Playing politics

Edward Leigh – he of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) – is at it again, his committee this time reporting on the ill-starred Type 45 Destroyers.

This warship type, as readers will know, is to form the backbone of the Royal Navy's air defence capability, replacing the ageing Type 42s. To that effect, the ships are fitted with the French manufactured Aster missile, known by the acronym PAAMS (Principle Anti-Aircraft Missile System).

Leigh's main beef is that, although the first (of six) Type 45 will enter service in 2009, "it is a disgrace that it will do so without a PAAMS missile having been fired from the ship, and will not achieve full operational capability until 2011." He (or his committee) also complains that other equipments and capabilities which will enhance the ship's ability to conduct anti-air warfare operations will not be fitted until after the ship enters service in some cases.

As to the committee's diagnosis of the main problem, it notes that, although the Type 45 was based on 80 percent new technology, the MoD failed to take sufficient account of this in its assessment of technical risk or in the commercial construct that it agreed. Thus, it decides that the Ministry "needs to improve its understanding of technical risks at the start of its projects" and should "factor in more realistic allowance for risk on its more technically complex projects."

To say that this is a somewhat superficial finding is something of an understatement. What the committee does not identify is that PAAMS is another of those ghastly European co-operative ventures, with the French having the design lead on the Aster missile. The delays in the deployment of the weapons system, therefore, owe as much to our French partners as they do the MoD.

Further, as we rehearsed nearly four years ago, the genesis of the Type 45 goes back to 1985, with the ill-fated NFR-90 (NATO Frigate Replacement for 90s) programme, a multi-national attempt at designing a common frigate for several Nato nations, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the United States and Canada.

Inevitably, with such an ambitious project and with such disparate requirements, the project could not succeed and it was abandoned in the early 1990s, after US and the UK had withdrawn, the latter in 1989 after fears that the design would not meet the requirements for replacing the Type 42 air-defence destroyers.

It was then in 1992, on John Major's watch, when he was imbued with the desire to be "at the heart of Europe" that his Conservative government opted for a "European" solution, setting up the Horizon "Common New Generation Frigate" project with France and Italy.

The project comprised two separate but linked projects – the basic platform (ship), and the missile/radar complex. And while the platform was a common venture, and the British elected for their own radar, the missile system – known as the PAAMS (Principal Anti-Aircraft Missiles system) – was to be French-built by EUROPAAMS.

It was a Labour government then in 1999 that abandoned the Horizon project, the MoD then electing to go for a British-built platform, which had been the original intention back in 1985 before a Nato solution had been considered. A year later, a "fixed price" contract was awarded to BAE Systems for twelve ships, scheduled to enter service by the end of 2014.

Interestingly, the entire programme was budgeted at about £6 billion, including PAAMS, the development of which had been agreed in 1995 by a Conservative government, despite fears over escalating costs. The target cost per ship (excluding missiles) was about £270 million, with as much again for the missiles.

The PAC now observes that it is "disappointing" that the MoD has taken so long - over 20 years, it says - to deliver its replacement for the Type 42s. But it then refers to the Type 45 entering service over two years late and £1.5 billion over budget. In fact, it is 20 years late, and more than £6 billion over the originally planned budget.

The crucial issue though is that this is another of those "legacy" procurement projects started in the days when European co-operation was all the rage, and many of the problems currently experienced stem from that – making the Conservatives jointly responsible for the cost over-runs and delays.

It jars, therefore, to find Liam Fox - as always – scoring party political points on this project, claiming that: "This report highlights the extraordinary risk that this Government is taking with our nation's defences in an increasingly volatile world."

"Its appalling incompetence," he adds, "has left the Royal Navy having to "juggle and hope" with only half the new ships it was supposed to have, and a fleet of exhausted Type 42s that are more than three decades old."

But for the Euro-enthusiasm of the previous Conservative government, the Type 42 replacements would already have been in service for some years. And, instead of relying on the European fixation with developing highly sophisticated technical projects like missile systems from scratch, we would possibly have relied – as do the Americans – on evolutionary projects such as an enhanced Sea Dart, developing the technology already in service on the Type 42.

To reduce costs, we could also have shared Spain's philosophy. Put off by the French insistence on a new European combat system, it went for the "proven and ready to go" US sales pitch for its F100 frigate, which features the Aegis system and Standard missiles, the current US maritime anti-aircraft systems.

Spain's IZAR shipbuilders formed industrial bonds with Lockheed Martin, enabling it to build its own platforms while benefiting from state-of-the-art technology, delivering ships with greater capabilities than the Type 45 which included Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-submarine missiles – at around half the cost for each platform.

Arguably, had the previous Conservative government followed this route, the massive cost increases could have been avoided, in which case we would have twelve ships instead of the six now being purchased. Dr Fox, therefore, is playing politics.

COMMENT THREAD

A Gray day

Almost since we first started writing this blog, I have been making the same point about defence spending. The message has been simple, direct, and to the point - "underfunding" is not the issue.

Not only is the MoD is pouring money down the drain, the systemic defects are so profound that merely giving it more money would simply enable it to waste even more money at a faster rate.

The trouble is, I wrote in February last year, that "none of the commentators are prepared to do their homework, to develop their understanding or address any of the real issues in the Armed Forces."

I continued: "Therefore, they are unable to focus criticisms and then ensure that the money that is made available is well spent, and that the machinery exists for ensuring future funds are also properly used." Thus. I wrote:

What evades them is the thesis that we have so often offered on this blog that, to throw more money at the Armed Forces is akin to bankrolling a drunk because he has spent all his money on booze. If the MoD is misspending much of its funding, giving it more money will simply allow it to misspend on a larger scale.

And now, much delayed, we finally see the Gray Review of Defence Acquisition and there we find:

Simply granting the MoD more resources cannot ... solve this problem. More resources will probably lead to more military output, but since the ambitions will also expand and the behaviours have not been changed or controlled, the same problems of delay and cost overruns will reassert themselves at the higher level of funding.

In particular, we pointed this out in May 2007 when the cries for more defence spending were particularly loud. Yet, two months earlier, I had been writing:

What does emerge from this is that money is not always the issue, and despite claims to the contrary, the Armed Forces are not actually short of money for equipment – buying better ... can also mean buying cheaper. Getting in the way though is the determination of the military to buy those increasingly expensive and complex "toys". For the UK to afford to go to war - and win - this process must be reversed.

I then finished off the piece by quoting Ed E. Heinemann, designer of the B-26 Invader, the A-1 SkyRaider and the A-4 SkyHawk. He had said:

The obstacles to any simplification may seem insurmountable, and the reasons for more complexity are many and powerful. But if we permit this Frankenstein of complexity to continue to work at its current plodding, insidious rate, it will slowly overwhelm us to impotency.

Now we see Gray write that, such is the nature of the procurement system that each of the Services feel "a moral obligation to specify the best possible solution given that they will be taking people into harm's way." The result, though, is that each of the Services has an incentive "to bid for as many different capabilities, at the highest level of specification, that it can."

These "powerful motivations" are encouraging each of the Armed Forces to overbid for equipment and underestimate the cost. Equipment plan construction is dominated by a 'bottom up' aggregation process, which makes it hard for 'top down' strategic guidance to control the balance of investment. Effective forums do not currently exist to allow top down guidance to control the evolution of the equipment programme."

He then tells us that, with each force bidding for the highest specification product as a result of the system incentives, "there is insufficient clarity over which systems need to be the most technologically advanced, and which could be used sensibly with an '80 percent solution' that would field a certain capability that could be grown over time."

That and much more, you can fillet from the 288-page report, but the underlying message is the same as that conveyed by Heinemann. We are being overwhelmed to impotency. That you could already have read on this blog. Very little of finds its way into the current media reports, the main focus being on the "estimated budget overrun of £35bn".

That allows Lib-Dim defence spokesman Nick Harvey to observe that the "devastating" findings would have a major effect on future defence policy. He says: "The government has presided over a decade of overstretch and spiralling costs without being straight with the public about the consequences."

No one who had read the report could possibly have come to that conclusion, and no journalist who had done their homework could have accepted that as a sensible or useful comment, but it goes in the BBC report without a hint of criticism.

Tomorrow, of course, the news reports will be history, and all that will survive in the collective memory with be the "£35 billion deficit". The "underfunding" mantra is far from slain, and soon enough, like some ancient order of monks, the chatterati will be resuming their chants, untouched by reality. The "Gray day" will leave no lasting impression on them.

COMMENT THREAD

Bogged down

In an exchange with a military expert yesterday, one who describes himself as having made a good living critiquing UK MOD programmes, we agreed that the MoD – and the military generally (it is hard to draw a clear line between divisions and responsibilities) – is "essentially incompetent".

You have to look no further for confirmation of this than in today's Sunday Times, which has been able to get hold of a full copy of the 296-page Gray report on defence procurement.

Featured briefly by Channel 4 earlier this month, with the benefit of far more detail the paper is able to tell us that the scale of MoD bungling is so severe it "is harming our ability ... to conduct difficult current operations".

Using blunt language not normally seen in official documentation, the report by Bernard Gray, a former senior MoD adviser, talks of "lethal" weakness in government programmes and failings so bad they "cause damage to UK military output".

The report goes on to claim that, on average, new equipment arrives five years late and costs 40 percent more than first estimated. The MoD equipment programme is £35 billion over budget and – most damning – the MoD's incompetence is helping our enemies who "are unlikely to wait for our sclerotic acquisition systems to catch up".

The management is so poor, the projects so expensive and many items so out of date by the time they arrive that one defence expert is reported as saying sarcastically: "The system is failing to produce the equipment we don't need."

The Sunday Times gives the report full treatment, with an additional feature-length article and a leader.

Interestingly, the paper notes that Labour politicians, including Gordon Brown, have insisted that the money is available for British forces to have what they need to fight the Taliban but, it says, the MoD is so incompetent at procuring equipment that billions of pounds are being wasted, the wrong systems are being ordered and soldiers' lives are being put at risk.

Also of great interest, Gray dismisses claims — often made by Labour ministers — that cost overruns relate to projects inherited from the last Conservative government. "The analysis of the data suggests that the problems are widespread, affecting projects old and new, large and small, to a greater or lesser extent," he says.

However, The Sunday Times, in its own journalistic way, then seeks to makes political capital out of this. But to attach the whole blame to ministers is a travesty. The report does not do it. It focuses at least as much or more on senior military officers either working on procurement or making strategic decisions about procurement. In particular, it criticises inter-service rivalry, lack of commercial competence and other issues which drag the system down.

Despite this, Liam Fox and other politicians are given their say, making their usual party political points. They miss the point. The problems with the MoD are structural, spanning administrations and even generations. As it stands, the MoD is not so much out of control as beyond control. The last Conservative administrations failed to get to grips with the problems, the current Labour administration has failed and there is no indication whatsoever that the next Conservative administration will fare any better.

However, comprehensive though the Times report might be, this only deals with one aspect of the defence activity. As we have remarked previously, the military is equally sclerotic when it comes to devising and updating doctrines and, as one of our recent posts might indicate, lethally slow when it comes to adjusting tactics to deal with the realities of the battlefield.

Small anecdotes tend to confirm this. Recently, a soldier, who had completed tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, found himself being instructed by seniors in tactics and procedures which had long been discarded in theatre, then being required to become proficient in them for his promotion examination.

Across the board, therefore, we are looking at an institution (or institutions) which are basically incapable of dealing with a lean, adaptive enemy such as the Taleban, and which will always be left floundering, behind the curve, as it has so often been.

It is on that basis that I came to the conclusion that we cannot win this conflict, and we should therefore withdraw.

I have searched my heart and conscience long and very hard on this matter and while, intellectually, I remain convinced that this war is winnable, I cannot convince myself that our military, as an institution – saddled with its own corporate inertia and the incompetence of the MoD – is up to the task. It can no longer conduct effective operations and gain operational and thus strategic success.

On this, it would appear, I am in tune with public sentiment – if not necessarily for the same reasons. In a Mail on Sunday poll, more than two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) want our troops withdrawn from Afghanistan. Only 31 percent believe the mission is worthwhile.

Downing Street advisers, we are told, had hoped that the prime minister could swing public support back behind the war by making the strategic objectives clearer. But 74 percent claim to understand the government's objectives, implying that they do not think them worthwhile or achievable.

Previous polls, this paper reminds us, have shown opinion to be evenly split on the issue. It thus suggests the milestone of 200 British deaths, passed a week ago, has proved a tipping point. That is probably the case and sentiment, at least under this administration, is probably irrecoverable. It is unlikely even that the incoming government will be able to claw back support, especially if we see the casualty rate continue to climb.

Personally, I do not know what it would take to convince me that the mission is worth the grief, and I doubt very much whether there exists within the MoD the ability to make the case that would bring people back on board.

In October 2007 the CDS was admitting in respect of Iraq that the government as a whole – including himself - had not communicated the strategic position very well. They have done no better with Afghanistan and now appear to have left it too late. They are so bogged down in their own incompetence that they cannot even dig themselves out of their hole.

COMMENT THREAD

Fine words ...

"I find it so distressing to hear lavish praise being heaped upon the procurement of vehicles that are potential death-traps and to listen later to expressions of condolence to the families of those who have perished in them."

So said Ann Winterton in a debate in the House of Commons on 4 June this year, but her distress might easily apply to the expressions so freely offered (and repeated) every time troops are killed.

"Fine words butter no parsnips" – a phrase which seems to have its origins in antiquity - seems an appropriate response to these gushing outpourings, so easily trotted out every time a soldier is killed.

Thus we see, yet again, the MoD website tell us that: "It is with great sadness" that it must confirm that one soldier from 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Duke of Wellington's) and one soldier from 2nd Battalion The Rifles have been killed in Afghanistan.

The soldiers, we are told, died as a result of an explosion that happened whilst on a routine foot patrol, not connected to election security, near Sangin, northern Helmand province, on the morning of Thursday 20 August 2009.

Yet the "great sadness" phrase is just words, pulled off from a standard MoD template, to be pasted in against the details of whichever incident is then current.

Even now, the media team are rushing around collecting statements from the colleagues and relatives of the deceased, to paste into the increasingly lengthy eulogies that are in the process of being written, but they too will be just words. They butter no parsnips – they do not bring the dead back to life and nor do they prevent troops yet to die from being killed.

Furthermore, built into the brief announcement from the MoD is a "lie" – a circumlocution, if one wants to be charitable. The incident happened while the troops were "on a routine foot patrol" says the MoD.

We saw this "routine patrol" lie in November 2006 when the MoD described the deaths of four military personnel on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Iraq in terms of them being engaged in "a routine boat patrol".

In fact, they were in a "water taxi", sent to their deaths, wholly unprotected when it was thought that this was the safest way of transporting personnel between bases. It certainly was "routine" – and that is what killed them – but it certainly was not a "patrol". These were lambs led to the slaughter.

Nor indeed was this current incident a "routine patrol" – at least, not wholly. In fact, according to Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph, it was not one incident, but three. The first may have arisen from such an event, although the whole idea of a "routine" is an anathema in counter-insurgency. Routines kill, as they did on the Shatt al-Arab.

The first soldier, writes Harding, from the 3rd Bn The Yorkshire Regiment, a unit sent out as emergency reinforcements to Afghanistan last month after the very high casualty rate this summer, was killed instantly after his foot patrol was targeted.

The second soldier, from 2nd Bn The Rifles, died as a force was sent out to retrieve the body of their dead colleague. Then, as the remainder of the force attempted to evacuate both fatalities a third device went off. Two soldiers were wounded in addition to the two killed in the attack, bringing the total number of British fatalities in Afghanistan to 206.

These facts immediately elevate the incident into a different league. We note that the location is what we have called the mincer of Sangin and that these two deaths bring the total in this area to 57, and this year to 22, with nineteen of them arising from IEDs.

With the grand total of 206 fatalities now recorded, an estimated 176 of these are KIA, which has Sangin and its immediate environs accounting for nearly a third of all deaths in action (32.4 percent).

That, in itself, is remarkable, as the area is often cited as one of the government's key targets for its "co-ordinated delivery of military and civil effect". Its aim has been "to provide a secure environment to allow stabilisation activity to take place", an aim in which it seems singularly to have failed, despite numerous intensive operations - although the MoD claims otherwise, one observer "noting" that ISAF is making "small baby steps" that, if continued, will soon pick up greater pace and confidence.

But what has marked out the most recent casualties – and magnified the rate of attrition – is the Taleban tactic of employing multiple IEDs in complex traps, with secondary devices aimed at killing rescue parties when they come to the aid of those caught in the primary blast.

With this current incident, this is the fourth time in the Sangin area since 10 July that troops have been caught out with fatal effect. That is not to say that similar tactics are not being used by the Taleban elsewhere – they are. Earlier this month we saw a soldier killed near Gereshk (although not so very far from Sangin) when he sought to recover an Afghan soldier's body. Then there was the incident in December 2008 when a soldier was killed after a complex ambush on a Viking near Lashkar Gah.

From other reports, though, it would appear that complex IED ambushes are now theatre-wide, these also having been experienced by USMC patrols further south in Garmsir.

Nor indeed is the slaughter confined to British troops. While we have lost 15 so far this month, the total losses for all coalition forces have now reached 50, not so very far short of last month's rate, when the total reached 76.

Public (and therefore political) acceptance of this continued toll of fatalities – which admittedly by contrast with previous campaigns is relatively modest – requires us to trust that the Army knows what it is doing, and the casualties are a necessary and unavoidable consequence of war, all in the context of the military making progress towards achieving its aims.

Sensitised by the saga of the Snatch Land Rover, however, and many other subsequent episodes where it has been demonstrated that the military (with or without the dereliction of the MoD – and it is difficult to assess where the responsibility lies) has been somewhat cavalier in its responsibilities, we are less than convinced that the Army has a grip on the situation.

Looking down from this end of the telescope – lacking the context and broader appreciation of the campaign in Helmand – all we see is a progression of casualties, some of which are evidently caused by the same Taleban tactic, for which the Army seems to have no obvious counter.

The Army response (and that of so many of its fellow travellers) is to retreat behind the wall of OPSEC (operational security) oblivious to the very obvious fact that the enemy clearly knows a great deal about its operations, with so many others directing sneering condescension at those who have the temerity to question or even doubt the wisdom and professionalism of "Our Brave Boys".

So often are our soldiers cast as "heroes" that there is virtually a cultural taboo against offering even the mildest criticism of soldiers, even though there is nothing particularly heroic about being blown apart by a hidden IED, or having limbs ripped apart. In fact, it is a squalid, miserable way to go.

Somehow, though, the military – or perhaps the politicians – are going to have to come to terms with the legitimate, but often overstated demands of OPSEC, and the need to provide enough information to assure its critics that the Army is responding effectively to the different threats in theatre, and is taking them seriously.

Fine words are no longer good enough – if they ever were.

COMMENT THREAD

Blood money

Belatedly, the media are beginning to take an interest in the Future Lynx – now improbably named the Wildcat - with The Daily Mail today complaining that:

Britain is buying 62 Lynx Wildcat helicopters from AgustaWestland at a cost of £27 million each but they will not be available to equipment starved troops until 2012 at the earliest - four years after they could have had cheaper US helicopters.

While we can applaud the fact that, at last, a newspaper is actually taking some interest in this issue, with some exasperation we note that we actually first wrote about this in June 2006 when there was an equally pressing need for helicopters in Iraq, and it was in April 2007 that we drew attention to the extraordinary cost of running the current Lynx fleet, and the availability of cheaper and more effective alternatives.

Now that the Future Lynx contracts are in place, and it is far too late to do anything about them without incurring massive cost penalties, we have the media taking an interest – effectively three years too late. Nor indeed has the Mail even begun to understand the complexities of the Lynx story, some of which we have been following on this blog.

Rather than deal with the issues, the Mail picks a political "line" with its deputy political editor Tim Shipman telling us that British soldiers in Afghanistan are paying a "blood price" over a deal for new helicopters, after the MoD handed a £1billion pound contract for the helicopters to a company that then hired the department's top civil servant.

The civil servant in question is Sir Kevin Tebbit, permanent secretary at the MoD when the Future Lynx deal was struck in 2005 (it was actually "struck" in 2006). He later joined the boards of two of the companies building the helicopter. Firstly, as the Lynx deal was being announced in June 2006, Sir Kevin was signed up as a member of the Smiths board. Then in May 2007 he was asked to be chairman of Finmeccanica, the company which owns AgustaWestland, a post he took up that July.

Company records, Shipman tells us, suggest that Tebbit is now pocketing in excess of £100,000 a year in his role as chairman of Finmeccanica and another £52,000 from Smith Industries.

This political angle comes from Tory MP Douglas Carswell, who seems first to have raised the Lynx issue in parliament in October 2007, reiterating many of the complaints raised in this blog (without acknowledgement, as is his habit), but has since raised it in parliament (according to the Hansard website) only twice.

This compares, incidentally, with the nine questions raised by Ann Winterton, who has been persistently probing inadequacies of the Lynx without the flashy, self-aggrandisement for which Carswell has become notorious.

In fact, the Tebbitt issue is irrelevant to the Lynx story. The idea that one man – even one of such high rank - could steer this contract in a particular direction is absurd. And, as the MoD points out, Sir Kevin was not involved in the decision to buy the helicopters. It was taken by ministers on the advice of the MoD Equipment Approvals Committee of which he was not a member.

What Carswell has done, probably unwittingly, is touch upon a bigger, more sinister problem, where the defence industry routinely buys influence by offering jobs, consultancies and directorships to civil servants, retired officers – such as the former CDS Charles Guthrie - and even former ministers, not necessarily to steer specific contracts but to shape policy and ensure that the industry voice is heard in the right quarters.

This, we came across in the murky tale of the Panther procurement, where the civil service desk officer administering the programme was subsequently given a consultancy by the vehicle manufacturer Iveco.

There is also the unexplained but highly suspect decision to favour the Piranha over the French VBCI for the FRES utility vehicle, while the decisions to purchase the British-built Pinzgauer Vector and the Jackal also smell of insider dealing.

This is not "corruption" in the sense that there are brown envelopes being handed under the tables in high class restaurants. It is more subtle than that, but it amount to the same thing. The defence industry is indeed buying influence, putting its interests above both the defence and national interests.

And, as we have seen, the industry is highly effective in censoring debate, ensuring that its critics are not heard.

Such issues, however, do not address the immediate problem of the Lynx. In fact, the deal is done and dusted, making the Mail indignation somewhat superfluous. But it does point up the vital role of procurement, and the effect murky decisions, made years ago in the corridors of power (and the fine restaurants and bars) do eventually extract a price when our troops are saddled with inadequate kit or, in this case, no kit at all.

Thus, The Mail is correct to write in terms of a "blood price", but one has to say that the media, in its refusal to take procurement seriously, is part of the problem. Neglect of such a vital subject also has its "blood price".

COMMENT THREAD

A torrid time

With one more soldier killed – yet another by an IED while on foot patrol – the total casualties for Afghanistan now stand at 196. In the deadly arithmetic of the media war, this is four short of the "magic" figure of 200, which will be the trigger for a torrent of media coverage.

With the current rate of loss, the bi-centenary could well come by the end of this week, giving the Sundays a free run. Given that we are in the middle of the "silly season" with very little competition on the news agenda, the likelihood is that the MoD will be in for a torrid time.

It is not untoward that the Taleban, conscious of the power of numbers, will be looking for a "spectacular" to maximise the media headline count. In The Sunday Times today, we have an intimation that the Taleban have a specially trained group, for precisely that purpose, its task being to mount attacks, to achieve a "spectacular" effect whereby several British soldiers are killed at the same time.

In effect, what we might be seeing is the Taleban setting out to "kill to order", aiming to maximise media coverage and thereby maximise the impact on the UK audience.

If that is the Taleban aim, then they will have been considerably assisted by the number of "own goals" perpetrated by the MoD and the Army, not least in the delayed deployment of the Ridgeback. The Dubai incident has very much lodged in the collective media brain, to be absorbed as part of the narrative.

Although it has not yet fully registered that the Army is responsible for some of the delay, the delays in getting equipment to theatre is a story that very much has "legs". It is given a boost today with the News of the World reporting that Ridgebacks and other armoured vehicles are being stockpiled at the depot in Ashchurch in Gloucestershire, instead of being sent out to theatre (pictured above).

What also has not yet registered is the extraordinary delays behind the whole Ridgeback programme. Mooted in October 2007, the intention to order was announced personally by Gordon Brown in December 2007. By June 2008, the theatre "fit" and been finalised and in August 2008, with great fanfare, the MoD announced that the first five vehicles had arrived in the UK for theatre conversion (picture below) - flown in to minimise delays.

With the vehicles not planned for deployment until October/November of this year (and then only some of them), this means that the best part of two years will have elapsed for what was an Urgent Operational Requirement to have been fulfilled. By contrast, when the Mastiff was ordered in August 2006, it was deployed in Iraq and in active service by the February of the following year – less than six months from the ministerial announcement.


Rightly or wrongly though, the media is making the link between the absence of the Ridgeback and the recently reported deaths in Jackals. Today, the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World, the Observer and the Independent on Sunday have all made unfavourable comparisons between the Ridgeback and the Jackal. Even the Mail on Sunday is pitching in.

The delays in fielding the Ridgeback, however, may not be purely the result of bureaucratic inertia. The Army has invested heavily in the Jackal and, to an extent, staked its reputation on its success. But, as we remarked in April 2008, there is doctrinal competition between the Ridgeback and the Jackal.

Although both have their niches, there is a certain amount of overlap between capabilities. Side-by-side on operations, the Jackal would compare unfavourably with the Ridgeback in any number of roles for which it is currently deployed, including convoy escort, for which the vehicle was never designed.

With the Army already having been forced to retire the Snatch, the Vector and now the Viking, to invite comparisons between the vehicles on actual operations, and to have the Ridgeback perform better, would be a mortal blow to the Army's pride, while being forced to retire yet another vehicle, in which so much has been invested, would have profound implications.

Thus, to delay the intoduction of the Ridgeback until the more heavily armoured (but still inadequate) Jackal 2 is fully deployed, gives the Jackal a better chance to shine against the competition. The Sunday People is already putting the pitch for the Army.

Furthermore, as it stands, on off-road mobility, the Jackal has the edge. But one wonders also whether the Army is deliberately attempting to maintain an unlevel playing field, by taking on charge the basic Cougar platform and not insisting on the upgraded suspensions which US forces are retrofitting.

Since the unique selling point of the Jackal is its mobility – which can only be degraded as more and more armour is added in an attempt to overcome its fatal weaknesses – it will do the Jackal advocates no harm at all of the Ridgeback off-road performance is less than optimal.

However, while the Army plays its games, and men die, the real world is catching up. The Taleban is completely uninterested in Army procurement politics and, since it has the measure of the Jackal, one can be sure that it will continue to exploit its weaknesses.

As the counter ticks towards the 200-mark, the media is not going to be interested (or even understand) the nuances. It will see the issue as Jackal versus Ridgeback in simplistic terms, and tear the MoD apart. Whether the Army gets caught up in the flak is moot, but it may have difficulty hiding behind the politicians this time, especially when they have been pushing the Army to get the vehicles into theatre.

Soon enough, we will know whether it is soldiers' lives or Army dogma that will prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

No wonder we are in trouble

An official involved in the design and engineering of armoured vehicles has denounced the recent criticisms directed at the Armed Forces' fleet, calling them "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous."

So says Defence Management, allowing the official to retain his anonymity, yet allowing him the claim that he "has worked closely on the design of several armoured vehicles including some of the MRAPs."

The man - let's call him Mr Smith - says that he felt it was time to dispel some of the running myths in the press about armoured vehicles and what does or does not make them safe.

Our Mr Smith starts by noting that criticism of armoured vehicles has grown over the last year due to the perception that they are increasingly vulnerable to IED plus, he says, "a number of procurement gaffes on the part of the MoD." These appear to include the Snatch Land Rover, the Viking and the Vector armoured vehicles - withdrawn from service due to their inability to protect passengers from explosions and the high number of casualties that have occurred in them.

He also notes that there have been questions over the design and safety of the Panther and Jackal vehicles - although they remain in service – and then acknowledges that the MoD and industry were not perfect. Nevertheless, he avers, criticisms of the [current fleet of armoured vehicles] are "largely untrue".

Without going any further, we can tell that we have an odd sort of a person here. Anyone inclined to address criticisms as "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous" is someone who is inclined to dogmatism. Then to brand them as "untrue" is bizarre. Criticism may be right, it may be wrong, it may even be misplaced, or any number of things, but truth does not come into it.

Looking then to win the one-sided debate, he employs the trick of the polemicist, framing the debate as one of "mobility v. protection." Vehicles ripped apart by IEDs and mines, says Mr Smith, are often the more mobile models that can quickly transport troops across the battlefield or help them escape a firefight.

Having thus established the desired framework he creates for himself a false comparator, defining the classic "straw man" alternative. This, predictably, is "using the heavier armoured vehicles such as the Mastiff and Ridgeback, which although better protected are far less agile."

The trick here is in defining these two vehicles as "heavier armoured", on which basis he attacks our argument that having one or the other is "a false paradigm." Says Mr Smith, "If you want more protection, you are going to be using more weight." Thus, "simple physics" wins the argument: "More armour equals more mass and more mass equals less acceleration. Essentially one cancels out the other."

Of course, we don't know Mr Smith well enough (or at all) to ask him any questions, but if we were to have the opportunity, we would like to know which he thinks is the better tank – the German Panzer Mk IV (Ausf H) at 25 tons, the Russian T-34 at 26.5 tons, the British Churchill at 38.5 tons or the US Sherman at 33.4 tons.

Then he might address the question as to which specific feature the Germans copied from the T-34 when they produced the Panther tank.

Straight from the Janet and John school of armoured vehicle design, however, Mr Smith's view of how to limit weight "is to make the vehicles smaller," and, not being averse to patronising his audience, he tells us: "People do not understand that there is a trade off between firepower and protection vs. mobility." I think we knew that, but that is not all there is to it.

Obviously unaware of the world around him, Smith then blandly informs us that "the chance to revise the vehicles after testing in order to make them more mobile is simply not possible." Clearly, no one told the Americans.

But he is right in one thing: "To go back and install mine protection is difficult. Unless you designed it from the start, the cost and operational compromises is not going to be worth it."

From there, however, Smith loses it. Advocates of more mobile vehicles have argued that protection should be built into the design of the vehicles such as V-shaped hulls, he says, adding:

The guaranteed safety that V-shapes hulls provide are something of an urban myth. For it to be effective, a blast must hit the vehicle right at the point of the V. If it hits anywhere else, the blast would not be properly deflected.

From there, he tells us:

Early mine attacks saw insurgents put mines in the middle of a road. Today IEDs are made up of multiple parts and explosives and can be placed anywhere in the vicinity of a road. For the V-Hull to be effective a blast would have to hit right under the point of the hull. Square hulls are therefore still a valuable design tool as long as they are properly armoured.

This is terrifying. This is a man who claims to be involved in armoured vehicle design, and he can seriously say that for a v-shaped hull to be effective, "a blast must hit the vehicle right at the point of the V." Thousands of soldiers, in thousands of MRAPs, hit by thousands of IEDs would say otherwise.

But it is also insulting. Blast protection is not solely a function of the v-shaped hull. There are other design principles involved, which we outline in another piece. If Mr Smith has heard of them, though, he does not mention them - yet our criticisms are "inaccurate", "dangerous" and "ridiculous."

And as for the "properly armoured" square hulls ... fine – if you want your vehicle weighed down by massive armour plate and then flipped over on its back by the force of a blast. Mr Smith, one feels, would design ships with square bows.

At last, though, we get to Smith's pride and joy - the Jackal. This time, criticisms are not "untrue". They are "unjustified" since it is not actually an armoured vehicle, rather a vehicle that has armour on it. So that's alright then. Because it was not designed ab initio as a mine protected vehicle and is thus extremely vulnerable because it only has "bolt on armour", the criticism is "unjustified".

Similarly "unjustified" is the criticism of the "fatal flaw" of having the front passengers ride above the wheels. That, says Smith, is not the fault of the Jackal. The problems stem from the way the vehicle is used, not its design. "When it hit the market, it was designed for a specific task. It was designed to travel across country in off road conditions."

"Now it is being used to protect convoys and provide cover and protection. It becomes the focus of attacks. The Jackal was never designed for convoy protection," he adds, then declaring: "Weaknesses are bound to emerge. But you leave it up to the commanders at the front to use the vehicles as they see fit."

So does Smith rest his case. He came forward with his statements because "he felt it was time to clear up a number of inaccuracies reported in the press and to begin restoring the image of the armoured vehicle industry."

The 14 dead so far in Jackals will be mightily impressed. And, if they can hear Mr Smith, they will surely agree that that their premature deaths arose because of the way they used their vehicles. But then, they might have preferred to have driven in the type of MRAP pictured above, from which the crew escaped shaken but unhurt, after the v-shaped hull took a massive blast under a front wheel.

COMMENT THREAD

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

Procurement on the map

Following the Channel 4 News lead on the Gray report yesterday, the BBC has allowed procurement minister Quentin Davies (pictured) to deny that the report has been suppressed

Despite this "non-suppression" though, more details are emerging, not least via the unlikely medium of a BBC clog which has obtained a slide presentation of the Gray report. Among other things, the slides charge that the "Ministry of Defence does not really know the price of any kit, and project management does not exist in the Department."

With the procurement minister in full flow, this has elicited a halfway sensible comment from the Coffee House clog (which proves it is possible) to the effect that: "the slides point to long-term structural problems within the MoD, which will take an enormous effort for a future Tory government to reverse."

Suddenly, therefore, defence procurement is on the map, with the leader in The Daily Telegraph airing its views on the "procurement scandal", noting that: "The problems at the MoD still run very deep indeed." The Times also takes a robust view, declaring:

The problem is that the military chiefs want everything they see in the sweet shop and the officials and politicians can't say no. When they run out of money, as they always do, orders are merely postponed, which raises costs and stores up more problems.

That is indeed one of the problems, but only one. Readers of DOTR will be aware of many, many more, none of which are referred to in any of the current media commentary. Having "discovered" procurement for themselves, they have no need for mere blogs.

However, at least the media are dimly aware that there are systemic problems. Maybe, just maybe, they can stay the course and more Tory MPs might start asking the right questions. And maybe pigs will start flying as well, but what we have is a start.

COMMENT THREAD

Good news ... and bad?

It is rare that one hears good news from the procurement front these days but, if Thomas Harding's story in The Daily Telegraph yesterday is correct, then a tiny ray of sunshine has broken through the gloom in Whitehall.

This is the story that the British government is leaning toward purchase of the "C" variant of the F-35 Lightning II - otherwise known as the Joint Strike Fighter – the type specifically designed for conventional carrier operations rather than the short-take off and vertical landing model, the F-35B.

The defence advantages of the "C" model are obvious. The aircraft, relieved of the burden of having to carry an extra lift engine and a complicated vectored thrust nozzle on the main thrust engine, and the control bleeds, has a longer range, can carry more ordnance and is easier to fly. It will also be considerably cheaper, at an estimated £90 million per model as opposed to £105 million for the "B", with technological issues still to be resolved. That, against the projected 150 order, could save us £2.2 billion.

Against that is the cost of modifying the two carriers we have planned, installing catapults and arrester gear to deal with the F-35C, but that also confers operational advantages. The carriers will be able to receive aircraft from other carriers – known as "cross-decking", which will extend the flexibility of the asset when working with carrier groups from other nations.

Importantly, our carriers will also be able to operate a wider range of aircraft, including fixed wing Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft such as the Hawkeye, instead of having to rely on helicopters with their limited endurance and altitude.

That said, such is the inter-relationship between the defence establishment and the industrial complex that there is a serious downside. Writes Harding, up to
750 British defence manufacturing jobs are at risk as Rolls Royce produces the lift fan used in the "B" and it will therefore lose out on 150 engines, their replacements and the ongoing maintenance, worth potentially some £5 billion over the life of the fleet.

There is also the question of the estimated £500 million of taxpayers' money paid to Rolls Royce to develop this highly complex engine, which would end up fitted to the 600 or so "B" aircraft to be bought by the USMC and the USAF but would no longer be of benefit to the UK.

One presumes that the investment would be recouped by the sale of engines to the US although fewer units will now be bought, which might extend the recovery period – unless the price can be increased dramatically, which looks unlikely, given the mood of Congress. And neither the USMC nor USAF would welcome the price hike, which could do nothing for relations with the UK.

Harding points to other issues arising from this switch, if it occurs, not least that Rolls Royce was not widely consulted on whether a change might be made. He cites a defence industry source saying: "This is a massive decision as it changes the whole industrial landscape. This will have a hell of an impact on Rolls Royce ... ".

Nevertheless, officially, the "B" variant currently remains the MoD's "preferred solution", which means that there is much lobbying and plotting to do before the final decision is made.

COMMENT THREAD

Burning our money

We will probably never know quite the degree of wheeler dealing went on, but the much unloved and hideously expensive Eurofighter has met its match – called financial reality.

According to The Times, a final deal has been done on the Tranche 3 purchase, with the RAF set to lose more than 70 of the planned fleet, the total order cut back from the original 232 to a mere 160.

This was bedded in today at a contract ceremony in Munich, when Britain signed up for the third and final tranche, agreeing to buy 40 more, instead of the planned 88. Of these, 24 will be sold to the Saudi Arabians, leaving just 16 for the RAF, says The Times, which like many others seems to have been confused by the original statements.

However, the MoD is saying that the RAF is actually to get 40 new aircraft, the 24 referred to being replacements for the Saudi batch already taken out of stocks intended for the RAF.

Nevertheless, it is clear that production is to be slowed down so that the delivery period will be stretched. The last of the tranche-three aircraft will come into service between 2015 and 2020, just as the first batch of Typhoons - in service today - would be coming to the end of their life.

On that basis, it is anticipated that the RAF at any one time will operate a fleet of no more than 120 aircraft at any one time – with a smaller number actually operation.

This is perhaps just as well. In answer to a recent written question from Nick Harvey, procurement minister Quentin Davies revealed that the operating cost per hour of a Eurofighter is £90,000, compared with the air defence version of the Tornado, the F3, at a "modest" £45,000.

Davies hopes that, as the Eurofighter fleet expands, unit costs will drop. But, with this latest announcement, it looks as if this will not be very substantial. Thus, as Heseltine's folly roars through the skies at airshows, delighting the crowds, we can reflect that it is actually costing us £25 per second. It would be difficult to burn money that fast. As for using the aircraft against the Taleban, it would be cheaper to buy them off.

And once again, we have the ultimate irony. Having delayed Tranche 3 for as long as humanly possible, the former Labour government - deposed by the Tories, as is confidently expected in 2010 - will have the quiet satisfaction of seeing a Conservative government having to pay for it.

COMMENT THREAD

Another review - The Ministry of Defeat

Colonel Blimp, you're still fighting the wrong war.

by Philip Jacobson

The Daily Mail, 24 July 2009

Although Richard North sets out to make the "case for the prosecution" of the British military and the political establishment for comprehensively bungling their conduct during the Iraq War, it is events in Afghanistan that make the book so timely and thought provoking.

The parallels between the two conflicts are inescapable, from the failure to learn from tactical mistakes to the desperate need for more helicopters.

Where North accuses the Ministry of Defence of an Orwellian attempt to spin an ultimately disastrous campaign in Iraq into a resounding triumph, an unspoken question hangs it the air: is history repeating itself in the wilds of Helmand Province?

The launch pad for North's withering assault on the MoD is the emblematic story of the Snatch Land Rovers, lightly armoured vehicles originally developed for riot control in Northern Ireland and pressed into service in the British zone of operations in Southern Iraq with the approval of General Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the army.

Under fierce attack by the well-armed militias, the snatches rapidly acquired the grim reputation as "four-wheeled coffins". North was one of the first military analysts to highlight their extreme vulnerability to the enemy's roadside bombs, known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

In North's view, shared by other knowledgeable observers, the initial success of the allied invasion was squandered by the MoD's inability – some would say pig-headed refusal – to grasp the true nature of the Shi'a insurgency that followed and adapt tactics accordingly.

Equally damaging, he argues, was the failure of the procurement system – the unglamorous but crucial business of ensuring that British soldiers had the best weapons and equipment for the kind of war they were being asked to fight.

While the Snatch vehicles were going up in flames and commanders pleaded for more troop-carrying helicopters, billions of pounds were being lavished on high-profile projects designed, in North's words, to fight imaginary wars of the future". The admirals were determined to have their giant new aircraft carriers, the air marshals their Eurofighters; meanwhile the army "was getting palmed off with wholly unsuitable, second-hand equipment".

In stark contrast, when IEDs began killing large numbers of US soldiers in Iraq, the Americans rushed into service hundreds of lumbering armoured troop-carriers specifically designed to withstand roadside bombs.

The result was a swift and substantial reduction in the body count. A US Marine officer who survived a massive blast told me reverently: "We just love those big ugly mother f*****s."

The MoD's tactical fallibility was rooted in the fateful assumption that the undoubted expertise acquired by the Army in Northern Ireland could be applied more or less wholesale to the radically different circumstances of Iraq. North cites the toe-curling meeting at which the senior British officer in Basra was dispensing lofty advice to US commanders on how to defeat the militias at the very moment they were forcing his troops into a humiliating withdrawal from the city.

"It's insufferable, for Christ's sake," raged one of the Americans present. "He comes in and lectures everyone in the room about how to do counter-insurgency. The guys were just rolling their eyebrows [as] the notorious Northern Ireland came up again."

Littered with military acronyms with obscure technical data, North's prose rarely rises above the utilitarian, while the crop of footnotes on practically every page reflects his heavy reliance on published sources (it appears he did not interview any of the senior military and political players, British or American).

He might also have examined more closely whether the strategic, tactical and organisational failures he identifies in Iraq are being perpetrated in Afghanistan.

It is hardly reassuring when an acute shortage of helicopters obliges the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, to borrow and American Black Hawk for a visit to his increasingly hard-pressed "grunts" on the ground.

For years, the default response of the MoD to criticism from civilians, however well-informed, has been to rubbish them as "armchair generals" pontificating from the comfort of the living room.

North will probably get the same treatment but, as he mischievously points out, only a couple of years ago some £2.3 billion was spent on upgrading the MoD headquarters in Whitehall – money that could have paid for two dozen of the troop-carrying Chinook helicopters so desperately needed in Afghanistan today.

And what that show up on the final bill but the purchase at £1,000 each, of more than 3,000 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, advertised as "the most comfortable in the world".

COMMENT THREAD

More deadly than the Taleban

Many graphic accounts have been written recently about the Panther's Claw operation in Helmand. From these emerge a picture of how the Taleban are employing the large-scale emplacement of IEDs to delay the assault (the classic role of minefields) and to inflict casualties.

In that Panther's Claw is a "deliberate operation" – i.e., one that was planned and executed in an area of choice - the fact that the Taleban had laced the area with IEDs could perhaps have been pre-empted. Not least, troops could have been provided with far more knowledge of their locations and extent than they seem to have been.

The asset of choice to provide this vital intelligence is the UAV and some hint that they have not been used to effect comes in today's Times. This retails the complaints of a "leading British officer" that the military had been too slow to capitalise on the use of UAVs to detect IEDs.

Once again one has to point up the effect of the misplaced focus on helicopters. This important information gets but one sentence when, in fact, a failure properly to employ this life-saving technology would constitute a major scandal – and one in which a responsible media would take a very great interest. A shortage of UAVs – or their poor deployment – could be having a far greater impact on casualties than the shortage of helicopters.

To get more detail, however, one has to go to Defence Management, where one learns that the "leading British officer" is Air Vice Marshall Martin Routledge, the outgoing chief of staff for strategy, policy and plans at RAF HQ Air Command.

He is complaining that the MoD and RAF have not invested in "agile" technology that could save lives in Afghanistan. UAVs have not been fully embraced by the MoD and their introduction is hurt by processes that are "too bureaucratic and unwieldy," Not enough were being procured to handle all of the operational demands.

Despite the huge threat posed by IEDs and the growing casualties, MoD procurement and strategy officials lack the "drive, effort, enthusiasm" to embrace the UAVs, added Routledge. In his opinion, the RAF had yet to fully embrace UAVs because it cannot decide how to best use them. "Something in the culture" was holding it back, he averred.

Routledge is referring to the Reaper - oddly enough heavily puffed by The Times, exactly a year ago today – and there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. Acquired under the UOR process and rushed into service by November 2007, it has never been adopted as part of the RAF's permanent inventory, reflecting a vicious battle over the future of UAVs in the RAF.

Something of the current status is told here, where there is friction over whether to adopt the Reaper, to go for the BAE Systems Mantis or to throw in with the French inspired Neuron programme under the aegis of the European Defence Agency.

With everything depending on the long-term choice of UAV – and a decision not planned until 2013 – the RAF is not really in a position to commit to the technology. Hence, the number of platforms operated is minimal, while there is no investment – intellectual or otherwise – in developing a fully integrated doctrine which would enable the full potential of these machines to be exploited.

The big problem is that, if the RAF puts the Reaper in the core program, and the government then chooses to pursue a UK or a European or other collaborative programme, it could end up foisted with more than one platform - potentially bedeviling support organizations with a requirement to fly two birds for the one job.

Thus, indecision rules, leaving a vital capability gap. And that gap is crucial because, unlike the Army-operated Hermes 450 – which is for surveillance only – the Reaper has a potent attack capability. Not only can it be used to catch IED emplacers in the act, it can kill them using a variety of weapons, including the Hellfire missile and guided bombs.

Once again, therefore, troops in the field are being denied life-saving equipment, this time cause by a combination of institutional inertia, pork-barrel and European politics. Either one is dangerous but, in combination, they are proving more deadly than the Taleban. After all, the very worst the Taleban could do is shoot one of these UAVs down. This lethal combination stops them flying in the first place.

COMMENT THREAD

The trouble with armoured vehicles

Originally published by Defence Management
Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Several of the MoD's newest armoured vehicles already have major design flaws according to defence author Richard North. The old way of thinking has to change.

The MoD and Armed Forces are unable to learn from their mistakes or admit erroneous decisions in the design and procurement of armoured vehicles resulting in a string of inadequate vehicles being sent to the frontlines of Afghanistan and tragically as a result, large numbers of casualties, a prominent defence author has said.

The death of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe last week in a Viking armoured vehicle brought a renewed focus to the MoD's armoured fighting vehicle strategy. Although IEDs and landmines have proven to be an effective weapon utilised by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MoD has only been partially successful in buying better protected vehicles. .

Richard North, author of the book "Ministry of Defeat" and the editor of the Defence of the Realm blog, outlined to Defencemanagement.com a series of poor procurement decisions and strategies that have resulted in a widely ineffective fleet of armoured vehicles coming up against IEDs and landmines.

"The concept of risk has been ignored," North said in an interview. As a result this premise is "eroding the ability to field certain vehicles."

The vehicle protection problems faced by British troops today in Afghanistan can be traced back to various campaigns during the Cold War era including in Rhodesia. The effectiveness of using IEDs on vehicles became clear yet military planners in the US and Britain for the most part ignored the new threats. Heavier armoured vehicles have to be transferred by ship because they are too heavy to fly. Military planners felt that this negated the advantages that an expeditionary force would have.

Even after the use of IEDs became a prevalent tool of the insurgency in Iraq, procurement officials in Britain continued to buy the same types of vehicles for operations in Afghanistan.

The Snatch, Viking and Vector were all sent to Afghanistan in the first year of major British combat operations but are now all being withdrawn from service due to their flawed designs and a lack of adequate armour to deflect explosions. Dozens of British servicemen have died in the vehicles during operations due to poor protection even though Snatch was upgraded with additional armour and the Viking and Vector vehicles were procured in 2006.

Protection has been the primary focus of vehicle designers in an effort to overcome casualties caused by bomb attacks. While there have been some successes such as the Mastiff and Ridgeback armoured vehicles, which the Taliban have effectively given up attacking, there have been widespread concerns with other models in the new fleet of vehicles the MoD has procured under an urgent operational requirement.

The Jackal has attracted the most concerns due to its design according to North. The front seats are over the front wheels making the driver and front passenger vulnerable to any explosion. Problems with the weight distribution have made the Jackal susceptible to rollovers, and bolt on armour has proven to be ineffective and has taken away the little mobility the vehicle has.

Army commanders have also been forced to use the vehicle, originally designed for off-road reconnaissance, for fixed road reconnaissance, supply escorts and patrols.

Already ten servicemen have died in the Jackal, despite the MoD spending hundreds of millions of pounds procuring it.

But the problems do not stop there. Last year the MoD ordered 262 Husky armoured vehicles from Navistar Defence, to be used as medium sized command and support vehicle in less dangerous areas. But according to North the deal came just as it was confirmed that the Husky had failed a blast test during a US Army vehicle contract competition. US Army officials are alleged to have expressed concerns over the "basic" design of the hull bridge which resulted in the Husky failing the mine test.

Given the success of v-shaped hulls on vehicles in Afghanistan, it is not clear why the MoD is procuring a standard hulled vehicle. Word of the US Army test failure was not announced until after the MoD had signed the £150m contract with Navistar.

There are also concerns over the new Panther armoured vehicle which North calls fundamentally flawed and "stupidity beyond measure". Panther is a designated command vehicle which will allow the Taliban to target higher ranking officers and field commanders in greater numbers than ever before.

The MoD is scheduled to buy 400 of the vehicles which North describes as "a fine modern product of the Italian automobile industry, and therefore completely unsuitable for military use."

The outside of the vehicle is made from "crushable" or "deformable" materials. While the Panther is well protected, any attack by an IED or mine will cause significant damage to the vehicle resulting in it becoming non-operational.

Procurement officials spent £400,000 per vehicle but it did not come with adequate protection for the engine, no electronic counter measures equipment and it only held three people. North estimates that by the time the full upgrades are completed, the MoD could be spending up to £700,000 on a vehicle that the insurgents can destroy with £20 worth of explosives.

The MoD for its part has argued that a number of upgrades have made the Husky, Jackal and Panther better protected and more able to deal with the operational challenges in Afghanistan.

The number of vehicle design flaws is part of a wider debate on mobility v. protection. Many vehicle design experts have argued that you cannot have both. If you have an agile vehicle it is limited in how much armour it can have. If you have a heavily armoured vehicle, case in point the Mastiff, you lose the element of surprise and ability to rapidly descend on the enemy or exit an operational centre.

North disagrees.

"I think it is a false paradigm. The Army doctrine says that you optimise on mobility and for specific theatres or specific threats you add on protection. Protection is seen as a separate issue added on after the event with design parameters," North said.

The problem is that when a "mobile" vehicle needs additional protection, engineers use bolt on armour which prejudices mobility. Vehicle engineers and procurement officials in turn conclude that mobility and protection are mutually contradictory.

Bolt on armour in many cases has proven to be ineffective against IEDs and mines.

Engineers should instead be "optimising for protection and then adding mobility" in vehicles according to North. A mobile well protected vehicle is possible but it would require a different mindset throughout the MoD's project teams and within industry.

There is still a large adherence to the successes of the past, North argued. Using mobile armoured vehicles to defeat Rommel in North Africa in the 1940s is still a primary reference point for today's armoured vehicle fighting strategies even though the scope of warfare has changed dramatically since then.

As a result, of the hundreds of new vehicles the MoD is rushing into service, many are plagued with design flaws or are used the wrong way.

"They are repeating the same mistakes and are doomed to repeat them over and over again," North said. With problems and concerns already arising in the Husky, Jackal and Panther vehicles, more mistakes could be on the way.

Richard North is the author of "Ministry of Defeat" and the website Defence of the Realm.

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Dead soldiers tell no tales

One of the things that is possibly upsetting the defence establishment is this blog's pursuit of the story about the Iveco Panther – the latest development I have been sitting on, while other more pressing issues were dealt with.

As it stood, we had found that this absurdly expensive machine, ordered in 2003 at a cost of over £400,000 each, had to be converted at an additional cost of £300,000 to make them suitable for use in Afghanistan, bringing the price to well over £700,000 each for a four-seater protected patrol vehicle.

However, we had also established that only 67 of these vehicles were being put through this conversion process, leaving 334 from the original batch of 401 that are basically unsuitable for deployment. Thus, it was left to Ann Winterton to ask what was to happen to the rest.

Answer there came from Quentin Davies that the remainder would be used for pre-deployment training individual and collective training, and trials and development. Never in the field of human conflict, he might have observed, have so many been used to train so few.

The more serious point is that, while the Army is crying out for protected vehicles, we have these useless machines stuck at home, when a fraction of the cost could have bought decent protected vehicles and had them in theatre.

Apart from Booker, however, only Defence Management was taking an interest in this procurement disaster. The rest of the media, so full of faux concern for "Our Boys" isn't interested in getting its hands dirty and actually reporting what is going on.

But then, an in-house cock-up by the MoD does not fit the narrative. Unless the story is about Gordon Brown and his "penny pinching", leaving "Our Boys" without the kit they need, the popular media does not want to know.

It is actually too much to hope for a responsible media though. Even if the story was handed to it on a plate, it would probably get it wrong and, if anyone gets near reporting the truth, we see the result .


However, one of the pieces can still be found on Google cache. This is what you are not allowed to see:

Hundreds of Panthers cannot deploy
Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The MoD has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on a new armoured vehicle that will mainly be used for training in non-operational settings.

Only 67 Panther armoured vehicles are in suitable condition to operate safely in Afghanistan according to the MoD.

Yesterday the minister for defence equipment and support Quentin Davies admitted to MPs in a written answer that 334 of the Panther armoured vehicles "will be used for pre-deployment training, individual and collective training, and trials and development."

The Panther Command and Liaison Vehicle (CLV) was procured earlier this decade to provide commanders and combat support services with better protection when they are on the battlefield. At £400,000, it will undoubtedly serve as one of the most expensive Army training vehicles, ever.

The vehicle has been riddled with problems from the outset, resulting in just 67 being available for Afghan operations due to a lack of capability requirements.

In May Defencemanagement.com revealed that none of the vehicles had originally been delivered with the required capabilities for Afghan operations, despite extensive field tests in Afghanistan earlier this decade. As a result, procurement officials were forced to spend an additional £20m upgrading just 67 vehicles.

This resulted in further delays to a programme that was already running over a year late.

The vehicle additions included a better protected engine compartment, the addition of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment, air conditioning and adding space for a fourth crew member to the vehicle.

Richard North, author of "Ministry of Defeat" said recently that the Panther "is a fine modern product of the Italian automobile industry, and therefore completely unsuitable for military use."

The outer portion of the vehicle, when hit by an IED or landmine is likely to be permanently damaged.

According to a National Audit Office Report, the MoD originally planned to buy 486 of the vehicles but due to "affordability" issues, was later forced to reduce the order to 401 Panthers. It is not clear whether the MoD will pay for the other 334 Panthers to be upgraded to combat standards.

As the threat from IEDs and landmines has grown, so has the demand for better protected vehicles. Ministers insist that they are sparing no expense in ensuring that troops have the best protection money can buy. However problems with the Snatch, Vector, Viking, Jackal and now Panther, leave these claims in doubt.

Even this fairly anodyne report, however, is too much for the defence establishment. It is far more important to stifle criticism than to protect "Our Boys" from getting murdered by the Taleban. In one of the more recent strikes, they only pulled the top half of the driver out of the vehicle. There was nothing else of him left. But hey! Dead soldiers tell no tales.

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