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

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

Is this is what it's about?

Thomas Harding in The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the major British offensive in Afghanistan (Panther's Claw) that has led to a large loss of life and many wounded "has strengthened Britain's battered relationship with America".

This is according to a "senior defence source" who is telling us that: "It has shown that other people are making the sacrifice and sharing the burden. American has been through their Golgotha moment and they admire a country that steps up to the plate and does the heavy lifting."

Once again, it seems, the shadow of Iraq looms, with the British Army highly sensitive about its performance there, even if it is holding the line with its public pretence that the campaign was successful. A big "push" in Afghanistan, therefore, is seen as a way of restoring the Army's reputation.

We wrote about this in April, when the call for 2,000 more troops was first gaining traction. With a flood of US troops due into Helmand, there was no great strategic sense in adding a much smaller number of British troops to the fray, especially as the supporting infrastructure – such as protected vehicles, helicopters, UAVs and the rest – was already inadequate. What was very clear - as we then wrote - was that the Army was playing games:

Confronted with its own inadequacies, it has therefore - in the time-honoured fashion of bureaucracies since the dawn of time - raised a cry for "more resources" as the answer to all ills, not least because when they are not delivered the fault (and blame) can be transferred. It then "briefs" heavily to its friends in the media, to ensure its version of events lodges in the public consciousness, thus establishing its alibi for when things go "belly-up".

We returned to this theme in early June, noting how the Army "line" had evolved into a "warning" that the reputation of the armed forces would suffer in the eyes of senior American commanders unless an autumn surge was authorised. Our "senior commanders" are saying that such a surge would signal Britain's intent to "pull its weight".

Now it is that, for precisely that reason – it seems – theatre commanders have embarked on a risky and costly adventure, with uncertain effect and dubious strategic benefit, merely to salvage the tarnished reputation of the Army brass.

And dubious it is. Watching recently a Canadian journalist in Kandahar, describing the coalition air effort, I saw him explain how helicopters were so vitally necessary. Such was the poor condition of the road network that a journey to the area of operation, which would take no more than 20 minutes on good roads, could take four hours or more. And, as we know, mobility is further hampered by the inability of roads and bridges to take heavy traffic, limiting movement of certain types of vehicle.

Thus, the operation was entirely supported by a constant shuttle of helicopters, making a nine-minute journey to the "front line", leaving the road network under the control of the Taleban, who mine it and prey on the civilian population.

It cannot be stressed enough that the basis of governance is communications – roads in particular – and what we are seeing is the legacy of eight years of neglect, where the Western aid effort has been misplaced, misdirected and badly managed, leaving the road network in a worse condition than when we started. Thus, in the absence of the tactical mobility afforded by that network, we are forced to rely on expensive assets such as helicopters.

The point here is that the fundamental coalition strategy is one of "take, hold and build" – or "shake 'n' bake" as we call it. The idea is to create a "security bubble" in which the civilian development agencies can then operate, implementing their redevelopment agenda.

This is a strategy that has already failed – not least because the "security bubble" is urban-centred, where it is easier to maintain security. It failed because the bulk of the Afghani population is rural – 80 percent or more – highly dispersed, living off the land.

To maintain country-wide security on a "take and hold" basis would require the dispersion of the security forces, putting them in extreme peril, unless there are huge numbers. There, conservative estimates are of 500,000 or more, simply to maintain a basic presence. Clearly, there is no way the coalition is going to put that resource into the field, and the Afghani security forces cannot take up the slack. That simply is not going to happen any time soon.

The alternative is to build the road network, and then police it. It is not helicopters that are force multipliers, as Malloch Brown was saying in September last year – when no one was particularly listening – it is the tactical mobility afforded by helicopters. But these machines are only one mechanism of delivery.

In the "hold" phase of the current strategy, responsibility for security is supposed to devolve to the Afghani forces, and they are not generously supplied with helicopters – or at all. And there are no plans to remedy that situation. It would be hideously expensive even to try, and we are having enough difficulty equipping our own forces.

Therefore, the Afghan forces are going to have to rely on the road network, often using light, unarmoured vehicles with limited off-road performance. If they are to succeed, we have to build a high quality, secure road network. This should not follow the "take" phase – it should be part of it, just as building the rail system opened up the "wild west" in North America.

The communication system brought with it the security – it did not follow it. And, where the US Army Corps of Engineers played a vital part in opening up the territory, so too must the British Army open up Helmand. This can never be achieved by civilian agencies.

It is here, oddly, that helicopters are vital, but not the ponderous heavy and medium lift machines that are so much the focus of attention. Back in November 2006, we were writing about the need for small, tactical helicopters that could deliver rapid reaction units quickly, to where they were needed.

The thinking was very much on the lines of the highly successful Rhodesian Fireforce model, where small packets of troops could interdict terrorist movements, disrupting their communications and never allowing them to concentrate their forces or dominate the ground. A good road network, allowing policing by local forces, with the rapid back-up of highly mobile forces on these lines, together with good road security, has been demonstrated time and time again to be a winning formula.

Instead of that, we have large, ponderous formations, ploughing up the territory, "breaking things and killing people", fighting battles which have been described as similar to the conventional "break-out" battle, of a type and tempo known the generals of World War I. The objective is to take territory which we know we cannot hold, and for which there will never be the resources to hold within the context of the strategy so far defined. To assert otherwise is moonshine - this strategy could suck in the entire British Army and it would not make the slightest difference.

The campaign, therefore, is being set up for another of those "heroic failures" at which the British Army excels. We will have been seen to have been "doing our bit", contributing to the "heavy lifting" and spilling enough blood for the Generals to salvage their own pride and look the Americans squarely in the eye.

But as an exercise in counter-insurgency, the Generals might just as well parade their troops in red coats, lining them up to fire their muskets into the tree lines to scare off the natives. At least then they would do less damage and it may be just as impressive for the Americans, who always did have a soft-spot for our quaint traditions. Perhaps we could even burn down the White House again. With Obama inside, that could be as effective as anything "Our Boys" are actually doing in Helmand.

COMMENT THREAD

The trouble with armoured vehicles

Originally published by Defence Management
Wednesday, July 08, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

North disagrees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD

Clear military advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD

The Americans understood ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It won't.

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

COMMENT THREAD

A tale of two armies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD

An unwinnable war?

The Daily Mail has deployed its heavy weapon on the Afghan front today, rolling out Max Hastings to tell us, "Why Lance-Corporal Elson and our other 175 soldiers killed in an unwinnable war deserve better from this country."

L/Cpl Elson is the last but one, of seven, soldiers to be killed in Afghanistan within a week – killed by an IED. At least Hastings cuts though the cant, remarking that it is hard to find much heroic about being blown up by a mine, the fate of so many soldiers in Helmand.

IEDs, he writes, impact significantly upon morale. Most men cheerfully take their chances in firefights, where superior skills and equipment usually enable them to prevail. But it is a wretched business, to march or ride daily through the Afghan countryside, knowing that at any moment one might be blown to eternity without the smallest chance of averting fate.

Unfortunately, Hastings then repeats the corrosive manta which is so beloved of the MoD and much of the military, telling is that "No armoured vehicle is proof against mines containing up to 500lb of explosive, such as the Taliban now employ." He is actually wrong there, which is why we've put up that famous picture of the destroyed Cougar again. That is reputed to have taken a hit from a 300lb charge – and the crew walked away with very light injuries.

That is not, of course, 500lb, but the weight comparison is misleading, as the really big bombs the Taleban are using are made from agricultural fertiliser – helpfully provided by the Western aid agencies. As such, they have only about a third of the explosive force of TNT and other military explosives – of the type that hit the Cougar. Not always, but even the big bombs are survivable.

As much to the point, although some big bombs are used, they are still the exception – they are difficult to get to site, very difficult to bury and expose the emplacers to a much higher risk of detection. More typical is this example recounted by a "Gateshead soldier" Corporal Dan Henderson.

He was on a routine patrol in Helmand Province when he noticed a suspicious bump in a road frequently used by food and medical supply vehicles. And after inspecting the mound, a 20-kilo roadside bomb was discovered – "the kind which has claimed the lives of scores of our troops."

With no time to spare, Cpl Henderson and his unit sealed off the area, close to the town of Musa Qala, before calling in bomb disposal experts to destroy the device. "It was 20 kilos of homemade explosive – the sort of thing that could do some serious damage," said Henderson. "Even a heavily-armed vehicle could still be knocked a few feet in the air."

He then added: "An unarmed vehicle wouldn't stand a chance. A British convoy was due to move across the route that it happened to be on. The Taliban obviously had their own information."

Even at that level, a Viking would be ripped apart if the bomb was detonated in the right place, but a Mastiff, a Ridgeback – or any other vehicle designed on the same principles – would shrug it off. There may, nevertheless, be bombs that will defeat these protected vehicles, although none have killed anyone in a Mastiff yet.

But to argue that we should not use protected vehicles because "bigger bombs" can defeat them is akin to arguing that soldiers should not wear bullet-proof body armour because it will not defeat RPGs. Similarly, we can dispense with tanks and go to war on bicycles because even the heaviest tank can be knocked out by an anti-tank missile.

To my mind, these are the sort of issues we should be discussing – how to bring protected mobility into theatre so as to restore freedom of movement to the battlefield, not only for mounted operations but also for foot patrols.

Here, we see a link to a BBC TV report from Ian Pannell, describing how the Taleban use multiple IEDs to slow down the advance of British troops, who have to use hand-held nine detectors to clear the way before they can move into positions. This gives time for the Taleban to assemble their forces to mount an attack.


Yet, in their Bush War, the Rhodesians had the Pookie mine detection vehicle (illustrated above) – small enough and light enough to lead the way down tracks, to clear the way for advancing troops. Surely, thirty years on, it is not beyond the capability of our procurement geniuses in the MoD to come up with something similar?

The trouble is – as with the Clegg – we do not get that sort of debate. Clegg, for instance, talks about wanting more troops for the "take and hold" (aka "shake 'n' bake") strategy, without any discussion of the possibility that this might be fundamentally flawed, and can never work.

So it is with Hastings. There is a long whinge in which – in passing – he refers to Major Patrick Little, and cites his comment that, "All is not well in the British Army." But he does not develop the theme. Instead, he withdraws to his comfort zone by declaring that, "There is still supreme professionalism in the British Army, together with a cheerful willingness to accept the risks of a soldier's calling."

There is a growing climate of unrest and anger that they [the troops] are called upon to fight a costly war with inadequate resources, no Afghan gratitude and cynical indifference from the British Government, then declares the Hasting, deciding that "this Labour Government sent the British Army to fight and die in Afghanistan, and bears an absolute responsibility."

For all that, Hasting is "not one of those who favours quitting immediately." Afghanistan's collapse into anarchy could have a grave effect on Pakistan, he says. But, he avers, "the security situation is deteriorating, and those in charge are muddling. We must do Afghanistan differently or admit defeat and come home."

Yea ... alright Mr Hasting. We must do it differently. But how would you do it? Come to think of it Mr Clegg, how would you do it - apart from more European co-operation?

COMMENT THREAD

The situation is serious

One truly wonders whether Bob Ainsworth is aware of the cynicism with which his statement is greeted in informed circles when he blithely tells us that conditions are improving in Afghanistan, based on the "message" he got "in Afghanistan when I visited last week".

One recalls the then newly appointed defence secretary Des Bowne visiting Basra on 18 May 2006, when he declared, "Basra is calm and British forces are working hand in hand with their Iraqi and coalition partners. Suggestions that the city is, in someway, out of control are ridiculous." Two weeks later, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a state of emergency in Basra, in a bit to contain the escalating violence.

Recalling also Stephen Grey's evidence to the Commons Defence Committee last week, one thus simply speculates how long the "lines-to-take book" was this time. The new defence secretary will have been told what he wanted to hear, and shown that which was convenient to show him, upon which basis he delivers the "upbeat" message that he was always going to deliver anyway – whether he had been to Afghanistan or not.

So taken with Grey's evidence was Jim Greenhalf that he was moved to write his own post on it, observing that much of what was said was worthy of the front page of The Sunday Times.

Anyhow, Ainsworth has delivered his own message to Chatham House today in a keynote speech which was delivered shortly after death of another soldier had been announced, the seventh in a week and the 176th to die since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001.

His response to those casualties is charted by The Daily Telegraph which tells us, "More British soldiers will be killed in Afghanistan and there is no end in sight to the campaign, Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary has warned." He adds, "Let us be under no illusion. The situation in Afghanistan is serious - and not yet decided. The way forward is hard and dangerous. More lives will be lost and our resolve will be tested."

So much of the rest of the speech is the usual FCO/MoD extruded verbal material that the only rational thing to do is to glide softly by, although there is some merit in comparing the defence secretary's views with the critique by Matt Waldman, who has some sensible and realistic things to say but, in other ways, is part of the problem.

Of special interest to this blog, however, is Ainsworth's frontal assault on the media criticism of the Viking and other poorly protected vehicles in theatre. "Every effort is being made to increase protection - such as the introduction of Mastiff and Ridgeback troop carriers, the improved armour on Viking and Jackal vehicles, and the more heavily armoured Warthog vehicles coming in 2010," he says, continuing with the "line-to-take" supplied by the military:

With this suite of vehicles military commanders will deploy their assets according to the tactical situation on the ground. But as we develop measures to counter a threat like IEDs, so our enemies adapt - for instance by building higher yield bombs to overcome heavier armour. So let us be clear, sacrificing manoeuvre for heavy armour in every circumstance is not the answer.

We are doing everything we can to counter the IED threat at source. Our forces are finding and diffusing these bombs. But tellingly, they are also concentrating on the networks and the people building them and supplying the technology, the parts and the know-how.

We are getting inside the production process - some in the military call this approach 'getting left of the bang'. When we target the bomb makers and take out the capacity to produce, we cut the threat. Getting left of the bang will save lives - of our troops - and of the Afghans themselves.

This is part of a sustained counter-offensive which has also seen a formal attempt at rebuttal by the Ministry of Defeat, which once again falsely frames the debate as one between protection and mobility, as favoured by the BBC. This is not a ministry that its prepared to learn lessons. Rather it is one that will invest its resources in supporting its existing decisions, however wrong they might be, for want of acknowledging any error whatsoever.

Similarly, Ainsworth is not prepared to admit that which Waldman accuses the government – of miss-spending or wasting aid – not that he could since that involves attacking the FCO and DFID (which we must now learn to call UKAID). Instead, he cites the UK's non-military aid, amounting to £740m since 2001, with a further £500m is planned to 2013. We wonder whether he is aware of the Ferris wheel so generously provided by the British taxpayer, and how that fits in with this general scheme.

What immediately strikes one, however, is the disparity of spending on the military, with over £3 billion in the last three years and £3.5 billion forecast for this current financial year. If the military effort was directed towards civil aid, one might see a wholly different situation in Afghanistan than we see today.

It is rather odd, therefore, that Ainsworth concludes his speech by warning "us" to be under no illusion. "The situation in Afghanistan is serious ... " he repeats. One is tempted to ask: who is this "us", white man? The illusion rests with the secretary of state ... whose policy is not dissimilar to this bridge in the region, which has yet to have the attention of western aid officials. But then, Ferris wheels are so much more useful.

COMMENT THREAD

A paradise lost?

One of the reasons, we are told, why Lt-Col Thorneloe and his driver Trooper Joshua Hammond could not have travelled in a better-protected Mastiff and instead were killed in a fatally vulnerable Viking was that the bridge network across the Shamalan canal, where the fighting is at its heaviest, was in poor repair and too weak to bear the weight of the heavier vehicle.

The Ministry of Defeat has now released a picture of one of the bridges (above) and simple inspection confirms the poor state. If the other bridges spanning the canal are in anything like a similar condition, then it is not at all surprising that the 23-ton Mastiff could not be used.

One would have thought, therefore, that the bridge network would have been a high priority for redevelopment funding, contributing not only tactical mobility for the Army and the Afghan security forces but also the local population who need a better network to move their equipment and goods.

But that is to reckon without those geniuses in the Department for International Development. Although they have been extremely busy in the Shamalan canal area, they have had slightly different priorities on which to spend British taxpayers' hard-earned cash.

To the utter bemusement of the local Afghanis, DFID has invested no less than £420,000 on a f****** leisure park for Women, complete, you will be pleased to know with a f****** Ferris wheel – (pictured below).

Called Bolan Park, when it was completed just over a year ago, it had "puzzled residents" asking why so much money was being spent on leisure when the most pressing problem – security – was getting worse by the day. Said Amir Mohammad, 44, "If the international community wants our country to be prosperous, they should first worry about peace and security. Then we can have parks."


As to the idea of a park for women, Mohammad Zaher stated the obvious: "The problem is that men are not accustomed to going to parks along with their women. And they won't let women go on their own." Abdul Halek, 22, agreed. "Although our house is very close to this park, we will never let our women go there," he said. "This park will be only for men."

Gul Mohammad, 35, a farmer, had a more pressing reason why women – or anyone else for that matter – would not use the park. He said, "For two years now, there have been remote-controlled explosions on the main Bolan road. I think mines will be laid in this park. That will keep people from going there."

But those brave chaps from DFID nevertheless persevered, trilling away that the nearly 20 acres would provide fresh air, fountains, flowers, picnic areas and recreational facilities for Lashkar Gah's estimated 100,000 people.

As for the IEDs that have been killing "Our Boys" – many of them now home-made using agricultural fertiliser - the aid agencies thought about that as well. Very helpfully this season, they have supplied the Taleban Afghani farmers with a total of 4,749 metric tons, conveniently packaged in 25-kilogram bags.

With such wonderful, intelligent support from our gifted civil servants, we cannot possibly lose the war in Afghanistan. We can look forward to moving from triumph to triumph, allowing the Afghani citizens to revel in their paradises of fresh air, fountains, flowers, picnic areas and recreational facilities provided so generously by British taxpayers.

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