A common enemy

David Hughes, The Daily Telegraph's chief leader writer, is waxing outraged about Quentin Davies, complaining that he is blaming defence procurement delays and cost overruns on a government of which he was actually a member.

Thus, in what Hughes calls "a shameless piece of sophistry", he has Davies identifying "the real problem" in as the last Conservative Government which had made such a mess "that we are still living with the consequences."

Hughes really cannot get to grips with this as, in order to dismiss Davies's point, he splutters: "The last Tory government shuffled off into the wilderness more than 12 years ago. That's the equivalent of the Second World War, twice over. And it's still to blame?"

People like Hughes or, of course, far too grand to read blogs – other than their own - but he would have benefited greatly from reading one of our pieces written on 20 July 2006 where we noted that a then-emerging defence "funding gap" raised ...

... important questions about the very nature of our democracy, arising from the lengthening period between ordering military hardware and taking delivery. We are getting to the situation where typical procurement cycles are longer than the length of several parliaments, so that one government can make huge spending commitments which may have to be met by a completely different government.

That effectively the point to which Davies was alluding and, while he placed it in a party political context, it is a good one. Any number of projects with which the Labour administration have had to deal with (and fund) were originated during the tenure of the last Conservative government. These include the Eurofighter, the Merlin helicopter, the Type 45 project, the Nimrod MR4, the medium armoured vehicle project(s) and even the A-400M, to say nothing of the failure of the UAV project, with the purchase of the Phoenix.

Cited in particular by Davies was the Chinook debacle, about which Hughes is so dismissive, yet this was indeed a Tory failure. Strangely, while we have discussed this in previous posts, we have never set down an analysis of what precisely went wrong, but it is only from this knowledge that one can see the full extent of the Tory culpability.

Revisiting the issue therefore, we can recall that the problems go right back to July 1995. Then, the MoD, under Michael Portillo, decided that eight of 14 Chinook HC Mk2 helicopters on order from Boeing should be delivered to an enhanced (HC Mk3) standard, to meet the emerging requirement for a dedicated Special Forces support helicopter.

The point at this stage was that, instead of the standard troop-carrying version, the MoD could have bought the special Chinook MH-47Es, which had been designed specifically by the US for special forces operations. But these were considered too expensive so, as a cost-cutting measure, Portillo agreed that eight airframes should be converted – to a lower standard, incidentally, which would not match the MH-47E and would not even meet known special forces requirements.

Therefore, right from the very start, the project was dictated by cost-cutting, with a "bastardised hybrid solution" devised to give the new helicopters a basic capability at minimum extra cost.

Thus, while the new aircraft were to have improved range and navigation capability, and be fitted with night vision sensors and a new weather radar, the MoD decided to shoehorn new, state-of-the-art digital systems into the existing, old-technology analogue cockpit.

With a projected cost of £259 million for the eight aircraft, the "In-Service Date" (defined as delivery of the first six aircraft) was set for November 1998, with the contract for the avionics upgrade agreed in early 1997, one of the last acts of the dying Major government. In the hot seat then as procurement minister was James Arbuthnot, now chairman of the defence committee.

Unfortunately, only when the conversion work was actually in progress was it discovered that the displays for the weather radar and other systems would not fit inside the existing cockpit, requiring extensive re-working.

This, then was the situation that the Labour administration inherited in May 1997, with the new defence secretary, then George Robertson, having no option but to agree a redefined In-Service Date for a programme which was now slipping badly. Thus, in March 1998, only eight months before the helicopters were due in service, a new ISD was set for January 2002.

Seven of the eight aircraft were actually delivered between July 2001 and May 2002, but then the real problems began to emerge. The aircraft had to be certified for safety before they could be used on operations and it had been assumed that since the systems and displays in the HC Mk 3 cockpit were based upon those fitted to the Royal Netherlands Air Force's advanced CH-47D Chinooks, there could be a "read-across" on the basis of similarity with the Dutch avionics.

Therein lay the real disaster. So many changes had been made that the new hybrid digital/analogue cockpit was now unique. This meant that the software used to make it function had to be fully tested, as of new, in order to the prevailing defence safety standards.

And no one had thought to specify in the contract (agreed in 1997 by the Tories) that software documentation and code for avionics systems should be analysed in accordance with UK defence standards in order to demonstrate software integrity. As a result it was not possible to demonstrate that the helicopter's flight instruments meet the required United Kingdom Defence standards.

Much is then made of the fact that, initially, the manufacturers, Boeing, were reluctant to allow access to the source codes that would allow the systems to be analysed, but they did eventually relent. But that could not resolve the problem.

The process of proving that the software met UK standards was itself time-consuming and extremely expensive. Moreover, because the legacy software in the hybrid cockpit was not amenable to the techniques required to confirm the robustness of new software design there was no guarantee of a successful outcome.

Consequently, the Chinook HC Mk3 was restricted to day/night flying above 500 feet, clear of cloud, and in circumstances that ensured that the pilot could fly the aircraft solely using external reference points and without relying on the flight displays. These restrictions meant that the helicopters could not be used except for the most limited flight trials.

This left the Labour government with an extremely difficult situation, the only option then to do exactly what is now being done - to strip out the new work and restore the helicopters to their original condition, at a cost originally estimated at about £127 million, over and above the £259 million originally estimated.

With that, the helicopters could have entered service in mid-2007 - nine years later than the original In-Service Date, and five years after the revised date. But even then, with dithering in the ranks of the MoD while all possible alternatives were explored – including scrapping the aircraft and using them for spares - it was not until last year that Des Browne bit the bullet and ordered them to be refitted.

Technically, therefore, the bulk of the blame for the problem – and certainly the extra costs – lies with Tory ministers. In fact, though, no lay minister could possibly be expected to second-guess a highly technical contract, and spot the missing details. They were – as are their successors – totally reliant on their expert technical advisors.

However, had not the Tories decided to cut costs and taken the safer route of buying off-the shelf, none of this would have happened. To that extent, political blame does rest with Tory ministers. But as to the technical decisions made subsequently, these are not party political issues. The system failed, as it has done before and since, and will continue to fail until it is reformed.

To that extent, Labour and Conservatives have a problem in common – the MoD. It is, in effect, the common enemy, something that David Hughes, if he had any sense, would recognise.

COMMENT THREAD

The all heat and no light show

Trying – and dismally failing – to cover even a fraction of the torrent of coverage on Afghanistan that has poured from the media over the weekend, I had thought we might see a slackening with the start of the working week – but not a bit of it.

What we are seeing is what might be called the "political phase" as opposition politicians have had time to absorb some of the details of recent events, confer with their colleagues and advisors, and prepare their own lines of attack, crafting points with which to beat the government.

With defence questions this afternoon, the last before the House rises on 21 July, rather predictably we see Liam Fox – silent for so long - leading the charge, accusing Gordon Brown of "the ultimate dereliction of duty" in his handling of the war in Afghanistan.

Those of us with a slightly longer memory will remember that, when our Liam earlier this year had the opportunity to set out his views in detail about the conduct of the campaign in Afghanistan, and what precisely was needed to ensure success, he was strangely silent, as indeed he was through a subsequent defence debate.

Now, making up for lost time, Dr Fox has decided that the prime minister has "catastrophically" under-equipped the armed forces and is now "resorting to spin rather than confronting the life-threatening reality" that the troops face.

The Conservatives' line is to accuse Brown of attempting to cover up the fact that British troops do not have enough helicopters, which has forced them to travel by road and left them vulnerable to the Taleban's IEDs. Twelve of the 15 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this month, and three-quarters of those killed over the past two years, were killed by IEDs.

Far be it for us to disagree with the premise that more helicopters are needed in theatre, but Dr Fox is on somewhat shaky ground if he is asserting – as he appears to be doing – that the bulk of the recent deaths arose from the lack of helicopters.

Not least, the five killed from the 2nd Rifles were on a routine foot patrol, and while there may have been some measures which could have eliminated the peril to which they succumbed, the use of a helicopter was not one of them. Given that they were patrolling in the vicinity of their forward operating base, on a fixed and predictable "beat", the most obvious safeguard would have been persistent video surveillance, using either UAVs, mast-mounted cameras or even concealed micro-cameras, the like of which have been used to great effect by US forces in maintaining route security.

Of one thing one can be certain, with the elaborate nature of the ambush prepared, it must have taken some time to set up and it is hard to believe that, had the technology been in place, suspicious activity would not have been detected.

It is ironic, in a way, that while CCTV prevails in this country to keep a largely law-abiding population under surveillance – and to detect such heinous crimes as littering – the MoD has not thought fit to employ the same technology to protect against far greater threats.

The irony of this, of course, seems to have passed by Dr Fox, yet nor can he rely on the deaths of Lt-Col Thorneloe and Trp Hammond to support his thesis on helicopter shortages. A helicopter ride might have saved Thorneloe's life, for sure, but in his absence, someone else would have been in the front seat of that Viking and could well have died in his place – the casualty rate might thereby have been unaffected.

Nor indeed do we know that a helicopter would have been appropriate, as the Lt-Col was going into a combat area and pilots are rightly reluctant to fly into contested areas unless in dire emergency, which clearly this was not. And, as we know from the fate of Captain Ben Babington-Browne, killed in a Canadian helicopter last week, flying is not without its hazards. For all we know, a ground vehicle might have been the most appropriate form of transport.

What we do have a better idea of, however is that if money had not been frittered away on such unwanted extravagances as a Ferris wheel and a "wimmins' park" and instead had been diverted on improving the road network and bridges, the heavier protected Mastiffs or Ridgebacks could have been used rather than Vikings.

Again, therefore, helicopter shortages do not seem to be the issue – as indeed it may not have been with the more recent Viking casualty, Corporal Lee Scot. He had been leading his section of Vikings from the front when an explosion struck, yet another soldier blown apart in that dangerously vulnerable vehicle.

Defence secretary Ainsworth then himself points to the fact that two recent casualties were killed by an IED while dismounting from a Mastiff, circumstances which might lead one to wonder whether this was another of those carefully prepared Taleban ambushes, but again an incident where a helicopter could hardly have saved the day.

Thus, while a more general case can certainly be made for more helicopters, the bandwagon harnessed by Dr Fox is not going in that direction – which suggests that when he raises the issue in defence questions tomorrow – as undoubtedly he will, given an opportunity – he will be slapped down. That will not matter, of course – the propaganda point will have been made and will get the requisite headlines.

Where Ainsworth would be vulnerable - but is unlikely to be challenged by Dr Fox, however – is on his assertion that "extra equipment could not eliminate risk". This is true enough in that nothing can eliminate risk, but there is certainly equipment that could reduce it, whether it is bridging gear, video surveillance cameras, more UAVs or, as we saw with Private Robbie Laws, more and better mine/IED clearance equipment.

What comes over from the current Tory thrust, therefore, is an attempt to distil down a complex situation, where theatre needs are equally complex as well as varied – as indeed are the deficiencies - in an attempt to score political points rather than shed light on the problems.

Much the same can be said of the second line of attack, the "boots on the ground" argument, rehearsed over the weekend by commentators too numerous to mention, not least Gen Dannatt, who gets an enthusiastic "puff" from Brigadier Allan Mallinson (ret).

Again, there is a case to be made for more troops in theatre, to consolidate the "take and hold" strategy, the first part of which has been played out over the last two weeks or so, with the deployment of US and British troops in co-ordinated actions. But that is a different thing from asserting that, during the current actions, shortage of troops has in any way affected the casualty rate. And that pre-supposes that we should necessarily buy into the strategy, and not be looking at alternatives.

Also, conveyed in The Times today is a somewhat "inconvenient truth" articulated by an anonymous government spokesman. He says, "We are losing more men because we are taking the fight to the Taleban and more troops are being put in harm's way. But it is just not true to say that fewer would be killed if more were there. The opposite could be true. Many of our men have been killed by roadside bombs. Having more there would not prevent that happening."

There is some truth in that. With an increasingly sophisticated enemy, constantly probing for weak spots and launching opportunistic attacks, more men can equal more "targets" and greater opportunities to inflict casualties. And then, it is indeed the case that more aggressive action, with forays into enemy-held territory, will inevitably increase casualty rates.

Bruce Anderson in The Independent therefore makes good sense when he writes that casualties are inevitable. "Politicians are sometimes naïve enough to think that battles can be won without bloodshed," he adds. But, "Soldiers know better. There is a phrase, regularly used by Wellington, which soldiers will repeat and which always makes civilians quail: 'the butcher's bill'. Soldiers have been there."

Putting that in perspective, Anderson then states that this does not dispense with the need to keep the bill down. He writes:

War imposes moral obligations, especially upon those who send men into action. If they will the end, they must will the means. In Afghanistan, this would not necessitate vastly expensive space-age technology. It would merely require the basic tools of modern warfare, such as armoured vehicles whose armour is worth something, and helicopters. Without them, we are effectively reduced to Second World War methods.

Actually, it does require, in some instances, "space-age technology", some of it very sophisticated and expensive. Other kit though, is more down to earth, such as well-designed mine/blast protected vehicles. But there is no panacea, no "quick fix" which will remove the risk entirely. Helicopters are part of the mix, but there is much a need for light tactical helicopters as there is for more transports, and for a decent section helicopter, which is not currently available to British forces.

Equally, with the "boots on the ground" argument, more troops per se are not necessarily an advantage, unless there is a clear idea of how they are to be employed, to what specific effect, within the context of a clear strategy and with equipment and tactics relevant to the theatre, which will provide "added value" to the campaign.

Issues such as helicopters thus do need to be addressed, but the questions that need to be asked are what types are needed, in what numbers and for what purposes. The equipment arguments then need to be widened out to address the broad range of deficiencies in theatre – and the quality and capabilities of equipment fielded. Numbers – and types – of troops deployed need to be discussed in the context of strategy and the other related issues.

Simply to distil these complex issues down to a small number of political mantras and slogans is neither helpful nor productive. Yet, despite the torrent of coverage that we are seeing, there is no evidence yet that we are progressing to the point where we are getting past the sloganising and into the beef.

Heat, there is in this debate, but very little light.

COMMENT THREAD

Welsh Guards CO killed

Recorded by Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe (pictured on patrol), CO of the 1st Bttn Welsh Guards, has been killed in Afghanistan by an IED.

He is the first CO to be killed in action since the death of Lt-Col H Jones of the Parachute Regiment in 1982 at Goose Green in the Falklands War and the highest-ranking British Army officer to be killed in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Thorneloe's death comes less than two weeks after the death of Major Sean Birchall, also of the Welsh Guards. He is the third Welsh Guards officer to be killed on the current roulement, with Lt Mark Evison killed on 12 May after sustaining injuries whilst on patrol outside Check Point Haji Alem in Helmand.

The first bare details were reported early Wednesday afternoon by AFP, which released details of an incident in which a bomb blast (IED) had killed two and wounded six in southern Afghanistan, bringing to 158 the number of international soldiers to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year.

It took until mid-morning today for the MoD publicly to confirm what has been known to the media since yesterday – that they were two of ours, "one soldier from 1st Bttn Welsh Guards and the other from 2nd Royal Tank Regiment."

The MoD website, however, makes no mention of Lt-Col Thorneloe or of the injured – although two were very seriously injured, one of whom is "critical". No other names have yet been given, in accordance with normal practice. Tpr Joshua Hammond of the 2 Royal Tank Regiment has now been named. He was, presumably, the driver.

This, according to The Daily Telegraph and others, brings the number of British personnel killed since the start of operations in October 2001 to 171. The explosion, we are told, happened whilst on a deliberate operation near Lashkar Gah, the media informing us that they were taking part in Operation Panther's Claw.


According to The Daily Telegraph, Lt-Col Thorneloe, with the others, was riding in a Viking (pictured) as it was negotiating a canal crossing. The explosion took out the rear compartment of this articulated vehicle, as well as the tractor. That would bring to eight the number of troops killed in Vikings, with Thorneloe the most senior, regarded as a "high flier" and former aide to defence secretary Des Browne.

If the unverified details are correct, then they would seem to reinforce the intelligence coming out of theatre that the Taleban are resorting progressively to much larger IEDs. However, such information as is available suggests this was not a massive bomb, and possibly survivable in a MRAP such as the Mastiff.

With the known vulnerability of the Viking, and its scheduled replacement, the use of this vehicle was supposed to have been restricted. With such a high-profile death, this may bring into focus the use of this tragically vulnerable vehicle, and call into question the entire MoD protected vehicle policy.

More details in The Times and the story is also covered by The Daily Mail. The Guardian pastes in a Press Association release, which makes no mention of the Viking, although it is briefly mentioned by the BBC.

The Guardian follows up with a piece by Richard Norton-Taylor, who retails a defence official's description of a "huge bomb" that shattered the armoured Viking tracked vehicle. In the absence of a reliable source on this, we can expect the MoD to "talk up" the size of the IED in order to divert attention from the weakness of the Viking. Even in death, politics plays its part.

The Times then offers a "commentary" by Crispin Black discussing how "Rupert Thorneloe's death will affect Welsh Guardsmen deeply", with not a word about the manner of his untimely death.

In a second piece, Tom Coghlan offers his reflections of Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the man, and then another piece where he describes an earlier ambush on a Viking supply convoy, completely missing the point. How the MoD must love him. We will review this piece separately.

James Blitz of the Financial Times comes in with his own piece. By now, the MoD is briefing freely and the focus again is entirely on the "commanding officer" aspect of the death. The MoD is cited as saying that only six Army COs have died on operations in command of their units since 1948. There is no reference at all to the Viking. This, and its extreme vulnerability to IEDs, is gradually being filtered out of the narrative as the "damage limitation" mechanisms go to work.

Reuters has its staff reporter Peter Griffiths write up the story. He also fails to include details of the Viking. This report will be reproduced in thousands of MSM reports. An "inconvenient truth" has been buried.

Note: Release of Lt-Col Thorneloe's name was originally embargoed until 10pm this evening, but The Sun has now published details on its web site. We have, therefore, now decided to publish our own post.

COMMENT THREAD

A failure of supervision

As the publication of the book draws near - now scheduled for next Thursday, the same day as the euro-elections - we are beginning the largely thankless task of getting media attention for the launch. To that effect, the first of many press releases have hit the street, couched in terms that may interest the media.

Our first is entitled "Failure of supervision by MPs 'caused deaths of soldiers'". It makes the case - which we have so often made before - that Parliament, and especially the Defence Committee, owes a special duty of care to members of the Armed Forces, to which effect we rightly (in our view) hold MPs responsible for some of our soldiers' deaths - where they could have intervened to save them.

Such a charge is the mirror-image of the "expenses" scandal, where the argument is that, while MPs have been enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense, soldiers have been dying becuase they have not done their jobs properly. It is difficult sometimes to make a link between the comfortable, well-appointed committee rooms in Westminister and the arid deserts of Helmand, but link there is. This is what we are telling the media:

Failures by a powerful MPs' watchdog committee killed at least five soldiers with many more being badly injured, claims Richard North, author of a hard hitting book on the Iraq war entitled Ministry of Defeat.

The five soldiers included Sergeant Lee "Jonno" Johnson who was killed in December 2007 when his vehicle was hit by a mine, and Major Alexis Roberts of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who had mentored Prince William during his time training at Sandhurst military academy.

They and the others were killed in a dangerously vulnerable "protected patrol vehicle" called the Pinzgauer Vector which should never have been ordered, says North. Yet in 2006 the vehicle order was "welcomed" by MPs in the Defence Committee, chaired by James Arbuthnot, who has since been criticised for claiming expenses for "swimming pool maintenance".(1)

Although MPs were been diligent in claiming their tax-free expenses, when it came to watching over the safety of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, they did not pick up fatal flaws in the machines, which offered no protection to mines and roadside bombs, claims North.

The Ministry of Defence first ordered Vectors on June 2006 at a cost of cost £437,000 each, to replace the the Snatch Land Rovers* costing £60,000, in which 37 soldiers have been killed. But so poor was their design that it was incapable of protecting drivers and passengers from more than hand grenades, yet they were being earmarked for Afghanistan where 7.5 kg anti-tank mines were common.(2)

Even when David Gould, deputy chief executive of the Defence Procurement Agency, sitting alongside the then defence secretary Des Browne, warned the committee on 11 July 2006 that they would "actually provide not a great deal more in terms of protection than Snatch", MPs failed to respond.

The choice of the vehicle was not examined again until December last year, but committee chairman James Arbuthnot – himself a former defence minister – only asked a question about its ability to operate on rough terrain. He did not query the deaths and injuries.

Only in April of this year did Arbuthnot finally question defence secretary John Hutton about the safety of the machine, when he was told that the Vector had been the "least successful" of the armoured vehicles purchased by the MoD and that "Mistakes were probably made". On 1 May, three years after the vehicles had been ordered, the MoD officially announced that they were to be withdrawn because they were "too vulnerable" to roadside bombs. Military vehicles often have a service life of 20-30 years.

Bizarrely, the Vectors are being replaced by "uparmoured" Snatch Land Rovers, the very vehicles they were intended to replace. The MoD has spent nearly £50 million on purchasing Vectors so far, and has been forced to spend another £5 million on upgrading the Land Rovers to take their place.

Says Dr North, had the MoD deliberately sought out a design to maximise deaths and injuries, the Army, in selecting the Vector, could not have made a better choice. If Mr Arbuthnot perhaps had been more concerned about soldiers' lives than his swimming pool maintenance, five soldiers might now be alive and many more would not have been injured. He says the design defects were obvious before the vehicles were even bought.(3)

Other MPs warned about the dangers – including the retiring MP Ann Winterton in April 2007, before the vehicles had been deployed, in a debate attended by Mr Arbuthnot and other defence committee members – but the warnings were ignored. (4)

Conservative leader David Cameron has called for reforms to the select committee system, including banning former ministers from being chairmen.

ends

Notes for editors.

1. Defence Committee Report on Defence Procurement 2006, 28 November 2006.

2. The manufacturer's specification cites protection from "two NATO L2A2 hand grenades detonating simultaneously only 150mm below the floor pan" – 350g of high explosive. This vehicle was to be deployed into one of the heaviest mined countries in the world, up against Russian anti-tank mines housing 7.5 Kg of high explosive.

3. The Vector has a "cab forward" layout, with the driver and the front seat passenger sat over the wheel arches. If a mine detonated under a wheel, either the driver or the passenger would be directly in the so-called "cone of destruction", exposed to the full force of the blast. The Snatch has an "engine forward" layout and there is some distance between the front wheels and the occupants of the cab, allowing, as some have, soldiers to escape the full force of a mine and survive.

4. During his tenure as defence procurement minister, James Arbuthnot was responsible for giving the go-ahead to the Phoenix UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for the Army. With an original planned in-service date of 1989 and despite having even then failed to perform, production was approved in the summer of 1996.

Unable to cope with the heat of Iraqi summers, it was withdrawn from operation service in May 2006, leaving the Army without a vital capability. Phoenix was formally retired in March 2008 - at an overall cost of £345 million - after less than seven years of operational service. Mr Arbuthnot was also the minister who ordered the ill-fated HC2 Chinook helicopters at an original cost of £259 million and have since cost £422 million for eight aircraft which have yet to fly.

Other projects for which Mr Arbuthnot was responsible - in whole of part - were the Nimrod MR4 project, the Future Large Aircraft (Airbus A400M) which has now been seriously delayed, and he masterminded the privatisation of Armed Forces married quarters.

Perhaps it is unfair to single out one man - but there again, if this is not done, where does the buck actually stop?

COMMENT THREAD

Is this the best you can do?

At last, elements of the Vector story are emerging, drowned in the torrent of stories on MPs' expenses, even though we are seeing the waste of £100 million – roughly the sum paid to all 648 MPs in a year – the unnecessary deaths of at least five men and many more very badly injured.

The proximate cause for the publicity is a National Audit Office report, which has remarked that the vehicle has "limited under-belly armour to counter the evolving IED and mine threat in Afghanistan" and as a result "confidence in the use of the vehicle was low among commanders, both those in theatre and those who have recently returned."

This being an NAO report, the parliamentary end is Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee. It is thus to him that Deborah Haynes, writing for The Times, goes for a "cut and paste" comment. And what says the mighty Edward Leigh? It is a "woeful state of affairs" when confidence is lost in a new vehicle like the Vector so quickly, he tells us.

It is a "woeful state of affairs"? Is that really the best this man can do – a senior MP costing us £150,000 a year, and change? Is that all he can say about a procurement scandal that has cost us so dear?

But Haynes, not content with just Leigh, also fills her space with a renta-quote from Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary. He tells us that the NAO's findings confirmed "the gross mismanagement that has characterised Labour's decade of neglect of the Armed Forces".

Extruded verbal material then follows as Fox utters his all-purpose quote: "Due to a lack of strategic planning by this Government, our armed forces now have to play catch up by procuring equipment through [urgent operational requirements], instead of through a coherent procurement strategy. This leads to shortages of key equipment for training and use on operations. This is unacceptable and could cost British lives in the long run."

Yet it is this sort of low-grade rant that brings politics into disrepute. Apart from anything else, the UOR system is widely cited as one of the successes of the procurement systems. It is a rapid means by which the interminable bureaucracy of the MoD has been short-circuited and urgently equipment has been brought into service.

As to the Vector, as we know, this is not a reflection of any lack of strategy – it was purchased by the Army in direct fulfilment of its then current strategy. As even The Times now reports, the vehicle was bought to replace the Snatch Land Rover. The NAO report, however, makes this clearer, stating: "Vector was procured as a lightweight patrol vehicle for Afghanistan, to address the mobility, payload and capacity constraints of Snatch II, while improving on the armour protection."

That this could be taken at all seriously is belied by the fact that in 2006 the Defence Select Committee made several examinations of the Vector procurement, not least here. On one occasion, a member noted of the Vector that "there is a very welcome announcement that the MoD is to buy these vehicles to replace Snatch Land Rovers". Yet, on on 11 July 2006, alongside Des Browne, then secretary of state for defence, David Gould, deputy chief executive of the Defence Procurement Agency said:

We have the Vector programme, which the Secretary of State referred to, which will actually provide not a great deal more in terms of protection than Snatch but much more mobility and load carrying, so very, very suitable for the kind of terrain we meet in Afghanistan.

This, we reported the next day, after already having noted that the vehicle was dangerously vulnerable. Not then nor later did the Defence Committee ever question the safety of the Vector, even though it was quite obviously less safe than the vehicle it was replacing.

This is now confirmed by an article in Defence Management and another in The Financial Times which tells us that, after the weakness of the Vector was noted, the MoD spent £5 million up-armouring the Snatch Land Rover to produce the Vixen, to fill the capacity gap left by withdrawing the Vector.

We thus have the extraordinary situation where the MoD has spent £100 million on replacing a vehicle that was acknowledged to be unsafe – the Snatch Land Rover – only then to find that its replacement was even less safe, then to spend £5 million replacing it with the vehicle which it was intended to replace. And all the while, the Defence Committee failed to understand what was going on, despite having been given evidence of its weakness, well before the vehicle went into service.

On this basis, we can certainly turn to the MoD and complain about its suspect judgement but the long stop is Parliament in the form of the Defence Committee – and it failed to do its job.

Moreover, Fox himself does not come out of this at all well. Despite Ann Winterton raising the issue several times in Parliament, initially, Gerald Howarth, a member of Fox's defence team, supported the vehicle and when, finally, Howarth acknowledged it was too dangerous for use in Afghanistan, neither he nor Fox did anything about it.

Thus, while Fox so casually lays the blame – all blame – at the feet of government, he too shares the blame, with his parliamentary colleagues. They all had the opportunities and power to bring the MoD to book, and failed to do so. In our constitution, the buck stops with Parliament. In this case – and in so many – the institution failed to do its job.

And this really is the nub of the issue, which takes us beyond the child-like tendency to load all our ills on "government". Parliament must accept responsibility for its own mistakes and then it must improve its performance. Otherwise, there is no point in having it at all – at any price.

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

Lost before it started – Part 5

Having looked at the effects of policy on the conduct of the campaign in Iraq, in this fifth part, we look at the Army's response to criticisms, and its broader response to its own failures, reflecting on the nature of the problems which affect the Army high command.

Armchair critics

Faced with criticisms of the Iraqi operation, Gen Dannatt has been quick to round on "armchair critics". He is not the only one. At the height of the Iranian hostages affair in April 2007, there had been much speculation about the apparent willingness of the boarding team to surrender without a shot being fired. Des Browne had sprung to the team's defence, castigating the "armchair pundits". "We ought to be very careful about commenting from the comparative comfort of wherever we are, when we are not out there on operations, about decisions that operational commanders and other people make," he said.

It is perhaps a little unkind to point out that, when it came to armchairs, the MoD was better equipped than most. To complement the £2.3 billion refurbishment of its headquarters in Whitehall, it had purchased over three thousand Herman Miller Aeron chairs, described as "the most comfortable office chairs in the world" - at a list price of over £1,000 each.

An Army incapable of learning

Despite its rejection of "armchair critics", we have an Army which seems incapable of learning for itself. For instance, with troops deployed in Afghanistan, albeit in small numbers before 2006, as had happened in Iraq, routine patrols in the capital Kabul had been carried out in Wolf Land Rovers.

Sure enough, on 28 January 2004, a patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing Pte Jonathan Kitulagoda and destroying the Land Rover. As in Iraq, the Army replaced these vehicles with Snatches. Sure enough, on 4 September 2006, a patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing Pte Craig O'Donnell. Four Afghani civilians were also killed and another soldier was very seriously injured.

Just over a month later, on 19 October, Marine Gary Wright, 45 Commando Royal Marines, was killed in a Snatch as it left the police station in Lashkar Gah, the regional capital of Helmand Province. A suicide bomber had been waiting for his convoy. The Snatch was destroyed, one other Royal Marine was seriously injured and two children bystanders were killed.

In all, up to the end of 2008, at least ten soldiers died in Snatches in Afghanistan, culminating in an infamous incident on 16 June 2008. Then, four soldiers were killed in a Snatch, three from the SAS and one female soldier, Sarah Bryant. Another soldier was badly injured.

The use of the Snatch was roundly condemned as "cavalier at best, criminal at worst," by Major Sebastian Morley, the soldiers' CO. Having tendered his resignation, he claimed that Whitehall officials and military commanders had repeatedly ignored his warnings. Troops would be killed if they continued to allow them to be transported in this vulnerable vehicle, he had protested. He had not been alone. "We highlighted this issue saying people are going to die and now they have died," said a soldier who served with Major Morley, referring to a vehicle which the troops were calling "mobile coffins".

Defence of the Snatch

Far from being contrite, the MoD robustly defended the Snatch. In the immediate aftermath of the June incident, Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth had in the Commons insisted that "commanders on the ground" were telling him they still needed Land Rover-based platforms "... and they will do for the foreseeable future." Weathering aggressive oral questions on 3 November and even a question to the Prime Minister two days later, the MoD maintained its fightback.

This culminated in briefings to MPs and media on 16 December from none other than Lt Gen Nick Houghton, now Chief of Joint Operations. Patronising in tone and simplistic in content, Houghton's dissertation amounted to an admission that, as long as there was a tactical need for a light protected vehicle, the Snatch would have to remain in service. There was no other option. "You may have heard of alternatives," he said, "but at present no acceptable alternative vehicle exists though they are being actively sought."

The Vector – a "coffin on wheels"

What he admitted to journalists after his formal presentation, though, was that there had been an alternative. But it had "proved inadequate, unable to cope with the threat from roadside bombs." This was the Pinzgauer Vector, about which the Army had been so enthusiastic in July 2006. Then, it had prevailed upon Des Browne to buy more - its price for accepting the Mastiff which it had not wanted. A clear record of the Army's intent had been delivered in March 2007 – by Houghton himself. He then told the House of Commons Defence Committee that once the Vector had been deployed fully, "the more vulnerable Snatch would be withdrawn from service in Afghanistan".

There were hints of a problem in June 2008, in a published list of "expected out-of-service dates" for a range of vehicles. The Vector was given a date of 2015. In an Army that routinely kept vehicles for 30 years or more, a mere seven-year service life was unprecedented. Therein lay a tale which raises serious questions about the competence and good faith of those involved in the procurement of Army vehicles.

In June 2006, when the Army had first announced its intention to buy Vectors, this "armchair general" expressed alarm at these "coffins of wheels". This was based on the manufacturer's specifications, which claimed a protection rating against "two NATO L2A2 hand grenades detonating simultaneously only 150mm below the floor pan" – 350g of high explosive. This vehicle was to be deployed into one of the heaviest mined countries in the world, up against Russian anti-tank mines housing 7.5 Kg of high explosive.

More alarmingly, the Vector had a "cab forward" layout, with the driver and the front seat passenger sat over the wheel arches. If a mine detonated under a wheel, either the driver or the passenger would be directly in the so-called "cone of destruction", exposed to the full force of the blast. At least with the Snatch and its "engine forward" layout, there was some distance between the front wheels and the occupants of the cab, allowing, as some did, soldiers to escape the full force of a mine and survive.

Had it deliberately sought out a design to maximise deaths and injuries, the Army, in selecting the Vector, could not have made a better choice. Furthermore, the vehicle was not cheap. Including the support package, each cost £437,000. They were not only "coffins on wheels", they were very expensive coffins. The £258,000 price of a Force Protection Cougar – on which the Mastiff was based – was better value.

Predictably – totally and completely predictably – within months of the Vector being deployed, a fatality was reported. This was on 25 July 2007 when L/Cpl Alex Hawkins and others, "had been taking part in a routine patrol and were returning to their patrol base when the explosion struck their Vector." Two other soldiers were injured. The Vector had to be destroyed to avoid it falling into enemy hands. Channel 4 News noted:

Vector, which is more suitable for rugged terrain than the army’s existing Snatch patrol vehicle, was recently introduced as part of a package of measures designed to increase troops' safety in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first Vectors began arriving in the country in April of this year and are being phased in, set to replace most of the Snatch vehicles by late October.

How many non-fatal incidents occurred we have no means of knowing but reports from serving troops recorded that the "ambulance" section of their flights home were frequently occupied by soldiers who had lost their legs from mine blasts. There is no means of knowing either how many soldiers were killed in Vectors. Conscious of the potential for damaging publicity, the MoD stopped reporting the types of vehicle involved in fatal incidents.

But we do know that, from October 2007 when Snatches were supposed to have been replaced, there had been only one fatal incident involving a Snatch – killing Sarah Bryant and her colleagues – as against three known fatal Vector incidents. There has since been one more, bringing the known total to four.

But there was a final twist to this debacle. There had been yet another Snatch replacement. In April 2008, months before Sarah Bryant and her colleagues had died, the MoD had ordered 24 mine-protected Bushmasters, exclusively for the Special Forces. Had the British emulated the Dutch and called off vehicles directly from Australian Army stock of 400, they could have been on a freight aircraft within weeks and been issued to units in Afghanistan by May. This vehicle could readily have resisted the attack which had killed four people and injured another.

Defence of a failed strategy

While the Snatch was getting the lion's share of attention – greater than in 2005, when so many more soldiers were being killed – and the Bushmaster order having been ignored, troops were being killed and injured in a far more dangerous vehicle, one which had been slated as a replacement for the Snatch. No wonder the Snatch Vixen was rushed in to plug the gap. No wonder Lt Gen Houghton and the MoD had been defensive.

There was though, more to Houghton's defensiveness. The Snatch was more than just a vehicle. It was the embodiment of a mindset. The vehicle filled an operational requirement, reflecting the Army's approach to counter-insurgency. As Houghton explained in his briefing:

In counter insurgency environments, other factors play into the desired capability mix. Most obvious amongst such factors are first the physical accessibility of vehicles in built up areas and narrow streets … Second the physical profile of the vehicle and its affect (sic) on the local people.

Third the ability of a vehicle to allow its occupants to interact with the local population and to allow observation of local atmospherics. And finally I would say the physical effect that a vehicle has in respect of the likelihood of it damaging local infrastructure such as mud walls and weakly constructed roads and culverts and thereby alienating the local population.

The Snatch, therefore, was essential to the Army's "hearts and minds" strategy. But what Houghton did not explain was there were two parts, essentially summed up as "go light – go heavy". The essence was outlined in a joint US/UK study of the British approach to "low intensity operations" in Iraq. This grouped armour into two packages. The Challengers and the Warriors were the "heavies", the Snatch, obviously, the "light". Thus:

Warriors and ultimately Challengers were found to send a very strong statement whereas the use of Snatch vehicles … sent an entirely different message. During difficult periods, having such impressive physical capabilities greatly enhanced the ability to ramp up and down between stances, maintaining British credibility as a serious fighting force.

The strategy, therefore, amounted to sending messages, essentially paternalistic in nature. If the citizens were good, daddy would use Snatches. If they were naughty, daddy would send out the Warriors. If they were very naughty, daddy would get really cross and inflict Challengers on them. If they then behaved themselves, it was back to Snatches as a reward … go light, go heavy – go light, exactly the rhythm to which the Staffords had been exposed in al Amarah in 2005 with such tragic consequences.

The problem, of course, was that the insurgents did not quite see like that. Going "light" meant offering them targets. When the British upped the ante and escorted the Snatches with Warriors, the insurgents learnt how to take out Warriors. When the Challengers appeared, they learnt how to take them out as well. After that, the British had nowhere to go, other than their bases – where they became … targets.

One thing the study also noted was the "instinctive reluctance of junior officers to rely heavily on technology to assist in their tactical decision-making". Was it "based on ill-founded conservatism or on a justified concern with how it may adversely influence their instincts?" it asked. It failed to note that technophobia was not confined to junior officers. However, the point was made – that technology was not always part of the British force mix. More worryingly, it was not part of the intellectual make-up of the Army.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started - Part 3

In Part 1, we saw that Tony Blair had committed the bulk of the UK's long-term deployable forces to the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF). Part 2 saw the 2003 Defence White Paper, heralding a "major restructuring" of the Army and the official emergence of FRES, in order to meet the commitment – just at a time when the Army was taking on the occupation of Iraq and needed to keep its options open.

We also saw the Army enthusiastically embrace the restructuring, using it to reactivate an 80s equipment project and acquire a fleet of new armoured vehicles. General Sir Mike Jackson then started reshaping the infantry to accommodate the new equipment – even though it would not be available for many years. With this going on, the war in Iraq took second place, the Army there having to make do with 14-year-old second-hand Land Rovers.

In this Part 3, we see a new Chief of the General Staff take over – General Sir Richard Dannatt. But the madness goes on.

A new broom

When General Sir Richard Dannatt took over as Chief of the General Staff from Jackson in August 2006, the war in Iraq was at a critical phase. The "repositioning" in al Amarah was imminent and the violence in Basra was reaching fever pitch.

Rather than grip the situation, however, he shared the lack of enthusiasm for mine-protected vehicles displayed by his predecessor. During the intense debates through the Browne review, he was "barely visible". He did, on the other hand, inherit Jackson's enthusiasm for "FRES".

As the Army – predictably - failed to grapple with the insurgency, it was Dannatt turned away from Iraq and looked to the fresher fields of Afghanistan. There, he thought, the highly mobile warfare was more like the war the Army wanted to fight. Facetiously, one might say that they didn't like the war they were in, so he looked around for another, better one.

Ostensibly, the Afghan war presented a tactical opportunity for deploying a medium-weight, mobile force. This allowed Dannatt to continue his advocacy of FRES – more accurately FFLAV - which he did at any and every opportunity. In early 2007 it looked as if the project was coming "unstuck", with suggestions that the first vehicles would not enter service until 2017.

A different route

By mid-2007, the United States was taking a different route. Similarly afflicted by the scourge of the improvised explosive device (IED), newly appointed Defense Secretary Robert Gates kick-started a massive re-equipment programme, supplying what was to become a flood of what were called Mine Protected Ambush Resistant (MRAP) vehicles to Iraq. As the programme moved into high gear, eventually furnishing over 10,000 new vehicles, Gates identified it as his "highest priority".

The British Army, with Dannatt at its head, having rejected the opportunity to embark on a similar re-equipment programme, had grudgingly accepted a token number of 100 MRAP-type vehicles – the Mastiff – split between the two theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It had also pushed, as a condition for accepting the limited number of MRAPs, a new type of patrol vehicle, the Vector, which was not mine-protected. It was to replace the vulnerable Snatch Land Rover in Afghanistan, yet was even more dangerous than the vehicle it replaced. Overall, therefore, while the US was systematically increasing the level of protection for its troops, the British Army was doing the opposite.

With Gates identifying MRAP as his "highest priority", Dannatt on the other hand declared FRES his "highest equipment priority". He was determined, he said, "that we will make this programme a timely success - it is at the heart of the future Army".

It was not a "future army". It was one which rested on an operational concept settled twenty years earlier for a war on another continent against a different enemy. Likely, it was based on doctrines that were even older, dreamed up by long-retired generals from a different age.

Nevertheless, by July 2007, Dannatt was insisting that "FRES" should acquire an in-service date of 2012. This, he said, was "non-negotiable". In October, a shortlist of three vehicle types was settled. One was the Piranha. Another was the MRAV.

But there was no longer even a pretence that this was FRES. It was what the Army had always intended it should be - a straight purchase of a new armoured vehicle. Predictably, the favourite was the Piranha. This was a later version of the very same vehicle which the Army had picked for FFLAV. In twenty years, the Army had gone full circle – its dreams were within a whisker of fulfilment.

The trials of truth

There was absolutely no doubt about the Army's determination to acquire the Piranha. To meet the notional and still vague requirements for FRES, General Dynamics, the manufacturers, had offered a "paper upgrade" of the then current version. The MoD in 2007 then launched a "competition" to select it, known as the "trials of truth". The Piranha, predictably, "ticked all the boxes". The paper vehicle completely met the paper specification.

Up against it, as the third of the triumvirate in the competition, was the Nexter VBCI, very similar in concept to the Piranha. However, unlike the Piranha VI – as it was to be called – the VBCI was a real vehicle, in production and entering service with the French Army.

The manufacturers of the VBCI, formerly the state-owned Giat Industries, were very keen to secure a prestige British order. So keen were they that they later prevailed upon the French government to agree to modify its own delivery programme to release sufficient vehicles to equip a British battle group.

Thus, not only was the VBCI a real vehicle, it was available for delivery in 2011 – at a fixed price. It was the only equipment that could have permitted the MoD to meet Dannatt's preferred in-service date. In fact, it could have come into service before his deadline.

Rigging the results

In the "trials of truth", real vehicle met paper specifications - and it had passed almost all the requirements, proving 95 percent compliant. This was not what the Army wanted. Out on the testing ground, therefore, diligent MoD officials managed to fail it on a number of arcane requirements.

One such "failure" was the speed with which an engine could be changed in field. The company had been judged on a leisurely demonstration which had not been part of the competition, despite evidence of controlled tests which proved that the specification could be exceeded.

Such was the determination that the vehicle would fail that a general specification unique to the British Army was also applied. This was the "ground running test", a legacy of an Army that had become used to dealing with the unreliable tank engines with which it had historically been provided.

Before fitting it to a tank in the field, a replacement power pack had to be capable of being set up on the ground, with the necessary fuel and electrical connections, in order for it to run. This was to avoid having to commit the labour to installing the engine, only to find that it did not work.

With the VBCI being fitted with a modified commercial truck engine produced by Renault, with hundreds of millions of miles behind it, Nexter thought such a provision unnecessary.

Furthermore, French Army doctrine did not require it. With a light, wheeled armoured vehicle, the preference was to recover the vehicle and tow it to a field workshop rather than replace a failed engine in situ. Thus, there was no provision for ground running.

Had it been considered, the engineering modifications to allow it would have been simple and cheap to provide. But, as submitted for the "trials of truth", the equipment lacked this element. Thus was the VBCI failed, despite protestations that modifications could and would be made before any vehicle went into service.

The Piranha VI, of course, had a provision for ground running – on paper. And by such means the paper Piranha triumphed. But for this, even within its own published terms, the Army could have had its FRES utility vehicle. It would have been a Nexter VBCI. This was not acceptable. Twenty years previously, the Army had set its heart on the Piranha. Wish fulfilment was more important than operational capability.

Climbing down

Unconscious of the history and clearly unaware of the recent background to vehicle procurement decisions, Michael Evans of The Times noted the "delay" in procuring "FRES". He thus opined that, to fill the gap, “the MoD has had to spend £120 million to buy 200 Mastiff and Vector armoured personnel carriers off the shelf to provide sufficient protection.”

That represented the extent of media understanding of what had been – and was then still - one of the most closely-fought battles on equipment in recent times, a battle that had stretched back over twenty years. The lack of understanding extended even to the failure to distinguish between the Mastiff and the Vector.

Unsurprisingly, when the Piranha was selected in May 2008 as the preferred design for FRES – as only it could have been - very few noted the subtle change in Dannatt's position.

From being his "highest equipment priority", FRES had become his "highest priority after support to operations." The born-again FFLAV was slipping through his fingers. As the campaign in Afghanistan was bogging down, with the proliferation of the IED increasingly hampering mobility - as it had done in Iraq - even Dannatt was having to concede that the Army would have to be equipped to fight the real war.

In February 2009 – just short of a year later - then Foreign Secretary David Miliband was freely acknowledging that the Taleban had managed to create "a strategic stalemate" in parts of Afghanistan, "through their use of improvised explosive devices".

What had happened in Iraq had come to pass in Afghanistan. More than two years earlier, Conservative back-bencher Anne Winterton had suggested in the House of Commons that this was precisely what would happen. The fantasy Army had collided with reality. For Iraq, it was too late.

COMMENT THREAD

The Army has spoken

Picked up early by The Daily Telegraph today was a statement to be delivered by defence secretary John Hutton on the continued use of the Snatch Land Rover in Afghanistan.

Correctly forecast – and now retailed by the BBC - Hutton was to say in a written statement to MPs that "The clear advice to me from military operational commanders, unanimously endorsed by the Chiefs of Staff, is that Snatch remains essential to the success for our operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.”

In the text of the statement, he declares that, "In the light of this authoritative assessment, I have decided that it would be inappropriate and unnecessary to conduct an inquiry." Justifying this decision, he adds: "These are matters on which I must rely on the considered judgement of military commanders who have experience of conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan and access to specialised military engineering expertise."

Hutton then said that the Snatch was to be rapidly replaced by, as The Daily Telegraph puts it, "the allegedly more robust Snatch Vixen" (pictured top) of which he claims, there is "no better vehicle in the world" to fulfil the light protected patrol vehicle requirement. The Snatch 2A - the current model - will be reduced in numbers "until it is used only in our camps".

A rationale for the continued use of the Snatch is offered in terms of the military tasks in Afghanistan being "largely ones of counter-insurgency". To achieve their aims, British forces "need to win the support and confidence of local people". This, we are told, "can only be done by face-to-face interaction, demonstrating to the local people that we are working in their interests".

Hutton thus argues that, "Our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has proven that better armoured vehicles, which tend by definition to be larger and heavier, are viewed by the local population as aggressive and intimidating. Their size and weight means too that they can cause serious damage to roads, buildings, irrigation channels and drainage systems".

All these factors, we are told, "can inflame local opinion against UK troops – working in favour of our enemy and actually increasing the threat levels to our people". Thus:

It is for these reasons that military commanders require a range of vehicles, from which the can choose the best one suited to the required task – and in this context there remains a critical requirement for a Light Protected Patrol Vehicle (LPPV) such as the Snatch Land Rover. Small, mobile and agile, it is ideal for allowing engagement with the local population, often in areas which would be inaccessible to heavier vehicles.

As a small but important point, the secretary of state concedes that "37 servicemen have died in these vehicles or as a result of injuries sustained in them". We had the figure as 38, but that includes Sgt Hickey, who was not actually in a Snatch at the time he was killed. We regard his death as "Snatch-related" but it would not come within the MoD definition. Removal of that puts our figure completely in agreement with the MoD's. We got that one right.

Turning to the substantive issues in the Hutton statement, there are four. Firstly, there is the "hearts and minds" issue, the need for a vehicle which allows "face-to-face" interaction. Secondly, there is the related issue of minimising the military "footprint", reducing damage to roads and infrastructure, and the need for a light agile vehicle to access areas which are closed to heavier vehicles.

Ostensibly, both these are persuasive arguments, but they are also disingenuous. In many of the episodes where we have recorded deaths and injuries, "hearts and minds" were not a factor.

We have seen Snatches being used for such diverse task as convoy escort, and for "fighting patrols" in wide open spaces, where there is no interaction intended, and no likelihood of a heavier vehicle causing either nuisance or damage. In effect, the Snatch has been misused as an armoured fighting vehicle – performing the role that would in past campaigns have been fulfilled by an armoured car. To that extent, the "hearts and minds" requirement is overstated.

But what we have also seen – and this is very much the case in Afghanistan – is that many of the attacks are mounted when units are transiting too, and most often from their area of operations. The most common of these assaults occurs when the unit is on its way back to base, and often when it is not very far from it.

The great danger, therefore is when units are in transit, and it is there that the protection is most often needed. What the military are saying, therefore, is that troops must be put at risk while moving from place to place in order that, when they arrive, they can carry out their duties.

Of the third issue, this is the claim in relation to the Snatch Vixen that there is "no better vehicle in the world" for the light PPV role. Frankly, this is delusional and reflects the classic Army response to a problem vehicle. Given that the Snatch is horribly vulnerable, they have simply bolted more armour on (pictured above right). This is very little different from what they were doing over 40 years ago ... bolting steel plate on the underside of Land Rovers to protect against mines (see above left). In this case, they have also beefed up the vehicle so that it can carry the extra weight. And that is the best the MoD can offer.

What these "experts" – the same experts that gave us the Jackal - do not seem to be able to understand is that if you take a basically inadequate design, simply adding bits of armour does not confer any significant additional protection.

This was precisely what the Rhodesians found so that, when they converted a Land Rover into a mine protected vehicle, it became the Kudu (pictured left) and looked very different from the Snatch. The Vixen will thus be better than the basic Snatch, but it is a long way from being the "best in the world", and nowhere near the standard of protection the Rhodesians were delivering over thirty years ago.

That brings us to the fourth issue – the inquiry. This had been requested formally by Sue Smith's solicitor and its rejection marks a determination of the MoD to keep some very suspect decisions under wraps.

In the Iraqi campaign particularly, it must have been known by late 2003 that the Snatches could not do the job intended. By the end of 2004, that was abundantly clear and by mid-2006 there can have been no question at all. Yet the Army persevered with this vehicle, also taking it to Afghanistan, where more soldiers died unnecessarily.

We needed an inquiry to find out something of the decision-making process – why the vehicles were introduced in the first place, why the Army persevered with them for so long, after they had been proved dangerously inadequate, and why then it took (and is taking) so long to find a more suitable replacement.

These are issues the Army clearly does not want to discuss in public, which means that it has not yet come to terms with a failure that could well continue and which we are already seeing in the wholly inadequate design of the Jackal, another death in which was seen last week.

Hutton may feel he is entitled to rely on the "considered judgement of military commanders who have experience of conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan and access to specialised military engineering expertise." But if Des Browne had relied on these geniuses, we would not have bought Mastiffs and the Army would have put Pinzgauer Vectors in to Iraq and Afghanistan to replace the Snatch, as originally intended.

These are the "experts" that got it wrong, and are continuing to get it wrong. And even in the final throes of the Hutton statement they still get it wrong. They tell us that they are "looking to the future" and "anticipating new threats", to which effect they "have begun a programme to develop the next generation of LPPV which will in due course take the place of Snatch Vixen".

But that "next generation" vehicle is already here. It is called the Cheetah (above right), made by the same company which produced the base vehicles for the Mastiff and Ridgeback. Yet the Army which looked at the RG-31 as a replacement for the Snatch and decided it was "too big for Basra" - and then went on to buy the Mastiff which was even bigger - has decided that the Cheetah is "simply too small in terms of capacity".

This is a vehicle that is actually bigger than the Snatch – 14 inches wider and 20 inches longer - yet the Army is saying it is "too small". Never mind that it is designed specifically for urban patrolling or that, with independent suspension, it has been optimised for off-road performance. The Army has spoken.

And that is why we still need an inquiry.

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