EU Referendum

Showing posts with label equipment. Show all posts

Sleigh2[i-Sleigh2]Any credible foreign policy for a mid-ranking, internationalist power like the United Kingdom relies on effective military forces to back it up. However, while our forces are undoubtedly first-rate, they are equipped primarily to deal with a Soviet-era threat. Yet the greatest demand in the post 9-11 scenario is for counter-insurgency forces, which need different types of equipment, issued on a different scale.

Since it is close to Christmas, we have sent a list of our needs to Santa. Read the details here.

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Inde%20betrayal%202[i-Inde%20betrayal%202]On the back of the coroner's report on the death of Sgt Steve Roberts, we see over a hundred links in Google News, all the main media outlets running the story. Very few though take the story beyond simply reporting the facts (or their version of them).

The Independent, however, makes a meal of the story, giving over its front page to the Coroner's words and making them its main story.

It then has one of its journalists, Nigel Morris, list the troops' "grievances". According to this gifted hack, "Pay/allowances" comes top of the list, followed by "Recruitment/retention" and then "Mental illness". Last (and least) comes “Equipment”, which includes a mere two items:

The standard-issue army rifle, the SA80 A2, has been dogged by problems, particularly when salt-water and sand interfered with its mechanism. The rifle has been upgraded but complaints persist.

A quarter of British soldiers killed by hostile action in Iraq were travelling in "snatch" Land Rovers - vehicles designed for Northern Ireland rather than the arid conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are bullet-proof, but provide no protection from improvised roadside bombs.

That is it? That is all a British national newspaper has to offer by way of a critique of military equipment deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq? And that was from the only newspaper that even made an effort. No wonder we have problems.

More to the point, when it comes to "betrayal", newspapers like The Independent (but also the rest of the media) should be looking in a mirror. Only through their laziness and inadequacies (alongside the politicians) is the government able to get away will failing to equip troops properly.

As an exercise, I wrote out a list last night of what I would like to see supplied to our Armed Forces. Later today, I will illustrate this and post it, with a link to this piece. Call it a list for Santa.

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roberts_hr[i-roberts_hr]"To send soldiers into a combat zone without the appropriate basic equipment is, in my view, unforgivable and inexcusable and represents a breach of trust that the soldiers have in those in Government."

Oxfordshire assistant deputy coroner, Andrew Walker today, speaking about the death of Sgt Steve Roberts and the failure of the MoD to supply him with body armour.

The danger now is that the media and (opposition) politicians will focus on this one issue - which has actually been sorted. All troops in combat areas have been issued with high-tech body armour. But there are many more fundamental shortages, from armoured vehicles, to thermal imagers and counter-mortar equipment - to say nothing of helicopters and UAVs.

So when are the media and the politicians going to start doing their jobs and demand this equipment, instead of just using troops as a source of cheap copy or stage dressing for their own publicity?

Read "Reflected glory" here.

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gatesb06[i-gatesb06]As Robert Gates (pictured) delivers his verdict on the Iraqi war and the Iraqi Study Group reports to president Bush, the amount of material stacked up in my virtual "in-tray" related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is getting excessive.

In order to pull it together, I am attempting to write a cover-all post here, in order to explain why we are losing (if we are) - the fashionable topic of the moment even amongst cuddly Tories.

But do not run away with the idea that this is an exercise of offloading surplus material all in one posting. Friends of this blog will know the keen interest we take in defence, and the material has been saved for a purpose. Now is the time to use it.

Even amongst those who will trouble to read it though - and many will not because it appears to be about "toys" - not all will fully understand the fascination with the subject.

Here, it is not as my co-editor would assert (but only in jest) that it simply reflects an obsession with "toys". What is really fascinating about them, for a political analyst, is that military equipment is the ultimate in functional tools. Their procurement is nine parts a political process and, therefore, in their design and construction (as well as their deployment) "toys" are a window into the soul of those - usually the politicians - who control them.

By contrast, with a great deal of social legislation, it can be many years before one can see the effects of actions taken by politicians, and the effects are often diffuse and difficult to interpret. With defence, though, there is a clean, direct cause-and-effect relationship between a decision to buy (or deploy) specific equipment (ot not to buy, as the case may be), and the end result. Thus, as a "tool" to measure the effectiveness of a government (and opposition), military equipment has few parallels. Amongst other things, we can see how much the kit was intended to cost, how much it did cost and, crucially, whether it is performing as intended.

Most often, we are also talking about huge amounts of money. The adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have already cost us, the British taxpayer, £7.4 billion and today, in his pre-budget report, Gordon Brown has allocated another £600 million to a special reserve to pay for these conflicts. A very significant amount of that money goes on equipment, and it is increasingly clear that the money is being very badly spent.

In the main post, we continue our exploration of this issue, but what begins to emerge is a question not previously addressed. If so many of the pundits are so sure we are losing (or not winning) that question is not so much why we are losing, as why we seem to want to lose?

This in part explains the unlikely title, the reason for which comes clear in the main post. In order to win, I wrote in an earlier post, we must first stop losing. And the first thing in this context we must do is ensure that our own casualties are minimised. But what we seem to be doing is going out prosecuting these wars in a way which will ensure unnecessary deaths and, in the end, guarantee failure. Can this really be incompetence?

For the moment, though, this is work in progress. I have nevertheless published the incomplete work with a comment thread - and invite comments, references to further material and anything else relevant. This, for me, is always a healthy process as I am able to feed comment back into the work as it develops.

Anyone else, who might be offended or disturbed that this blog should be used to write about such nasty things, can always move on to the far more important subject of David Cameron's triumphs as Conservative leader.

The post, as it is emerging, can be read HERE.

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