Blood on their hands

Flashback to Thursday 22 June 2006 and the House of Commons, where Tory backbench MP Ann Winterton challenged defence minister Adam Ingram thus:

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

Now fast forward to The Times today and read:

Whatever the intensity of that past action, Nato forces could use their airpower to telling effect against concentrated Taleban formations in Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province. Now suicide bombers and small groups of Taleban are striking across southern Afghanistan, ambushing convoys and killing Afghans employed by foreign organisations.

No one, but no one in a position of authority can pretend they are surprised by current developments. Our soldiers' blood is on their hands.

COMMENT THREAD

Another one…

UPDATED: A Royal Marine from 45 Commando has been killed and another seriously injured after yet another suicide attack on a "Snatch" Land Rover in Afghanistan.

They were driving in a military convoy leaving the Afghan national police station at Lashkar Gar, capital of Helmand province, this morning. The marines were airlifted to a military hospital at Camp Bastion, where one later died from his injuries. An MoD spokesman said the dead soldier's next of kin had been contacted.

Ghulam Muhiddin, the spokesman for Helmand's governor, reported that the attacker targeted British soldiers. He said the bomber, who was on foot, also killed a boy and a girl, both under eight. Other reports speak of bodies of civilians, some with arms and legs blown off, scattered around the scene near the town's bazaar.

This is becoming an all too familiar scene and, while better-armoured vehicles do not provide complete protection – witness an incident earlier this month when a Canadian soldier lost his life after an attack on an RG-31 (pictured) – the overall experience is that troops are much more likely to survive, usually uninjured.

Apart from anything else, a "Snatch" Land Rover costs in the order of £60,000 and this – like others before it – is clearly a write-off, while RG-31s suffering similar attacks need only relatively minor repairs.

What is particularly disturbing though is that, while the replacement Pinzgauer "Vector" is no better protected than the Land Rover, already the MoD propaganda machine is moving in to tell the troops what a good piece of kit it is.

Thus we see in this month's Soldier Magazine a "Boys' Own" puff on the two new additions to the British order of battle, the tame hack gushing that the "meaty Mastiff" and Vector (pictured left) are "destined to make life safer for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan".

The Vector – so soldiers are told – "will address the protection and payload problems of the Snatch Land Rover, making it ideal for Afghanistan." Surpassing the carrying capability of the Snatch, the Vector can carry an additional specialist, such as an interpreter, plus enough water for a ten-hour patrol. The piece adds:

"With Vector we have an improved payload capability, better mobility and improved protection,” said the vehicle’s project manager, Ben Onslow. “It will also have air conditioning, which is important for comfort.” The first of approximately 170 vehicles ordered should be delivered by February – just ten months after Pinzgauer started work on the variant.

Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Drayson told reporters on Salisbury Plain: "The Snatch Land Rover will continue to be an important part of our equipment. But we have identified that we need to give commanders more options. It is vital that we give our soldiers the kit they need. But it is down to the commanders in the field to choose the right tool for the job."

You would expect a tame house magazine to deliver that sort of guff, but it would be nice if the supposedly independent media took time out to tell our soldiers the truth. Unfortunately, it would seem that hacks are more concerned with the threat of external censorship, without realising that self-censorship, ignorance and indifference are probably the greater dangers.

COMMENT THREAD

This is the future…

In the great tradition of the free-enterprise de Haviland Mosquito fighter bomber of World War II, BAE Systems has this week unveiled a completely new armoured vehicle, a 6x6 Mine-Protected Vehicle, to be known as the RG33L.

This has been developed in-house using the latest in design, modelling and simulation tools in Benoni, South Africa and in Santa Clara, Calif. It is claimed to offer more volume under armour than any other C130 transportable mine protected vehicle and incorporates the latest designs in protecting against improvised explosive devices and is equipped with a hydraulic ramp, a gunner's protection kit, a robotic arm, survivability gear, and dedicated space for equipment stowage. In addition, the vehicle is remote weapon capable and network enabled.

The RG33L also features additional systems to enhance survivability, such as modular add on armor kit provisions, TRAPP transparent armour that provides excellent visibility and situational awareness, and run-flat tyres. The vehicle is equipped with multi-positional mine protected seating and air conditioning.

Left to themselves, the armies of this world would still be looking at generations of armoured vehicles with their design principles stemming from the 60s – as indeed is the European Defence Agency with the pan-European Boxer (right) – and the British Army is still floundering around with the FRES concept and lightweight armoured vehicles.

This BAE Systems concept, however, is the future. While the Europeans are still bogged down in their outdated plans for air-portable rapid reaction forces capable of fighting a conventional war, it is to the RG33 type of vehicles that Sir Richard Dannatt needs to be looking.

COMMENT THREAD

Another patronising, holier-than-thou post

There was something close approaching joy in the EU Referendum household this morning at the sight of The Daily Telegraph with its front page headline declaring: "Navy 'too weak' for big role in Korea blockade".

Not, as you will appreciate, was there any comfort to be gained from the message. But the very fact that a British newspaper has actually noticed something like this and is able to detach itself from its feminine side long enough to report it on the front page is indeed something to celebrate.

Equally, one took considerable enjoyment from the leader – something almost of a throwback to the days of Empire, the headline trumpeting: "Britain's obligation to blockade North Korea".

And then… what a wonderful opening line: "If you want to engage in gunboat diplomacy, it helps to have some gunboats."

How true. How so very true.

Thus says the newly-masculine Telegraph, Britain has been in the vanguard of those pressing for sanctions on North Korea after its detonation of a nuclear device. And "now that the UN Security Council has authorised those sanctions, it falls to us to assist in their enforcement in any way we can, in particular via a blockade of North Korean trade."

Yup… go with that – and with the next bit:

…just as the Army has been starved of the resources to do its job in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there are serious question marks over whether the Navy is equipped for this task. Since Labour came to power in 1997, the Navy has lost a third of its ships. We should be able to rustle up a couple of frigates or destroyers, a submarine, even an aircraft carrier.

The trouble is that the paper seems to lose it a bit – it goes on to say:

But as the Sea Harrier was withdrawn from service earlier this year, and its replacement does not arrive until 2013, those ships will be defenceless against missile fire. Unless our fleet shelters under the protection of the French or the Americans, its air defences are pitiful; were the Falklands crisis to recur today, our task force would be sunk before ever sighting Port Stanley.

Gone are the days of Desmond Wettern, when a Daily Telegraph correspondent was regarded as a world authority on naval issues. We are now reduced to this abysmal degree of ignorance. And ignorance it is – this is not "techie" pedantry: there is no way a Sea Harrier was ever and could ever be considered as part of a missile defence – it is (was) an air superiority fighter and its role would only be (as in the Falklands) to intercept enemy aircraft. Whether it could handle North Korean Mig 29s is another matter.

Furthermore, in any fleet, an aircraft carrier is an extremely vulnerable and attractive missile target and, therefore, far from contributing to missile defences, requires the deployment of considerable assets to protect it from attack.

One can see the point the Telegraph is trying to make though. The news piece sets it out:

…senior navy officers expressed deep concern about their ability to defend their ships against a hostile missile or fighter threat after a decision was enforced six months ago to scrap the Sea Harrier fighter. As a result of government cutbacks any British ships deployed to the South China Sea to enforce the UN resolution would depend on the American or French navies to provide "beyond visual range" air defence with their aircraft carriers.

The Navy has been cut by almost a third since Labour came into power, and the admission by Royal Navy commanders that they were struggling to find suitable ships to deploy to the UN force will raise further questions about the Labour government's handling of the armed forces' budget. Britain's military commitments to Iraq and North Korea have exposed glaring deficiencies in resources and equipment.

Thus do we get "defence correspondent" Thomas Harding citing a "naval officer", writing: "… without the Sea Harriers the ships will be vulnerable to attack if there are no US Navy Aegis class ships in the area. … The Fleet will not have adequate air defence until the first Type 45 destroyer enters service in three years."

This then allows the newspaper leader-writer, by way of a conclusion, to twitter: "It will be a disgrace if Labour's neglect of our Armed Forces renders us unable to play our part."

But I must stop doing this - dismissing Harding and his ragbag of fellow hacks as intellectual pygmies. One must not be so arrogant or opinionated. It is totally unreasonable to expect newspaper writers to know anything of what they are writing.

Far be it for me to point out, therefore, that the Type 45 Destroyers (or their equivalent) would have been with us years ago but for the er… Conservative government’s obsession with trying to develop a common European frigate - the ill-fated Horizon project.

One must not say that they are also grossly over-priced and that this is entirely due to the insistence on fitting European missile systems. Nor must one note what we got from Mr Thomas bloody Harding on the day of the first Type 45 launch. We simply must not remind people that he trilled that the Type 45 was a 'quantum leap forward' for the Navy, faithfully reproducing the MoD press release, almost to the letter.

My critical piece, incidentally, was headed, "A retreat from defence", commenting on the inadequacies of British journalists, but I now realise that this was simply unwarranted arrogance.

All this is behind me now. Mr Harding is a Great Man and the Wondrous Daily Telegraph has now pronounced that the reason we are short of ships is entirely the fault of the Labour Party. Who am I to disagree with that, or even mention that, had the Conservative Party gained power at the last election, things might not have been any different?

Me, I'm just an ignorant blogger.

COMMENT THREAD

Winning the war

Should we give half a cheer that at least one newspaper has picked up on Dannatt's plea for more resources to be devoted to the armed forces, or will this have no more effect than any of the tons of fish and chip wrappers produced each day?

Well… a micro-cheer – if there is such a thing. But, while the world's favourite newspaper (not) has come up with a stunningly obvious headline declaring that, "Winning the war will need more" – the problem is that the nature of "more" is not specified. What we do get though is this:

For the foreseeable future, the Army's basic task will be to defeat hit-and-run insurgent groups in hostile terrain. Yet the priorities for the defence budget are still geared towards frustrating an attack by the Soviet Union on Western Europe. A very substantial slice goes on our nuclear deterrent; more still will go on updating it. Some £18 billion has been expended on our share of the Eurofighter: a plane that still does not work properly, and for which no military function has been found.

...

The "peace dividend", the pot of gold politicians so love, has long since disappeared. We face a prolonged war against an implacable enemy. Mr Blair has recognised the threat. He, and his successor, now need to provide the resources our Armed Forces need to defeat it.

Clearly, the egregious hacks on The Sunday Telegraph did not fully read the Sarah Sands piece in the Mail (which is hardly surprising as most of them have been fired) but, had Patience given it to the dog, he might have reminded her of this:

What will make a difference is the arrival of more heavily armoured vehicles. Sir Richard is open about the vulnerability of some of the vehicles his soldiers have been using, particularly in Iraq.

"The threats we have been facing in Iraq from last summer grew considerably. The sophistication of the mines and rockets used to attack our vehicles went up significantly."

Thus, 160 six-wheeled, four-ton armoured patrol vehicles are on their way to Afghanistan. There is also a 20-ton vehicle called the Mastiff ready for use in Iraq or Afghanistan. The controversial Snatch Land Rovers, which give little protection, should be replaced. "Over time I want to modernise all patrol vehicles," says Sir Richard. "The snatch vehicles were getting old. They were originally developed for Northern Ireland. I want people to have adequate vehicles for the tasks they carry out." There is also a family of armoured vehicles called FRES (Future Rapid Effect System). The cost of this future equipment is £14 billion.

And there it is. Dannatt, like his predecessor Jackson, is committed to FRES – with a price tag of £14 billion – the biggest single procurement programme for the Army ever devised.

Is anybody out there? FRES, i.e., Future Rapid Effects System, is the biggest single procurement programme for the Army ever devised.

This is not "geared towards frustrating an attack by the Soviet Union on Western Europe" but neither is it suitable for defeating "hit-and-run insurgent groups in hostile terrain." In fact, its primary purpose is to equip the European Rapid Reaction Force, the function of which is unknown – other than to pursue the "colleagues'" ambitions for further defence integration.

It is all very well taking a cheap shot at the Eurofighter (the only thing cheap about it) but the money is spent – or committed. It would cost us more at this stage to cancel the contract than buy the aeroplanes, unless we can dump more on the Saudis.

But when it comes to FRES, we are talking about the future – decisions yet to be made. And not for nothing have we called it a blunder of Eurofighter proportions with serious political implications.

There is still time to reverse course and equip the Army to deal with "hit-and-run insurgent groups", but that is not going to happen unless the media (to say nothing of the politicians) start waking up and discussing forward plans instead of ancient history.

COMMENT THREAD

Before defeat becomes a rout

There is a certain child-like naïveté to the media coverage of General Dannett's remarks which has now run unabated for two days, taking pole position in The Sunday Times this morning.

If one was to see such quality in coursework offered by sixth form pupils, though, one would smile indulgently and take the time out to correct it. But we are not dealing with a sixth form here so much as a situation where the children have taken over and there is no grown-up in a position to set them straight.

Without such guidance, the media narrative has settled on this being an instance of, variously a "brave", "honest", "blunt" soldier – even now a "soldier's soldier" who has courageously "told the truth" about the problems in Iraq. He is even described as having "put a rocket up the politicians who were making life hell for his beleaguered troops", thus leaving Tony Blair variously "battered" and attempting to "play down the rift", with the government "engulfed in a firestorm".

Some hacks write about "damage limitation", others applaud Dannatt's candour while others, with all the pomposity and gravitas that their platform affords them, are calling for his resignation.

This is absolutely classic of the "biff-bam", soap opera, personality-driven style of news reporting that we have to suffer these days, where everything is reduced by these intellectual pygmies to its most basic elements and then expressed in one-dimensional terms with all the subtlety and depth of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

What none of these prattling children even begin to do, though, is examine – much less evaluate – the issues to which Dannatt spoke. And, in endorsing his call for a "phased extraction", the neglect of years is returning to haunt them. Atrophied through years of under-use, their limited brains are quite unable to grasp that the UK is already in the process of withdrawal from Iraq and is seeking to complete the process as fast as is politically and humanly possible.

That is the missing element – the spectre at the feast. It has been brought about by the fact that the British Army is not and has not been for some time up to the task of maintaining order in Southern Iraq. The "best soldiers in the world" are very far from the best – and not even "good enough". That we have, "the best Army in the world" comes from exactly the same stable as, "our NHS is the envy of the world" – with about as much foundation.

Like every other British employer, the Army is struggling with the aftermath of the collapse in the education system, having to deal with recruits of low educational attainment at a time when the technical demands on individual soldiers are increasing.

With competition from other industries, an increasingly unmilitaristic society and the relative poor pay and conditions, it is also having the greatest difficulty recruiting (and keeping) good officers, a situation only temporarily ameliorated by the influx of high quality females attracted by gender equality provisions.

And, if manpower is often of poor quality and insufficient in numbers, so is much of the equipment - as we have recorded on this blog – a great deal of it dangerously so. Furthermore, equipment which could or should be available has either not been thought of, is thought unnecessary or is simply too expensive.

A defeatist attitude amongst British forces is now evident, witness the incident on 3 October when a British soldier was killed and another seriously injured after three mortar shells landed inside the Shaat al-Arab Hotel base in Basra. Rather than any determination to avenge colleagues, what was particularly chilling was the almost off-hand way that British Army spokesman, Major Charlie Burbridge, was cited as saying, "It is a major challenge to stop these sorts of attacks."

Yet, challenge though it might be, it is by no means impossible. Faced with the same problem, the US Marines have developed lightweight counter-mortar radar which can be used to detect incoming rounds and direct helicopters or other assets to deal with the terrorists.

Yet that is simply not an option for the British. Even if they had the radar, they have neither the helicopters nor the rapid armoured vehicles that they would need to combat this threat. Instead, they must take the casualties and hope that, in due course, it will all end.

What is perfectly illustrated by this example is that equipment (and manpower) inadequacies have a significant effect on the tactics adopted – for the very simple reason that certain options require certain equipment - and thence morale and capability. Lacking the necessary (much less desirable) equipment, tactics are often inferior, capabilities are limited and morale falls as a result.

But there is also a peculiarly British arrogance in this theatre where commanders have mistakenly believed that skills acquired in Belfast and other public order operations are necessarily transferable to Iraq, slowing down and sometimes completely inhibiting the development of more appropriate (and effective), theatre-specific tactics.

All of this means that the British Army in Iraq is the next best thing to a failing organisation. You do not need to be the Chief of General Staff to realise that its continued presence will serve only to exacerbate the security situation – and expose British troops to continued casualties. But that is the situation into which General Sir Richard Dannett – as professional head of the Army (its chief uniformed bureaucrat) – has walked.

The degree to which the situation has deteriorated is well illustrated by this BBC report and this local report. With the British roundly having been accused of causing the chaos and the security decline in southern Iraq, especially Basra, by their leniency with the militias and their parties, no one believes the sitation is recoverable. The British presence is simply no longer desired.

Knowing that his Army is not up to the job in Iraq and that the government is neither willing nor able to provide the men and material necessary for it to improve its performance - even if that was possible - Dannatt's only option is withdrawal. And not only does he know this – the government knows it and agrees. Furthermore, the decision to withdraw was made some time ago (when, precisely, we do not know, as the policy change was never announced), so Dannatt's difficulties lie not with the government but elsewhere.

Arguably, Dannatt's central, professional problem is how to extract the Army from Iraq in one piece, without the catastrophic loss of morale that would accompany an enforced withdrawal or open defeat. His public problem, therefore, is how to dress a defeat up as – if not a victory – "a job well done", giving sufficient of a figleaf for the Army to walk away without too much immediate loss of face.

If you thus read his statements, from a military point of view, what he is saying is nonsense. Troops being present, doing their job, will invite a hostile reaction. That is both necessary and welcome in the normal run of things as it is only by provoking the enemy can you bring him to battle and defeat him.

But Dannatt has no intention of even trying to defeat the enemy so, by declaring the obvious, he is simply attempting to create a public climate where withdrawal is seen, on the one hand, to be operationally desirable and, on the other, not as a retreat or a defeat. That is where the media have probably made their biggest error. Somehow, they seem to believe that Dannatt is talking through them to the politicians. They cannot seem to cope with the possibility that he is using them to talk to the wider media as well as the public.

If that is why a Chief of the General Staff is talking to the media then, despite the spluttering of Charles Moore and Matthew Parris, he will remain in office. It will show that he knows – as does the government – that he has to get his troops out before a defeat becomes a rout.

COMMENT THREAD

Now pull the other one

Front page of the Daily Mail would have us believe that the newly appointed Chief of General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt has launched a "devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy" in calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk the consequences for both Iraq and our society.

His views, declares the Mail - given in an "exclusive interview" - will send shockwaves through government. "They are a total repudiation of the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly insisted that British presence in Iraq is morally right and has had no effect on our domestic security."

As always, though, this is looking-glass politics. If the hacks and editorial staff the Daily Mail stopped to think for more than one second, they would appreciate that a newly appointed CGS does not take on the government and contradict its foreign policy. And nor has he.

Within the Army, it has long been the view that neither the nation nor the armed forces have any appetite for the continued adventure in Iraq. Furthermore, it is an open secret in Whitehall that British policy is to withdraw from Iraq as soon as humanly (and politically) possible.

To that effect, Dannatt is simply preparing the ground for that eventual withdrawal, acting entirely in accordance with government policy and intentions. Hence his willingness to be interviewed by the hacks on the Mail.

The only puzzle is whether the Daily Mail actually believes the guff it has written and, if it does, whether we are stupid enough to believe it. On balance though, it is probably the former. It has commissioned a long piece from Sarah Sands, who has only recent moved over to join the Mail after doing her best to wreck the Sunday Telegraph. Her piece is headed, "Sir Richard Dannatt: A very honest General," but it could just as well be headed, "Sarah Sands: A remarkably stupid woman".

Needless to say, Dannatt is now denying any rift between himself and the government and said that his comments were not "substantially new or substantially newsworthy".

However, the dead tree media have filled a little more space, the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme has waffled a bit more and an avalanche of ill-informed comment has been triggered. None of us are any the wiser, except DOTR readers – but then you knew that already.

COMMENT THREAD

The march of the amateurs

We have spent considerable time chuntering that the MSM does not give any space to defence procurement. Now, however, equipping the armed forces is at last on the agenda and we are beginning to see some articles on the issue. But, if the Guardian is any guide, they might as well not bother.

In a piece headed, "British military bites the bullet", with Mark Oliver asking, "Is the British military underfunded, or just spending badly," we find that the years of ignoring the subject, combined with the inherent ignorance and laziness of the MSM, produces something so distorted it is hardly worth reading.

The one thing Oliver does not do is answer his own question - to which the answer is "yes" - yes, it is underfunded and it (or the MoD) is spending badly. But there is a strong European element to the mis-spending, which The Guardian does not even begin to address (although it does mention the Eurofighter and the Type 45 Destroyers), so I thought it would be helpful to put together some examples of Euro-wastage. These are just some of them:

The joint US/UK Tracer/FSCS programme to develop a tracked armoured reconnaissance vehicle. For the British Army, this was to replace the ageing Scimitar CV(R)T. However, the MoD pulled out in 2000 before the first prototype was ready in order to pursue a European project, losing at least £131 million for absolutely no gain.



The Future Command and Liaison Vehicle - the "Panther": Italian-built at a cost of £413,000 each, these supposedly carry out some of the roles of "Tracer" (above) but are useless for patrolling or other functions in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The cost of £166 million for 401 vehicles is, therefore, dead money.



The "Cobra" anti-battery radar - high tech equipment for detecting the source of artillery shells, mortars and rockets. German-built, 10 sets were procured at £17.8 million each. Buying US-built "Firefinder" systems at less than £10 million each would have saved £82 million, giving the Army a perfectly acceptable anti-artillery capability.



The "Trigat" projects - medium and long-range anti-tank missiles. British participation in these European projects (appropriately, developed by "Euromissile") cost us over £314 million before we had to pull out after the systems failed to deliver, leaving the MoD with a total loss. A rush purchase of US-built Javelin missiles had to be made to equip the Army.




The Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle (MRAV) project, named the "Boxer" - a joint German, Dutch and British venture, managed as a European project. The MoD pulled out after the vehicle proved too big and too heavy for the RAF's fleet of Hercules transports, with a total loss to the defence budget of £48 million.



The MoD has spent (or has committed) £1045 million to developing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), first the Phoenix - losing £345 million - and now the Watchkeeper, to be built by the French-owned Thales company. Yet, despite this extraordinary expenditure, the MoD has no UAV capability in theatre and is having to spend upwards of £60 million on buying/leasing US Predator UAVs. Had we bought proven US systems in the first place, we might have saved more than £400 million.

The MoD has bought 22 of these European Westland-Augusta Merlin HC3 transport helicopters. Working out the purchase price is near impossible but at an estimated £30 million each, US equivalents would have been less than half-price. alternatively, the RAF could have bought Chinooks at £25 million each, saving £110 million in total and considerably more on maintenance, the Merlins currently exceeding expected maintenance costs by over 200 percent.

At over £60 million each, these Eurofighter aircraft are an acknowledged Cold War relic. Although rated highly as an inteceptor, current versions have no ground attack capability. US-built F-16s, an adequate fighter with a proven ground attack capability would have cost in the order of £20 million each. With 232 on order, notionally, the MoD could have saved upwards of £10 billion.


Not only the aircraft but also the weapons - the European-designed Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile costs an amazing £1,000,000 each - for what is effectively a 1,000lb bomb. Having bought 900 of them, the MoD could have saved over £830 million if it had purchased the US equivalent, the JASSM.

The Eurofighter is also to be equipped with European-designed air-to-air missiles. These are known as the Meteor. With the total costs at over £1.4 billion, purchase of US-designed Raytheon missiles (which are being bought anyway as a stop-gap, until the Meteor is ready) would have saved the MoD some £900 million.



In the rush for European harmonisation, the MoD joined with the French and Italians on the "Horizon" programme for a common frigate. Formalised in 1992, the UK eventually pulled out in April 1999 after failure to agree a common specification and complaints of "unfocused management", with an estimated loss of £537 million, leaving the French and Italians to continue with the project.




Co-operation did not end with the Horizon project. Although the MoD decided to go it alone with the platform, emerging as the Type 45 Destroyer, the ship is equipped with European-designed missile launchers and missiles, which largely account for the huge cost of £1 billion per ship, some £400 million more than the Australians are paying for the more capable US-designed Arleigh Burke class missile destroyers. With five ships now planned, that is a saving of £2 billion.

For the Type 23 anti-submarine frigates, we developed our own type 2087 sonar, at £9 million per set. But the development costs were an additional £300 million, given as a free gift to the French company which bought up the UK manufacturer, leaving it free to sell cut-price versions to the French Navy. Had we bought from the Americans, we could have saved that £300 million.


And finally, the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system. By the time it is fully operational, the UK will have paid £400 million towards its development and commissioning costs - the system being then used to underpin the European Rapid Reaction Force. But the US "Navstar" GPS is already available - and free of charge. The £400 million is a total waste of money for a duplicate system.



Putting these all together - but excluding the Eurofighter costs, which are a special case - the excess payments, for no gain whatsoever, come to £8.8 billion. That is considerably more than is spent in any one year on procurement. That would buy a ridiculous 35,000 RG-31 mine protected vehicles or 350 Chinook helicopters.

That is the measure of the wastage on European projects and, the amazing thing is, the MSM can't even begin to work it all out. Read the Guardian piece and see how amateur Mr Oliver really is.

COMMENT THREAD

The real thing

As troubles multiply for the European aerospace giant EADS, the Financial Times has been quoting Airbus Chief Executive Christian Streiff as saying that the revamp of the mid-size A350 XWB project could be at risk.

But more worrying are the implications for our defence capability as Streiff is also saying that the A400M – the military airlifter - could suffer cost overruns or delays. "The timetable is exactly on the edge. It is a tense situation with a number of suppliers and internally. We are exactly on track but without any reserves [of time]," Strieff says.

Britain has ordered 25 of these machines at an expected cost of £2.4 billion, to replace its fleet of 51 US-built C-130 Hercules transports and is suffering a marked shortage of airlift capacity as it waits for Airbus to bring the A400M into production.

Strieff's problem is that the A400M was undertaken by Airbus as a fixed-price contract and he is complaining that, "We have not yet found the right cost base to get to profitability targets," a coded reference to the project over-running its budget.

With the parent group EADS having issued a €4.8bn profits warning following the delays arising from the A380 superjumbo programme, it might not be able to afford to bail out a fixed price military contract.

That there is a potential problem seems to be confirmed by the speed with which Francois Lureau, head of France's DGA procurement agency, came rushing to the defence of the project, declaring that, "the key milestones have been respected and that deliveries are on track for 2009." That, of course, is not the point – the question is whether cost over-runs will force Airbus to pull the plug or slow down production.

In addition to the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg - have the aircraft. South Africa has ordered eight, while Malaysia has ordered four, bringing the order book to just short of 200.

As a straw in the wind, the MoD has now come out openly to tell European politicians to stop meddling in the future of EADS. It is hinting that if they do not the government would reconsider its role as a multibillion-pound customer.

EADS is currently involved in the strategic airtanker contract for the RAF and is also a member of the Eurofighter consortium, but the MoD intervention at this stage could also be a warning over the A400M. With British forces desperately overstretched and in need of additional airlift capacity, the US Boeing corporation is ready and willing to sell the British the tried and tested C-17, which is faster, carries more and is already in service.

It will not be too long before service chiefs get tired of looking at photoshop pics of the A400M (top left) and start demanding the real thing (above right). What price European co-operation then, which consistently fails to deliver the goods?

COMMENT THREAD

Adding to the confusion

Tucked in to the Boy King's closing speech yesterday afternoon was this little gem:

Our armed forces are doing important work in Afghanistan and Iraq. So let the message go out from this conference, to the best armed forces in the world. You are fighting in our name, and we are proud of what you do.

In contrast with some of the other messages delivered by the Boy King, this received massive applause, demonstrating that Tory instincts are still alive and well.

The Boy had not finished though. He want the conference to send our forces a second message, "responding to the questions that our troops themselves are asking". Said the Boy, "They're asking for armoured vehicles that will actually defend them against roadside bombs…".

That is an indication of how far this issue has climbed up the political agenda, although – as you would expect – the Boy had nothing specific to offer: "…we should do more, much more for them," was all he could say, but again to prolonged applause.

According to an incoherent newspaper piece, what the "Army chiefs" actually want in Afghanistan is heavy armour.

This follows concern that the Taliban is planning to replace "human wave" attacks with a much more lethal campaign involving suicide car bombers and roadside explosives. Such a change in tactics was alluded to in July by Tory back-bencher Ann Winterton so the MoD has had plenty of time to get used to the idea.

But what is confusing is an assertion that while the MoD put in an emergency order for Pinzgauer and Cougar armoured vehicles to beef up protection, "senior officers" want heavy armour to provide protection against large car bombs driven by suicide bombers that have destroyed several Canadian vehicles over the summer. Thus the Army is looking to deploying Warriors (pictured left) or even Challenger MBTs by March next year.

Says the newspaper, the Canadians are "also planning to deploy Leopard tanks", something flagged up on this blog last month but it is perhaps unaware that the tanks are not being used primarily for "force protection". They are being deployed to provide a "direct fire capability" in areas of southern Afghanistan where Canadians have encountered resistance from entrenched forces

As the Canadians have demonstrated several times now, their RG-31 Nyalas are providing more than adequate protection against IEDs and suicide bombs and, as this dramatic footage shows (right), the real problem is lightly armoured jeep-like vehicles.

The picture shows the effects of a suicide bomber on a motorcycle who attacked a Canadian military convoy in the volatile region west of Kandahar, ramming his vehicle into a G-Wagon. Although no Canadian casualties were reported in that attack, three Afghanistan civilians were hurt and the vehicle was a write-off. Thus, after the recent spectacular demonstration of survivability, arrangements are also being made to send another 21 Nyalas to Afghanistan.

What must be of concern, therefore, is the vagueness surrounding reasons for the deployment of British equipment. Compared with the Canadian RG-31s, the "Cougars" are more heavily armoured, although we are uncertain as to precisely how many of the 100 ordered are to go to Afghanistan.

By contrast, the Pinzgauers are dangerously vulnerable, offering little more protection than a "Snatch" Land Rover or armoured G-Wagon. Yet, the Boy King's own shadow defence minister, Gerald Howarth, was recently seen praising the "superb" Pinzgauer, after he had been taken on an "exhilarating" off-road test drive – allowing himself to be photographed for publicity purposes at the wheel of one of the vehicles.

It thus does rather strike me that we need some clarity about what the Army needs. Neither the media nor, it seems, the Army itself, seems to be entirely sure about what it wants and for what purpose its armour should be used. So far, though, all the Conservatives seem to be doing is adding to the confusion.

COMMENT THREAD

Medals galore

The news that almost 180 British soldiers have been recommended for gallantry awards for their efforts in Afghanistan, including "several" Victoria Crosses, brings to mind the last days of the siege of Stalingrad, when Junkers 52s from Hitler's Luftwaffe were despatched to airdrop container-loads of Iron Crosses to the beleaguered troops of the 6th Army.

That is not in any way to disparage the bravery of our troops but, as The Daily Telegraph remarks, the scale of the awards suggests a conflict out of all proportion to the security operation first outlined by the government when Britain committed forces to southern Afghanistan in January. John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, expressed the hope that the troops might be able to get in and out of Helmand without firing a shot.

While it is right and proper that the troops' endeavours should be properly recognised, it also has to be said that the government is getting a good deal, relying on the skill and sheer bravery of our men to make up for the pitiful inadequacies in troop numbers and equipment. Handing out medals is considerably cheaper than buying the armoured vehicles and helicopters which the Army so desperately needs.

And, if handing out medals is a cheap way of keeping troop morale high, what are we to make of the report conveyed by the BBC that Brigadier Ed Butler, the outgoing ground forces commander, is claiming that a "secret deal" has brought a halt to violence in Musa Qala, a district which had seen intense fighting.

According to the BBC's Alastair Leithead, the peace deal was struck with the elders of Musa Qala, following a "secret meeting" in the desert, since when there have been fewer number of clashes in recent days. This, Butler believes – or so we are told – is a sign that the Taleban was tactically defeated ahead of the winter. "I think we have won, we may not be quite there yet this year," he says.

This, however, simply does not match up with other reports that Taliban attacks against American forces in eastern Afghanistan have tripled since a truce was signed between the Pakistan government and pro-Taliban tribesmen in Pakistan's tribal areas, suggesting (as we indicated earlier), that the Taliban has easy access to reinforcemements.

Furthermore, the recent slacking of hostilities may have something to do with the start of Ramadan, rather than any effect British troops may have had on their enemy, which might explain why ground troops "have questioned" whether the dip in fighting is merely a sign that the Taleban is regrouping. If that is the case, the British government had better start minting some more medals.

On the other hand, if the situation is – albeit temporarily – slackening off in Afghanistan, it seems that, after months of inactivity in Iraq, action is underway by 3,000 British troops in Basra, aimed at curbing the widespread lawlessness in the province.

However, as in Al Amarah, when the British have taken a robust line, retaliation has quickly followed in the form of roadside bombing and, given that the Army has yet to receive any of the promised armoured vehicles, they are just as vulnerable to this tactic now as they have been. There is a possibility, therefore, that a hiatus in the Afghan casualty count may be replaced by an upsurge in Iraqi losses, in which case, the medal makers are going to be busy, as there is no sign that the government is preparing substantially to increase the support and equipment to these troops.

Ironically though, even if things got to breaking point, the RAF does not have sufficient airlift capacity to emulate the Luftwaffe and air drop the medals.

COMMENT THREAD

Bloggers - which is it to be?

Having dealt in a little detail with the Afghan situation on Sunday, what is particularly remarkable about the piece to follow is that it cites the European Union's special representative in Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, who not only seems to make a great deal of sense but also seems to corroborate the source we used in our Sunday piece.

The details we picked up not from the UK media but off a Texan online news service with a shorter version of the same report from the Chinese news service Xinhua.

Now, before dealing with the reports and other information, the summation of which has worrying implications – a personal note.

Frankly, I am getting more than a little tired of the self-obsessed indulgence the media is currently displaying with the Tony and Gordon show in Manchester at the Labour Party conference. But that irritation also extends to the British political bloggers who seem quite content to follow in the wake of the MSM and prattle endlessly about exactly the same issues.

Often the humour and analysis is about the level one would expect of the 4th form of a second-rate boys boarding school and I have heard more intelligent comment from college students in fifth and sixth forms in the lectures I have been given to schools recently.

In a nutshell, the Tony and Gordon show is fluff – nothing is going to be decided immediately and much water is going to pass under the bridge before things come to a head. Meanwhile, we are a nation at war, we do have troops committed to a dangerous foreign venture and, if the material we have accumulated in this and our previous reports is at all representative of the situation, there is the potential for the situation to go seriously belly-up. In that case, over the winter, we could be seeing soldiers coming home in coffins in very large numbers.

And, if the MSM does not have the maturity to lead the way, it is for the bloggers to take over and demand a serious debate on a situation which is becoming ever-more unsettling. As bloggers, you can indulge in your idle tittering and puerile humour or you can act as grown ups. The choice is yours and your readers will be your judges.

Returning to the substantive issues, the details we have seen echo the report by Canadian journalist Graeme Smith, which we reviewed on Sunday, Vendrell – who lives in Kabul – says that the West must "find out more" about the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan before it can defeat it.

Standing aside from the fact that we actually have an EU official who seems to be talking sense, we will take our information from where we can get it. Apparently he was speaking to journalists in Brussels – and event, as we indicated, entirely unreported by the British MSM, when he suggested that NATO and other Western institutions did not have a sufficiently clear idea of who they were fighting. He told journalists that:

We do need to seriously look at how the Taliban is composed, what goes by the name of Taliban, who are the people that we label Taliban …Are they all part of a single group under the command of Mullah Omar? Or are they autonomous groups who perhaps do not have the kind of national or Islamist agenda that the Taliban are known for, but perhaps have specific grievances regarding certain provinces in the country? We need to find out more about that.

This was precisely the issue addressed by Smith who reported that many of the “insurgents” killed in the just completed Operation Medusa were not in fact Taliban but aggrieved local tribesmen, rebelling against corrupt and violent government forces and police.

We also reported on Captain Leo Docherty warning that, "Having a big old fight is pointless and just making things worse," but Vendrell seems to be contradicting this by calling for "quick" military strikes against insurgents. But then, like other commentators, including Docherty, he says these must then be followed by reconstruction efforts to deny the Taliban new recruits.

Both Vendrell and Docherty agree on the need to avoid civilian casualties, which Vendrell says "come at a political price." As to the follow-up, he wants the area of governance by the central government extended progressively from the areas which have been taken over, coupled with immediate improvement in governance and improvement in reconstruction."

The reference to "improvement in governance" perhaps hints that all is not well with the current situation, but while Vendrell does not elaborate, he does say that the reconstruction effort must become much more visible, and that Western aid must shift from humanitarian assistance to support for the overall economic rehabilitation of the country. This Vendrell says is necessary to undermine support for the militants.

"At the end of the day," he argues, "the reason why the Taliban are able to recruit so many people is less due to ideological grounds, [and] more because the Taliban is able to pay better than the police and the army pay their own [people]."

I am not entirely sure about this last comment as Graeme Smith indicated that the police were being recruited from specific tribal groups, which was partly the cause of the problem, but it might also be the case that this tribal group is not being recruited by the Taliban. Neverthless, if government servants are not being paid enough, their loyalty certainly cannot be assured.

However, as one might expect, Vendrell supports the request of NATO commanders for more troops, and he also takes issue with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, disputing that the deals Musharraf has agreed with tribal elders in Pakistan's Pashtun region of Waziristan provide a guarantee that Taliban infiltration will stop. He notes that after the first such agreement with Southern Waziristan, infiltration from Pakistan into the neighboring Afghan provinces of Paktia and Khost had, in fact, increased.

Putting this together so far, it is common ground that we do not have anything like enough troops in theatre and that they are seriously – if not dangerously – under-equipped. Contrary to some reports, it seems unlikely that there will be any respite for out troops this winter and, if the Vendrell report is correct, Taliban reinforcements are flooding over the Pakistan border.

To counter this, Nato troops should be holding the ground they currently occupy and extending their grip, while also pushing ahead with major development projects, which also require security.

But, from The Independent this weekend, we learn that that British forces in Afghanistan are restructuring their operations. The policy of setting up "advanced platoon houses" will be quietly abandoned and British troops will instead be concentrated in more easily defended bases near the towns of Lashkargar, Grishk, Sangin and Musa Qala, as well as their main base, Camp Bastion. The outposts in the Sangin Valley are still being manned by British troops, but they are due to be handed over to the Afghan army, and no new ones are likely to be established.

In other words, there is to be no holding of ground or accelerated development. Instead, rather as in Iraq, the British contingent is retreating to barracks for the winter, leaving the field to the Taliban, and the population at the mercy of the murderous and wholly inadequate government forces who are parties to a vicious tribal feud.

Even if the Taliban do not step up attacks over the winter – and the most likely outcome is that they will - in the Spring if not sooner, the Army will face a re-invigorated Taliban, reinforced by recruits from over the border and from local citizens who will have been, effectively deserted by Nato forces and have thus turned fighters, siding with the Taliban.

Even the Independent asserts that, "most worryingly, there appears to be no shortage of Islamist fighters coming across the porous Pakistani border to replace the killed and wounded", so the body counts of which we have been hearing so much recently are of very little significance.

The paper cites an officer saying, "We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, locally or from across the border. We have used B1 bombers, Harriers and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles, they have fired so many."

During the winter, air cover will be harder to maintain and re-supply will be more difficult. One does not have to be alarmist to assert that there is a potential disaster in the making. The signs are all there for anyone who wants to see.

Basically, as I see it, we have two options. We either heavily reinforce the Nato contingent and urgently upgrade its equipment and logistic capability or we pull out. Anything else is to invite slaughter.

That analysis might, of course, be wrong. But I haven't seen any better and people in a position to know better than me do not disagree with it. If it is halfway right, something has to be done – soon. Not in the spring or sometime never but now. Given a grown-up opposition, this would be a main issue in the Conservative Party Conference next week, but I somehow doubt it will be.

That does, as I say, leave the bloggers. You – collectively – can continue to play your little games. Or you can show up the media and the politicians and make the running. Which is it to be?

COMMENT THREAD

This does not look good

It must have been a slow news day yesterday because Sir Richard Dannatt, the Army's new Chief of the General Staff, stayed on most of the day's television news bulletins, springing to the defence of the RAF after Friday's attack on it.

Oddly though, Dannatt did not even hint that the Major who made his complaints about the RAF may have been mistaken – and been complaining about the wrong air force. And it is doubly odd that not one single news station (or newspaper) which reported on the affair has mentioned this. Clearly, the Major's complaints supports the media narrative that "our boys" are ill equipped and under-strength, so to cast doubt on the man would have reduced the authority of his report.

But this superficiality is getting serious. When it comes to news on Afghanistan, we as a nation are dangerously ill-informed, in two key areas – firstly, the general strategic position and, secondly, over the possible course of events during the winter.

To get some insight into the strategic position, one has to turn to a piece in the Canadian Globe and Mail and an account of the recent "Operation Medusa", another Nato operation which has been coming to a "successful" conclusion, this one in the neighbouring Kandahar province.

Headed, "Inspiring tale of triumph over Taliban not all it seems," the piece is written by Graeme Smith and it does not make for happy reading. Officially, the operation has been declared a success. A thousand Taliban have been killed, others have been routed and villagers are welcoming the return of government rule. Military officials say the operation may have destroyed up to one third of the insurgency's hardcore ranks.

But, writes Smith, interviews with tribal elders, farmers and senior officials in the city of Kandahar suggest a version of events that is more complicated, and less reassuring. The revolt, it seems, has been fuelled by tribal feuds, government corruption and police violence – all of which has been exploited by the Taliban, protecting local inhabitants from the police and government. Thus,

…many of fighters killed - perhaps half of them, by one estimate - were not Taliban stalwarts, but local farmers who reportedly revolted against corrupt policing and tribal persecution. It appears the Taliban did not choose the Panjwai district as a battleground merely because the irrigation trenches and dry canals provided good hiding places, but because many villagers were willing to give them food, shelter - even sons for the fight - in exchange for freedom from the local authorities.

And, although the government has regained control of the district, there are troubling signs that the area may be sliding back toward the same conditions that sparked the violent revolt. Smith tells us:

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Taliban fighters continue to lurk around the district, and that police in the area have resumed the abusive tactics that originally ignited local anger. Farmers say gangs of policemen, often their tribal rivals, have swept into Panjwai behind the Canadian troops to search for valuables. They have been described ransacking homes, burning shops and conducting shakedowns at checkpoints.

This will come as no surprise to anyone with even the glimmering of understanding of Afghan politics and history. This current situation always had to be much more complex than a simple "biff-bam" punch-up between Nato "goodies" Taliban "baddies", to be reduced to "Boys Own" style comic strips by a supposedly serious newspaper like The Sunday Times (below).


In this context, while we hear from the likes of defence secretary Des Browne and now from General Dannatt that the "Taliban" is proving to be a more difficult adversary for British troops in Afghanistan than expected, no one in the British media has sought to offer an explanation as to why the resistance is so strong.

We can, however, glean something of the same dynamic, as described by Smith from the piece earlier this month about the resignation of Captain Leo Docherty.

A former aide-de-camp to the commander of the British taskforce in southern Afghanistan, he has described the campaign in Helmand province as "a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency". His view is that, "Having a big old fight is pointless and just making things worse." He adds:

All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British … It's a pretty clear equation - if people are losing homes and poppy fields, they will go and fight. I certainly would.

Docherty also observes that Nato lacks the capability to carry out development work and this can only reinforce what seems to be the growing impression that Nato troops are simply another version of the Soviet invaders, an occupying military force supporting a corrupt, murderous regime.

As to the second issue, we have heard from a number of media and other commentators that, with the onset of winter, hostilities will slacken off, given Nato forces – and especially the British – time to re-group and rest.

However, as numerous accounts of the Soviet invasion show, this is a myth (see here, here, here and, especially here).

In the south – unlike the north – temperatures do not fall precipitously but the weather generally does make flying more difficult and dangerous, especially for helicopters. Effectively, for sophisticated armies, logistics become much more difficult and the balance of tactical advantage shifts to the insurgents.

Far from diminishing over the winter, therefore, Nato forces can expect attacks to intensify and, given the extreme difficulty the British already have in supplying their forces, we could see a major disasters just at a time when we are schooled by the media to expect it least.

Putting the two together, it would seem that – far from entering the region to spread peace and democracy, our troops are blundering into tribal wars, where government forces themselves are tribal protagonists. By supporting the government, far from defeating the Taliban, we are creating allies which, over winter may take advantage of an improved tactical situation to strike back with a vengeance.

Whichever way you play this, it does not look good and the media, as always, has lost the plot.

COMMENT THREAD

Winds of change?

As with Kremlinology, you look for clues where you can find them – and they are beginning to suggest that there has been a sea change in British foreign policy, away from Euro-enthusiasm and genuinely pro-US. All that just at a time when the British public seems to be turning the other way.

It is not just what Blair says - words are cheap, especially when they are uttered by our prime minister. And he tends to be one of those Walter Mitty characters who seems to agree with the last person he met.

No, the key pointers are the concrete indicators and none are more so than defence purchasing – this being one of the most active areas of European integration. It was thus the predominance of major projects purchased by the MoD that alerted us to this hidden policy of Europeanisation, which seemed to run contrary to the over Atlanticism of the Blair government.

With the row about the Joint Strike Fighter the retreat of BAE Systems from the British defence market, which we noted in April, and other signs, it seemed as if we were moving to the end game.

One of those signs was the sale of Britain's last naval sonar system manufacturer to the French company Thales and the purchase from that company by the Royal Navy of the Sonar 2087 equipment for its Type 23 Frigates. That seemed to set the seal on the Europeanisation programme.

But now, via DefenseNews comes news which seems to turn the perception on its head. In a tightly fought contest, the MoD has awarded a £30 million contract for a new sonar system for its ballistic missile submarine fleet not to Thales or another European producer but to the Maritime Systems and Sensors division of the US defence giant Lockheed Martin.

But what is really illuminating is the comment from rival bidder, Devonport-based DML that, according to the UK's recently announced Defence Industry Strategy, "sonar systems are viewed as an essential sovereign capability".

That has not in the past prevented the MoD from buying European but for this contract to go an American company does seem to signal a significant shift in British policy. That may also have been influenced by the reluctance of the "colleagues" to pull their weight in Afghanistan, demonstrating to Blair that, when the chips are down, his European "allies" are not to be trusted.

Straws in the wind, maybe but these could also be the winds of change.

COMMENT THREAD

The challenge of reality

If one were to try and guess what either or both Basil Liddell Hart (left) and JFC Fuller were thinking at this moment – presumably as they perched on their lofty celestial clouds (or perhaps not in the case of Fuller) - it is difficult to decide whether they would be laughing or crying.

Both of them armoured warfare theorists in the inter-war period and strong advocates of the tank, they might perhaps be amused – in an ironic sort of way - by the news that the Canadian government has ordered its armed forces to prepare 120 troops and 15 Leopard tanks to send to Afghanistan as early as next week.

This is the government which used has 66 of these machines but was in the process of trimming the fleet to about 44 vehicles, judging them costly and less useful than in the Cold War era, having succumbed to the current military fashion for medium-weight wheeled armoured vehicles.

What has the hallmarks of a sudden decision follows changes in Taliban tactics in southwestern Afghanistan, where the 2,200 Canadian forces contingent is heavily committed in Operation Medusa to clearing out the Taliban from Kandahar province.

According to Canadian deputy commander Colonel Fred Lewis, the Taliban appear to be concentrating forces and digging in defences - moving to what he called "semi-conventional" combat, compared to guerrilla-style tactics employed before. In this scenario, the tanks would provide well-protected firepower to blast away and plough over such defences.

Interestingly, at 42 tons, the Leopards are considerably lighter than the US Abrams tank – weighing in at 65 tons – are more lightly armed with a 105mm gun as opposed to the Abram’s 120mm, but they are also faster. They may prove a better weapon against lightly armed irregulars, providing the Canadian all-arms co-operation is good enough to protect them from the ubiquitous RPG-7s.

But the crucial issue here is that, yet again, another army is turning to heavier armour. This follows in the wake of the US and Israeli armies, who have found that there is no substitute for thick steel when protection is needed, reversing the thinking of recent decades where the tank has been considered redundant on the modern battlefield.

The news comes little more than a week after the new British Chief of the General Staff (the professional head of the British Army), Sir Richard Dannatt , has called for a debate on defence spending, questioning whether the five percent of public spending (about £30bn) on defence was sufficient.

A similar line was taken by The Times but it must surely be getting to the point where there must be a similar debate on what equipment is needed by our forces, who are committed to so-called "asymmetric" conflicts for the foreseeable future. Not least, the big-spending projects like the £14 billion FRES project must be reconsidered, now that the former CGS, General Sir Mike Jackson – and champion of the project – has departed.

The problem is, of course, that – nominally – the UK government is still committed to Chirac's dream of a European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF), of which the FRES concept is an integral part. Will Blair have the courage to tell L’Escroc that he needs to ditch the dream or will we have to wait for his successor – presumably Gordon Brown – to break the bad news to Chirac's successor?

Therein, however, lies danger. So laboriously has the ERRF deal been stitched up that unravelling it and its component parts, like the European Capabilities Action Plan and establishing the EU Battlegroups (with plans only finalised in 2005), would open up a such a can of worms that the "colleagues" might resist any review. They could instead put pressure on member state signatories to honour their commitments and maintain their European fantasy.

Thus, while most of the forces which are actually in contact with the enemy are having to revise their thinking – and their equipment programmes – to deal with the realities on the ground, the British government may find itself under pressure to stick to the programme agreed with the "colleagues".

Whether a new prime minister will rise to the challenge – the challenge of reality versus dogma – and resist the pressure, will be an important test. Many lives will depend on the result.

COMMENT THREAD

What is wrong with these gormless hacks?

Under the heading, "They deserve more", The Sunday Telegraph today is launching a campaign to "get the Government to reward our soldiers properly".

Central to this campaign is the argument that the government now pays a newly qualified teacher £52.49 per day whereas a private "dodging bullets, bombs and missiles in Afghanistan is paid £39.24p a day for the privilege".

Illustrating just how lame this argument is, the paper is referring to the lowest level of wage, which would be paid to an 18-year-old soldier after 20 weeks of (free) training, a young man who may have no qualifications or experience.

By the time a soldier reaches the age of 21 – the age at which a newly qualified teacher might start – he will be on £54.60 a day (with no student loan repayments), unless of course he has been promoted, whence as a lance-corporal he will be earning £57.10 or, as a Corporal, a minimum of £64.48p. And, of course, certain specialists (such as parachutists) receive additional special pay, currently £4.85 per day.

Add to that a non-contributory pension – which can be carried over to other careers – plus tax-free lump sum after completing 18 years service, and the last problem soldiers have is their pay-scale. It is certainly not, as The Sunday Telegraph claims, a "pathetically inadequate level of pay", and far from being an "outrage".

What is an outrage though is their pathetic level of equipment, which Booker addresses in his column. He writes:

When Cpl Mark Wright of 3 Para was killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, attempting to rescue six comrades who had been badly injured when their patrol vehicle was hit by a mine, this brought to 35 the number of our Armed Forces killed since their new deployment in Helmand. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been at pains to conceal the vehicle's identity, but the evidence suggests that yet again it was a Snatch Land Rover.

When Canadian and German patrols were also hit by explosive devices, their occupants escaped largely unscathed because their vehicles, an RG-31 and a Dingo, are designed to be "mine protected". This underlined the MoD's scarcely believable folly in sending our troops into action in Afghanistan and Iraq in unprotected vehicles, with the wholly predictable result that more than 30 have now died.

The MoD seeks to reassure us that it will soon be sending 100 Pinzgauer patrol vehicles to Afghanistan, costing £487,000 each. What they do not admit is that these "coffins on wheels", as they are known, offer less mine protection than the £60,000 Land Rovers. Meanwhile the RG-31s used by our allies, costing just £320,000, have saved scores of lives. Not the least forgivable aspect is how the MoD uses spin and deceit to conceal its incompetence.

Put it to the average soldier to whether they would prefer a wage rise, or decent kit that might keep them alive, and I have no doubt where their choice would lie.

So what is it with these gormless hacks that they so consistently grab the wrong end of the stick?

COMMENT THREAD

When is it going to stop?

Via The Times, agencies and others, we learn with great regret that the Army lost three more soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday, with 11 other troops injured.

Particularly distressing was the death of one of the soldiers after his vehicle hit a land mine, with five other troops also seriously injured. Another soldier received minor injuries.

The incident took place in the north of Helmand province, and occurred after the soldiers' patrol strayed into an unmarked minefield. There was no contact with the Taleban.

Very few news reports mention a vehicle, however, and the MoD have not disclosed the type. The likelihood is that it was a "Snatch" Land Rover. From the number involved and the fact this vehicle is the most widely-used patrol vehicle, the odds point very much towards this.

Another soldier of the three who died today one of the crew who was ambushed by a suicide bomber last Friday – an attack that had already left one soldier dead.

Yet, German forces have recently been subject to an attack by a suicide bomber while one of their patrols also hit a mine. Riding in mine-protected Dingos, however, both crews survived with only very minor injuries.

In May, a Canadian vehicle also ran over a mine after it had been sent to aid a resupply convoy that experienced a breakdown of one of its vehicles.

Fortunately, the vehicle was an RG-31 Nyala. Although the crew was briefly hospitalised after the incident, Brig. Gen. David Fraser, commander of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, was reported to be smiling as he left the hospital after visiting the soldiers.

For the British yesterday, there were no smiles. Yet the tragedy of the mine and suicide bomb incidents is that the deaths and serious injuries were almost certainly preventable. Unlike the other nations providing major force numbers in Afghanistan, though, British soldiers have no mine protected vehicles for carrying out patrols. Had they been German or Canadian, their odds of survival would have been that much higher.

And the only thing on the horizon for the troops are lightly armoured Pinzgauer trucks, which provide no mine protection either.

When the hell is the MoD going to do something about these unnecessary deaths?

COMMENT THREAD

Dying of ignorance

A crop of letters in the Telegraph today (double-click to enlarge), under the heading, "Armed Forces deaths are the result of a lack of equipment", attests to the fact that the this blog is by no means alone in its view of the MoD's procurement performance – not that we ever thought we were.

But a recurrent theme in the debate is the issue of "underfunding". For instance, Telegraph correspondent James Heitz Jackson of London sees a direct correlation between the overstretch and underfunding imposed on our armed forces and the deaths of service personnel.

This is a charge made by former soldier Michael Moriarty in the "comment is free" section of the Guardian last week. Moriarty actually claims that soldiers are paying with their lives for the MoD’s incompetence, declaring that, "escalating commitments, budget squeezes and big equipment programmes have left Britain's forces fatally overstretched". He argues that:

Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching our forces - the army in particular - beyond the limits of the assumptions on which their funding is based. This situation has arisen through a combination of the government's enthusiasm for use of the armed forces to support its foreign-policy aims and the failure of defence chiefs to adequately highlight the limitations of military force and to demand that the government properly resource its military ambitions. There is a real risk that the armed forces could fail in their politically appointed tasks, with terrible long-term consequences for both them and Britain's world standing.

This has had defence secretary Des Browne rushing to the ramparts with what he thinks is a rebuttal, denying that British troops are ill-equipped and that the defence budget is insufficient.

At the heart of Bowne's rebuttal is his claim that the Afghan operation is fully funded from the Special Reserve and, therefore, the defence budget is not threatened by operational costs. Furthermore, he claims, the annual defence budget has risen by five billion pounds over the last five years - well in excess of inflation.

One has to say that this sort of charge and counter-charge gets us nowhere. It is little more that the "yah-boo-sucks" type of exchange that you can get any day in any school playground, lacking as it does any detail upon which to chew.

Actually, both are wrong and both are right – and neither has got to the key point. Yes, the defence budget has increased, and yes British forces are underfunded. And the reason both are right is that the money is going on useless projects like the Eurofighter, the Type 45 Destroyers and the Storm Shadow (the million pound bomb) – none of which are any use to the troops committed in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

But there is another all-important issue which neither of the proponents seem to have recognised. That is the value for money issue, which must also be assessed with regard to the tactical need.

Taking the second point first, outside a very narrow group of military specialists, there is very little debate as to what precisely is the right type and mix of equipment needed for counter-insurgency operations. Yet this issue is too important to be left to the specialists and – especially – the military establishment, which has a glorious and virtually unbroken record for getting it wrong.

Whether it was the introduction of the rifle in the Napoleonic wars – which was strenuously resisted – the change from red tunics to khaki in the Boer War, and the tardy issue of machine guns, or failure to develop a suitable tank (or armoured personnel carrier) during the Second World War, the record is dismal.

One of the current, most vibrant arguments at the moment is the role of armour in counter-insurgency, one that came to the fore in the battle for Fallujah (see here and here), which has had the US military reappraising the role of Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) and committing to a major programme of upgrading their Abrams fleet to improve its survivability in urban warfare.

Similar thinking is influencing the Israeli military. Before the Lebanon war, it was a given that the IDF would halt production of the latest mark of its Merkava MBT.

The view now – according to DefenseNews - is that the tank acquitted itself well in the recent fighting, not only in its primary role but in support missions such as escorting infantry, delivering supplies and even extracting battlefield casualties. The tank, therefore, is expected to evolve into a multi-purpose vehicle and its continued production looks assured.

Not only is the tank version undergoing a transformation, however, the Israelis are funding a project to develop the Merkava chassis into a dedicated armoured personnel carrier, called the Namera, building on their experiences with the Puma and its limitations.

All this is happening though at a time when the British Army is undergoing a major transformation, cutting back on its heavy armour and planning to replace much of its capability with medium-weight, wheeled armour, under the aegis of the £14 billion FRES programme, all to fit in with the EU concept of the European Rapid Reaction Force.

One can only marvel at the thought that the two armies which are most actively engaged at the sharp end with so-called "asymmetric warfare", in deadly counter-insurgency campaigns are opting for more and heavier armour while the British military establishment, imbued with the ethos of European integration, is going the other way.

But, if the choice of equipment is suspect, what about the costs? One of the main disadvantages of the Israeli Namera, we are told, is the cost – at a cool $750,000 each. But that, in sterling, is £398,631 (at current exchange rates) yet this compares with £437,000 each for lightly armoured Pinzgauer trucks.

No one is saying that the Namera would be the most appropriate equipment for the British Army in Afghanistan – although I suspect that some commanders would not turn them away if they were offered them – but surely the MoD can do better than spend nearly half a million for a truck that offers little if any better protection than that afforded by a "Snatch" Land Rover.

Then, as we have reported before, while there is a crying need for tactical helicopters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the MoD is committed to buying the " future Lynx" at an average cost of £14.2 million each, which means that they cannot be brought into service until 2014. Yet, the US Army is quite content with the well-proven Kiowa variant, at less than £2.3 million each.

All this and much more (such as the near £200 million on 400 useless Panthers – which cannot be used in Iraq - see also here) suggests that, not only is the MoD buying the wrong equipment, it is also paying far too much for what it does buy – the worst of all possible worlds. It also suggests that the problem is much more complex than the simple issue of "underfunding".

On the one hand, we have committed far too much on equipment that is of no use for the current campaigns and, on the other, much of what we do buy for the respective theatres is either overly expensive, under-performing or too late – or any combination of the three.

Echoing Booker's lament in his column last week: "Oh, for a properly clued-up media and an Opposition worthy of the name," we urgently need a properly informed debate both in Parliament and in the media.

We have no great hopes of the former and, as for the latter, even if there were journalists around who were capable of understanding the issues, the likelihood is that they would not be allowed to write even half-way detailed stories (as we found to our cost here). Their editors, wedded to their dumbed-down diet of political soap operas and Diana-esq, human interest stories, can rise to the occasional cheap quickie - after the event – (or the occasional cartoon) but would judge detailed analyis too "boring" for their precious readers.

Thus is the public condemned to ignorance and, as we keep pointing out, the consequences are all too evident. Ironically, during the early '80s, when the killer disease AIDS made its appearance, the Department of Health advertising slogan – to increase awareness – was "don't die of ignorance". Decades later, this looks to be the fate of many of our soldiers. The horrible reality, though, is that it will not be their ignorance which does for them – but ours.

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