Missing the point

Once again, the Nimrod saga has erupted into the news, and once again the media have lost the plot. Right from the very start, after the tragic crash in September 2006 we were asking why an extremely expensive maritime patrol aircraft was being used for operations in land-locked Afghanistan, when there were cheaper and better ways of providing the same capabilities.

Now, with the removal of the Nimrod fleet from operations, pending rectification works, the focus is on the shortfall in capability. Thus, we get The Daily Telegraph retailing concerns from "military sources" that the withdrawal of Nimrod would remove vital surveillance coverage and could endanger the lives of troops on the ground.

Those same "military sources" are telling us that, "The MR2 gives forces on the ground immense camera and communication capability alongside experts in the Nimrod who can interpret what's going on." And so we are advised that, "Without Nimrod the dangers will increase."

This is, though, only partly true. Some of the capacity provided by the MR2 is now delivered by the Reaper and Hermes 450 UAVs, which should have been available much, much earlier – but that is another story. Additional capacity will shortly be delivered by the Beechcraft King Air 350ER, which should have been ordered earlier, but again, that is another story.

But the real story of the MR2 is that it is a stop-gap, providing a limited battlefield surveillance capability. It was used to make up for the absence of specific equipment, designed for the purpose, which is still not available. Yet, in their own dismal, ill-informed way, the idle hacks complain that the MR2 has been kept in service because of the delays in the replacement MR4 programme. That is completely to misunderstand the situation.

The MR4 is indeed a replacement for the MR2 maritime patrol aircraft, but it is not a substitute for the MR2 as a (land) battlefield surveillance aircraft. The MR2 is a stand-in pending deliveries of the Sentinel R1 ASTOR programme (pictured right). It is because of the non-availability of that aircraft that the MR2 was pressed into service in the first place.

The history of the ASTOR project is, to say the very least, interesting - yet another of those procurement cock-ups for which the MoD is so famous. And once again, this goes back into the mists of time, as the project stems from the early 90s, to the last Conservative administration.

The initial definition studies were carried out through the mid-90s but, by 1995 they were sufficiently far advanced for the then minister proudly to announce that development and production contract would be let in 1998, with an in-service date for the full system of 2003. That minister was, of course, the Rt Hon James Arbuthnot, currently the Defence Committee chairman.

The project was inherited by New Labour in 1997 and, unfortunately, it was not subject to review, having by then acquired unstoppable momentum. As so often, though, the project suffered slippage, the preferred bidder not being announced until June 1999. Since then, the project has suffered numerous delays and, as of this year, it is still not in operational service. And that is why the Nimrods have been flying over Afghanistan.

The essential problems, however, started with the very nature of the project. The system in the early 90s was already being developed by the United States, as the E-8 J-STARS programme. But to deliver the capacity, they chose the C-135 airframe (based on the Boeing 707 airframe - pictured left). As a result, it had a relatively trouble-free development, becoming operational in 1996, while the MoD was still carrying out definition studies.

At that stage, with the "special relationship", we could have bought into the project but, being British we had to have a British system – pork-barrel was the name of the game. And, being British, we of course knew better than the Americans how to do things. So, instead of choosing a cavernous and proven airframe like the C-135, we opted for a two-engined business jet called the Global Express, into which more or less the same systems were to be crammed.

Unsurprisingly, with all those electronics and systems packed into such a tiny space, there were over-heating problems, with which the cooling system failed to cope, and a number of fires in the equipment. Thus the aircraft could not be cleared for operations, leading to the massive delays we have experienced.

But there was another twist to this tale. The US airframe is able to carry a crew of 21 comprising 18 operators and three flight crew. For long endurance missions it can carry 34, comprising 28 operators and six flight crew. Thus, it has the capability of processing much of the data on-board, delivering the finished product to ground forces, and contributing to the battle management – in much the same way the AWACs system works with the air battle.

However, with the Sentinel only able to carry five crew, of which only two are system operators, raw data has to be transmitted to ground stations for processing and onwards transmission, adding hugely to the complexity and cost of the system – and adding another stage in the process of getting intelligence to ground forces.

With only a nine hour endurance (flight refuelling having been omitted to save costs) – as against 20 plus hours for J-STARS- we end up with a more complex system which is still not in service 12 years after the US system became operational. For that privilege, we are paying roughly twice the acquisition cost of the US aircraft. We have also had to fund Nimrod operations in the interim, at £30,000 an hour, amounting to hundreds of millions from the defence budget, for what amounts to a substandard capability.

So far though, the MoD seems to have got away with it, the project having almost completely escaped parliamentary scrutiny. Thus, of the current phase in the Nimrod saga, we get opposition politicians accusing ministers of "complacency and penny-pinching". The courageous Liam Fox, Conservative shadow defence secretary then leaps into the breach, declaring that: "It beggars belief that even after 18 months, the MoD and its contractors have failed to modify these aircraft which are undertaking critical surveillance operations in Afghanistan."

It would not do, of course, to point out that the root of the problem stems from decisions made in the 1990s, initiated by the last Conservative government. And, far from "penny pinching", it has cost us a fortune.

That point was not lost on Bruce George MP, Chairman of the Defence Committee, 1979-2005. In June 2008, commenting on procurement failures, his list included "J-STARS ... which we should have bought for ASTOR". He added: "Every single war in which our armed forces have engaged was either just about won, or even lost, not just because of poor leadership but because of poor procurement."

COMMENT THREAD

Strategic decay

If you have a powerful, petrol-driven chainsaw, and sundry matching accoutrements, you would be adequately equipped to become a lumberjack. Few would suggest, however, that you could use the same toolkit for computer repairs, even if the end result of any such attempt might afford momentary satisfaction.

From such an example comes the blindingly obvious truism that you must have the right tools to do the job – and, of course, the corollary, that without the tools the job simply cannot be done.

Less obviously, what applies on the scale of cutting down trees also applies to the execution of grand strategy and policy – those two words sometimes being used interchangeably. Without the tools, the strategy cannot be implemented. And no more so does this apply to the ultimate expression of foreign policy, the use of military power.

To offer but one scenario – there is a case to be made that to resolve the increasingly ghastly situation in Zimbabwe, a military invasion and occupation would be an effective answer. Thus, apparently, was seriously considered by Tony Blair, only for him to be dissuaded from carrying out such a venture. The military capacity simply did not exist.

Thus we see a relationship. The strategy calls upon certain tools for its execution but, in the absence of the necessary tools, the strategy cannot succeed. There is no point even considering it. To that extent, a strategy can be – and often is - defined not by the broader political considerations, or any other issues, but by the availability of the tools to do the job. The tail, in that sense, wags the dog.

These points are so simplistic and obvious as barely to warrant re-stating, yet they lie at the very heart of a major debate raging in political, military and academic establishments. Yet it is a debate that is barely recognised outside these very tightly drawn circles. Where elements do emerge into the public domain, they are often misrepresented and misunderstood.

This brings us to the paper, published today by the foreign policy think-tank Chatham House in its journal International Affairs. It is called, "Blair's wars and Brown's budgets: from Strategic Defence Review to strategic decay in less than a decade." The authors are Dr Paul Cornish, Head of the International Security Programme at Chatham House, and Dr Andrew Dorman, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House and a Senior Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department, King's College London.

Going right to the heart of their argument, they assert that defence policy, planning and analysis in the United Kingdom has reached "a state of organisational, bureaucratic and intellectual decay." They have thus come to the worrying conclusion that British defence is

... in a crisis so deep that it is no longer simply a matter of having to make difficult choices; rather, the machinery with which to analyse and understand defence, and with which to make those difficult choices, is wearing out.

That comes at the very end of a fifteen-page, closely argued paper, preceding which the authors note that calls for a defence review are being heard ever more loudly and frequently. This is very much the Conservative line, with the expectation that strategic priorities will be set and robust spending plans designed accordingly.

But, say Cornish and Dorman, even in the best of times a defence review is an extremely difficult matter of satisfying competing economic and political imperatives. The political climate in 2009/2010 is hardly likely to be conducive to a carefully considered, full-scale review of Britain's defence policy and strategy.

They are almost certainly right there. A review is a process rather than an end, and the nature of the findings depend entirely on the terms of reference, the political realities and the judgement of the writers as to where the priorities lie.

The authors, however, also point to other issues which could fatally weaken the utility of a review. They argue that the continuing downsizing of the Ministry of Defence, its loss of corporate memory and the weakening of the policy community - both within the MoD and in the wider think-tank/academic/policy analyst environment - suggests that even if the government did choose to proceed with a full-scale defence review, it is not at all clear that it could be conducted with much success.

Again, they might be right. But one also has to venture that they are missing the very point they, themselves make in their own admirable work. Their key passage comes on page 9 – more than halfway through the paper – where they observe that, "In a number of respects, the military component of UK defence policy is beginning to appear rather frayed." They then go on to pose the key question, the importance of which cannot be over-emphasised. "There is, first, the question," they write, "of what type of armed forces the UK needs."

Here, Cornish and Dorman call in aid General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff. In June 2008, they tell us, he outlined the future direction of the "land environment" to 2018. And, at the heart of his remarks was a quandary over the role of the military and the future of conflict.

It is that "quandary" which explains why defence policy is such a mess. In the paper we are told that it is widely understood within the Army in terms of a tension between those who support General Sir Rupert Smith's "war among the people" thesis (and therefore see the future for western armies as one of stabilization and counterinsurgency operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan) and those who support Professor Colin Gray's argument that the current period is untypical, with the implication that traditional state-versus-state conflict could or will return.

In many ways, we are then told:

… Dannatt was trying to appeal to both schools of thought by presenting a framework which would encompass both possibilities. However, the British army remains divided on this issue since it is inconceivable that both types of military structure and doctrine could be supported and sustained given the current intensity of operations and level of resources.

There you have it in a nutshell: "it is inconceivable that both types of military structure and doctrine could be supported and sustained given the current intensity of operations and level of resources." In other words, we can have an Army designed for and capable of dealing with a "war among the people" – the type of war we are currently fighting - or we can have one prepared to deal with the "traditional state-versus-state conflict", the "future war". But we cannot have both.

Dannatt's mistake – if it can be called that – has been in trying to achieve the impossible, attempting to build an Army which can do both, within the limits imposed on him. This simply cannot be done and it was fruitless ever attempting it. Not even with double the resources would it have been possible. Thus he was in a position of failing to do either properly. The (potential) consequences are spelt out by Cornish and Dorman who note:

The risk is that these different pressures might combine to result in Britain's armed forces being defeated in combat - as some commentators have argued has already happened, in Musa Qala in 2006 and Basra in 2007. Worse still, perhaps, Britain's armed forces might become so exhausted that they cease effectively to be functioning entities and will be unable to meet the next challenge that confronts them.

If there is blame to be laid at Dannat's door, it is in his failure to convince politicians that the two roles are wholly incompatible. Furthermore, he needed to tell them that they could not be achieved without massive additional spending, which was neither politically nor economically feasible.

Equally, he has failed to make that case openly, in public, despite having made numerous high-profile statements on the state of the Army. It is not clear, however, from those statements, that he himself fully understands the degree of incompatibility between the roles – hence his advocacy of FRES as a multi-purpose asset which could be employed for both counter-insurgency and the "future war". The indications are that he believed he could "square the circle".

On the other hand, the choice of whether we dedicate our Armed Forces to one role or the other should not rest with a lowly Chief of the General Staff. This is a decision which lies in the realms of high policy and is thus for the politicians to make. And it is here that the essential failure lies. The decision simply has not been made, leaving the military to muddle on, trying to make the best use of their resources in an endeavour which cannot succeed.

Cornish and Dorman usefully discuss this, referring to "declaratory policy" – the policy the politicians actually claim as their intent. They then note that the defence policy framework that has emerged has not "kept pace with commitments and events." What they do not point out as clearly as they might though is that, since the original policy formulation which started with the Strategic Defence Review of 1998 and continued through to the second White Paper in 2004, more than defence policy has changed. In terms of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Armed Forces have undergone a transformation, to bring them into line with real policy.

Gradually, through a series of ad hoc changes, mostly achieved through incremental re-equipment via the Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) system, the Armed Forces – and especially the Army – is adapting to deal with current operations, equipping to fight the "war among the people". Yet, in tune with headline "declaratory policy", there is still an expectation that the Armed Forces will continue to equip and prepare for the "traditional state-versus-state conflict", in line with the "declaratory policy".

Therefore, it is hard to agree entirely with Cornish and Dorman that defence "is in a crisis so deep that it is no longer simply a matter of having to make difficult choices." Arguably, defence is in a crisis because difficult choices have not been made.

The choices, in essence, can be simply stated. On the one hand, there is the prospect of continuing with the pretence that we are still a major power and can maintain an all-purpose military capability which can deal with the entire range of conflicts that might possibly arise. One the other hand, there is the reality of equipping and structuring our forces successfully to deal with known commitments, to the exclusion of any more grandiose ambitions. With whatever home defence component might be needed, and a limited capability to engage in discretionary operations, that is the extent of the second option.

The fact is that we have to make the choice. The underlying problem is that the need to make a choice has not been presented in a coherent way. By and large, the public and the wider political community are not even aware of the issues.

Thus, we continue to hear complaints of "overstretch" and "underfunding", with the concomitant pleas for more funding. But there is no realisation that no amount of additional funding which could reasonably be expected will solve the problem. The issue is that the Armed Forces are having to cope with mutually incompatible roles. Since we cannot (or will not) afford both, we have to decide on what we can reasonably afford to do – and are prepared to do – and then shape our Armed Forces to deliver them effectively, thus fashioning the right tool to do the jobs.

For all its merits, the paper produced by Cornish and Dorman does not make this entirely clear. It does, however, add usefully to the debate, but it is a debate that needs wider exposure. This, it shows no sign yet of doing. We live more in hope than expectation that it will.

COMMENT THREAD

A concerted line

It may be the case that "spin" in its modern form was invented by New Labour, but it is a technique which the military have adopted with gusto – presumably for the same reason – to make up for its shortcomings elsewhere.

Thus, in the wake of Lieutenant-General John Cooper, we now have Major General Andy Salmon, coming up with the view that, "the servicemen and women who had been killed in Iraq since 2003 did not die in vain."

This is so similar in expression, tone and content to Cooper’s pronouncement that it cannot be a coincidence. This is clearly a concerted line that the military "brass" has agreed to adopt, to draw attention away from their collective failure to hold the line in southern Iraq.

And still Salmon is repeating the same drivel that he came up with in early February, claiming that the provincial elections were a "litmus test" for the Iraqi army, which it had passed. It was thus the right time for the British to pull-out because the military task had been achieved. "We have created a secure and stable environment for social and political development to take place."

While, as we have said before, there were good reasons for the failure, and no blame can be attached to the service personnel on the ground who served their masters and were in harm’s way. But it ill-behoves the likes of Cooper and now Salmon to pretend that the campaign was anything other than what it was. The claim that, "We have created a secure and stable environment…" is manifestly untrue.

That Salmon is clearly spouting the concerted "line", however, seems to have been missed by Sean Rayment, who wrote The Sunday Telegraph story. Apparently not having seen the report in The Times on 16 February, he writes: "He [Salmon] is understood to be the first British officer to publicly state that war was worth the sacrificing the lives of British troops."

At least Salmon has the decency to say that it was always difficult to judge whether any military operation was worth the sacrifice of soldiers' lives, acknowledging that, "different soldiers will give you different answers, depending on their experiences."

But it now seems that if you are in the high command, "different answers" is no longer a luxury you can afford. Whatever the question, the answer will always be the same. But the only people the military are deceiving are themselves.

COMMENT THREAD

The watchdog that doesn't bark

Governments make mistakes. For a whole variety of reasons they mess up. That is the very nature of things and it is why over time there has developed a system of checks and balances, all aimed at making the government accountable. The system is also devised so as to detect mistakes early, remedy them where possible and, crucially, prevent repetitions.

It was with that in mind that we wrote this piece which also referred to this piece, pointing out the vital role of parliamentary select committees, in making the system work.

I would not be the first to observe that the committees do not function very well, but have indeed noted how one committee in which we take a special interest – the Defence Committee - functions very poorly. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to write a series of case studies on the Defence Committee. The idea is to pick a series of equipment projects that went wrong so to see what the committee did about them, and whether its activities could have been better handled – with some observations then on what could be done to improve the performance.

After this first one, which is below, I will post the case studies separately, and then write a consolidating post drawing out observations and conclusions, bringing them all together – with input from the forum where relevant – in order to frame recommendations. If this works as an exercise, I will then revamp it as a paper, possibly for publication.

For the first case study, I have chosen the Phoenix unmanned aerial vehicle project, which I first looked at in September 2006 in the context of the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan.

The flight of the Phoenix

Last year, on the tenth anniversary of its entry into service, the Phoenix unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was formally taken out of service.

In fact, though, it had last flown operationally in May 2006, giving less than seven years of operational service for the cost of £345 million since its inception.

From the start, the Phoenix programme was a disaster. The requirement emerged in the early 1980s as a battlefield UAV to support the British Army, originally designed for artillery spotting. As so often with these projects, though, there was "mission creep" and the final specification emerged to encompass a fully-fledged surveillance aircraft, something for which the original design had never been intended.

Nevertheless, the GEC/Marconi (later to become /BAE Systems) design was selected by the MoD in February 1985 with a planned in-service date of 1989. Although the first example flew in 1986, a the Defence Select committee in 1990 heard from the MoD that difficulties had been experienced with the datalink, which could lead to loss of contact with the air vehicle. The system had become known as the "Bugger Off - because often it did not come back once it had been launched.

There were also computer problems with the ground station and recovery problems. The aircraft was parachute-recovered, upside-down, with the landing impact to be taken by a shock-absorbing plastic hump. Frangible elements of the fuselage were supposed to breaking off to absorb the impact. Unfortunately, other non-frangible elements of the air vehicle were also sustaining considerable damage.

This left the British Army during the first Gulf War having to rely on ageing Canadair CL-89 surveillance UAVs, in service since 1972, which had to be recovered and film processed before targeting data were available. Artillery batteries more frequently were forced to use targeting data provided by US Marine UAV, the RQ-2 Pioneer (pictured left), an aircraft derived from an Israeli design and brought into service by the US in 1986.

The problems with the Phoenix had not by any means been fully resolved by 1994, by which time other concerns had emerged. Crucially, the machine had been originally intended for use in Central Europe and could not cope with hot-and-high conditions, such as in the Gulf. With the added payload the original machine had never been intended to carry, it needed a more powerful engine. In the financial climate of the time, however, that option was abandoned.

By early 1995, Flight International was reporting that the Army was considering cancellation. Six years behind schedule, it had already cost the MoD £227 million - double the original estimate when the deal had been signed.

In March, with the in-service date having already been extended to October 1995, the MoD was admitting that, if it opted to continue with the project, a further two-year minimum delay would be incurred, seeing it enter service by the end of 1997 - eight years late. Cancellation was being "very seriously considered". Not least, the method of recovery continued to cause unacceptable levels of damage.

With so much invested, however, the company was given another chance. In April, the then procurement minister, Roger Freeman, announced that the manufacturer would be allowed to complete an "additional programme of work" to resolve the remaining technical difficulties, lasting about a year, at the contractor's expense. Later that month, MPs were told that potential alternative systems were being considered, in case the Phoenix did not come up to standard. Significantly, highly successful Israeli machines were being examined.

In August 1995, James Arbuthnot was appointed as defence procurement minister. It would now fall to him to make the crucial decision as to whether the programme would continue or whether an alternative would be purchased. Any decision would be highly contentious and cancellation would be highly embarrassing for the government. Already it had been forced to abandon the ill-fated Nimrod airborne early warning aircraft, produced by the same GEC/Marconi/BAE Systems combine, with the airframes having been scrapped in 1991 at a loss of over £1 billion.

Mr Arbuthnot was asked briefly about Phoenix in the October but with the review underway, he batted down the question. With a year's grace bought by the "additional programme of work", it was not then until the anniversary of the announcement on 25 April 1996 that Mr Arbuthnot was called to give an account. By then, the US had been successfully operating its Israeli-designed machines for ten years. However, the announcement about the future of the project was not ready. Mr Arbuthot hoped to be able to make one "before the summer recess".

It was down to Flight International, therefore, to come up with any information on what was going on. From this it was learned that GEC was to resolve the landing problems by equipping the UAV with an air bag, similar to those used in motor cars, to absorb impact of landing. This was precisely the option used on the 25-year-old Canadair UAV which the Phoenix was to replace. There was also talk of fitting a more powerful engine, but nothing was to come of that.

Nothing was to come of Mr Arbuthot's announcement before the summer either. In fact, there is no record of him ever having made one to Parliament, a strategem which would have neatly avoided any questions in the House. Instead, the news of his decision was conveyed by an MoD press release in October, which broke the news: It declared: "We now have confidence in the cost-effectiveness, tactical performance and reliability of the system to meet the army's requirements".

This came to light in Parliament only because it was mentioned in a debate by an opposition spokesman, Dr John Reid. Phoenix was to become operational in 1998, nine years after originally planned, with 198 eventually delivered. Complaining of the delay, Reid declared:

We do not blame the Government for every delay. However, any objective observer who examined the pattern of consistent delays would conclude that it was the only area where the Government appeared to have a strategy. I am reminded that Napoleon once instructed Bourrienne not to open his letters for three weeks and, after that time, expressed satisfaction that most of the correspondence had resolved itself. I have a feeling that the Secretary of State is adopting a Napoleonic strategy to defence procurement: if we delay indefinitely, the need will go away. But it will not.

On 1 May 1997, Tony Blair's New Labour had won the general election and Mr Arbuthot lost his ministerial job. But his legacy, of which Phoenix was part, was to live on. Within months of the Phoenix becoming operational, it was deployed in the Balkans, coinciding with the day that Yugoslavian/ Serbian forces began their withdrawal from Kosovo on 9 June 1999. Eighteen months after it had been accepted into service, 16 machines had been lost or destroyed in the course of 200 sorties, including 13 during operations. Ten were lost or destroyed in Kosova and three more during further operations the following year.

Mr Bruce George, chairman of the Defence Committee in 2000 was less than complimentary about the system. "That is a pretty deadly weapon," he said, "because they do tend to drop out of the sky causing damage to anyone standing underneath. Was that a secret weapon? It was probably quite an accurate weapon." That brought from Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett, then Chief of Joint Operations, that, "Of course we would like to have better unmanned aerial vehicles to give us intelligence and perhaps we might have that capability in the future."

The capability provided by the Phoenix, however, was fully recognised by the Defence Committee it remarking in January 2001 that, "The momentum behind developing the capability of Phoenix to provide targeting data to strike aircraft must be maintained."

If that momentum was maintained, it did not extend to the Phoenix programme. The system was deployed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 89 machines being sent. Between March and 3 April, some 23 machines were lost with 13 damaged but repairable. The equipment was openly described as a "dismal failure". Despite that, the Defence Committee, reporting on the war in March 2004 was uncritical. "We are pleased," it said, "to hear that, despite its chequered past, Phoenix made a valuable contribution to the operation."

Nevertheless, so obviously inadequate was the machine that the MoD, under new management since Arbuthnot's time, had already determined on a replacement. Rejecting the proven but very much larger US Predator model, it had an Israeli-built machine in mind, the very option that Arbuthnot and his predecessor had been asked about in 1995 and 1996, and which he had rejected. This was to be the Watchkeeper programme, a licensed-built version of the Elbit Hermes 450, with a projected in-service date of 2006.

One MP on this committee, however, expressed concern that the programme could not be "more aggressively accelerated". This was Gerald Howarth, on 21 May 2003, questioning Sir Peter Spencer KCB, then Chief of Defence Procurement. Sir Peter's answer was very revealing. The development could not be speeded up, "because we are buying a system of which the UAV is a component," he said.

This referred back to the "Strategic Defence Review – New Chapter" published in July 2002 in which the Government had committed to a major reorganisation of defence forces, in particular the Army. It was to introduce a new concept called the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES), linked into a vast computer and communications network, introducing what was known as a "network-centric capability".

Thus, at the time Sir Peter was being questioned, attention was focused on a high-tech "future war" while, at the very same time British troops were engaged in a vicious counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq, equipped with the Phoenix which, as was well known, could not operate in hot conditions – when indeed it operated at all.

This notwithstanding, in November 2003, Defence Minister Adam Ingram assured the House that the Watchkeeper programme was "on track to deliver a tactical UAV capability from 2006."

That, however, was not to be. In July 2004 the "preferred bidder" for Watchkeeper wasannounced, for a contract that was expected to cost £800 million. And not until the following July did then defence secretary John Reid announce the order. But the in-service date was no longer 2006. The capability would be delivered "incrementally" from 2010. This was from the same Dr Reid who in 1996 had complained about the delays in introducing the Phoenix.

Arguably, it was at this point that the Defence Committee might have intervened. As of July 2005, two crucial issues were evident. Firstly, that the Phoenix system was seriously substandard and also inoperable in Iraq during the summer months. Secondly, there was now no prospect of an early replacement. It might have even gone back earlier to 2003, when questions could rightly have been asked. But two years later, there can have been little argument that the Army urgently needed an effective UAV.


That intervention would have been valid and effective is unarguable. In May 2007, reported a month later the MoD, recognising for itself the critical shortage of UAVs, issued an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) for a $110 million deal to buy Elbit Hermes 450 UAVs direct from Israel (pictured above), to fill the capability gap – a year after the Phoenix had been withdrawn from Iraq. The first machines were delivered to Iraq and operational by September 2007, a mere four months later. By then it was too late to affect the outcome.

More than a year earlier, however, in mid-2006, another opportunity had arisen for Defence Committee to intervene. It was then gathering evidence on operations in Iraq. That year, and since the general election in June 2005, the Rt Hon James Arbuthnot had taken over as committee chairman – the very man who as procurement minister in 1996, ten years earlier, had given the go-ahead for the production of the Phoenix.

Under his chairmanship in June 2006, the committee took evidence from the then Defence Secretary Des Browne on a range of problems, including the deficiencies of the Snatch Land Rover. But neither then, nor in the report, published on 10 August 2006 were UAVs mentioned.

In fact, it took until May 2008 before Mr Arbuthnot's committee focused on the subject of UAVs, in an investigation devoted to that subject. In its report, published in July 2008, Mr Arbuthnot's committee noted that the acquisition of UAVs, which by then had included the successor to the Predator, known as the Reaper, and Hermes 450 were providing our Armed Forces with "battle winning capabilities", and were "proving effective in the counter-insurgency style of operations which they face in Iraq and Afghanistan."

However, evidence was submitted by the MoD in a written memorandum to the committee, which noted:

Limited range full motion video surveillance is provided by the Phoenix tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) system. Originally designed for operations in central Europe, it has not proved suitable for supporting ongoing operations in the more demanding climatic and geographical conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A memorandum from the Royal Aeronautical Society also noted that the "UK experience with UAV technology has not been entirely happy, pace the Phoenix programme".

However, there was no reference to the Phoenix in the conclusions and recommendations section. As to the purchase of the Hermes 450s, the committee had asked why the requirement for the UAVs acquired as UORs had not been identified earlier. It had been told that "in many cases they were identified earlier". The Hermes 450 UAV had been acquired as a "stop-gap" filler because the Phoenix UAV system could not be operated effectively in a hot and high climate. To that, the committee responded:

The MoD has acquired UAV systems for current operations as Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs). In its response to our Report, we expect the MoD to set out its future plans for the UAV systems acquired as UORs and where the future costs fall within the defence budget. We also expect the MoD to set out its longer term strategy for acquiring UAVs systems, given the concern expressed by industry that keeping the UAV systems acquired as UORs in service for a long time could undermine the UK’s national capability in this area.

Thus did the committee convey the concern of the trade body representing the defence contractors, the SBAC. It wanted: "the balance being maintained between developing national capability and supporting UOR capability for urgent operational requirements." Roughly translated, that meant that the defence industry did not want too many off-the-shelf purchases in case it reduced the sales of custom-built machines. And that was the extent of the committee's concerns on UORs.

COMMENT THREAD

Playing games in the bubble

We do not hear so very much about "joined-up thinking" in government these days – presumably because it has been given up as a lost cause. For the gentlemen (and ladies) in the House, however, their task is to mount a general oversight of the affairs of government, which presumably gives them the opportunity to take a wider perspective of issues.

That, unfortunately is not the case. Our wise and dedicated MPs, it seems, fall into exactly the same trap as our masters, thinking along tramlines, totally unable to deal with the bigger picture.

Yet another classic example of this inability is today’s much-hyped report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee on the great Chinook disaster – a project started in 1995 which has left us with an expenditure of £422 million for eight aircraft, which originally cost £259 million and have yet to fly operationally.

For sure, it is the job of this committee to examine high expenditure projects and draw conclusions from them – and this the committee has done again. It has already visited this project several times. But what it is not entitled to do – and does not assist by so doing – is to draw lurid conclusions which are not supported by the evidence or for which there are other inferences to be drawn.

However, you can immediately see that the line taken by Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee, is calculated not to bring any light to the subject but simply to create an opportunity for grandstanding. This we see in the publicity, which has The Times reporting "'Troops put at risk' by MoD blunder in deal for Chinooks" and The Daily Telegraph telling us that MoD "Chinook delays 'endanger' troops".

Here, there is a link between the shortage of helicopters on operations and the fact that troops are often as a result required to use less safe modes of transport, exposing them to risk. And there is a case to be made that the absence of helicopter lift was a direct factor in a number of deaths in Afghanistan.

Not least, there was the death of Jack Sadler, killed by an explosion as he was riding in a Wimik while escorting a slow-moving convoy of guns which could have been quickly and efficiently delivered by helicopter.

But the point here is that these deaths occurred ten years or more after the original Chinook order, and many years after 2001 when it was evident that the project was going belly-up. The fault, therefore, lies in the failure then to make alternative provisions for airlift to make up for the shortfall of capacity represented by the non-availability of these machines.

On this, we have charted endlessly the availability of alternatives and pointed out that there were many different options that could have been taken. That the MoD consistently refused to take up any of these lies at the heart of the airlift shortage.

But what is sinister about this, and Mr Leigh's pathetic attempts at self-aggrandisement, is that this issue was explored in the oral questioning by the committee. Led by Ian Davidson, we see this exchange:

Q138 Mr Davidson: Was there nobody else, Australia, New Zealand, anybody else at all from whom we could have borrowed stuff?

Sir Bill Jeffrey: The truth is that in the two significant campaigns that we, the Americans, the Australians and others are engaged in, helicopter support resources of this kind are at a premium. In fact, there is in my view a strong need to persuade NATO allies in particular to be ready to deploy their own helicopter capability on their own account. At the point in time you are referring to, we did explore with Americans in particular and we found it just was not possible.

Q139 Mr Davidson: In the same way that it would appear the French want to borrow our aircraft carriers, if you read the front page of The Sun—and it must be true because it is in The Sun—there was nobody from whom we could tap helicopters at the time then?

Sir Bill Jeffrey: No.

Sir Bill Jeffrey is currently Permanent Secretary for the MoD, its most senior civil servant, made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2007 New Year Honours List. It cannot be said of Sir Bill that he actually lied. Most probably, there was nobody from whom we could have borrowed helicopters. But there were most certainly many opportunities to lease helicopters. Jeffrey was being somewhat economical with the actualité.

However, had Davidson been better briefed – or had he or any other members of the committee got off their idle arses and done some homework – they could have picked Jeffrey up on this, and got to the bottom of the issue.

This is not what our gilded MPs are all about these days. As long as Mr Edward Leigh can get his name in the papers with a lurid headline, the committee has served its purpose. As for ensuring that our troops are properly equipped, so that they do not have to die, well that is hardly of any importance at all.

But, if we want to play Mr Leigh's games, it is useful to note that, buried in the oral evidence – but not highlighted by the media – were some interesting snippets of information. The original request from the RAF for Special Forces helicopters was formally made in 1994, for the CH-47E (more correctly, the MH-47E). This was turned down by the then defence procurement minister, on cost-cutting grounds. From that stemmed the decision to adapt the eight HC Mk2s, a decision which led directly to this procurement debacle.

And the minister who made the decision? Ah! The Conservative colleague of Mr Leigh, Mr James Arbuthnot, currently chairman of the Defence select committee. It is he who so recently labelled the FRES project a "fiasco". Well, it seems it takes one to know one.

COMMENT THREAD

What is it?

I happened upon this ... it was taken in Calcutta in 1946. I thought I knew most British armoured vehicles, but I have no idea what this one is. Could it have been locally made?

Love the pub sign in the backgound.

COMMENT THREAD

What happened to the rest?

In July 2006, we got from defence minister Adam Ingram some information on Snatch Land Rovers. They were produced in 1992 and a total of 991 were procured.

February just gone, the MoD was asked how many were still in service. The response was that 645 were still on the inventory but only 580 were "fit for purpose".

Now, through several Parliamentary questions, we have established that no Snatches were ever sold off by the MoD. And they started with 991. They have 645 left, which makes 346 missing – more than a third of the starting number.

Whatever happened to them we wonder.

COMMENT THREAD

A glimmer of sense

In the absence of any coherent (or any) debate in the media on the important issue of how to tackle the insurgency in Afghanistan, a low-key snippet of news from the BBC is unlikely to have much impact – its significance barely appreciated outside a very small circle of analysts and officials.

That actually is a measure of the poverty of the debate in this country, for what we are being told is the UK is to commit an extra £50 million in development money to Afghanistan. But, more importantly, we find that the money is to pay for a new road in southern Helmand province and refurbishment of a power plant, as well as farming and job creation projects.

This comes from international development secretary Douglas Alexander, who has told the BBC that "tackling poverty was the best way to tackle the insurgency in the country." As such, this is not only the most sensible thing that Alexander has said, but it represents a paradigm shift in strategy in this benighted country, the result of much earnest behind-the-scenes discussion and debate.

Such is the inability of the media to understand what is and is not important, however –and its inability to sort the dross from information of value – that we only get the minimum of detail. Thus we are only told that the aid money has been earmarked for projects including construction of a major road linking the towns of Lashkar Gah and Gereshk (pictured above).

We also find that it will also go towards a hydro-electric plant to boost power supplies to Gereshk and agriculture and rural enterprise projects to create rural jobs.

Much will be written from time to time in the future, about the British military effort in Afghanistan, as if that was the totality of our contribution to fighting the insurgency, but this initiative – if it is implemented effectively – will have a greater long-term contribution to peace than a battalion of troops in their "boy racer" Jackals. Yet, you can bet, if another battalion had been despatched to Afghanistan, it would be all over the news, accompanied no doubt by much acreage of self-important pontification.

Interestingly, we see in The Guardian a piece headed, "Pomegranates not poppies", underlining the vital role of agricultural development in addressing the opium-growing problem in Afghanistan.

One smiles wryly and recalls that we were writing on precisely this point last June when we concluded that, if the trade was developed, it could have a very significant impact on the war.

Noting how there had been some welcome increases in high-value agricultural production, we wrote:

… in the final analysis, it is more of the same that is eventually going to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan. A supermarket buyer, waving a substantial contract, is probably worth more than a thousand troops – and certainly more than 10,000 aid officials.

The roads issue, on the other hand, is one we explored in depth last Sunday. But what the heck. We are only a lowly blog, way down the pecking order and not worthy of any attention from the high and mighty, so what do we know? Nevertheless, the fact is, that of all the dross you will read in the next few days, this little snippet of news from the BBC is of far-reaching importance.

If we are ever to get out of Afghanistan with our reputation intact, leaving behind a country that is moving towards peace and prosperity, then what has just been announced is the way to do it. For this glimmer of sense, we should be grateful.

COMMENT THREAD

Dogma and ignorance

The British military faces transfer to the "second division" unless there is a "major spending increase". That is the message conveyed by a report produced by the UK National Defence Association UKNDA). Its author, Tony Edwards, a former head of defence export services at the Ministry of Defence, thus argues that Britain must increase its defence spending by £15 billion a year, representing a 40 percent increase in the defence budget.

That much we are told by The Daily Telegraph which gives the report front page treatment. To obtain the full details, however, one would have thought that the obvious place to go would be the UKNDA site and download the report itself.

Oddly, unless there are secret signs that are not visible to mere mortals, this does not prove possible. A link to the Telegraph story is available, and a somewhat less than informative press release can be read. There is no obvious sign of the report. But, not to be deterred, a Google search yields dividends, and a link can be found – on the Society of British Aerospace Contractors' website.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it does seem rather rum that the only way one can access a so-called "independent" report, calling for a very substantial increase in the defence budget, is to go to the website of an organisation which represents companies which would be the major beneficiaries of that increased expenditure.

Having looked at the report – a rather modest production of 24 pages including several large and rather odd photographs – perhaps the kindest thing one can say is that it is a blessing that Tony Edwards no longer works for the MoD. One could also surmise that one of the reasons why the MoD is currently in such a mess is because the likes of Tony Edwards used to work for them.

That is not to say that Mr Edwards does not make some good points. With such an open goal as MoD equipment procurement, even in a meagre production of 24 pages it would be almost impossible not to score the occasional hit. But what is lacking is any sense of intellectual coherence. Essentially, all that Edwards manages to do is assemble a list of major projects, current and future, put a notional price on each and then add up the price tags. A supermarket check-out girl could have done nearly as well.

What Mr Edwards does not do is explore to any extent what he would have the Armed Forces do, what they are capable of doing (not the same things) and what then they would need to achieve those things.

Bizarrely, there is barely any recognition that we are a nation at war, with the Armed Forces actually fighting a real enemy in real battles. Instead, Edwards's substantive point on Afghanistan is to complain that:

… our defence capability which supports our foreign policy is being degraded by the extended period of overstretch of our armed forces – the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have lasted longer even than the whole of World War II.

So, if we have got this straight, the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have "degraded" our defence capability, which "supports our foreign policy". And those operations were not – and are not – in support of our foreign policy? Yet, in a monumental example of schizophrenia, this same Mr Edwards also complains that, "recent reports from the US show serious dissatisfaction with the British contribution to both the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. "

So, putting this together, supporting our operations "degrade our defence capability" yet because we are not – evidently – supporting our operations enough, the Americans are showing "serious dissatisfaction". Which is it to be?

The litmus test on all this, however, is Mr Edward’s attitude to the FRES project. This, he sees as "fast becoming a national disgrace." Then, on the one hand, he points to "many outsiders including the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire Coroners" who have "spoken critically of the vehicles in which we send our troops to war."

On the other hand, he complains that, "Somehow we have managed to turn a fairly straightforward requirement for new vehicles into a "complex system" – Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) – which has only served to cause delay and incur unwarranted cost." FRES, he claims,

… responds to a wish to replace all fighting and support vehicles with a high-tech modular family of vehicles connected with a computer-controlled digital wireless network. On the way the MoD even managed to award £100 million to a company more usually associated with road and railway contracts. So, after many years of expenditure the concept of FRES has been put aside and instead we are going on an ad-hoc buying spree in response to desperate short-term requirements. This approach has created a new challenge – how will this collection of vehicles procured under Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) be integrated later into the core defence procurement budget?

Those who have followed this saga through this blog will immediately see that Edwards is complaining that we did not buy into the FFLAV concept or one of its successor projects. But, with the MoD mercifully not having done so, he further complains that it has gone on an "ad-hoc buying spree in response to desperate short-term requirements." Thus, we have the MoD responding to genuine operational needs, with a specific class of vehicles - entirely different from the class originally proposed, which was and is unfit for counter-insurgency operations – and this is dismissed as an "ad-hoc buying spree".

Interestingly, this was exactly the same line taken by Bill Kincaid, another MoD escapee, about whom we reported earlier. This, clearly, is the perceived wisdom amongst the MoD rearguard, obviously from the same line of thinking that in 1935 insisted that Royal Tank Corps officers were issued with horses.

The worst of it all is that The Daily Telegraph, having bought uncritically into the UKNDA line with a news story, today publishes a supportive leader, telling us that, "The choice is clear on defence funding." Its view is that, "Britain must either continue with interventionist foreign and defence policies and fund them properly, or retrench to a purely reactive position."

Thus does it fail completely to recognise that it is, in supporting the UKNDA line, arguing for a diversion of funds from exactly "the interventionist foreign and defence policies" that it purports to support. It wants instead to inject massive capital funds into projects that have absolutely no relevance to those policies, leaving operations starved of equipment and capabilities.

Therein lies one of our major problems. On defence, as with so many other things, we need an informed, constructive debate. Instead, we get a miasma of ill-informed comment, based on tired dogma expressed as received wisdom, without any pretence at exploring or understanding the underlying issues.

And this is from a newspaper that once employed Lidell-Hart as a defence correspondent.

COMMENT THREAD

An absence of strategy?

For some time now – as we have remarked previously - it has been very difficult to "read" the battle in Afghanistan. That was not the case with Iraq. There, with some of the main action going in heavily populated areas, there was media reporting – and a constant flow of reports from Arab press agencies. It was, therefore, possible to piece together what was going on – albeit with very little help from the British media.

In Afghanistan, it is different. Much of the action is taking place outside the urban centres, the Afghani media is considerably less developed and the Western media relies almost entirely on "embeds", the output of whom is rigorously controlled.

Following the ebb and flow of a counter-insurgency operation is, in any case difficult. Unlike conventional warfare, with its defined lines and set-piece battles, there are no front lines. The confrontation tends to be disjointed, small unit actions, separated in time and space, with the fighting carried out by disparate national contingents, between which these is less than perfect communication, and different intensities of reporting. All of this naturally makes the "bigger picture" more than a little obscure.

The very idea of "reading the battle" however, implies that there is something to read – an element of coherence and a "guiding mind" that is directing movement towards a defined gaol, however chaotic and uncertain that movement. What is slowly dawning though is the realisation that the main obstacle to understanding what is going on is that there is lacking any defined goal and therefore any coherence. It is impossible to read the battle because there is no guiding mind. There is no coherence, only chaos.

A hint of that came in early February when David Milband complaining of "a strategic stalemate in parts of the country through their use of improvised explosive devices", also noting that the Taleban was "spreading insecurity".

Further hints came with the MoD's reporting of its recent "Red Dagger" operation, heavy on the hype but lacking any framework that would indicate that there is any sense of strategic direction, an impression reinforced by its pathetic attempts to over-sell the "success" of its drugs bust in northern Helmand. Combine that with its general lack of reporting and you discern exactly that which is becoming evident – that there is a lack of strategic direction.

Yet another clue to this disarray comes in today's Sunday Times. It tells us of how US forces in Afghanistan are taking a more assertive role in Helmand province, dictating the nature and scale of tactical operations in an area nominally the responsibility of the British.

A 2,000-man US taskforce based in Helmand has, we are told, pushed west into Farah province to choke the Taliban's supply lines, part of an American plan to contain what they perceive as British "failures" in southern Afghanistan. We are also informed that, privately the Americans are fiercely critical that the overstretched British are merely "treading water" until more US forces arrive this summer.

Furthermore, US special forces are probing Taliban strength in Washir, Nahr Sukh and Garmsir, three districts in central and southern Helmand, again areas nominally the responsibility of the British.

This trend of greater US intervention has been evident for some time – if entirely unreported by the British media. In the operation to recover Musa Qala in December year last, it was the US which dictated the timing of the operation, which determined the shape of the operation and which provided significant ground forces, plus most of the helicopters and air support.

Then, in the operation to take control of Garmsir, it was the USMC which took the lead and provided by far the bulk of the forces, succeeding where previous British efforts had failed.

Now, it seems, US forces are not even doffing their caps to British sensibilities, refusing to take orders from Britain’s Taskforce Helmand. Instead, they report directly to a regional headquarters in Kandahar. A standing joke amongst the Americans, it appears, is the acronym for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, which includes most British forces. This is taken to stand for I Saw Americans Fighting.

An unspoken presence here, like the spectre at the feast, is Iraq. The lacklustre performance of the British in that theatre has had a profound effect on the Americans. Gone is any deference or even any confidence in the abilities of the British high command – although there remains the greatest respect for the fighting qualities of the troops. And the American attitude is somewhat reinforced by the delusional conduct of British senior officers who are seeking to convince themselves and everyone else that their activities in Iraq were a success. Amused contempt is giving way to irritation.

US General David McKiernan, ISAF commander, is less than impressed by British efforts in Afghanistan. Like Miliband, he sees the current situation in Helmand as a "stalemate". British officials, on the other hand, admit they do not have enough troops to control the ground. "We clear an area and the Taleban run away," said one official. "But the soldiers can't stay, so the Taleban creep back. It's pointless."

Such an analysis is – as so often – superficial, and again relates back to Iraq where the oft' repeated lament was for more "boots on the ground". But, as US General John Craddock observed last year, 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."

We have a situation in Helmand where British troops – short of both helicopters and protected vehicles – lack the tactical mobility that would enable them to function more effectively. The Royal Marines, in the north, have been able to rely on USMC assets but, further south, the Rifles battle group are sorely lacking in the necessary equipment. More British troops would simply exacerbate existing shortages and achieve very little.

However, while the US is taking a more dominant and assertive role, that does not mean that the Americans have an overall strategy worth its name. Although Obama has agreed to a "surge" later in the year, there are no indications that these troops will make the difference.

Nevertheless, there is going on behind the scenes an intense debate on the correct strategy to adopt and, unlike in the British media, that debate is spilling over into the public domain. Thus we saw recently in Newsweek a long and detail analysis which, to a very great extent, reflects the range of thinking in the Pentagon and State.

Written by Frederick Kagan, the author obviously has a good knowledge of his subject but, like so many, is trying to paint too broad a brush, treating Afghanistan as a single country or a single problem. At the heart of the difficulty though is that Afghanistan has only ever been a country in name. In reality, it is in fact a series of disparate regions, with their own separate identities, which transcend the borders.

The task facing the coalition therefore is not so much reconstruction as nation-building ab initio, an altogether different prospect to the task that faced them in Iraq. The basic flaw in the thinking, it seems to me, is that they are looking for a "top-down" solution, ignoring the fundamental principles of how nations are actually created.

Here, one really does have to look to the past and it does seem strange that principles that were known to the Romans and the ancient Chinese seem to elude us, for all our technological sophistication. What both empires had in common were that, when they sought to extend their grip over their territories, they concentrated on communications - especially roads.

Reading recently, "The shorter Science and civilisation in China," By Joseph Needham, one sees the interesting observation that, "No ancient country in the world did more in civil engineering, both as to scale and skill, than China." Needham goes on to write: "With a territory of nearly 1.5 million square miles, by AD 190 during the Han dynasty, they had built 22,000 miles of first grade roads."

That, we are told, was in addition to an immense system of navigable rivers and canals. Road building was at its peak during the Warring States period. The most successful states, such as the State of Qin, were those which excelled in road-building activity.


One really does get tired of stating the obvious but the essence of a nation is communications. Governance stems from communications not the other way round. When you have mountain valley communities which are difficult to access even by Humvee, where even sizeable towns a mere 100 miles from the capital can take three or four days to reach and where it is possible to lose touch completely with communities of several thousand strong - not even knowing whether they still exist - just because there is heavy snowfall, this is not a nation.

The thing about the basics is that they are precisely that – basics. They are not optional extras and, unless you get them right, everything else that follows is doomed to failure. It might one day be modish to the point of fashionable to build houses without foundations - instead of sticking to boring old "traditions" – but the forces of gravity will soon prevail. Similarly, modish ideas about strategy will not stand the test of time without foundations.

At least, though, in the US there is some sort of a debate going on. Here, of course, our parliamentarians are far too busy emoting to waste their time on such matters and the media has long since abandoned any pretence of conducting anything that approximates informed debate.

Whether led by Americans or the increasingly discredited British, however, there is no sense that any strategy which does emerge will be any more successful than the current non-strategy. The fear is that all we are going to achieve is to kill a lot of good men, spend an awful lot of money and get nowhere.

That would seem to leave but one option. In the fullness of time, the Americans will have one thing to learn from the British – how to lead an ignominious defeat and pretend it is a success. Even there, though, the British have been somewhat less than convincing so it looks as if the Americans are going to have to work out their own strategy for that as well.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting the point

Two offerings in the Sundays on the continuing discussion of Mr Cameron's loss make an interesting contrast. One is from Matthew d'Ancona in The Sunday Telegraph and the other is from Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday.

I will not trouble you with the former, other than to note that its vacuous drivel serves only as a counterpoint to the robust and sensible piece from Hitchens, who absolutely and completely gets the point. He writes that was "struck by the coincidence" between the death of Ivan Cameron and the four soldiers killed in Afghanistan. He then writes:

Three were of soldiers killed in Afghanistan by yet another roadside bomb, from which they were not properly protected by the inadequate, cheapskate vehicle in which they were travelling. They were Corporal Tom Gaden, Lance Corporal Paul Upton and Rifleman Jamie Gunn. The fourth was that of a Royal Marine, Michael Laski, who died in a Birmingham hospital from wounds sustained in Afghanistan on Monday.

That means deaths in this vainglorious, ill-considered episode have reached 149, a shameful number killed because they were inadequately equipped. No, these were not small children, but they were much-loved sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers. Their deaths have all left sad gaps in previously happy lives.

The fate of every one of these was directly in the hands of the MPs who adjourned on Wednesday. Yet I cannot remember when they last attempted a proper debate on what our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan, or when anyone on either front bench said anything truthful on the subject. None can explain why we have soldiers there at all. They come up instead with silly slogans, free of thought.

And even if our MPs are too busy claiming second-home expenses to think about this, or merely haven't the courage to raise it, and even if they are genuinely convinced that this doomed operation is necessary for the safety of the Western world, why have they done so little to make the MoD protect the men they have allowed to be sent into danger? The American Pentagon has a special unit to combat roadside bombs, with a budget of about £2.8billion a year. On top of that, it is spending £1.45billion on new armoured vehicles. Even the tiny Irish Army has taken more decisive steps than ours to obtain mine-resistant vehicles.

That encapsulates so well our thinking. In the torrent on "mawkish sentimentality" – as one commentator put it – over the death of one child, precisely how much attention has been given to the deaths of these four soldiers? Why, asks Hitchens, have they [the MPs] "done so little to make the MoD protect the men they have allowed to be sent into danger?"

And that is the point. Parliament has a special duty to protect the men and women put in harm's way in our name. MPs have the power individually and collectively to bring the government to account and force it to take action. We saw that in June 2006 when, finally, the House got its act together and made an issue of the Snatch Land Rover. That forced Browne to undertake a review, from which emerged an order for protected vehicles.

Now, we can allow Parliament and the MPs their "gesture" over Ivan Cameron. But, as Hitchens writes, "However hard they strained their minds and sinews, our MPs could not have prevented the death of young Ivan, or altered his fate by an inch." On the other hand, had they exerted themselves, they could have prevented many of the deaths that have occurred in Afghanistan and, before that, in Iraq. But, as we have seen so often, the House has not exerted itself on their behalf.

Without a countervailing concern – and action - for the lives for which the MPs are truly responsible, the gesture on Ivan Cameron was self-indulgence. It belies a selective concern which does nothing more than highlight the abrogation of their duties and responsibilities.

Nevertheless, Hitchens, having got the point, has a suggestion:

If they can adjourn for poor Ivan Cameron, then they should be compelled also to sit in all-night session till dawn, to commemorate and debate in detail each military death in Afghanistan from now on. The way things are going, that should also solve their second-home problems. They won't need them, as they'll spend most nights in the chamber.

They will not do that of course, but they should. In preparation, they should be given the bundles of witness statements and technical documentation that are produced after every death, and be forced to read them.

Then they should, each and every one of them, be forced to stand up in the House and explain to the nation why they (with but a very few honourable exceptions) have personally allowed soldiers to go to their deaths ill-equipped and unprepared. And in the gallery should be the parents of those soldiers who have died so unnecessarily. Our MPs can look them in the eyes when they make their statements.

They owe us no less.

COMMENT THREAD

Taking us for mugs

In his column today, Booker today picks up on the MAN truck story, but also extends it to take in the broader issues of the undeclared Europe first policy that has blighted defence procurement over the last decade.

Some time ago, I calculated that the British government had overspent to the tune of £8.8 billion on European projects, when the same (or sufficient) capacity could have been acquired more cheaply through indigenous production or by buying from other sources.

That is not to say that we should not buy European equipment. For instance, if a case could really have been made for a medium-weight, wheeled armoured vehicle (although I do not think it has) then we could have – and perhaps should have - bought the French VBCI. These, in any case, had a substantial British component, and they could have been in service by 2011.

The point that emerges, therefore, is that the decisions on which military equipment to buy should be made on the basis of national interest and then, within that, on the basis of what best meets the military requirement. All things being equal, the equipment should be purchased from British manufacturers. But, if better can be obtained elsewhere (or faster where there is an urgent operational need) then we should go anywhere in the world.

What Booker points out in his column though, as indeed did we earlier, is that one of the largest Army contracts in recent time, for a new fleet of 8,000 Army trucks, was not decided on any of these criteria but in support of Mr Blair's policy of supporting European military integration. Even Gerald Howarth, at the time noted that the MoD was "Buying them for political rather than commercial reasons". That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Army equipment should not be used as a political tool.

With a deep recession now in progress, the way this contract was awarded is particularly poignant, given the travails of one of the earlier bidders, LDV. The firm is now facing closure when it could have been sharing in a programme originally costed at £1.6 billion and which will end up at around £2 billion by the time all the add-ons have been taken into account.

The appalling thing about this whole episode and many others like it, though, is how little political and media interest there has been in the whole saga. We get no end of accusations directed at the government about "underspending", but rarely is there any interest in looking at where the money goes and whether it could be spent better. The whole of the undeclared "Europe first" programme has been one of those "black holes" which no one mentions.

Of course, with so many billions being sluiced about to bail out the banks and sundry financial institutions, it is very easy to lose sight of the fact that this is real money, representing real jobs and real products, the end result being military capabilities that determine whether people live or die.

The biggest problem of all, though, is that when it comes to protecting our own national interest, seem to let our "partners" walk all over us. The background to the MAN trucks story is that it took over the British company ERF, one of the last truck-makers in the UK, hollowed it out from the inside and then made it a front company for retailing German and Austrian-built trucks in the UK.

The one thing you can bet though, is the French Army – supposedly a pillar of the European Union – will not be seen in anything other than French-built trucks (pictured). In the same way, while we see French and German ambulances on our streets, you will be very hard put to find anything but a French-built ambulance anywhere in France.

It is exactly this mentality which is currently exercising the "colleagues" this week as they attend an emergency European Council today in Brussels. They are addressing the rush to "economic protectionism" and, in particular, Sarkozy's robust support for French car manufacturers and his determination to support French jobs before anything else.

In the frame are Sarkozy's plans to lend PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault €3 billion each and other measures in exchange for a promise not to shut French plants or move to cheaper sites "in the Czech Republic or elsewhere".

The French see no inconsistency between being member of the EU and supporting their own industries, yet we seem to look upon our membership as an excuse to ditch anything British, run down our industries and buy from any Jacques, Fritz or Toni that happens to want to make a quick buck at our expense. I suppose that we should be consoled in this case that British truckers at least got the contract to transport the trucks from Austria to the UK (below).


However, when it comes to truck builders, as Booker observes, when LDV last week pleaded for Government aid, the trade minister Ian Pearson loftily responded "the British taxpayer cannot be expected to pay for the company's losses". What he didn't admit, of course, is that if it hadn't been for his own Government those losses would never have arisen. And for the British taxpayer to pay up to £2 billion to keep Austrian workers employed is, it seems, perfectly acceptable.

Our government is taking us for mugs. It really is about time it woke up and smelt the coffee. British national interest comes first – and that does mean British jobs for British workers and British trucks for the British Army. Look after your own first not least because, unless you do, you won't be in a position to help anyone else.

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