

COMMENT THREAD

An uncomfortable truth

One feels very deeply sorry for Mrs Diane Bell, mother of Corporal Ivano Violino, killed when the Volvo FL-12 truck he was driving hit a mine. As she stood outside the Coroner's court in Tunbridge Wells, where today an inquest was held into her son's death (reported here and here), she struck out at "ministers", demanding that they do some "soul-searching" over whether enough was being done to protect British troops.

During the inquest, Mrs Bell had heard that the 44-vehicle convoy, moving equipment to a base nearly 12 miles north-east of Gereshk, had been promised air cover during its passage, but the helicopter designated had been re-tasked and had not appeared.

Focusing on that omission, she made the impassioned plea for more air cover for convoys, heedless of the view of the Coroner, Christopher Sutton-Mattocks. He was satisfied, he said, that it would not have made any difference whether air cover had been provided, as it would not have been able to detect the explosives that Cpl Violino's truck had driven over.

The convoy was in fact regarded as low-risk and an attack was not expected. Furthermore, the vehicles were not driving along a tarmac road but across desert. Some of the heavier vehicles were becoming stuck in the soft sand so, at the time of the strike, Violino's was driving his 10-20 yards to the right to avoid deep ruts made.

The chances are, therefore, that this could have been a legacy mine, rather than a deliberate ambush. Certainly, the Coroner declined to rule the death "unlawful killing" and instead elected to record that "Cpl Violino was killed in action on Her Majesty's Service".

As to whether this death could have been prevented, we explored this issue back in September 2007 when it happened. Then, oddly enough on the back of comments made by Lord Malloch Brown on the need for helicopters, we concluded that the convoy supplies could have been better and more economically delivered by helicopter.

As for Cpl Violino's truck – a loader-tipper – this was engineering equipment being delivered to a Forward Operating Base. It too could have been delivered by helicopter. At 10 tons unladen weight, it could easily have been carried by an Mi-26 and we even published a photograph demonstrating that this could be done (top left). It was not until February the following year, however, that a Mi-26 was leased by the MoD, too late for Cpl Violino.

Therein, however, lies a conundrum. Only last week, that same Mi-26 was shot down by the Taleban, killing six on board and a young girl on the ground, with a man injured. Moving the FL-12 by air would have been safer for Cpl Violino, but it would, effectively, have transferred the risk to the helicopter crew – and those under its path.

In turn, fully to protect the helicopter on its approaches to British bases, where it is at its most vulnerable, would need foot patrols out in the approach area transferring the risk to the soldiers, making them highly vulnerable to ambush, either from direct fire or IED.

Arguably, an escort of Apache gunships might have sufficed, but then there is the opportunity cost: how many soldiers would die, how would the overall mission be compromised by the allocation of this precious asset to escort duty, when it might be better employed on air support?

Collecting together these various strands, arguably, Cpl Violino's life could have been saved, had helicopter lift been available. Given that lift capacity is currently a major controversy, one might have thought that an astute journalist might have picked this up. This could even have been raised in the inquest, but it was not.

But the price of his safety could have been at the expense of the helicopter crew who transported his vehicle, as indeed it was the safety of those troops who did not have to make the land convoy into Sangin base to deliver supplies least week.

We would like to think that the Mi-26 which crashed last week could have been better protected, and need not have been shot down, or that the lives saved through convoys avoided were more than were lost. We can never know. Whether seven dead and one injured was a fair trade is also something we can never know, but it does point up an essential truth – war is a dangerous business and people get killed.

But there is another, more uncomfortable truth. To ensure one man's safety may, directly or indirectly, put others at greater risk. There is no such thing, they say, as a free lunch.

COMMENT THREAD

We need more helicopters

"Army bomb expert killed trying to clear the way for vital supplies" is the headline under which Nicholas Cecil, chief political correspondent for The Evening Standard writes today.

Captain Daniel Shepherd died instantly when the makeshift bomb he was trying to defuse exploded in the Nad-e Ali District in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. A member of his team suffered minor injuries. Capt Shepherd, 28, from 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps, was leading a team trying to clear a route for a convoy to re-supply Nato troops and the local population.

This raises serious questions. There is a whole raft of kit available for this task. Why wasn't it available?

The job starts with the Buffalo (pictured above). It can expose an IED and the claw apparatus can be used to rip away any command wires, if that is the method of triggering employed. The manual disturbance will trigger any motion-sensitive booby trap.

If the bomb is still live, it can be investigated by a remote robot (pictured below). A shotgun fitted to the robot can be used to blast the detonator and thus disable it. Failing that, the robot can be used to place an explosive charge on the device, blowing it up and thereby neutralising it. Damage to roads and other structures can then be dealt with by armoured engineering vehicles.

Only in extreme cases, where there is imminent risk of loss of life without intervention, should an attempt be made by a bomb disposal officer personally to disarm a device. There are no indications that this was the case here.

However, as to the kit, therein lies the tale. Kit such as the Buffalo is not yet in theatre. The US forces have them, the Canadians have them and the French also have them. But, despite a call for them to be provided in 2005 – the MoD did not think they were necessary. They were not ordered, therefore, until last October and will not arrive until next year.


We do have robots – the British were pioneers in this technology. However, they are transported in the unarmoured "Tellar" EOD vehicles, which are themselves highly vulnerable to IEDs. They require an armed escort and route clearance to get them onto site. All too often, they cannot be used.

But our Mastiff EOD vehicles were not ordered until last October and will not arrive until next year – despite the equivalent JERRVs having been used by US forces since 2003.

Then, there is a shortage of armoured engineering equipment. What we have is being sold off at knockdown prices, and the new kit was not ordered until last October. It will not arrive in theatre until next year.

Of course, if we follow the media and political narrative, this incident clearly demonstrates that we need more helicopters. Every casualty is being used to reinforce that argument.

But what it could also demonstrate is that the MoD and the Army seriously under-estimated the IED threat and failed utterly to prepare for it. Such issues, however, will not even begin to be explored by the media. The solution is obvious – we need more helicopters. Everybody knows that.

COMMENT THREAD

We were not wrong

Very nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece about the Tucano headed: We are not wrong. This is how the piece started:

When, like this blog, we are so often far out on a limb, discussing ideas that no one else seems to be looking at – with critics lining up to pick holes in the arguments or tell us we've simply got it wrong (as they did when we advocated better armoured vehicles for our troops in Iraq), the sheer weight of contrary opinion, combined with the isolation, does make you seriously question your own arguments (and even your own sanity).

Anyhow, further down the line, it looks as if the Navy SEALS agree with us. We were not wrong.

Furthermore, if DIFID and the FCO could get their fingers out, and paid the Army to build some roads – instead of funding Ferris wheels - these aircraft could be even more useful. What they need to do is emulate the South Africans in their own bush wars. Then, they built lengths of road – and bridges – in such a way that they could be used as temporary landing strips (take the sign away in the pic and you get the drift).

A flight of aircraft could land on any one of these strips, accompanied by a STOL transport carrying supplies – or meeting a supply convoy – fuel and re-arm and then wait, close to the action, until needed. Pilots often lived out in the bush with their aircraft. And, with so many strips available, there was no way the nasties could predict where they would land. There was never any need to use the same strip more than once in any operation.

With a little bit of imagination and determination, there are very few problems that cannot be solved, and light turbo-props are a cheap and effective way of enhancing the force mix. But, these days, it's much easier to find excuses for not doing something – and then spending billions on not solving the problem.

COMMENT THREAD

Playing politics with peoples' lives

Although ostensibly addressing a serious deficiency in our military capabilities which is affected the campaign in Afghanistan, there is something distinctly tawdry about the way the Defence Committee has today "rushed out" a report on helicopter lift.

The nuance would not be apparent to most but this is the same committee which has never seriously addressed the issue of mine/blast protected vehicles – and the management of the IED threat generally. Yet, a significant proportion of the current casualty rate stems demonstrably from inadequacies in the Army fleet of vehicles, and the lacklustre approach to controlling IEDs. The problem here is far more serious than the perceived shortage of helicopter lift.

On that basis, it is very hard to escape the conclusion that chairman James Arbuthnot is indulging in the not-unknown political sport of bandwagon-riding, hitching his star to an issue because it has – more for the sake of expediency than on its intrinsic merits – been catapulted into the public consciousness.

One cannot nevertheless gainsay all the Committee's findings or its primary conclusion that the lack of helicopters is "undermining operations". Even then, we could dispute its conclusion that this stems from a shortage of medium and heavy lift battlefield helicopters.

When one looks at the ponderous tactical deployment of British forces in the field, and the intrinsic vulnerabilities of such helicopters, there is at least an argument that the operational need would be better served (in part at least) by a larger number of smaller, tactical helicopters, on the lines of the Rhodesian "Fireforce" model which deployed multiple sticks of four soldiers from Allouette III helicopters, each machine armed with a 20mm cannon.

Arbuthnot and his merry men, however, do not even enter this territory, trapped as they are in an orthodoxy which rests with their oft' demonstrated inability to think outside the box – or draw evidence from outside the military-industrial complex.

Thus we see the Committee recommending the "pork barrel" route to enhancing capacity, going for the procurement of new helicopters, oblivious to alternatives and totally ignoring the cost implications. More seriously, given that the capacity shortfall needs addressing urgently, the MPs have opted for the slowest possible route, offering absolutely nothing that will fill immediate needs.

Then, although not given prominence in the Committee's press release, the
"bandwagon agenda" emerges in the media coverage of the report, as was surely the intention. Thus we have The Times currently reporting that, "The lack of helicopters available to British troops in Afghanistan is costing lives, MPs concluded today." Worryingly, we also see written, the assertion that:

Extra medium-lift support helicopters would cut down on the number of road convoys that have proved vulnerable to Taleban attacks. Twelve of the 15 deaths in Afghanistan over the past fortnight have been caused by roadside bombs.

This, possibly, is added in by the journalist Michael Evans, and relies in part from the populist (child-like, even) tendency to describe IEDs as "roadside bombs".

However, to make the link between these casualties and a shortage of helicopters is tendentious, to say the very least, if not downright dishonest. But, once the virus is in the system, never let it be said the British journalists will ignore it. This is now the narrative, and narrative it shall be.

As for cutting down the number of road convoys, thereby reducing the number of attacks, we have the news of the recent loss of the Mi-26 which was performing precisely the role of cutting down road convoys, yet neither Michael Evans nor the Defence Committee take this into account. One could take the cynical view that, because only six Ukrainians and an Afghani child died, this does not matter – as long as our "Brave Boys" are not killed.

But, as David Axe discusses, although civilian helicopters may not be as well protected from missile (MANPAD) threats as military hardware, this machine may have been brought down by an RPG – against which there is no protection other than tactical flying.

Yet, as one of our readers reminded us, not too long ago, an RAF Chinook was very nearly brought down by an RPG. Only exceptionally skilled flying – and luck - saved the day. And, if that is hazard enough, if the Taleban do manage successfully to deploy anti-aircraft guns, the machine they hit is toast. "Game over," as we said. It is unlikely that the momentum for withdrawal would be stoppable.

In his narrow pursuit of more helicopter lift, therefore, Arbuthnot and his committee may be pushing for a course of action which might increase risk, not reduce it – even without taking into account other factors, which we rehearsed in an earlier post.

The idea that transferring troops from the roads to helicopters very much stems from experience in Northern Ireland but, as we pointed out, the situation in Afghanistan is not the same. While in the earlier campaign, the troops were largely the targets of the terrorists, in Afghanistan, the Afghani security forces and the civilian population are also being killed. If we abandon the roads, in pursuit of the notional (but possibly ephemeral) safety of our own troops, we cede the game to the terrorists.

This is brought home by a recent, haunting piece in the New York Times which refers to the tendency of the coalition forces to look after their own, concerning themselves less with the safety of Afghan forces who work alongside them and who are taking far greater casualties.

Given that the strategic plan is eventually to hand over to Afghan forces, it is difficult to accept that these personnel will even begin to assume the burden as long as they see their better-equipped – and highly risk averse - "partners" using their resources to avoid the very hazards to which the indigenous forces are also exposed, with far greater consequences (pictured above – an ANP patrol vehicle destroyed by an IED which killed five, including a senior commander).

Support for the Afghanis, therefore, would suggest that we have to share the same threat environment, which means that countermeasures and protection must apply to all, not just the select few.

The answer there – in dealing with IEDs – is not for coalition forces to run away from the threat but to deal with it, using the many technical and other measures at their disposal, to ensure not only their safety (as far as that is possible) but also to protect Afghani forces and civilians.

While, thus, the Defence Committee is enjoying the ride on its new-found bandwagon, it is missing the point – perhaps deliberately – and playing with peoples' lives.

COMMENT THREAD

A tale of two armies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD