Anything goes

Political editor George Pascoe-Watson, of The Sun needs to talk urgently to the paper’s defence editor (or vice versa).

On 11 March of this year – to the evident approval of the newspaper, GP-W announced a "£40m kit boost for our heroes", telling us in an "exclusive" report that British soldiers in Afghanistan were to get "72 new Mad Max-style troop carriers in tomorrow's Budget".

Although the story had a picture of the early version (unarmoured) - with photoshopped grenade launcher - amd acaption, "Tough ... Supacat armoured vehicle", it seems that defence "editor" Tom Newton Dunn (don't they have reporters anymore?) does not agree.

In another "exclusive" – despite it having been reported elsewhere - TND complains, under the title "Sent to die in open-top 4x4" (and a report that shows an armoured Jackal) that "commanders had to send a Household Cavalry soldier out to die in an UNARMOURED vehicle after their ageing light tanks broke down."

This was Trooper James Munday, the first (officially reported) death in a Jackal, the event described by TND as "…the latest in a long line of shameful equipment shortfalls to plague Our Boys on the Helmand frontline." He adds: Last night a Household Cavalry officer fumed: "It is a disgrace young men are being exposed to these sorts of dangers simply because the Government isn't prepared to pay for anything better … It makes a mockery of everything we serve for" - despite, it seems, the £40 million "boost" that The Sun has previously reported.

This is also rather at odds with the eulogising from The Daily Mail in June 2007, when it gushed over the "The 80mph 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban". Furthermore, it is totally at odds with the mad "puff" in The Sunday Mirror of last March, which described the Jackal as "four tons of pure killing machine".

This paper was competing with The Sunday Telegraph's Sean Rayment who was happily burbling about the "Pitbull", citing "senior officers" saying: "the vehicle will greatly enhance the fighting capability of their soldiers, and will save lives", adding: "The vehicle and crew are protected against mines by reinforced armour plating."

Well, for sure, it did not save the life of Trooper James Munday, nor those of Marines Neil Dunstan and Robert McKibben (and the unnamed Afghan soldier), the latest casualties, with the MoD admitting that they too were killed in a Jackal - something which The Daily Mail has also noted.

For Newton Dunn, though, the “unarmoured” truck is a poor substitute for the Scimitar, drawing this pained response from the MoD. If Newton Dunn wants another view (not that he does) he could always read this. Rather, shoehorning the facts to fit his storyline, he is more intent on offering us this tale of woe:

The elite unit's 26 Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles entered service in 1971 and have suffered mechanical problems for years. But they finally packed up this summer, as almost all broke down four miles from Camp Bastion at the start of one disastrous mission.

Half the troopers from the regiment's D Squadron, Prince William’s old unit, were stuck in the base for TWO MONTHS. Barely half the Scimitars could be repaired, leaving commanders with no choice but to rapidly retrain the other half of the squadron on the new Jackal 4x4 patrol trucks.

Even the Scimitars that were fixed could only operate in early morning or evening because of the blistering Afghan summer heat. A replacement — the FRES Scout Vehicle — was drawn up years ago but is not now due in service until 2015 at best. The MoD blamed problems with the Scimitar fleet on dust and heat and said £30million had been spent on upgrades.

The reference to FRES is interesting, with TDN presumably imbibing the legend that this system was in any way going to be up to the rigours of Afghanistan.

However, this defence "editor" finishes his piece telling us that "Last week an SAS commander quit in protest after three of his soldiers died inside an unarmoured Snatch Land Rover." Thus we have an "unarmoured" Jackal and an unarmoured "Snatch Land Rover", despite both being armoured – albeit lightly.

Perhaps Newton Dunn has not caught up with the latest version of the Jackal but it is always good to see the man keeping up his high standard of reporting.

As for the Scimitar, does he really think that this type is any safer, given the fate of the Spartan recently (built on the same chassis) or of this Scimitar in Iraq?

However, given the line taken by the man on the Jackal, it would not take many more casualties in this machine for The Sun to be making the government's life very difficult indeed. When you can be so cavalier with the facts, anything goes.

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The Jeremy Clarkson syndrome

All it lacks are "go-faster" stripes down the sides but, short of that, it is every boy-racer's dream - a "Mad Max" monster machine that can tear around the countryside at the taxpayers' expense, all without a moment's thought about what it is supposed to achieve.

No matter that the thing is so dangerously vulnerable that the Taleban can probably scarce believe their luck. Simply give the supposedly hard-bitten hacks a chance to play with the new "toy" and their brains go gurgling out of their backsides. Instead, they are seized by an advanced attack of the Jeremy Clarkson syndrome, gibbering with delight at the thrills and spills.

No less than two such hacks have fallen prey to this syndrome this weekend, Rupert Hamer, defence correspondent for the Sunday Mirror and Sean Rayment, his counterpart on The Sunday Telegraph.

Interestingly, both claim "exclusives", obviously heedless of the fact that they have been recruited by the Army to deliver shameless "puffs" for its latest insanity, justifying a decision which beggars belief in its arrant stupidity.

Thus do we get Hamer burbling with child-like glee at "the British Army's latest lethal weapon - four tons of pure killing machine, capable of climbing mountains and swimming across rivers to hunt down Taliban fighters in Afghanistan." Sitting in the front passenger seat, he tells us, with unrestrained joy: "The Supercat (sic), dubbed 'Mad Max' and a 'Land Rover on steroids' by troops, lurches down a steep hill and smashes into a water-filled ditch…".

Rayment, for The Sunday Telegraph is similarly afflicted. With his story illustrated by a lurid graphic, he tells us that the object of his childhood fantasies is, "Fast, powerful and with a fearsome array of weaponry …". "It has already been named 'Pitbull' by the soldiers who will drive it deep behind enemy lines," he burbles.

Citing entirely uncritically, unnamed "senior officers", he allows them to say, "the vehicle will greatly enhance the fighting capability of their soldiers, and will save lives", adding that: "The vehicle and crew are protected against mines by reinforced armour plating but the military says its best defence is its manoeuvrability and speed."

The vehicles – as we know - are not protected against mines at all. Thus the value of this exercise (for the Army) is that when the body bags start coming home - which we know they must, the journalists will have been totally compromised. They will utter not a word of criticism of the vehicle when the death toll mounts.

This we have seen before with the Pinzgauer Vector, with Sean Rayment offering an apologia for the machine, so bland in its description that no ordinary person would begin to realise that something was badly amiss.


Interestingly – and very telling – we can recall none of these burbling boy racers offering similar eulogies for the Mastiff, or even querying the delays over the introduction of the Ridgeback. Yet, for all the glamour and excitement of the new "toy", the unsung Mastiff is proving itself perfectly adequate for many of the tasks which the Army require – as the above picture demonstrates. Extreme off-road performance is not always at a premium, nor even necessary on many occasions.

Going back to basics, this Supacat M-WMIK (now renamed Jackal - ed) was originally intended as a replacement for the "Pink Panther", the mobility platform for Special Forces. It was never intended a replacement for the WIMIK Land Rover, which itself is an unsatisfactory stop-gap, pressed into service to make up for the failure of the Army to get its act together and procure an updated armoured car.

Yet the one thing useful Rayment does is confirm our worst fears that this "four tons of pure killing machine" will replace "the ageing Land Rover WIMIKs." In this role though, it will indeed be a "killing machine" but it will be our own troops who do the dying.

There is something very wrong with a media which so lacks critical faculties that it falls so easily for Army "spin".

COMMENT THREAD

Boy Racer procurement syndrome "killing soldiers"

Recent deaths of soldiers in military vehicles in Afghanistan are the result of poor procurement choices, influenced more by looks and performance than operational needs claims Richard North, author of Ministry of Defeat published later this week. Many of the vehicles pressed into service in Iraq and Afghanistan would be more at home amongst the middle aged boy racers on Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear programme or tearing round city centres late at night than on a modern battlefield.

The Army policy appears to be to buy vehicles for their looks, "uparmour" them at great cost but still leave them as effective as chocolate fireguards against the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) – the insurgency weapon of choice in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the worst examples is the Army's new Jackal high mobility gun platform, described as a "Land Rover on steroids" and dubbed the "Mad Max monster machine" when it was unveiled by the Army in June 2007.

Hugely popular with troops for its speed, manoeuvrability and comfortable ride, it's nonetheless lethal! Including the two soldiers tragically killed on Saturday May 30th in Helmand Province, already eight soldiers have since been killed in these £400,000 machines, many more have been seriously injured and over 20 vehicles have been written off after mine strikes or roadside bomb damage.

The loss rate is not surprising says North. The vehicle was originally designed as a high mobility truck and gun tractor and has since been converted into a "weapons platform" with the addition of two machine guns. First introduced into Afghanistan without armour, it has since been "uparmoured" twice, each time because it could not withstand Taleban attacks.

Modern protected vehicles are custom-designed and can withstand bombs as large as 300lb, something which converted vehicles can never do. In the Army's dedicated mine protected vehicle, the Mastiff, no lives have been lost, despite it being in service in two years longer than the Jackal.

An even worse example is the recently ordered Husky "support vehicle". It is based on the US-built International MXT pickup, a civilian competitor to the Hummer. Launched in 2004, it was decribed by the manufacturers as a "sleek and dominant truck geared for the 'image' truck market, a growing niche of truck owners who want to make a powerful statement about who they are."

With 200 ordered by the MoD in April this year, at a cost of £120 million, the Husky has been converted for military use with "bolt-on" armour. The same version was offered to the US Army for a procurement competition for an off-road mine protected vehicle to serve in Afghanistan. But, in the same week of the MoD order, it was learned that the US Army had failed the vehicle during its compulsory mine protection test and had been ruled our of the competition.

Again, North is unsurprised. Without what is known as a "v-shaped hull" as a basic part of the design, it is difficult to protect vehicles properly. Yet, with the right design, even light vehicles can withstand blasts that cripple tanks ten times their weight.

The Army, he says, is regressing in its approach to armoured vehicle design. The first ever production armoured car was built by the French in 1904. It was a commercial vehicle with bolt-on armour. After the Second World War, new technologies and experience enabled far more effective vehicles to be built, incorporating the armour into the basic structure. Now, the Army is going back to pre-war technology – pre First World War. And men are dying as a result.

Ironically, the British were the pioneers in mine protected vehicles, building army trucks in 1966 for the Aden campaign. The technology was further developed by the Rhodesians for their Bush War in the 1970s and then by South Africans. It has since been adopted by the US which is currently running a competition for a high-mobility mine protected vehicle.

It was in this competition that the Husky failed which means that the MoD is buying vehicles rejected by the Americans. But, with its chunky, macho looks, on the Top Gear show, it would win every time.

COMMENT THREAD

More coffins for the troops

What looked like it could have been an extra £2 billion for defence, announced yesterday in the budget, has turned out to be nothing of the sort.

Instead, it is an initial indication for the costs of military operations in the coming financial year. Since these costs normally come from the Treasury reserve and, last year cost £3.297bn, the figure announced can only be as advertised – an "indication".

However, within that is an element of "real" money, £900 million which, according to the MoD "will be used to ensure that the UKs Armed Forces have the best possible equipment and protection while they are on operations."

Nevertheless, the apparent paucity of the sum has yielded a ritual condemnation from the United Kingdom National Defence Association (UKNDA) which claims that the £2bn is a "sticking plaster" and "is not enough to plug gaps left by years of chronic under-funding".

The Association is calling for an increase in the core defence budget - arguing for a 40 percent increase to bring spending on the armed forces up to three percent of GDP - an objective it shares with the likes of Conservative Home.

The intensity of calls for greater funding though has not been matched by any detail on how money should be spent on extra equipment. That absence provoked a comment from this blogger on the Conservative Home site:

What you have to realise is that the Armed Forces have an unlimited capacity for buying the wrong or overly expensive equipment. But the really important thing is that the through-life cost of equipment is very much higher than its procurement cost. Thus, the wrong equipment continues to exert a drag on the budget throughout its life (to say nothing of the opportunity costs).

…

If the Conservatives are to be credible on defence policy, therefore, they cannot just keep repeating the sterile mantra of "more expenditure" when the NHS provides the definitive evidence that more money does not necessarily mean better capability.

They must start identifying the very specific shortcomings in equipment and expenditure wastage and come up with sensible alternatives.

Perversely, what looks to be a classic example of this comes in the very announcement which the UKNDA has so roundly condemned. The MoD, we learn, intends to order additional M-WMIK vehicles (now called the Jackal - ed) for Afghanistan and this is included in the "indicated" operational spend.

This is in addition to the original 130 ordered last June when the vehicle was described in gushing terms as a Land Rover on steroids.

From The Sun we learn that another 72 of what it describes as the "new Mad Max-style troop carriers" will be ordered, at a cost of £40 million. That makes them over half a million each, nearly double the original cost of £230,000 per unit.

This completely passes by The Sun which "…told yesterday how an SAS officer died in a parachute jump because he did not have a £50 radio". Now it is "campaigning for ministers to ensure all UK forces have the kit they need." A newspaper which is making such issue of the death of an Army Captain through what it alleges is "penny pinching" is thus heedless of the fact that this vehicle is dangerously vulnerable both to mines and IEDs and to gunfire.

We have made our views abundantly clear on the dangers of these vehicles, not only here and here but particularly here, where we were able to illustrate the vulnerabilities.

The issue was extensively debated on the unofficial Army site, with a wide range of views expressed. If the case for the advocates of the vehicle can be summed up though, it is that the enhanced off-road performance gives it the ability to skirt danger areas, where mines might be laid, while its speed, manoeuvrability and firepower offers greater protection than can be achieved from a slower, armoured vehicle.

There seems to be some agreement in this context that the vehicle is fine for Special Forces and Special Forces Support Groups. These are often working in areas where they have the advantage of surprise and where there is some validity in providing high mobility to the exclusion of any protection.

However, the problem is that with the original purchase of 130 and now another 72, they look set to become a partial WIMIK Land Rover replacement, for "routine patrols" and other purposes for which they are entirely unsuited. As one poster to the Army forum put it, "…if it does get used for urban patrols or gets misused for other roles, then a lot of squaddies will not be coming home."

We have already seen a steady toll crews of Land Rover WIMIKs, Pinzgauers and even the occasional "Snatch", and there are many occasions where mobility affords little protection. A vehicle offering even less protection than the Land Rovers – which they seem set to replace – means we are indeed going to be seeing more body bags coming home.

Yet, as they pull the bodies from the wrecks of these vehicles – currently slated at over half-a-million each - not even The Sun will be able to complain of "penny pinching". And, if the Army was given yet more money, what then would it buy?

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Are they insane?

Just when you thought this site had become a "toy" free zone and it was safe to come back – wham! A "toy" post with a vengeance.

There is, however, no levity here. Once again, on a day when we are also reading reports of another roadside bomb in Afghanistan, killing and maiming solders in a Snatch Land Rover, we have to record the utter stupidity of the MoD, which seems determined to put troops in harm's way, with inadequate protection.

The proximate cause of our ire is a report in yesterday's Mail on Sunday headlined, "The 80mph 'Mad Max' monster targeting the Taliban".

This, in the usual gushing, uncritical style of idiot journos, talks up a "four-ton monster truck" which is supposed to be "the British Army's new weapon designed to take on insurgents on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan."

It is, we are told, the British-made, the Supacat Weapons Mounted Installation Kit (now renamed the Jackal - ed) which "boasts awesome firepower which will be unleashed early next year," adding, "British and other Nato troops are being targeted by roadside bombs and daily firefights."

Yet, although we are told that, "Infantry soldiers have complained existing Land Rovers provide insufficient protection from the bombers," the one thing that struck commenters on both the Mail site and the Army forum was the lack of protection.

Inspection of the photograph does suggest that there could be a modicum of mine protection, in that the front wheel arches do seem to have angled armour, but the position of the gunner is still extremely exposed – dangerously so – yet 130 of these contraptions are to be sent to Afghanistan, where mines are a serious problem.

Yet again, as with the Pinzgauer Vector and the Duro we see this insane obsession with putting drivers and crew over the front wheels, in the centre of the cone of destruction, where they are at their most vulnerable. As the picture shows, of an ordinary Land Rover which survived a mine strike, the crew would be better off in that type of vehicle

Just when we thought we were getting through to the MoD, with its purchase of the Mastiffs, which are turning out to be highly popular with the troops, we then get this regression to type.

One wonders whether these fools have ever seen vehicles which have taken mine or IED strikes (above) and, if so, why they are so willing, it seems, to send troops to their certain deaths.

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