A reckoning

The MoD has now released the name of the latest British soldier to die in Afghanistan. He was Craftsman Anthony Lombardi of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), attached to The Light Dragoons.

In an unusually detailed report, the MoD goes on to tell us that he was killed on 4 August in Babaji, in the Lashkar Gar district of Helmand province.

He was attached as a vehicle mechanic to The Light Dragoons and was, at the time, driving a Spartan as part of an escort for a Viking supply convoy, moving between the company's two locations when the vehicle was hit by an explosion. The force of the explosion breached the hull, killing him instantly.

This appears, on the face of it, almost a re-run of the circumstances surrounding Lt-Col Thorneloe's death. He too was with a Viking supply convoy, only that time it was the Viking that got hit rather than a Spartan.

Had it been a Viking this time, and/or a high ranking officer, the media might have taken some more notice. As it stands though, very few media reports bother to mention the vehicle type. It is not one with which they are familiar.

The details, however, do beg a series of questions. One would like to know why a lightly armoured vehicle like the Spartan – which is an armoured personnel carrier – was being used as an "escort" for the more heavily armed and armoured Vikings.

Even then, as the Thorneloe incident – and others – demonstrated, the Vikings are highly vulnerable when used for routine tasks such as supply convoys, where they are unable to exploit their mobility, which is supposed to confer their protection.

The same also applies to the Spartan and it was only fate that this was the vehicle targeted rather than a Viking.

One would also like to know whether the convoy route was such that the high mobility of these tracked vehicles was really necessary, or whether a better protected vehicle – like the Mastiff or the Ridgeback – could have been used.

That, of course, we will never be told, especially as it now transpires that the Ridgebacks in Dubai were never intended for immediate use. This comes over from the BBC report and has been independently confirmed.

Although Ridgebacks are available in small numbers, the Army has no intention of deploying them until there are enough to equip the brigade group, with fully trained drivers and all the infrastructure in place.

This, the Army argues, is necessary to save lives, as fielding new kit prematurely – they say – presents its own hazards. Thus, the nine Ridgebacks that have been (or are being) "rushed" to Camp Bastion will stay there unused until the new roulement arrives in October and is ready for action.

The Army, therefore, not the MoD, is the blockage, rather confounding our earlier story. The Ridgebacks were left in Dubai because there was no hurry, as there was no intention to use them yet.

It does seem extraordinary that the Army itself should reject life-saving kit and, if it could be shown that Craftsman Lombardi could have been saved, had he been riding in a Ridgeback – and that such a vehicle could have been used – then the Army case for delayed deployment looks pretty thin.

What is salutary about this whole affair, however, is the willingness of myself and others to leap in on the basis of very limited information, and condemn both the politicians and the MoD – when it is now clear that the delay in deployment is a military decision, taken for what the Army believes are sound operational reasons.

Arguably, the Army is wrong. It is displaying a peace-time preference for having everything neat and tidy, and properly organised, instead of the untidy and more difficult to manage "trickle" deployment, releasing the vehicles to theatre as they (and their drivers) became ready.

Tidiness is not a luxury the military can afford in wartime. Imagine, for instance, in wartime Malta when a decision was made to replace the outclassed Hurricanes with Spitfires. New machines were rushed in to fill the gaps, with the two types operating side-by-side for a period.

Imagine what would have happened if replacements had been delayed until a "big bang" switch-over was organised. The battle would have been lost.

It will take a great deal of convincing for me to believe that the Army is right in its current policy. If men could be alive today, but were killed for want of better equipment, then there should be a reckoning.

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.

COMMENT THREAD

It's not lost

As I was hinting last night – and did so prematurely last week – the storm has run its course. The number of new stories or new "angles" on Afghanistan has fallen to a trickle, and very soon it will be back to "normal" – if one dare use that word.

For all the torrent on media coverage, the pessimistic view is that absolutely nothing has been achieved, nothing resolved. That is not the case though. Waves have been made and, in the fullness of time, changes will become apparent, but not all for the good.

The view from theatre – if there can be something as straightforward as a single view – seems to be that the helicopter issue was totally overblown. At the moment, with the US forces in place, the bulk of their helicopters are available as "theatre assets" and the troops are getting plenty of helicopter rides.

In the green zone also, where the bulk of the fighting has been, the value of the Viking, in being able to cross difficult terrain is much appreciated. But there is indeed nervousness about using it: preliminary estimates of the weight of explosives that took out Col Thorneloe's Viking are that some 30kg of homemade explosives were used.

That weight, equivalent to about 10kg of military-grade explosive, would have been shrugged off by a well-designed mine-resistant vehicle, yet when it exploded under the driver's seat, it ripped through the floor, killing him instantly. For all the talk of the Taleban building bigger bombs, this was not one of them. In the right vehicle, the explosion was survivable.

Elsewhere, the US Marines captured a major cache of IEDs and the photograph above shows the face of the enemy – 25 litre plastic drums, packed with fertiliser (click the pic to enlarge and, at the back of the room, you can see the 25kg bags of fertiliser).

Meanwhile, of our own MoD, a report today accuses it of losing track of £155 million-worth of radio equipment. That doesn't mean to say it is lost – just that the MoD doesn't know where it is.

That, in fact, sounds like a description of the whole Afghan campaign. Perhaps we should send them a roadmap.

COMMENT THREAD

The all heat and no light show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD

"Conceptually flawed from the beginning"

Richard Holmes is a by-word for his meticulous military histories and, as a Emeritus Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University, he is a man to whom one listens.

In a eulogy on his friend Rupert Thorneloe, headed "Rupert should not have died for this", we writes in The Times of a failure to develop a coherent Afghanistan strategy, on which basis, he says, "we should not be risking our soldiers' lives".

In developing his argument, he cites Major Little's recent article, noting his observation that the US Army has undergone a radical transformation as a result of early failures in Iraq, and the British Army has not.

It is tempting, adds Holmes, for some senior officers to lay the Army's misfortunes at the door of our crippled Government, but the problem is more complex. Although the Army had considerable experience of counterinsurgency (and went on at unwise length about the fact), there is little sign that it applied its own doctrine in Iraq.

This piece then provoked agreement from David J Pickup, a former senior lecturer in defence studies at Sandhurst. In a letter to The Times, given the title, "Flawed doctrine to blame for Army failures", his response explains, "Why the shift in Army thinking over the years through lower intensity operations is causing problems today."

During almost 20 years at Sandhurst, Pickup saw a "noticeable shift" in army thinking. After the end of the Cold War, and in common with the other two Services, the Army was looking for a role, he writes. It found it in its "perceived expertise" in counter-insurgency warfare and what became known as peace support operations.

The emphasis in officer training was shifted from traditional war fighting to these lower intensity operations, building on the "successes" in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, which were used as case studies.

These "apparent successes", Pickup goes on, "produced an arrogance in the British Army in which it projected the view that other armies should look to the British as the role models in such activities." This, he notes, "caused much irritation in a number of other countries, particularly the United States, and also in Australia after its experience in East Timor." Then writes Pickup:

Unfortunately, this whole attitude has been called into question by the Army's limited success, if not failure, in Iraq and its difficulties in Afghanistan where expertise in a narrow area of operations has proved inadequate. Consequently we now see senior army officers and their civilian and political supporters using the traditional excuses of lack of resources and poor equipment for their difficulties, reasons that have been cited in almost every failed conflict in history. In reality, the cause has been a doctrine and a philosophy that was conceptually flawed from the beginning.

What leaps out from this passage is the identification of the Army and its camp followers "using the traditional excuses of lack of resources and poor equipment for their difficulties". This is the drum we have been beating for so long that it is hard to remember when we first started. It was Little's theme and now Pickup joins him. They are far from alone, their views shared by many in the corridors of power.

The great tragedy is that the refrain finds a ready hearing in the Conservative Party and its claque and resonates so easily with the public. But it is also a huge trap. Not a few times, we have written that the military machine is insatiable. It could absorb the whole GDP and still come back for more. Tie that in with our more frequent observations on waste and it becomes evident that the more money that is poured in, the more waste there will be.

Crucially though, Pickup accuses the Army of failing through "a doctrine and a philosophy that was conceptually flawed from the beginning." That too, we have been asserting for a considerable period, and is the exact theme of Ministry of Defeat to the extent that we could say, "you read it there first", if that was not too insufferable.

The present drag of operations, in our view, stems from the inability of the Army, as a corporate body, to recognise its fundamental failings and then to address them. But, as long as it believes it has in the Conservative Party a sympathetic ear, it can put off the catharsis until the new administration is in place – whence it will learn the hard way that there will be no more resources forthcoming.

What makes this a tragedy, apart from the deaths of many good men and women for no purpose, is that a delayed reckoning will make the remedies that much harder and more expensive, while the situation in Afghanistan may have deteriorated to the point where it is irrecoverable - as it became, for the British Army, in Iraq.

With that, there is certainly not much sympathy from Pickup. He avers that the other two Services should resist strongly any attempt by the Army to make them shoulder the financial burden of the Army's difficulties. In some future conflict, he says, it may be the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force that might need those resources.

This should be taken as a warning shot to the Army, and also to the Conservative Party. The "resources" argument is not going to fly. Lack of resources is not the problem and more resources is not the solution. Those who argue otherwise are doing the Army – and the nation – no favours.

COMMENT THREAD

A paradise lost?

One of the reasons, we are told, why Lt-Col Thorneloe and his driver Trooper Joshua Hammond could not have travelled in a better-protected Mastiff and instead were killed in a fatally vulnerable Viking was that the bridge network across the Shamalan canal, where the fighting is at its heaviest, was in poor repair and too weak to bear the weight of the heavier vehicle.

The Ministry of Defeat has now released a picture of one of the bridges (above) and simple inspection confirms the poor state. If the other bridges spanning the canal are in anything like a similar condition, then it is not at all surprising that the 23-ton Mastiff could not be used.

One would have thought, therefore, that the bridge network would have been a high priority for redevelopment funding, contributing not only tactical mobility for the Army and the Afghan security forces but also the local population who need a better network to move their equipment and goods.

But that is to reckon without those geniuses in the Department for International Development. Although they have been extremely busy in the Shamalan canal area, they have had slightly different priorities on which to spend British taxpayers' hard-earned cash.

To the utter bemusement of the local Afghanis, DFID has invested no less than £420,000 on a f****** leisure park for Women, complete, you will be pleased to know with a f****** Ferris wheel – (pictured below).

Called Bolan Park, when it was completed just over a year ago, it had "puzzled residents" asking why so much money was being spent on leisure when the most pressing problem – security – was getting worse by the day. Said Amir Mohammad, 44, "If the international community wants our country to be prosperous, they should first worry about peace and security. Then we can have parks."


As to the idea of a park for women, Mohammad Zaher stated the obvious: "The problem is that men are not accustomed to going to parks along with their women. And they won't let women go on their own." Abdul Halek, 22, agreed. "Although our house is very close to this park, we will never let our women go there," he said. "This park will be only for men."

Gul Mohammad, 35, a farmer, had a more pressing reason why women – or anyone else for that matter – would not use the park. He said, "For two years now, there have been remote-controlled explosions on the main Bolan road. I think mines will be laid in this park. That will keep people from going there."

But those brave chaps from DFID nevertheless persevered, trilling away that the nearly 20 acres would provide fresh air, fountains, flowers, picnic areas and recreational facilities for Lashkar Gah's estimated 100,000 people.

As for the IEDs that have been killing "Our Boys" – many of them now home-made using agricultural fertiliser - the aid agencies thought about that as well. Very helpfully this season, they have supplied the Taleban Afghani farmers with a total of 4,749 metric tons, conveniently packaged in 25-kilogram bags.

With such wonderful, intelligent support from our gifted civil servants, we cannot possibly lose the war in Afghanistan. We can look forward to moving from triumph to triumph, allowing the Afghani citizens to revel in their paradises of fresh air, fountains, flowers, picnic areas and recreational facilities provided so generously by British taxpayers.

COMMENT THREAD

Tactical mobility

Afghan civilians using mobile phones acted as lookouts for the Taleban before they attacked Lt-Col Thorneloe's Viking convoy, reports the Mail on Sunday. The civilians, who left the area before the attack, had formed a "screen" to observe the convoy, enabling the Taleban to "activate the improvised explosive device".

A military source is cited saying that the early signs are this was a classic "dicking" operation that allowed the Taliban time to set their roadside bombs.

That military convoys in Afghanistan are under constant observation, however, is not at all news. The photograph shown was published by the BBC last year to illustrate the nature of the problem, suggesting that the boy with the bike could be a dicker.

We discussed the role of dickers only last week and, in the context of the Thorneloe incident, further undermines the case for the Viking.

Its off-road performance is widely cited as enhancing "tactical mobility", making the movements of the vehicle unpredictable and thereby frustrating the attempts of the bombers. But, were there is constant observation, that dynamic changes and the unpredictability factor is of less value, especially when the vehicle is being used for supply runs and similar "routine" tasks.

The term "dicker" seems to have been coined in Northern Ireland during the Troubles where, perversely, the very presence of "dicker screens" was often used to warn of impending action or terrorist activities (see this report - 156 pages pdf). Similarly, the sudden departure of civilians from an area and, particularly, the absence of children, are all "indicators" that trouble might be imminent.

The broader point from this, though, is that the measure of "tactical mobility", as applied to a conventional military campaign, needs to be redefined in counter-insurgency operations. All too often, as was the case in Iraq, freedom of movement was limited not by physical restraints but by politically imposed measures directed at casualty avoidance – often in response to media publicity or in anticipation of such publicity.

Under these circumstances, vehicles with good terrain crossing performance or other attributes (such as size or weight) can end up being less mobile than vehicles with inferior performance but with higher protection levels.

Judgement of the "mobility" criteria for a military vehicle in a counter-insurgency campaign, therefore, has a political as well as military element. Neglect of the former can impinge on the latter.

That was the essential mistake made by the military planners in deploying the Viking. In judging its suitability on military criteria alone, they neglected the political dimension. Had, of course, this been taken into account, the vehicle should never have been deployed, exposing a capability gap that would have had to have been filled.


Here, the "experts" recoil in horror at the thought of a "quick fix" which might be good enough for most roles but not providing the perfect answer – such as to take a standard MRAP - a 4x4 Cougar would do nicely (illustrated above) - and fit it with tracks from an already existing vehicle, such as redundant M-113s, for example.


Once again, though, one must draw upon German World War II experience where, after the mobility problems experienced on the Eastern Front in 1941, the Army had a fully-tracked supply truck up and running for the 1942 season. Developed by Steyr, it was called the Raupenschlepper Ost (illustrated above) and used the transmission of the standard 1½ - tonne truck. Although far from perfect, it gave valuable service until 1945, with over 28000 vehicles produced.


Incidentally, another aspect of the mobility equation, the bridging tank, was available and used successfully by the German Army in 1940 (illustrated above). Such bridging equipment is currently on the British Army inventory and, with the web of canals and watercourses in Helmand, there should be plenty of use for it, providing additional flexibility that even the Viking cannot match.

In this realm, there are no insoluble problems – only lack of will and application. But a nation that is not flexible and cannot improvise is one that is past its sell-by date and does not deserve to win.

COMMENT THREAD

They should not have died

I am sorry if it offends – and it certainly does upset some of the military types, and the "consultants" and designers responsible for the Viking and the decision to deploy it to Afghanistan – but, on the basis of all the evidence we have, Booker and I both have come to the conclusion that Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond should not have died.

That they did die is the greater offence and, while it must always be remembered that the proximate cause was a Taleban bomb, in a cold-blooded act of murder, the neglect of the MoD and all those involved with the deployment of this vehicle is a contributory factor. Thus does Booker in his column today point the finger squarely at the MoD.

From Mick Smith (and others) in The Sunday Times, we get the first published confirmation of that which we had already worked out, that Lt-Col Thorneloe was riding in the front passenger seat of the Viking. With his driver, they were in two of the most vulnerable positions in a dangerously vulnerable vehicle.

In other circumstances, writes Smith, Thorneloe would have travelled by helicopter; but it appears none was available. He notes, however, that the MoD declined to confirm or deny this.

Without this facility, and wanting to "get up among his boys at the first possible opportunity," Thorneloe found that, "A resupply convoy was going up there and he hitched a lift on that." As the Viking approached a canal crossing, it passed over a hidden IED which destroyed the front cab. Thorneloe and the driver, Hammond, died instantly.

The lack of helicopter notwithstanding, if Thorneloe had not been in the vehicle, someone else would have died. And the incident would already have been a footnote in the history of the campaign, blanked out by the operations being mounted, not least the big push by the US Marines further south.

As for the Viking, this was originally produced as an amphibious assault vehicle and delivered to the Royal Marines in 2001, for use in the Arctic Circle as a mobility platform when reinforcing the Nato northern flank, assisting the Norwegians against a Soviet invasion. It was a Cold War machine, designed for a different purpose.

In that role, the question of protection had been considered – and the machine was armoured against ballistic threats. However, within the "Littoral Manoeuvre" parameters set at the time, a decision was made deliberately to skimp on mine protection to save weight. This was to enable the machine to be lifted by a Chinook helicopter and to maintain the amphibious free board clearances.

Before deploying the machine to Afghanistan, the protection levels were reviewed but, despite the known mine threat, the "assumptions about the overall mobility benefits" were considered valid – the ability to swim and be lifted by a Chinook. With no Chinooks actually available to lift these machines, therefore, the Viking went in October 2006 to war dangerously unprotected, simply to maintain its ability to swim through the waters of landlocked Afghanistan.

The original protection level was specified as proof against an explosion of no greater than 500gm under the belly, with a higher resistance to a blast under the track. This was claimed to meet the technical standard known as STANAG 4569, to level 2a – resistant to a 6kg explosion and thus protection against a common Russian anti-tank mine, the TM-46, with a charge weight of 5kg.

However, also present in some numbers in Afghanistan is the Russian TM-62M, with a charge weight of 7kg and fuzes which enable these mines to be detonated against the belly of a vehicle, or by vibration rather than contact, as the vehicle passes over the mine without the wheels or tracks riding over it.


For that reason, the US mine and blast resistance standard – for an underbelly explosion - is set at 7kg, and it is this standard that the British mine protected Mastiff (pictured above) also meets and in fact exceeds a level equivalent to STANAG level 3b.

At that level of protection, no soldier has ever been killed in a Mastiff in either Iraq or Afghanistan, despite being hit by explosives considerably exceeding its stated protection level. Much of that is due not to the blast resistance, as such, but to the v-shaped hull design of the Mastiff, which the Viking also does not have. It is entirely reasonable to assert, therefore, that had Thorneloe and Hammond been riding in a vehicle similarly protected and designed, they would have survived the blast.

However, the reasons for the MoD's neglect in not providing suitable vehicles are complex. Originally, the Viking was Royal Marine equipment, sent to Afghanistan because that was their standard mobility platform, with which they had trained.

So short of high mobility platforms was the Army though, that when the Marines departed after their six-month tour, a decision was made to keep the Vikings in theatre. Had they been withdrawn then, the MoD might just have got away with it, because the Taleban had not yet worked out quite how vulnerable these formidable-looking machines were, and how easily they could be destroyed.

The shortage of vehicles was nothing to do with money – as Booker reminds us in his column. At £700,000 each, Vikings are far from cheap, and neither is their maintenance. What had happened since 2003 was that, in effect, the Army had frozen development or purchase of any new armoured vehicles, while it worked up plans for a £16 billion fleet of high-tech wheeled armoured personnel carriers and other armour to meet Blair's commitment to the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF).

Although faced with a vicious insurgency in Iraq and then Afghanistan, the politicians and the Army were not prepared to spend on new specialist vehicles for these theatres, protecting instead the funding stream for the ERRF equipment.

Without that – had they given the time and attention to the needs of these real wars, instead of the imaginary wars of the future alongside our European "partners" - it would have been perfectly possible, even with limited funding, to have developed a high mobility platform for the Army, with the same protection levels of the Mastiff. That would have allowed the Marines to keep their Vikings for the role for which they were originally designed – amphibious assault.

That this has been the case has been hotly denied by the MoD, which is already facing legal cases over its deployment of the Snatch Land Rover. But the real story is told in Ministry of Defeat, an account "winning warm praise from various serving and former Army officers who recognise only too well what a disgraceful part the MoD has played in two awful military fiascos," writes Booker.

Already, we have been booted out of Iraq by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, after we had so signally failed to carry out the task contracted to us there, and as our troops have been slaughtered in poorly protected vehicles in Afghanistan, on the altar of "European co-operation", it must surely be only a matter of time before we hand over completely to the better-equipped Americans – whose Marines have left their amphibious assault vehicles at home – declare another great "victory" and depart.

In the meantime, in the baking heat and dust of Afghanistan, more soldiers must die. Many more will be seriously injured.

COMMENT THREAD

The wrong debate

See also: Time to get this sorted

With its unerring instinct for getting it wrong, the BBC – in the persona of its defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt – is framing the debate over the use of the Viking and the deaths of Lt-Col Thorneloe and Tpr Joshua Hammond as one of "armour versus mobility", suggesting that there is "a fine balance."

To be fair, she is not the only one to get it wrong. This is the way much of the British military thinks, thus channelling the argument into a sterile comparison between the merits of the heavy but well-protected Mastiff and the lighter, more mobile vehicles such as the Viking and the Jackal.

As the military would have it - enunciated by Amyas Godfrey to the BBC and also to The Guardian - the choice of which armoured vehicle to use in any campaign is a question of balancing risks and benefits.

"It is all about getting the balance right between the need for armour and the need to be light and flexible, with the ability to go off-road," says Godfrey. "Mobility is a form of protection in itself, and with heavier armour, you sacrifice mobility for greater protection."

At that entirely superficial level, there is some merit in Godfrey's assertions. Roads are a natural target for terrorists and, as that picture above shows, one particular weak point is the culvert bomb, which is fiendishly dangerous and requires a great deal of manpower and other resource to thwart. The ability to transit an area avoiding the roads – and such devices – is therefore an obvious advantage.

However, one almost gets tired of the repetition here, having yet again to draw the distinction between design and weight. Godfrey, in common with so many of his ilk, equates protection with "heavier armour".

Such are the constraints on their own thinking that they seem incapable of understanding that mine/IED protection is not primarily a function of weight of armour but of design – the principles of which we elaborated recently. It is this complete failure of the military establishment to understand these fundamentals which lies at the heart of this sterile debate.

To that extent, as we have so often observed, mobility and protection are not mutually exclusive. It is only the sterile thinking of the British military which makes it so. It would be perfectly feasible – by design - to produce a tracked vehicle with the mobility of the Viking, yet with the inherent protection of a Mastiff. This should not add significantly to the weight or, more particularly, hamper mobility.

Those proponents of the Viking, who argue that its mobility has saved more lives than its lack of protection have lost, are therefore arguing from a false premise. Mobility and protection are not mutually exclusive – it is possible to have both.

There are, however, other issues to address, where the whole argument on off-road mobility falls apart. One of those is the "pinch" or "choke" point problem, which we have also discussed. No matter how good a vehicle's off-road performance might be, there are natural features in any terrain which restrict and funnel movement into predictable areas, and it is there that ambushes are so often mounted.

Even in wide open spaces, there are constraints. As Tom Coughlan writes in The Times of the Viking, "in the heavily irrigated fields along the Helmand river, room for manoeuvre is more limited, and churning up farmers' fields with its tracks will not help to win the support of the local populace."

This then leads to a paradox, where designers optimise for off-road performance and then, to deal with the occasional but deadly ambush, add armour to their vehicles. They end up – as they did with the Vector – compromising performance without significantly improving protection. The outcome is an off-road vehicle with less performance than a custom-design protected vehicle, from which stems the mantra that you cannot keep increasing weight.

Locked into this trap – yet under pressure to reduce casualties - they have nowhere to go but to develop bigger and stronger vehicles in order to carry more armour. This is precisely the line adopted with the Viking, where it is to be replaced by the Warthog – a vehicle with heavier armour but sharing the same design flaws.

However, Major-General Julian Thompson, who commanded 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines in the Falklands conflict in 1982, makes a different point. He tells The Times - undoubtedly based on his experience in Aden and then Northern Ireland: "The question is not whether one vehicle or another is sufficiently armoured, it's about the lack of helicopters. We need more helicopters in Afghanistan to ferry troops in high-risk areas."


This is a good point. The ultimate mine protected vehicle is the helicopter. Unfortunately, as we pointed out earlier, the option of relying on helicopters is not available to the coalition forces, and not entirely because there is a shortage.

Unlike Northern Ireland, where the security forces were the main target of the terrorists, in Afghanistan the population in general is being attacked, particularly on the roads, which are needed to move large quantities of supplies. They are used heavily by Afghan security forces and civilians.

To abandon those roads to an enemy which is indiscriminately slaughtering civilians as well as the security forces is also to abandon any attempt at winning "hearts and minds". The military must maintain a strong presence on the roads and, therefore, will always be exposed to a risk that cannot be mitigated by the greater use of helicopters.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to the amount of protection that can be afforded, even in the best designed vehicle. To make that point - or something akin to it - Caroline Wyatt calls in aid the spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lt-Col Nick Richardson.

He insists the Viking remains an excellent vehicle, telling us that, "Armour is the last resort in terms of defeating the threat. It is much better to be able to avoid the threat than to have to rely on the armour defeating the threat when it is initiated. He then states: "It doesn't matter how much armour you have - it can always be overcome if you make the charge big enough."

The "bigger bomb" threat is overstated, an issue we have promised to address in a separate post, and neither should "armour" (more properly, protection) be considered the last resort.

In their Bush War between 1962 and 1980, the Rhodesian Army found that it was impossible to ensure that the thousands of miles of unpaved roads were kept clear of mines and IEDs. Therefore, vehicle protection was treated as a routine precaution. (See this study by Franz J Gayl - 147 pages, pdf).


That notwithstanding, protection is by no means the only precaution. Route clearance – using basic devices such as mine rollers (pictured above) plus more sophisticated technical aids, and even sniffer dogs - route proving, surveillance, routine patrolling to deter activity, intelligence, interdiction of supplies and disrupting the bomb-makers are all part of the armoury which must be deployed to defeat the joint threat of the mine and the IED.

To distil the argument down to one of "armour versus mobility", therefore, is as facile as arguing that either armour or mobility is the answer. But there is no more facile an argument than to assert that "armour" – i.e., protection – must be sacrificed to mobility. That is the wrong debate.

COMMENT THREAD

With friends like this ...

Having egregiously failed in its role of questioning the MoD's often lacklustre choices of vehicles, The Guardian, via Richard Norton-Taylor and Mark Tranc, now rush to give house-room to defenders of the Viking.

Thus we see the headline "Former officers defend vehicles as Afghanistan bomb deaths investigated," with the strap line: "Use of Vikings questioned after British commander and soldier are killed, but analysts say size of Taliban bombs surprises military."

Right up front, as one might expect, is the legend of the "huge" bomb, an issue to which we are going to have to devote a full post. Suffice to say at this juncture that the alacrity with which this legend has been embraced suggests that it provides more than an element of convenience.

Turning to the "former officers" who are so stalwart in the defence of this failed vehicle, the first is Amyas Godfrey, a former infantry officer and fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.

However, one needs only to look at the list of RUSI's corporate sponsors, and its proximity to the MoD to know where Godfrey stands. If "big oil" is forever accused of supporting "climate deniers", any such relationship is nothing compared with RUSI and the arms dealers, with BAE Systems, supplier of the Viking, right up front.

So it is that Godfrey tells us: "You have to remember that Vikings were deployed to fill a very specific function," referring to the bridges and canals of the "green zone" along the Helmand river. "You are sacrificing mobility for protection but mobility is itself a form of protection", said Godfrey.

This, needless to say, is the favourite MoD mantra, so it is no surprise to see it trotted out here, despite the fact that we are now looking at eight deaths in the Viking and even more in the popular all-terrain vehicle the Jackal. Despite this, Godfrey hastens to inform us that "even the Mastiff had been vulnerable to roadside bomb," neglecting to say that there have been no deaths in Mastiffs, as against 18 in the mobility-duo.

The second of the apologists is Charles Heyman, another former Army officer and now a military consultant – with sources of income undeclared. He states that it is "impossible to judge decisions and the circumstances" surrounding Lt-Col Thorneloe's death.

That may be the case, but the facts speak for themselves. Thorneloe was riding in a perilously fragile vehicle in an area infested with Taleban, where there was a recent history of successful IED attacks in a campaign where the IED is the enemy's weapon of choice. No much judgement is actually needed.

If that constitutes the offerings of the witnesses for the defence though, The Guardian has not finished yet. It tells us that the Viking was introduced into Afghanistan three years ago, but last year the MoD admitted it had reached the limit of how much it could be armoured following a number of deaths involving roadside bombs.

Never fear though, we are also told that it is due to be replaced by the new Warthog vehicle next year, with Gordon Brown announcing that it would provide "improved protection for our forces". So that's alright then.

Everything Mr Brown says must be true, and of course, if officialdom claims that a vehicle offers "improved protection", that must also be true, just as it was with the Vector and the Viking, when these vehicles were introduced – to say nothing of the Snatch Land Rover and, latterly, the Jackal.

In a bizarre reference, the paper then tells us that, "In another move to counter the threat of roadside bombs, a new class of mine-clearing vehicles – including the Buffalo mine-protected vehicle – is also being developed."

Yet, far from being "developed" the Buffalo has been in use by US forces in Afghanistan since 2002 and was rejected by the MoD in 2005. Only in October last did the MoD relent and order a batch, which are not due for delivery until next year. How easy does the MoD escape censure.

Even the disaster with the Vector gets skated over as we learn that the "Army's Snatch Land Rovers, which have been particularly vulnerable to attack, are also to be upgraded to a new variant – Snatch Vixen – with more power and better protection."

Never mind that the Snatch was supposed to have been replaced by the Vector, at a cost of £100 million, a vehicle which has since been withdrawn, requiring a rush upgrade at a cost of £5 million to produce the Vixen, in order to fill a yawning capability gap.

But then, we do too much justice to the authors, taking this work seriously. The comments on the Buffalo and Vixen are a straight "lift" from a Press Association report dated 29 October 2008, used by hundreds of local paperson the day, and then re-cycled on 21 April of this year, again used by hundreds of papers and also used today by the Daily Mail. This is "cut and paste" journalism at its finest, splatted into the copy without even momentary brain engagement.

A similiar technique is used to pad out the piece by adding comments on the Viking, where the authors note there "have been a number of deaths involving Viking armoured vehicles in Afghanistan." The "cut and paste" this time is also Press Association copy dated 10 June and used by, amongst others on the day, the Daily Mail once more. With dreadfully familiar words, we are informed that, last month, "the Grimsby district coroner, Paul Kelly, praised the MoD for identifying a problem with the vehicle and taking steps to solve it".

This was the carefully executed cover-up perpetrated by the MoD, but The Guardian takes it at face value, the words pasted in to fill the space with neither thought nor analysis.

With such lazy - if not dishonest - reporting, the MoD needs have no fear of being outed. It can continue wasting taxpayers' money and allowing its soldiers to be slaughtered as long as The Guardian is on the case.

Not even The Guardian though can compete with Con Coughlin on his clog. "Fatuous" does not even get close, when he writes: "Even though Lt-Col Thorneloe was travelling in a well-protected, £700,000 Viking armoured vehicle, that was specifically designed to protect British soldiers from roadside bombs, the Taliban have succeeded in designing a device that can kill or maim the occupants."

The great sage then opines that the "only effective way to counter the threat of these attacks is to have more men on the ground to guard territory that has already been seized from the Taliban. That would make it harder for the Taliban to plant the kind of device that killed Lt-Col Thorneloe."

With "friends" like this, who needs enemies? Some sections of the media are more deadly than the Taleban.

COMMENT THREAD

Time to get this sorted

With the recent deaths of Lt-Col Thorneloe and Trp Joshua Hammond, the number of service personnel killed in Afghanistan by mine strikes and IEDs while riding in poorly protected vehicles rises to 49 by our estimate.

With 140 KIA, that amounts to 35 percent of deaths due to enemy action (or accidental minestrikes from legacy mines). Perhaps twice as many service personnel have suffered very serious injuries, losing in total 150 or thereabouts skilled personnel. Without taking into account the huge financial costs, the Military cannot afford this unnecessary attrition.

Yet from the man on the spot, working for The Times comes one very obvious remedy, which the man himself fails even to recognise. The man in question is Tom Coghlan who records his experience riding in a Viking re-supply convoy, and an incident similar to that which killed Lt-Col Thorneloe.

Coghlan starts his piece with the effect: "The blast from the roadside bomb was a breaking storm of noise and shock that scrambled the senses and shrouded men and machines in a white pall of choking dust," he writes, with the description continuing thus:

Long seconds of uncertainty followed, before torch beams swept the evening gloom to reveal the silhouette of the sixth vehicle in the convoy, an armoured supplier, sagging sideways and half off the track. Its cabin was a shambles of metal. Its machinegun turret and its gunner were missing.

There was no sign of a follow-up ambush, but one might be imminent. On the internal radio of the Viking armoured car, an 11-tonne tracked personnel carrier, the crew swore softly and bitterly. "I wish they’d show themselves so I could f*****g ..." one voice said, trailing off to anguished silence.

The first five vehicles in the convoy had passed over the bomb before it detonated under the sixth, injuring but not killing two of the occupants. About 25 minutes after the blast the injured men were on an American Blackhawk rescue helicopter – not, incidentally, a British helicopter. We will return to that.

With the convoy now stranded two miles from its base, the troops have a nervous overnight wait for a recovery vehicle, suffering a Taleban ambush at 8am when they sustain more casualties. Why a recovery is not mounted immediately is not explained.

At last however, a rescue party arrives – a recovery vehicle, escorted by two Mastiffs. Coghlan calls then "armoured cars", which is a very odd choice of words. Cars, they most certainly are not. To call them merely "armoured" is also to miss their essential attribute. Unlike the Vikings, they are mine/blast protected vehicles.

That attribute is immediately tested. We learn that, as it neared the convoy, the lead Mastiff was caught by another buried bomb. However, Coughlan records, "Its heavy armour saved the crew, but it had to be recovered by the vehicle it was escorting."

So, putting it together – a Viking is hit by a bomb. Two crew are injured and need medevac. A Mastiff is hit by a bomb in the same location, and the crew walk away uninjured. And Coughlan draws no lessons from that at all.

The inference must be, of course, that had Lt-Col Thorneloe and his driver been riding in a Mastiff, they would still be alive today. No one yet has been killed in a Mastiff, even though it is covering the same territory as the other vehicles in theatre and taking many hits.

There is, of course, the mobility issue, with the Viking able to traverse terrain that is not accessible to the Mastiff, although it seems unlikely that a supply route could have been particularly challenging. And in any case, we have addressed this issue. If there is a mobility problem with the Mastiff, put half tracks on it.

Furthermore, someone in authority needs to ask of Force Protection if the Ridgeback or Cheetah can be turned into a fully-tracked vehicle. If the Germans could do it with the Opel Blitz in 1942, there cannot be any insuperable technical problems in 2009.

Another aspect of "mobility" however, is weight, especially relevant in the Thorneloe incident, where canal crossings were being used. Against the 12 tons well-distributed weight of the Viking, the 23 tons of the Mastiff undoubtedly causes severe strain on the primitive road system and very often exceeds the load-carrying capabilities of rural bridges.

As an alternative, there is the Ridgeback, nine tons lighter than the Mastiff 2, which is now in theatre. Not only that, sitting in South Carolina at the Force Protection plant are 50 unused Cheetahs which at 11 tons, come out at roughly the same weight as the Viking yet confer the same degree of protection as the Cougar, on whuch the Mastiff is based.

Here, we also need to look at the bigger picture. In the crossing of the Rhine in 1945, within 24 hours of the initial assault, the Allies had 36 crossing points established. Assault bridging is a speciality of the British Army and there is also that miracle of British engineering, the Bailey Bridge - or its modern equivalent.

We have long argued that the engineering component of the British forces needs substantially to be enhanced. Not least, locals also find difficulties with access, getting farm machinery and commercial trucks across canals. The "hearts and minds" aspect of such engineering works cannot be overstated, to say nothing of the tactical flexibility afforded.

Looking more specifically at the incident in question, there is also the question of why Thorneloe was taking a high-risk journey in a ground vehicle. A tactical commander might be better served by a helicopter or a STOL aircraft, such as a Pilatus Porter.

Then, having chosen a ground vehicle, one has to ask why a supply route was not cleared and then – whether or not it had been – why it was not under continuous video surveillance (by UAVs or ground assets) to prevent the Taleban bomb emplacers doing their deadly work. Given Coghlan's experience, and the fact that the IED is now the Taleban's weapon of choice, it could hardly have come as a surprise that this incident occurred.

As in life, there are always plenty of reasons one can find for not doing things and excuses there are a plenty when things go wrong. These we see in quantity in this man's Army, but the excuses are wearing extremely thin. It is time to get this problem sorted.

COMMENT THREAD

Welsh Guards CO killed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD