The fearless Dunn rides again

It used to be said that Sun journalists were the most skilled in what used to be called "Fleet Street". Their skill was in writing one hundred words of accessible prose what took broadsheet writers several thousand to do, while getting accurately to the heart of the story. Then the paper employed Tom Newton Dunn as defence "editor".

He, like many of the hacks today, writes up a story puffing the latest pronouncements of General Sir Richard Dannatt, missing the point completely, and thus reinforcing the paper's unenviable "comic strip" reputation, as it reduces defence matters to the status of a soap opera.

Thus does the fearless Dunn parade his superficiality under the heading: "Army chief: Spend more on Our Boys", telling us that the "outspoken" Army head last night accused the MoD of squandering precious billions on outdated equipment."

This was Dannatt preaching to a sycophantic audience at Chatham House, finally catching up with a reality largely of his own making, arguing that "Britain was still gearing up for a Cold War-style conflict against other powerful nations". But, he said, troops were far more likely over the next 30 years to find themselves fighting terror groups like al-Qaeda.

In the deathless prose of the fearless Dunn, this is translated as "Sir Richard" – there's grovelling for you – warning that "Our Boys in Afghanistan would suffer — or even fail — unless more cash was channelled towards their urgent needs."

The perspicacious Dunn then wisely informs is that this "landmark speech" was last night interpreted as a thinly-veiled attack on PM Gordon Brown's decision this week to buy 40 new Typhoon fighter jets at £60 million each. "And the hugely-popular general's comments will provoke more in-fighting between the RAF and Royal Navy over Britain's dwindling military budget."

What of course we do not get from Dunn – and, to be fair, from any other hack either – is that when it comes to "squandering precious billions", Dannatt has been right there in the thick of it, presiding over the waste of hundreds of millions on dangerously inadequate vehicles, not least the Vector, the Tellar and, to come, the Husky.

This is the man who also blocked the Army from obtaining cheap but entirely adequate helicopters for Iraq and Afghanistan in order to safeguard one of his fantasy projects, the Future Lynx, a helicopter that will cost 2-3 times a more than a suitable equivalent. It will not be available until 2014 – and not in service until 2016.

This is also the man who delayed the response to the catastrophic failure of the Phoenix UAV, leaving the Army devoid of a vital surveillance capability, preferring to wait for the advanced "Watchkeeper" project instead of insisting on buying perfectly capable UAVs off-the-shelf when they were most needed.

Most of all though, this is the man who in mid-2007, when US defence secretary Robert Gates was declaring the MRAP programme as his "highest priority" was declaring that £16 billion FRES programme was his "highest equipment priority". By July 2007, Dannatt was insisting that FRES should acquire a completely unrealistic in-service date of 2012 which, he said, was "non-negotiable", thus blocking the wholesale provision of more suitable, mine protected equipment.

Yet this was also the man who, having decided on one specific armoured vehicle to fulfil his dream, presided over an active conspiracy to block the provision of an equivalent vehicle, available off-the-shelf, the only one which could have met his 2012 deadline and which, within his own terms, could have given the Army the capability which he claimed was so desperately needed.

Now, having been largely responsible for the impoverishment of the Army, Dannatt has the nerve to insist that: "Much of our planned investment in defence is of questionable relevance to the challenges we face now and in the future. The balance of our investments remain heavily skewed towards industrial warfare. Many of these look simply irrelevant."

He also says, with not even a blush, "We must not take the commitment of today's Tommies for granted. We have an obligation to understand their needs and provide them with tools and training, not squander scarce resources," then concluding that, "We are in an era of persistent conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations, they are signposts to the future."

As to the latter assertions, Dannatt is, of course, playing catch-up – these very points were articulated by Robert Gates over a year ago. More specifically, Dannatt is bending to the wind, having spent most of his three-year tenure as Chief of the General Staff preaching the doctrine of the "balanced force", the very antithesis of what he is now embracing.

Nevertheless, such nuances, are beyond the likes of Dunn, Not having reported the Gates speech - The Sun doesn't do US defence politics - not having the first idea what FRES is, and certainly never having reported it intelligently, and having evaded any scrutiny of Dannatt's dire tenure over the equipment programme, Dunn is content to indulge in gushing hero-worship of a man who has perhaps done more damage to the Army than Mike "macho" Jackson.

Unfortunately, Dunn is not entirely alone in allowing Dannatt a free hand, with Thomas Harding The Daily Telegraph also offering an uncritical account of Dannatt's attempt to join the real world.

But here, in a much more measured account, Harding does allow something that Dunn, champion of "Our Boys" could never permit. He writes that Dannatt admits that Britain's performance in Iraq had led to its military reputation and credibility being "called into question" by America." Thus we also hear, via Harding, Dannatt telling us that, "Taking steps to restore this credibility will be pivotal – and Afghanistan provides an opportunity – key to doing so will be an honest self-appraisal of our performance in Iraq."

This is the man who, in December 2008, dismissed criticisms of the operation, telling us that "We have been quite clear about what we had to do and we have done it and we are going to leave in the early part of next year because the job is done". Now, at last, we are hearing a call from that same Dannatt, this time for "an honest self-appraisal of our performance in Iraq" – exactly the call made in my book Ministry of Defeat. Where we lead, Dannatt follows.

Whether the Army can rise to that challenge, or is even capable of carrying it out - with the accent on "honest" - remains to be seen. But that the outgoing CGS should at last ask for it is a step forward. One wonders though, whether his performance will be included in such an appraisal. If it is, though, you can be sure that the fearless Dunn will not report it.

COMMENT THREAD

Different realities - 2

If the reality of Michael M Phillips – for a short period at least – was Jalrez Valley in western Afghanistan, defence correspondent Michael Evans has been living a different reality with "our boys" in Helmand.

Published in The Times on 5 May, Evans gives as a quirky insight into one of the incidents briefly mentioned in the USAF "airpower summary" for 30 May.

The bare bones of that incident, as reported by the USAF, were that "a coalition aircraft" strafed an enemy improvised explosive device team. The aircraft engaged after detecting anti-Afghan personnel setting up a "daisy-chained," multiple-explosive IED. The aircraft used guns rather than a precision bomb to prevent damage to the roadway.

Behind that lies a fascinating story, headed in the newspaper as "Wandering Afghan goatherd holds up lethal attack on Taleban roadside bombers". The location is Garmsir and the narrative begins with four Taleban insurgents appearing at one end of a bridge on what is called by British troops "Route Cowboys". They begin to dig a hole for an IED (Evans calls it a "roadside bomb").

This is a scene that must have been repeated thousands of times, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Far too many times, the outcome has been fatal for British or other coalition troops. But not this time.

Flying above them at a height of 9,000ft, we are told, is a Hermes 450 UAV, relaying pictures of the scene to British controllers. They call in air support, which materialises in the form of two Belgian F-16s. Evans calls them "Belgian Air Force" aircraft, unconscious perhaps that the BAF was disbanded in 2002, to be replaced by the "Air Component" of an unified armed force. It is a small detail, but a telling one.

The F-16s prepare to attack but they are warned off as a young Afghan goatherd with a few goats around him is seen walking towards the bridge. By the time the goatherd has cleared the scene, one of the Taleban fighters, apparently the leader, has left on a motorcycle while another has began to walk backwards holding a wire and disappeared from view.

Then, and only then, the F-16s are cleared to attack. Rather than dropping a 500lb bomb that would have damaged the bridge, one strafes the area with, Evans says, a "30mm cannon", killing the two bomb emplacers. Our reporter is thinking, presumably, of an A-10 which is thus equipped and the figure he offers does not immediately register. But the F-16 is equipped with a 20mm M61 cannon. Another small detail wrong from the man who "was there".

Anyhow, the remaining insurgent mounts a motorbike and leaves, but the UAV follows him south, observing him as he enters a compound to change clothes and drives off to a rendezvous spot known to be a Taleban command centre. "He was allowed to escape," Evans tells us, without further explanation. Not for long, we suspect.

In this piece from Evans, there is a distinct difference in style, compared with the offering from Michael M Phillips. Both have a narrative of the events they observe but Phillips also works in an element of analysis and something of a "strategic overview". This is entirely lacking from Evans – as it is so often from British media pieces. His is a straight "Boys Own" narrative with nothing of any depth which might trouble the reader.

What Evans does do, however, is demonstrate – perhaps unwittingly – the vital and devastatingly successful role of the UAV in counterinsurgency warfare and, in particular, its "battle-winning capabilities" in the fight against the IED.

Therein lies a further story, one which Evans does not tell – the fact that, had British forces been equipped with the Hermes 450 in Iraq, and in particular in al Amarah, history could have been different. Instead, as we recounted at length in an earlier post, the Army there was equipped with the useless Phoenix, thus requiring patrols to be mounted in Snatch Land Rovers, with the tragic results which we have also recorded.

Even then, the availability of the Hermes 450 was a close-run thing. The original plan was for the Phoenix to be replaced by the more sophisticated Watchkeeper system (a heavily modified Hermes), as part of the FRES capability. Although this was not due to be introduced, and then incrementally, until 2010, the Army initially resisted the idea of acquiring the more basic version off-the-shelf, for fear that it would prejudice the Watchkeeper programme.

It was not, therefore, until May 2007 that the issue was forced, and an Urgent Operational Requirement was issued for the Hermes, too late to affect the outcome in Iraq but in time, as Evans now attests, to do good service in Afghanistan.

Even then, when we could use as many of these machine as could be supplied, even last year, the defence committee was retailing the view of industry that the provision of UAVs for "current operations" could undermine future industrial capacity.

Fortunately, as the political emphasis has shifted from "future capacity" to support of current operations, the Hermes has been bought but, had it been left to the Army and the defence industry caucus, the situation described by Evans might have had a less happy outcome for British troops.

To give him his due, Evans's narrative did not stop with this one episode. He goes on to describe a foot patrol, where more traditional methods of IED detection and disposal are witnessed, but with the Hermes in the air providing persistent overwatch.

A bomb is found using methods which our forefathers would have recognised, illustrating that the battle is now being fought with a meld of the old and the new, the answer – such as there is one - being a combination of tactics and techniques, with no "magic wand" that will deal with all eventualities.

Partly – but only partly – illustrating that point, Evans offers a separate analytical piece, telling us that "Helmand's improvised explosive devices exact a terrible toll".

In this, he actually tells us nothing we did not already know, but he also underlines the utility of "protected vehicles", recalling an earlier incident he had reported. This was where a Mastiff had successfully withstood a "donkey bomb" - two buckets hanging on either side of a tethered donkey filled with an estimated 20 Kg of explosives and set off as the vehicle was passing. No one was seriously hurt.

One additional detail is interesting. To help in the hunt for IEDs, we are told that "every aircraft with photographic capabilities roams the skies to look for Taleban fighters digging up the ground. Even the US Air Force B1B bomber has been used because of its advanced cameras."

Despite all this, the IED is still regularly claiming victims. Elsewhere, however, we learn that the successful countermeasures, and especially the use of better armoured vehicles, is – as we would expect – provoking a Taleban response.

The conventional wisdom is that the insurgents would simply build bigger bombs, but in fact the Mastiff has proved so resistant to attack that, even despite six stacked mines being used, no soldier has yet been killed in one.

What seems to be happening is that Taleban bombers have shifted to attacks on Afghan soldiers and police, who do not have the MRAPs or other countermeasures. Thus, with about as many Afghan personnel as there are coalition troops, the Afghans are taking higher casualties because they are more vulnerable.

In Iraq, the US found it necessary to equip the Iraqi Army with its own fleet of MRAPs, and with IED investigation equipment, and it looks as if a similar programme will have to be mounted in Afghanistan. But, for the moment, at least some progress has been made.

More and better technology is still needed. Some is on its way but there are still gaps and glaring deficiencies in an Army which should have been better prepared but which has been behind the curve throughout the campaign.

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 7

In this final part, where we have explored the reasons for the British failure in Iraq, we turn the tables and speculate on whether they, despite the handicaps, could have succeeded. Reviewing what actually did happen after the British had retreated to their final base at Basra airport, we believe they could.

That is the ultimate tragedy. Instead of attracting the contempt of the Iraqis and the disdain of the Americans – who will never really trust us again – we could truly have walked out of Iraq with our heads held high, without having to pretend we had achieved success. It was that close – and that far.

Could it have been different?

At the start of the occupation in May 2003, the decision to cut back troops levels to 11,000 was disastrous, but not fatal. However, with that, Blair's decision to throw his lot in with the Europeans - compensating, many believe, for his failure to deliver the UK into the embrace of the single currency - seriously hampered the ability of the Army to deal with the insurgency.

And, having pledged the nation's armed forces to the Europeans and Iraq, he offered troops to reinforce the campaign in Afghanistan. That made a tight situation worse.

Even then, defeat was not inevitable. Looking at the campaign in the round, the single most egregious failure was the decision to abandon al Amarah, walking out on a half-trained and poorly equipped 10th Division. That was a major strategic error. Yet that decision itself was not initiated by the politicians but by the military.

Strangely, at the time, there had been very little discussion or debate. Equally, there was virtually no evaluation of the strategic consequences. Then, the "retreat" was an administrative decision. The "road map" had already been revealed by Gen Houghton in March, over three months earlier.

But "repositioning" in order to concentrate on Basra was wrong. Al Amarah was the Mahdi Army's major armoury and it would have made more strategic sense to have cut off the supply of arms at source before dealing with the problem of Basra. It was a "downstream" solution, akin to mopping up a floor after the bath had flooded, without first turning off the taps.

Dealing with the indirect fire

Of course, to have maintained forces at Abu Naji would have required dealing with the indirect fire – one of the main reasons why the base was vacated. Here, the main problems were the lack of suitable equipment, in particular UAVs, helicopters and MRAPs, plus C-RAM for base defence. All three could have been provided. Most were eventually provided, but too late. This was not a problem of money. It was about timing – and commitment.

Even in 2006, at a very late hour, had Gen Dannatt been able to break free of the Army’s obsession with FRES, he could have negotiated a major MRAP package. In exchange for scrapping FRES or putting it on the back-burner, substantially larger numbers of Mastiffs could have been bought, together with other, smaller MRAP vehicles. When this happened anyway in October 2008, it was too late for Iraq – and may be too late for Afghanistan.

As to helicopters, the Army was again partly the author of its own misfortune. Many times, cheaper options than the Future Lynx were offered, and rejected. Had the Army been intent on acquiring tactical helicopters rapidly, it could have had them. It was occasionally able to borrow US Blackhawks and the Americans also provided medivac helicopters, but this was not a reliable foundation on which to carry out planning.

The Army was actually offered a new fleet of Blackhawks off-the-shelf. It turned them down. As for UAVs, the MoD already had in place a replacement programme for the Phoenix, called Watchkeeper, modified Israeli Hermes 450s – with deliveries scheduled for 2010. The modifications, incidentally, were part of the FRES programme. They included fitting extra communications systems fit in with the proposed "network" that was at the heart of the system.

Because of the urgency of providing the Army with a UAV capability, in May 2007 the programme was brought forward with the purchase of the basic Hermes system off-the-shelf, direct from Israel. What was done then could have been done earlier, but for the determination to incorporate FRES modifications. Similarly, with C-RAM being ordered by the MoD in 2007, and temporary measures taken to ensure its early deployment, it is not untoward to argue that this equipment too could have been procured earlier.

With suitable equipment, holding the base at Abu Naji could have been tenable, buying time further to train and equip the Iraqi Army 10th Division. That perhaps could have allowed the Army, with existing resources, to back the Iraqis in recovering the city that much earlier, possibly as early as February/March 2008.

A fatal error

Instead of holding the line in al Amarah, the Army committed its main strength to Basra. And there it made a fatal mistake. In September 2006, it launched Operation Sinbad – a last-ditch operation to recover the city. It was well-planned and executed, but the timing was wrong.

Very much later, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jock Stirrup, complained that the action had been "watered down" and lacked support from the Iraqi politicians, particularly Maliki. That was always going to be the case.

The British had misread the political situation in Iraq and had acted prematurely. Maliki was still in the grip of Muqtada's party and to have openly confronted the Mahdi at that time would have been political suicide. He had not by then secured his political base, weakening the political grip of Muqtada and could not take the same robust line that he took in 2008. The British would have been well advised to have husbanded their resources until a more propitious moment.

There were, though, the dangerous and debilitating attacks on the bases in Basra, but what held for al Amarah could equally have applied to them – with the probability that, without Abu Naji having been abandoned, the pressure on Basra would not have been as strong. Nor indeed would the insurgency in Sadr City been as troublesome, possibly liberating US resources for the fray.

A change in approach

One there had been a change in the balance of political power in Baghdad, things were possible which had previously been impossible. Then, had the British maintained their presence in al Amarah, a joint British/Iraqi move could have been made on the city, cleaning it out as happened with Operation Promise of Peace. This would have made dealing with Basra an easier proposition.

Arguably, with a British presence remaining in Basra, and the indirect fire being dealt with by technology instead of the wasteful use of manpower, the situation would not have deteriorated so far.

Instead of Basra becoming the battlefield in Charge of the Knights and al Amarah being taken without a shot fired, the situation might have been reversed. The battle would have been at al Amarah.

By June 2008, Muqtada was a busted flush and with British support, again using existing resources, the 10th/14th Iraqi Divisions could have walked into the Sadr strongholds in Basra without a shot being fired. The British, instead of skulking in their base in Basra airport, would have been central to the action, with a wholly different outcome to the one that has come to pass.

The tragedy is that this could have been done with existing manpower resources. Through the recovery of first Basra and then al Amarah, the US did not commit more than 2,500 troops – less than the British had available. What they had and the British did not, was the right equipment – and the right mental attitude.

A lack of commitment

To have won would have required the same degree of commitment injected by President Bush, Robert Gates and Gen David Petraeus. Yet, the Army - Dannatt in particular and Jackson before him - was not prepared to sanction what was required to fight a war that he and the rest of the Army no longer believed was winnable.

That was the real problem. Wars are won and lost in the minds of men. Even without the political drag, this war would have been lost because the Army had decided it was not worth winning. More to the point, it had decided that the price it would have to pay in order to win was unacceptable.

In Iraq, therefore, the Army was defeated by its own leaders. Indisputably, the major fault lay with the politicians, in particular, one man – Tony Blair. But the Army was not without fault. Its equipment was wrong, its tactics were wrong and, in the final analysis, it lost faith in its mission and gave up.

Whether Service chiefs could have made a difference lies in the realm of speculation. The indications are that they did not try. They accepted defeat and, in so doing, made it inevitable.

COMMENT THREAD

How many more times?

After a somewhat prolonged absence from this blog, we return with a report, trailed in The Daily Telegraph about UAVs – not that the readers of this esteemed newspaper can possibly be exposed to such a fearsome combination of initials. They have to be told of "drones".

Anyhow, the legend according to this newspaper, not without justice, is that the MoD has been "slow to appreciate' potential of drone aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan", to which we would say, in a voice laden with irony, "You don't say!" We might also add the question, "what took you so long to notice?"

This "discovery" however comes not from the newspaper – which could never have worked this out for itself, but from the House of Commons Defence Committee, which has just published a 149-page report entitled, "The contribution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to ISTAR capability".

As might be surmised from the title (and the length) this deals with much more than the tardiness of the MoD but, as to that singular conclusion, had the Committee made its observations in June 2006 when we – from our lowly, amateur position – first started writing seriously about the subject, it might have been of some use.

As it is, when UAVs could have made a difference, and especially in Iraq, they were not available, the Army still then relying on the useless and ruinously expensive Phoenix, another of those MoD procurement disasters, the full extent of which has never been properly explored and probably never will – at least, not by the Defence Committee.

Now, with the addition of three Reapers to the inventory (one of which has since crashed) and the addition of the Hermes 450 as a stop-gap, until Watchkeeper arrives, the problems of availability (but not entirely) are largely solved. Thus, the Committee's comment is essentially history, so much so that The Telegraph is one of the few newspapers that can even be bothered to write about it.

And, although defence correspondent Thomas Harding makes a decent stab at the story, the detail is relegated to the online edition, the print version summarising even that and placing it in a "news in brief" section.

The story would have had more impact if the Committee had sought to explore the consequences of the failures of the MoD to introduce this technology into theatre earlier, and its current failure to exploit the technology as fully as it might. For, as we discussed in earlier pieces, while the Army was sending soldiers to their deaths in lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rovers, on fruitless anti-mortar patrols, the most appropriate technology was the UAV, which could have been used, had it been available.

Even now, when we see foot patrols in Afghanistan ambushed or bombed, with the inevitable casualties, we wonder whether some of that patrolling could not have been better done with UAVs and thus whether troops are being exposed to needless danger.

Equally – with special relevance to the recent death of Lance Corporal Ken Rowe and his dog - again one wonders if all the available technology is being used.

L/Cpl Rowe, it will be recalled, was a dog handler, accompanying foot patrols with a specially-trained sniffer dog, tasked with detecting bombs and weapons caches. It is of more than some importance, therefore, to know whether the use of technology such as the UAV-borne Automatic Change Detection System, currently operated by US forces as the "Buckeye" could have been of value in reducing the need for such vulnerable assets.

Needless to say, the Committee does not even begin to explore this issue – preferring instead to regurgitate material spoon-fed to it by its carefully selected MoD witnesses. Not one of the Committee members have had the sense to look elsewhere for their information.

A similar deficiency exists in the Committee examining UAVs only in the context of their specialist role as Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) assets. It does not look at the broader picture of how they could best be integrated into the battle plot.

Invaluable for being able to produce real-time video imagery from a huge area, UAV intelligence is of limited value unless our forces are able to respond to it. For instance, the detection of groups of Taleban on the move is of little immediate use unless air assets or ground forces can be employed to deal with them.

In that context, the piece we linked above in turn links to a narrative offered by Michael Yon, where he describes the combined actions of a UAV and light helicopters in tracking and then intercepting an insurgent mortar team.

In the wide open spaces of Afghanistan, that combination would be a powerful asset against often fleeting targets, an idea we have rehearsed only recently. Nothing of this, of course, impinges on the brains of the Defence Committee members.

There was some hope, incidentally, that the issue of helicopter provision was going to be aired fully, with reports of an MoD helicopter summit in the MoD last week, but if anything substantive came out of it, we have yet to hear what it is.

There was some brief hope that the experience of the Rhodesian Light Infantry and the Selous Scouts in the 1970s, with their pioneering use of Alouette III light helicopters (pictured), might have percolated into the consciousness of the MoD strategists. But recent optimism might have been misplaced.

In the round, therefore, we are not much further forward. Things are moving behind the scenes, but all so desperately slowly. We were writing about the need for light helicopters in November 2006 and so many times since that we have lost count. How many more times can we write the same thing?

COMMENT THREAD

Straws in the wind

Predictably, the print media today follows up yesterday’s launch of the UK National Defence Association but, with the issues having been well-rehearsed on the web, one almost gets a sense of déjà vu.

It is a measure of the level of debate, though, that some of the papers pick as their headline a comment made by former Tory MP Winston Churchill, asserting that, "We cannot continue to expect the Armed Forces to pay the price in blood for the underfunding of the military today."

This is thus translated by The Daily Mail as, "Armed forces are 'paying in blood' for defence cuts", by The Daily Telegraph as "Forces are 'paying in blood for lack of funding'" and by The Scotsman as "UK troops 'paying price in blood' for inadequate military funding".

The Guardian, however, is more direct, with "Military chiefs demand more cash", echoed by The Daily Mirror which trumpets: "Military chiefs call for cash". The Times contents itself with, "Retired military chiefs join forces to battle for a bigger war chest" and the Independent – which has been so vocal about the "military covenant" - is silent, choosing to ignore the issue.

But, while most of the papers do cover the story, very few seem to have editorialised, one of the few being The Times which focuses the coverage more tightly, arguing that, "Spending for frontline troops must be increased".

Interestingly, this was not exactly the specific line that Guthrie conveyed – he and his colleagues were arguing for global increases in defence spending - but the Times leader instead complains that, "The balance of spending is badly skewed," going on to argue that, "What is urgently needed now is better support for frontline troops."

More in tune with the Demos report, it notes that the bulk of the money is committed to costly long-term projects, pointing out that:

Strategists argue that commitments must be made decades in advance, and that since it is impossible to anticipate the needs of a modern army or navy in 20 years' time, options must not be jeopardised. Increasing defence spending at the expense of domestic programmes is electorally unpopular. And since the "fat" has repeatedly been trimmed, there is all the more urgency for monitoring - and, if necessary, scrapping - of large projects.

That The Times is signalling the scrapping of large projects is possibly quite significant. Often seen as close to the New Labour "project", the paper is sometimes credited with an inside track. Therefore, this "suggestion" may be something more than the invention of the febrile mind of a leader writer, and be signalling a shift in government policy.

Certainly, we saw something of a shift in the recent announcement of the purchase of additional Mastiff (MRAP) protected vehicles, funded directly from the Defence budget. This, we felt, reflected a new realism about the need to ensure exactly that which The Times is advocating – better support for frontline troops.

This also brings into high profile Gen. Dannatt's recent speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies - one part of which we highlighted earlier - now seems to have considerable importance. Buried towards the end, and given no coverage by the media, he said:

We also need to radically rethink the way that we think about our equipment. We need to start from the bottom by looking at equipping the man first and building the system around him. Too often we have been seduced by high technology, sometimes without really understanding what it can deliver or how it can improve our effectiveness. I would like to see us spend more programmed money in getting the very lowest level right – and, I have to say, we have made great improvements here recently. This will need to manifest itself in buying in bulk those capabilities that we now rely on in our medium scale operations. After all, which government is going to send its troops into harm's way without the best equipment available?

There are other indications that priorities are changing, with the recent urgent procurement of Hermes 450 UAVs - without waiting for the full "Watchkeeper" package, with all its bells and whistles, and the delivery of the Reaper UAV to Afghanistan. Furthermore, with an announcement of additional MRAP vehicles imminent, and some hopes of extra helicopter support, this suggests that the MoD priorities may be centring on those three areas: protected vehicles, UAVs and helicopters.

If that was the case, it would represent a major turnaround from even last year, and perhaps a victory of Des Browne and his advisors, as well as the current CGS Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup – all of whom are known to be advocates of better support for current operations.

That leaves, however, the question which – if any – of the "large projects" is most at risk, in order to fund this new realism. The Times identifies the carriers at £3.9 billion, the 150 Joint Strike Fighters at £10 billion, the Eurofighter programme, and the Type 45 destroyers. It does not mention FRES though. Possibly, with that latter project having the lowest public profile – few journalists even able to tell you what it is – the axe might fall here, with compensation offered by way of the protected vehicles that are to be procured.

Such are the straws in the wind though: Dannatt, the Demos report and now The Times - plus much else – that the possibility of a major shift in defence policy seems to be too strong to ignore.

COMMENT THREAD

Occupying the high ground

Not a week goes by now without some media speculation that Gordon Brown is poised to withdraw British forces from Iraq. First it was The Times, then – last week – it was The Sunday Telegraph and, this week, it is the turn of the Sunday Times defence correspondent, Mick Smith.

He is retailing the fears of unnamed (as usual) "senior army officers" that Gordon Brown is going to cut the number of troops in Iraq to such a low level that their effectiveness is jeopardised and lives are endangered. They say, or so Smith tells us, it is clear Brown is preparing to speed up the pull-out to draw a symbolic line under the Blair era.

Against such speculation, however, there are consistent denials from "sources close to Brown", but that would only be expected even if the intention to withdraw was firm policy.

On the other hand, what might be a more reliable pointer to Brown's intentions is the report from DefenseNews that the Army is about to take delivery of a "small number" of US-built fixed-wing surveillance aircraft.

These are King Air 350ER special mission aircraft (pictured), superbly well-equipped with electro-optical surveillance equipment, ground monitoring radar and a highly sophisticated communications package. They will replace the Army Air Corps Defender aircraft and, at an estimated £14 million each, represent a massive enhancement to Army aviation capabilities.

The point here, of course, is that these aircraft are primarily intended for deployment in (relatively) benign airspace, which means they are tools specifically designed for counter-insurgency operations. It stands to reason, therefore, that Brown – as chancellor – would hardly be authorising such expenditure if he intended to cut short Britain's deployment in Iraq.

Furthermore, the expenditure does not stop there. Rather than wait for the completion of the Watchkeeper UAV programme, not scheduled to begin deliveries until 2010, replacing the disastrous Phoenix UAV, the Army is deploying a new fleet of Elbit Systems' Hermes 450 tactical UAVs, purchased as an urgent operational requirement.

With the reported extension of the MPPV programme and other as yet unannounced equipment programmes, the indications are that the British government has been re-framing its procurement priorities and is showing a new commitment to fighting (and winning) its counter-insurgency campaigns.

Clearly unaware of this, The Times's Mick Smith records the woes of (another) unnamed officer, who complains that, "We are sitting ducks and have very little in the way of resources to react … If we mount an operation to deter a mortar attack it takes an entire battle group and ties up all our people … Any further reductions in numbers would leave British troops hanging onto Basra by our finger tips".

Smith believes that this danger has been illustrated this weekend by continuing battles between British forces and fighters from the Mahdi army militia. These follow reports that British and Iraqi forces killed the Basra commander of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army on Friday, after al-Sadr made a re-appearance in Iraq the same day.

But our man neglects two things. Firstly, the initial action was carried out jointly between British and Iraqi forces – with the British acting as "advisors". This would seem to confirm the growing confidence and capability of the Iraqi 10th Division, reducing the need for the direct involvement of large numbers of British troops.

Secondly, while, in the past, it has been necessary to field full battle groups to carry out even quite minor operations - such as the extraordinary operation last December, where tanks, armoured vehicles and 1000 men were deployed to capture five "terrorist leaders", these operations have been conducted without the high-tech capability that is now becoming available.

With better real-time intelligence and the other equipment that is coming on stream, and the support of the 10th Division, such mass raids – never desirable for the message they send out – will be less necessary than they were. The Army will, at last, have acquired the capability to fight "smarter".

From a political stance, this is going to have even more interesting implications. The Conservatives, to date, have relied entirely on their mantras, "overstretch" and "under-resourcing", to focus their attack on the government. But, with none of the current programmes officially announced, Brown, on assuming office as prime minister, is going to be able to unveil a significant increase in defence spending – all of it off-budget, representing real money – and a significant enhancement in capabilities.

Unless they are more astute than they have so far been, it looks as if the Opposition is going to be wrong-footed, leaving Brown occupying the political high ground on an issue which has, traditionally, been occupied by the Conservatives.

COMMENT THREAD

Cost-effective defence

Lewis Page, the man who brought us the book Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs - tabulating some of the MoD's procurement scandals – has done it again.

For the ERC, (Economic Research Council), he has produced a paper entitled "Cost-Effective Defence". It details how, in his view, the UK could radically reorganise its Armed Forces within the existing budget to finally move them beyond their redundant Cold War footing.

He explains in detail what equipment and capabilities needs to be bought and discarded and how funds can be found for a fifty percent pay rise for combat troops. He believes that the correct level of pay for a private is about £22,000 - which is still less than a policeman or firefighter. This, he writes, "can be paid for within the existing budget by cutting back on the Eurofighter and other pointless procurement projects whilst still retaining funds to buy the equipment and capabilities our armed forces actually need."

The ERC, which claims to be Britain's oldest economics-based think-tank, founded in 1943, is to be commended for publishing the work. There is little enough being done to provoke a debate about the nature and structure of our armed forces and, if it encourages a few pieces in the media, that could be helpful.

What is particularly useful is Page's initial analysis of the central defects of our defence effort. The problem is that our armed forces are likely to face three types of opposing forces: what he calls "paramilitaries" (i.e., insurgents); the armed forces of minor powers; and the armed forces of nuclear powers. The last is extremely unlikely, the second happens every ten years and the first continuously since 1945. But, he notes, the UK's military capabilities reflect the reverse of these facts.

Page thus argues that insufficient effort is being made in the provision of deployable ground combat troops with a small logistical footprint, utility and transport helicopters, both heavy and light military air transports, sea-based aviation of every type and "recruitment and retention of suitable junior servicemen and women."

But, he declares, giving the MoD more money would be unwise and merely continue present duplication of effort and "overextension into foolish areas" to persist. A radical reorientation of existing resources is required first.

We would, as you can imagine, completely endorse Page's view on this. More cash to the MoD as presently constituted would simply be throwing more money after bad. And Page offers plenty of detail as to where the axe would fall – not least on the Eurofighter Tranche 3 (the ground attack version), the Nimrod MR4 maritime patrol project, a halt to the Type 45 building after six ships (which will probably happen anyway) and reducing the Royal Navy frigate and destroyer fleet to 14 ships.

In fact, reflecting his previous experience as a Royal Navy officer, Page is savage on grey floating "toys", although he wants more amphibious warfare ships and the two carriers (preferably reconfigured for conventional take-off and landing). Overall, he thinks he can save £20-25 billion from the proposed procurement budget, all of which he would use to improve pay and conditions, with a starting salary for privates and equivalents to be at least £22,000, especially for combat troops.

We do not entirely agree with his emphasis on paying privates more and, if anything, it seems that within the services, this is not the main issue. Furthermore, with the current overseas bonus, it must be even less of an issue than it was.

This though is not the only area where Page's arguments start to unravel. When it comes to green "toys", he is clearly out of his depth. That is not to say that a former naval person cannot acquire considerable expertise in army equipment and land warfare, but you have to put the work in – which Page does not seem to have done. Little things, as well as big, betray him. In the former category, he seems to be unaware that the Saxon APC has been junked and that the Phoenix UAV has been withdrawn from service.

Page's biggest problem though is in dealing with the issue which we promised we would address in an earlier piece - the vitally important issue of how, in counterinsurgency operations, you bring the battle to the enemy.

Here – as in all military procurement – one should not be defining the equipment so much as the tasks, and then designing the equipment to allow your people to carry them out. In that earlier piece we already set out the need to protect your own personnel. In the context of the IED having become the insurgents' main weapon, from that has evolved a range of mine/blast protected vehicles, the design principles of which are very different from those of "conventional" armoured vehicles.

This is Page's first error, in that he fails completely to recognise the need for these, the need for patrol vehicles that give better protection than the "Snatch" Land Rovers and other lightly armoured vehicles.

His second error – one which the Army also makes – is failing to realise that dealing with IEDs must be carried out on a proactive as well as reactive basis. The Americans – for all their other mistakes – have understood this, with the formation of their IED-hunting teams and their requirement for specialist equipment.

Interestingly, the NAO Report points out that shortfalls in recruitment/retention are patchy and one of the key shortages is in bomb disposal officers – an area where the British Army is singularly badly equipped.

However, if protecting your own people through passive and active defences formed the first unbreakable principle - the need to minimise "unnecessary" deaths - the second rests on the need to make a "promise" to the insurgents. The first says, effectively, if you try to kill us you will fail; the second says, if you try, you will die.

The reality of an insurgency though is that the enemy is invisible until he reveals himself and is identifiable only for so long as he engages – merging back into the environment to become invisible again. To the question, "how do you kill an insurgent?" therefore, the answer is "very quickly" - or not at all. Most often, you have a fleeting "target of opportunity" and your equipment must be geared to maximising the chances of a "kill" in time afforded.

Some of this is old technology – intelligence-led ambushes and the use of long-range, pre-positioned snipers who take out the enemy when he appears. But where, for instance, you get the hit-and-run mortar team, new technology is vital. We have already spelt this out in terms of needing accurate counter battery radar, UAVs to carry out routine surveillance, plus light helicopters that can carry out surveillance functions, which can mount attacks and which can deliver rapid response ground teams.

But what are also proving extremely valuable are Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicles (UCAVs). The later models such as the Predator B – now renamed the Reaper – are able to deliver a variety of munitions including laser/GPS guided bombs, and up to 14 Hellfire anti-vehicle/personnel guided missiles. With their advanced surveillance capabilities, these, above all, seem to hold out the most promise of being able to deliver an instant and deadly response to the fleeting insurgent. We have already seen many examples of their utility.

But here, as with the other equipment issues, Page does not seem to be on the same planet. He makes no provision for re-equipping the Army with blast protected vehicles or supplying it with large numbers of light attack/reconnaissance helicopters. Furthermore, he costs only for the Watchkeeper in his UAV programme, with no provision for UCAVs. Yet these essential additions would absorb a considerable portion of his expected savings and that is without even considering the extremely expensive enhancements in satellite communications capabilities needed to operate an extensive number of UAVs.

In this 40-page paper, though, you would expect that there are many other ideas, and indeed there are. Another major suggestion from Page is the total abolition of tank regiments, which he argues should re-role as armoured infantry, switching from Challengers to Warriors, while the existing mechanised infantry would convert to light infantry.

Yet this ignores completely the experience of an increasing number of armies, from the Americans to the Israelis – and now the Canadians, all of whom are reconsidering the role of heavy armour in counterinsurgency operations. The Israelis are even considering moving away from lightly armoured personnel carriers to the heavy Namera APCs, based on the Merkava MBT.

Strangely though, where there is room for significant financial savings – such as in abandoning the FRES programme – which Page clearly does not understand – he comes up with no recommendations. And, despite the extraordinary cost of the Future Lynx programme, this is allowed to stand.

All of this makes for an extraordinarily shallow paper, which offers very little* that can be treated as a serious contribution to defence strategy. Nevertheless, up front, I did commend the Economic Research Council for publishing the paper – as a contribution to the debate - and stand by that. I wish, though, the Council had been a little more aggressive in testing the arguments of its author before going public.

* Originally, I wrote "nothing" but, on reflection, that is a little too severe. There are some good ideas in the paper, albeit very few.

COMMENT THREAD

Serial incompetence

In defence questions in the House of Commons yesterday, David Laws, the MP for Yeovil, asked what action was being taken to deal with the shortage of helicopter lift capability.

Surprisingly, the defence minister Adam Ingram responded that, "there is not the problem that the hon. Gentleman describes." He then continued: "We have looked into this. Commanders are not asking for more helicopters."

Clearly, that was not the answer expected as Ingram noted: "The hon. Gentleman looks quizzical…" adding, "but we have to listen to what is required on the ground."

If it is indeed true that commanders "on the ground" are not asking for more helicopter lift capability (in Iraq and Afghanistan) then we have a serious problem … with incompetent commanders. They should be sacked and replaced with better officers, who understand the role of helicopters in modern warfare.

It would have been better, however, if the question had been addressed in terms of overall helicopter capability as it is not just the transport fleet which is inadequate. We are especially deficient in light attack / reconnaissance helicopters, with only six Lynx to cover the whole of the British zone in Iraq.

It is that inadequacy as much as anything which has contributed to the humiliating inability of the Army to deal with the mortar and rocket threat on its headquarters in Basra, which has led to the decision yesterday to withdraw civilian staff from the Basra Palace complex.

And humiliating it is – an enormous blow to British prestige. What possible confidence can the population of southern Iraq have in the ability of the British Army to protect them when it cannot even protect its own headquarters from attack?

To do so, as we pointed out yesterday is not impossible nor even difficult. It just needs the application of resources. In particular, as Viscount Brookeborough observed in the defence debate in June, you need helicopters:

If there are heli hours, eagle patrolling reduces the risk immediately. If helis are at risk, the use of helis in pairs enhances safety yet again. One helicopter operates while the other one watches. Two helis in the air can virtually freeze terrorist movement in a 2 kilometre-square area.

To maintain two helicopters in the air at all times, however, needs about sixteen machines, and twice as many pilots, which is nearly three times more patrol helicopters than we have in the whole of Iraq. Such is the measure of the lack of resource available to our troops.

But, instead of doing something about it, such as buying "cheap and cheerful" off-the-shelf helicopters, with a range of good options available, including this MD Explorer (illustrated left), the MoD is going for jam tomorrow, with deliveries of the hideously expensive "Future Lynx", scheduled for some time after 2011. Even then, the load could be reduced by using UAVs but, as with the helicopters, we are opting for "jam tomorrow".

Here, it was particularly significant that the Americans use the Shadow UAV, a system which is turning out to be particularly successful and remarkably cheap. Each unit comprises four advanced air vehicles, two ground control stations, associated components and support equipment, which can maintain continuous coverage for 12 hours, at a price of approximately $10 million.

Why the Shadow is so interesting is because it is directly equivalent to the British Phoenix system which, as we recalled recently has so far cost £345 million and, having been introduced in 1998 with a supposedly minimum 15-year in-service life, has never functioned effectively and has been withdrawn from service.

Instead of making up the shortfall now – perhaps buying into Shadow - the government is embarking on a replacemment programme, committing another £317 million to build 99 Israeli-designed Elbit Systems WK-450s, known as the Watchkeeper, the total contract running to £700 million. Yet the system is not due to come into service until 2010 while the need is today, with the British Army currently unable to protect its own headquarters.

We have actually noted before what we have called this "defeatist attitude", calling in aid the incident on 3 October when a British soldier was killed and another seriously injured after three mortar shells landed inside the Shaat al-Arab Hotel base in Basra.

For sure we cannot protect every soldier against every incident but the insurgents ability to harass our forces seemingly at will is making a mockery of our presence in Iraq. That we are not able to deal with it is not an accident or unavoidable. It is serial incompetence - the result of many poor decisions, right up to this very day, which must be remedied. Instead of grandiose plans for new helicopters and UAVs in the future, we need the capability now.

Continued failure should not be tolerated.

COMMENT THREAD

The march of the amateurs

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

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

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

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



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



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



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




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



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

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

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


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

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



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




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

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


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



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

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

COMMENT THREAD