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Showing posts with label land rover. Show all posts

snatch[i-snatch]The Times is reporting that several British troops "are believed to have been injured" in two near-simultaneous attacks which today struck in Basra today.

One incident is said to have involved a roadside bomb striking a British convoy south of Basra, causing a number of casualties. The BBC website is saying that one soldier has been killed and three others are injured. One is in a critical condition. All three have been airlifted by helicopter to the hospital at Basra air station.

The Associated Press calls the vehicle an "armoured personnel carrier" - as does The Daily Telegraph (nice one, really helpful, that) but a photograph (above left) of the scene shows a damaged "Snatch" Land Rover, the caption reporting four soldiers "injured". The BBC report on the fatality thus looks to be accurate, and it is confirmed by the MoD.

Snatch+002[i-Snatch+002]Other reports indicate that the attack took place around 1pm local time at an intersection about three miles south-east of Basra. An updated BBC report confirms that the men were all travelling in a "Snatch" Land Rover, which it describes as "lightly armoured vehicles".

The Times quotes "military sources" saying the target of the roadside bomb was an armoured Land Rover – "a vehicle considered vulnerable to attack, and subsequently being used less and less than the heavily armoured personnel carriers which provide more protection." However, as the picture (above right) - and the many others we have published recently on this blog - shows, these vehicles are still in widespread use.

Lynx[i-Lynx]As to the other attack, this was a mortar or rocket attack on the Basra Palace complex. A Times reporter in Basra witnessed a medical helicopter flying from the city centre to Basra airport, where the main military hospital is based. Usually, the paper says, military helicopters do not fly in Basra in daylight as it is too dangerous – a rule which is only broken in emergency situations.

In two areas, therefore, where British troops are known to be vulnerable, insurgents have again struck to cause death and injury. However, since this is clearly not "friendly fire" by the Americans, one expects it will get minimal media coverage. Nor do we expect the media to ask what happened to the Mastiff mine and blast protected vehicles, which were supposed to be in place by now.

Snatch+003[i-Snatch+003]Meanwhile, after this, Sue Smith, whose son Phillip Hewett was killed near Basra in July 2005, is according to The Independent, planning to take legal action against the Ministry of Defence over its failure to protect combat troops with the right equipment.

She says military commanders are exposing soldiers to unnecessary danger by continuing to use ageing "Snatch" Land Rovers instead of armoured vehicles. "I want them to accept that Snatch Land Rovers should not be used on patrol. These vehicles are death traps," she says.

The Army has refused to launch a board of inquiry into the circumstances of Hewett's death – in an incident where two of his colleagues also died – describing it as an unavoidable "accident".

Yet the inquest in Oxford heard that the three men were dispatched to al Amarah in a "Snatch" Land Rover, even though just weeks earlier a roadside bomb had killed two soldiers near the town.

LR081[i-LR081]Mrs Smith said the Army told her that the men were hit by a previously unseen kind of explosive which would have penetrated even a heavily armoured Warrior vehicle. But photographs submitted to the inquest showed that the bomb entered the Land Rover through a window protected by nothing more than a steel mesh.
Said Mrs Smith, "There has been no proper investigation and the truth still hasn't come out. It took 19 months to get the inquest, and all I have to show for it is a three-page report and a patronising letter from the Army saying it was an accident."

According to Mrs Smith at least 20 servicemen have been killed in "Snatch" Land Rovers by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan since her son's death. She said: "I just want the Army to stop using these bloody vehicles. How many more people will have to die for them to change their minds?"

Quite.

COMMENT THREAD

A Coroner's inquiry has reported on the deaths of Pte Phillip Hewett, 2nd Lt Richard Shearer and Pte Leon Spicer – three soldiers slaughtered by a roadside bomb while they were patrolling in a "Snatch" Land Rover. Our report is here.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]The television device this evening had reporter Sean Langan filming alongside British troops, and with Afghani police and troops in the town of Garmser - taking on the Taliban. This was for the Channel 4 Dispatches programme.

Langan makes some play of the fact that the British are fighting in unarmoured WIMIK Land Rovers and, in one instance, a soldier is wounded – shot in the lower arm. Interestingly, he is extracted from the fire zone in one of the two vehicles operated by a small contingent of Estonian troops.

LAND+-+Mamba+Estonia[i-LAND+-+Mamba+Estonia]We are not told why this is so but can guess. Unlike the British Land Rovers, these are armoured. They are in fact, Mamba APCs, nine of which were acquired by the Estonian Army from er… the British, who disposed of them of a fraction of their original price, as surplus to requirements.

The actual machines, in British colours, are shown below - the short-wheel-base version, also known as the Alvis 8 or the Acorn. They are exactly the same, right down to the dinky little storage bins on the sides.

LAND+-+Mamba+001[i-LAND+-+Mamba+001]I doubt whether any of the British troops at the scene knew the story but, if they did, no one mentioned it. Nor did Sean Langan, who doubtless would not have known the background – and thereby missed a good story (there's unusual for you).

But how galling it is that British troops are exposed to fire in unarmoured vehicles, while our allies are able to take protection in cut-price armoured vehicles sold to them by our own caring, sharing MoD.

COMMENT THREAD

LR+attack[i-LR+attack]We have no more details, this photograph up for less than an hour. The caption reads:

Two British army vehicles are seen destroyed on a road in Basra, 550 kilometers 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Dec. 29, 2006. Unknown gunmen attacked a British army convoy on the southern outskirts of Basra, burning two armored vehicles, police said. AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani.

There is nothing on the MoD website (as yet) so one must assume that (fortunately) no British troops have been killed. The MoD does not routinely issue details on injuries, though – so we cannot be assured that all the troops escaped uninjured.

LR+attack+2[i-LR+attack+2]However, on what might be the eve of Saddam Hussein's execution, this has to be considered a bold attack. As can be seen from this above and this second photograph, the attack took place in the open – no ambush in the narrow street of Basra this. And, once again, Snatch Land Rovers are in the firing line – and found wanting.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Daily Mail is reporting that the government's timetable to transfer power in the southern Basra province had slipped beyond the end of 2007/beginning of 2008.

COMMENT THREAD

LR265[i-LR265]According to the MoD, another soldier has been killed in Afghanistan. So far unnamed, he was on a reconnaissance mission in the desert to the south of Garmsir, when his vehicle was involved in an explosion. As well as one fatality, there was one serious injury and two minor injuries.

At this stage, says the MoD, it is too early to say what caused the explosion but there were no Taliban in the vicinity and there was no follow-on contact. The thinking is that it could possibly have been a "legacy mine" left over from one of the earlier wars, which the troops were unfortunate enough to have hit. Lieutenant Colonel Andy Price, of the Royal Marines, suggested that a deliberate attack was unlikely, as the explosion "was in the middle of the desert."

Pinzgauer5-02[i-Pinzgauer5-02]No details have been given by the MoD of the type of vehicle involved. But, with that number of troops involved, it was most likely either a Land Rover or a Pinzgauer (pictured right).

Even if it was an unarmoured Land Rover, though, a mine strike is survivable – evidenced by the remarkable photograph of a Land Rover Wolf (above left), after being hit by an anti-tank mine just north of Basra, in June 2004. In a Pinzgauer, however, the chances of the driver and/or front seat passenger surviving are significantly reduced as they are seated immediately over the wheels and, therefore, take the full brunt of the blast.

In this incident, it seems that the blast caused a loss of control, whence the vehicle crashed, that being responsible for the death. On that basis, the vehicle involved may well have been a Land Rover, possibly a "Snatch", which often carries a crew of four.

LAND+-+Cougar+003[i-LAND+-+Cougar+003]To guarantee survival, though, the troops would have to be equipped with a mine protected vehicle, such as this Cougar (now deployed by the US in Afghanistan), from which the crew emerged unscathed. And which vehicles are being supplied to British troops in Afghanistan, to replace the Land Rovers?

Given that we are talking about the MoD, the answer should be obvious. They are sending out lightly armoured Pinzgauer Vectors. But then, does it really matter if a few more soldiers are killed? Gerald Howarth thinks Pinzgauers are "superb".

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]...in a bitter sort of way. The picture shows French armoured vehicles in Kabul today, escorting a convoy. The red signboards at the back say, "Please do not overtake the military convoy".

The vehicles themselves are the Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé or VAB ("Armoured Vanguard Vehicle") an armoured personnel carrier manufactured by the Euro Mobilité Division of GIAT Industries of France.

LR200[i-LR200]Under normal circumstances, the picture would be just a curiosity, of interest mainly to military equipment nerds. But what is significant is the contrast with British equipment. In Kabul, to escort our convoys, our troops are given "Snatch" Land Rovers. And they die.

The odd thing is that, the VAB actually entered service in 1976. Around 5000 were produced and, as the photograph shows, it is still doing good service. It is not ideal, not modern, but it does a much better job than any armoured Land Rover can do, or the stupidly expensive Pinzgauer coffins on wheels which will be introduced in the new year.

As we rather sadly remarked earlier, we seem to be going backwards.

COMMENT THREAD

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.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]It has been known for some time that Taliban tactics are changing, with this blog reporting just over a week ago that they intended to resort to laying mines as a tactic to demoralise troops.

But it was also the case that they were going to be targeting troops with suicide bombs with the aim of killing as many soldiers as possible, to put pressure on the Nato governments.

And yesterday we perhaps saw another result of that tactic, a British Land Rover, part of a military convoy, damaged by a suicide car bomb in Kandahar, south Afghanistan. Three Royal Marines have been injured, one seriously. The other two are in a stable condition.

link[i-link]One thing is for certain, looking at the relatively modest damage to the vehicle, had the troops been riding in an RG-31, they would not even have had a headache. They might even have survived uninjured in a Snatch Land Rover – with its basic armour - but this is not even an armoured Land Rover.

It is a "wolf" version, stripped down and fitted with roll cages and weapons mounts – the so-called Weapons Mount Installation Kit (or "Wimik"). Fully equipped, it looks a macho machine in the style of David Stirling's World War II SAS jeeps. But it has no place as a convoy escort in Kandahar, where the suicide bomb is a known and potent enemy tactic and where, in the same town, two Canadian soldiers were killed in a suicide car bombing last week.

link[i-link]Maybe yesterday, the three marines were "lucky" that they were just injured although, at least eight people other people were killed. According to Reuters, three civilians died when the bomber struck and five more were shot by troops afterwards.

As these appear to have been civilians, Nato spokesman Major Luke Knittig had said that the alliance will "establish the facts". But one fact is certain – deploying British troops in unarmoured vehicles in urban areas is too dangerous, exposing them to unnecessary risks. It is time to call a halt on this practice.

COMMENT THREAD

SAA%20pontoon%20006[i-SAA%20pontoon%20006]Analysis of strands of information coming out of southern Iraq puts a different and sinister complexion on the events leading to the murder of four British service personnel on the Shatt al-Arab waterway last month. It suggests that the Iraqi police may have been complicit in the incident, and that the British authorities knew that personnel using the waterway were at risk – and failed to take any action.

The first strand comes a disturbing report published by the Belfast Telegraph, telling us how the Iraqi police were probably directly involved in the murder of a British sergeant. He was one of the many servicemen killed by a roadside bomb last year, while riding in a Snatch Land Rover.

The soldier was John Jones, 31, of the 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Just weeks into his second tour of Iraq, he was killed by a roadside bomb as he commanded a routine patrol in Basra. Four other soldiers were injured. Just a week after the anniversary of his death, Jones's parents received a report from the Army that appeared to suggest his killer or killers may have been among the same Iraqi security forces the British have been training.

Describing the moment of Sgt Jones's death on 20 November 2005 as his patrol was heading back to the Shatt al-Arab Hotel, it read: "It was observed at this point that there were a number of unknown Iraqi males wearing Iraqi Police Service and military uniforms and that they were observing the scene from the Port Authority area. An Iraqi Police Service car was seen to turn around and head away from the scene, back the way it had come."

The conclusion from this and other evidence was that the police had been responsible for the bombing and, furthermore, Sgt Jones appears to have been just one of several British soldiers murdered by Iraqi police.

What was perhaps most damning about the murder of Sgt Jones is that the evidence was passed to the Iraqi police as a matter in their jurisdiction, but no action was taken. Undoubtedly though, the incident was one of the many that has created an atmosphere of distrust between the British Army and the Iraqi police.

This can only have been reinforced by a report on 23 October of four Iraqi policemen having been found with a roadside bomb in their patrol car. They were arrested by British troops and handed over to the civil authority, but later released without action.

But, if that tends to affirm that Iraqi police are responsible for insurgent attacks, we also have diverse reports, one cited here which suggests that half or more of Basra police might belong to the local militias and only a quarter could be trusted.

Next, from this month's edition of Soldier magazine that, in an event apparently prior to the November bomb incident, soldiers "patrolling" the Shatt al Arab waterway came under fire from a bridge. Up to six gunmen opened fire on a four boat convoy, led by Sgt Kev Cameron, and a ferocious gun battle ensured. Soldiers reckoned to have shot at least one of their attackers dead.

Crucially, though, there was speculation at the time that the terrorists may have been trying to plant a bomb and the intervention of the boats managed to disturb them while they were in the process of so doing.

link[i-link]The final strand in this exercise comes from local unpublished reports that, while soldiers knew boats passing under the bridges were highly vulnerable, because of the policy of progressive hand-over of security matters to the Iraqi police, there were no British Army guards on the bridges and no specific Army patrols. Instead, security was left to the Iraqi police, who had guard posts on all the main bridges crossing the Shatt al-Arab.

So, putting this together, we have a situation where the local police are known to be untrustworthy and have been implicated in the murder of British soldiers by the use of roadside bombs. We also know of evidence that officers had possession of improvised explosive devices. We have indications that one bridge might have been targeted as a site for an IED (suggesting that all might be at risk) and we know that the land-side security was in the hands of the local police.

On that basis, it seems entirely fair to suggest that the boat traffic on the Shatt al-Arab was at extreme risk and, if the soldeirs were aware of the risk, so must have been the military authorities. The bombing on 12 November, it seems, was an incident waiting to happen.

Needless to say, the government is extremely reticent about disclosing any details – and it goes almost without saying that no attempts to pursue the matters have been made by the Conservative defence team in the Commons. However, Lib-Dem MP Mike Hancock has asked the secretary of state what risk assessments had been carried out "with regards to personnel transfers on the waterway prior to the fatal attack".

Predictably, Des Browne was less than forthcoming in his reply, telling us that "we take the threat to our forces very seriously...". But not, it seems, seriously enough.

link[i-link]All Browne's reply does, in fact, is confirm that the UK government is consistently giving over-optimistic assessments of progress on the ground in southern Iraq. And, unlike David Cameron, we did not need to fly to Basra at enormous expense to find that out. Yet this is seemingly the main finding of his recent trip.

What this points up is the difference between analysis and crisis tourism. The former gets you the answer sooner, with the background evidence, while the latter simply makes you a vessel for someone else's opinion. But it also gives you apparent authority, by virtue of having been there – as if a visit to a protected airbase outside Basra would actually tell you anything of the situation in er... Basra city.

Nevertheless, in political discourse, the "whenneye..." ploy is still extremely powerful, despite being ultimately meaningless. It is relied upon by a procession of politicians and other crisis groupies, who so often dine out on the proceeds of others' endeavour.

In analysis, however, the strength comes not from the intelligence of vicarious politicians, but from linking facts and events, often separated in time and space, to form new conclusions, confirm existing ones or to raise new questions and directions of study.

Sitting at a computer screen many miles from the action sometimes brings a clarity that is not possible at the scene. And, if there are no answers to be got from the process, there are certainly plenty of questions.

COMMENT THREAD

DFH1[i-DFH1]Drinking from Home (a seriously good blog) picks up a letter from a former BBC News cameraman Chris Harnett, published in the Media Guardian. Harnett complains of visual material being used in a way that totally distorts actual events and of urban bias, sloppy technical, artistic and journalistic standards that BBC News now represents.

He cites an example of a Newsnight interview with the prime minister on a train. "Neither the cameraman, reporter, editor, sub or indeed tea lady noticed that between cutaways and the body of the interview the train direction reversed." "Precision with words and pictures," Harnett writes, "is vital in a political world that seeks to distort both."

Harnett's observations are interesting, not least in confirming that a great deal of what we see as the BBC's inadequacies reflect not so much bias as sheer amateurism – combined with intellectual laziness.

This we saw in a recent Radio 4 File on Four programme, dealing with military equipment procurement. First broadcast on 10 October, the transcript is now available, and we can now see reporter Allan Urry give a graphic example of both characteristics.

Urry%20BBC[i-Urry%20BBC]"It's the amount of detail we gather during our investigations which sets File on Four apart from other programmes," says the hubristic Urry on the programme website but, hot on the trail of "Snatch" Land Rovers, he does not actually listen to his own words – or even do any research. Instead, he goes for the cheap shot, interviewing Sue Smith, the mother of a soldier who was killed in an attack in such a vehicle.

From her, he establishes that her deceased son, an Army private, told her that the vehicles used by the Iraqi security forces were "better protected". Relying on this expert source, Urry then asks Sue Smith from where the Iraqi forces were getting their vehicles. He is told that they were supplied "by the Americans and the British".

Otokar%20LR%202[i-Otokar%20LR%202]Urry then interviews Lord Drayson, the defence procurement minister, and eventually refers to an MoD press release in which reference is made to the Iraqi army having received new armoured personnel carriers at the end of May. "And yet we haven't got full armoured personnel carriers yet for our troops", Urry complains.

Drayson responds by saying that the "vehicles provided … were Land Rovers".

"Why does it say new armoured personnel carriers then, in the Ministry of Defence press release?" demands Urry.

Er… because they were? The vehicles supplied to the Iraqi army were Turkish-built armoured Land Rover Defender 110s – one of which is pictured above left. And, if you look them up on the Otokar website, you will see them described as "armoured personnel carriers", which is precisely what they are.

Otokar%20LRa[i-Otokar%20LRa]Furthermore, in terms of protection offered, there is very little to choose between these and the more expensive "Snatch" Land Rovers, as indeed Urry would have found out if he had done some of the investigation of which the programme is so proud. He would also have found that the Iraqi Army had been targeted, with exactly the same unfortunate results as the British Army.

One really does have to wonder whose interests are being served by this amateurish pap. This is by the BBC's own reckoning Radio 4's "flagship investigative series". If it cannot do better than this, what is the point of having it at all?

COMMENT THREAD

MoS%20CAMP%20001[i-MoS%20CAMP%20001]Not only the Telegraph but also the Mail on Sunday, The Independent and The Sunday Times all pick up on the story of idle troops at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.

The Sunday Times has "British troops hide from bombers" and the Independent runs "Troops 'locked down' by suicide bombers", while the Mail on Sunday has a particularly strident headline: "Camp Do-Nothing". Its photographs tell the tale, some of which we have reproduced below, demonstrating how tough it is out at the front - something us "armchair soldiers" could never really appreciate before.

MoS%20CAMP%20005[i-MoS%20CAMP%20005]
What is interesting about these pieces is that they all tell the same story - with at least four newspapers carrying it. Yet four newspaper editors did not suddenly and independently come up with the idea of looking at the conditions at Camp Bastion, and their journalists did not all come up entirely independently with exactly the same story. At the very least, there is some collusion and there may well be a "guiding mind". In that case, who is doing the spinning, and why?

link[i-link]Whatever the reasoning behind the spin, it clearly has MoD approval as all of the papers seem to quote Lieutenant-Colonel Andy Price and they all mention the recent death from a suicide bomb of Marine Gary Wright (pictured right), although none specifically point out the vulnerability of the "Snatch" Land Rover in which he was riding.

link[i-link]And neither do any of the newspapers mention an ealier incident - this one in Kabul in early September. This was also another suicide bomber, in this instance driving a Toyota Hilux truck, but it was also another instance of a highly vulnerable "Snatch" Land Rover being targeted.

RG-31%20survivor%203[i-RG-31%20survivor%203]Now, purely on journalistic grounds, you would have thought that there was a story here, especially if a contrast was then made with the fate of a Canadian RG-31 which had recently been attacked by a suicide bomber, the crew having escaped without injury, the vehicle itself having limped home under its own power, needing only relatively minor repairs.

dingo_1.2[i-dingo_1.2]Add to this the recent experience of the crew of another Canadian RG-31 escaping injury after a mine explosion, and the similar fate of a German crew riding a Dingo mine protected vehicle and you have a superb story of British government incompetence.

Neither Canadian nor German (nor any other) troops have been confined to base because of a bomb threat yet here we are with all those tough Marines having to act like big girls' blouses and stay at home with mummy all because their patrol vehicles are crap.

MoS%20CAMP%20003[i-MoS%20CAMP%20003]But rather than engaging their brains, we get the MSM hunting as a pack, all following each other down the same line, holding each others' hands for comfort. Thus does the Mail on Sunday, like the Sunday Telegraph give the Marines' "Vikings" a puff, not stopping for one moment to look beyond the MoD spin and do their own background research.

Nor even do they get their facts right, the MoS citing the top speed as 60 mph, when it is in fact 60 kph (approximately 40 mph, and then only for relatively short periods), and the price as £80,000 when it is in fact $1,000,000 (as opposed to the £1m cited by the Telegraph).

Most significantly, the Viking is an amphibious vehicle, designed in Sweden primarily for amphibious operations and for their ability to move through swampy terrain, as well as snow. At twice the price of either a Bushmaster or RG-31, to use (and wear out) these highly specialised vehicles in a landlocked desert is little short of stupidity.

Luckily for our government and military, however, while this commodity is available in copious quantities, the MSM seems to be totally blind to it.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]
Weighing into the debate about British Army equipment today comes Booker again, in his column, with a piece headed: "Our troops will patrol in 'coffins on wheels’".

My%20little%20Pinzy[i-My%20little%20Pinzy]This is about the continuing scandal of the Pinzgauer, named after an Austrian pony and, by one of our forum members, "my little Pinzy". For all the use it is to our troops, it could just as well be a little girl's toy.

Anyhow, at the heart of the disaster gathering round Britain's military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, writes Booker, is the fact that our Government has in each case sent in an inadequate number of troops, hopelessly ill-equipped to do the job which faced them, Nothing has more cruelly brought this home than the still rising number of soldiers who died because the Ministry of Defence failed to provide them with patrol vehicles properly protected against mines and roadside bombs.

link[i-link]Last week, he tells us, Dutch troops in Afghanistan were supplied with the first of 25 mine-protected Australian Bushmasters, costing £271,000 each. This means that every other NATO contingent, American, Canadian, German, French and Dutch, now has mine-protected vehicles, but not the British, who are still expected to patrol in wholly unsuitable "Snatch" Land Rovers, such as the one destroyed by a suicide bomber in Helmand ten days ago in which a British Marine died, with a second seriously injured.

The MoD says it will soon be equipping our troops with Pinzgauer Vectors. These are known as "coffins on wheels" because they are in some respects even more vulnerable than the Land Rovers; not least because the driver is sitting right over the wheels when a mine strikes, and because the nature of their armour is such as to confine the effects of a blast inside the vehicle, probably killing all inside. Yet each Vector costs £487,000, nearly twice as much as the much-better protected Bushmasters. In other words, we are spending a great deal more money to give our men even less protection.

link[i-link]When our Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram was asked on 18 October by Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock what "risk assessments" had been carried out on the Vector, he refused to answer, merely giving the condescending reply "we do not comment on the details of our vehicles' protection levels". The Tory spokesman Gerald Howarth, on the other hand, is so reluctant to recognise the failings of the Pinzgauer that he is even pictured in an advertisement for them on the makers' website.

With a sense of frustration that we can only share, Booker concludes with the question, "why is this national scandal not on the front pages of every newspaper in the land?" Certainly, it isn't on the front page of his own paper, but that does report separately a story of how hundreds of marines are "penned into base by suicide bomb threat".

This is an entirely preditable response to a development which, it is claimed, marks a shift in Taliban tactics but, as we recently pointed out, was itself entirely predictable.

LR%20Composite[i-LR%20Composite]
Nevertheless, we are told that military commanders ordered the "lock down" after receiving intelligence that many bombers plan to attack British troops in two towns in northern Helmand. One senior officer said that some of its fighters were now prepared to turn themselves into "human claymore mines" in a renewed attempt to drive the British from the province.

The two British bases being targeted are in Lashkar Gah, where 300 members of the Royal Marines are based, and the strategic town of Gereshk, on one of the main routes through Helmand, which is being guarded by 60 marines from 42 Commando. Limited patrols around Lashka Gar resumed yesterday only on the specific orders of the base commander, but high risk areas were avoided as was the centre of town.

link[i-link]So desperate are the Marines to strengthen their defences against suicide bombs, they are also deploying their BvS10 "Viking" all terrain vehicles, which were only delivered this year.

At a cost of cost £1 million each - nearly four times the price of the RG-31 or Bushmasters - they are being sold to the Telegraph's gullible Sean Rayment as giving "far greater protection than the infamous 'Snatch' Land Rover," even though the ballistic protection offered is about the same and the vehicle is rated to protect against pathetically meagre 0.5kg charge anti-personnel mines, compared with the 14kg protection offered by both the RG-31 and the Bushmasters.

Once again, therefore, Rayment - a specialist defence correspondent - misses the story and lets the MoD off the hook, while "my little Pinzy" toys pour off the production lines, unremarked by our skilled and diligent hacks.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]UPDATED: A Royal Marine from 45 Commando has been killed and another seriously injured after yet another suicide attack on a "Snatch" Land Rover in Afghanistan.

They were driving in a military convoy leaving the Afghan national police station at Lashkar Gar, capital of Helmand province, this morning. The marines were airlifted to a military hospital at Camp Bastion, where one later died from his injuries. An MoD spokesman said the dead soldier's next of kin had been contacted.

Ghulam Muhiddin, the spokesman for Helmand's governor, reported that the attacker targeted British soldiers. He said the bomber, who was on foot, also killed a boy and a girl, both under eight. Other reports speak of bodies of civilians, some with arms and legs blown off, scattered around the scene near the town's bazaar.

link[i-link]This is becoming an all too familiar scene and, while better-armoured vehicles do not provide complete protection – witness an incident earlier this month when a Canadian soldier lost his life after an attack on an RG-31 (pictured) – the overall experience is that troops are much more likely to survive, usually uninjured.

Apart from anything else, a "Snatch" Land Rover costs in the order of £60,000 and this – like others before it – is clearly a write-off, while RG-31s suffering similar attacks need only relatively minor repairs.

What is particularly disturbing though is that, while the replacement Pinzgauer "Vector" is no better protected than the Land Rover, already the MoD propaganda machine is moving in to tell the troops what a good piece of kit it is.

kit1[i-kit1]Thus we see in this month's Soldier Magazine a "Boys' Own" puff on the two new additions to the British order of battle, the tame hack gushing that the "meaty Mastiff" and Vector (pictured left) are "destined to make life safer for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan".

The Vector – so soldiers are told – "will address the protection and payload problems of the Snatch Land Rover, making it ideal for Afghanistan." Surpassing the carrying capability of the Snatch, the Vector can carry an additional specialist, such as an interpreter, plus enough water for a ten-hour patrol. The piece adds:

"With Vector we have an improved payload capability, better mobility and improved protection,” said the vehicle’s project manager, Ben Onslow. “It will also have air conditioning, which is important for comfort.” The first of approximately 170 vehicles ordered should be delivered by February – just ten months after Pinzgauer started work on the variant.

Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Drayson told reporters on Salisbury Plain: "The Snatch Land Rover will continue to be an important part of our equipment. But we have identified that we need to give commanders more options. It is vital that we give our soldiers the kit they need. But it is down to the commanders in the field to choose the right tool for the job."

You would expect a tame house magazine to deliver that sort of guff, but it would be nice if the supposedly independent media took time out to tell our soldiers the truth. Unfortunately, it would seem that hacks are more concerned with the threat of external censorship, without realising that self-censorship, ignorance and indifference are probably the greater dangers.

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RG-31%20survivor%201[i-RG-31%20survivor%201]Although the meat and drink of real politics might be about dots and commas in draft legislation, it is also about life and death, as we have pointed out before. And there can be no better an illustration of this, and the total failure of our political process, than the contrast between this photograph (left) and the one below.

The first shows a Canadian RG-31 Nyala in Afghanistan which, according to CTV News was today attacked by a suicide bomber in a vehicle. The soldiers inside escaped unscathed and no other Canadian troops were hurt in the attack.

We are told that the attack took place about two kilometres from the regional international reconstruction headquarters in Kandahar and, according to reports, the suicide bomber tried to ram a vehicle into the convoy that was travelling through the city of Kandahar on its way to the main Nato headquarters at Kandahar Airfield.

The bomber was driving what appeared to be a minivan in front of the convoy. The driver pulled over as the convoy approached, then turned around and drove into one of the vehicles in the convoy. Soldiers said there was little warning of the attack.

wterror105.0[i-wterror105.0]Now compare and contrast with the outcome of a similar suicide attack earlier this month, only this time against British troops. They, to their misfortune, were riding in a lightly armoured "Snatch" Land Rover. And, as a result of the failure of the MoD to equip our troops properly, they died.

This, as the media are belatedly beginning to realise, is one of the more egregious failures of the MoD procurement process, but one that has – with a few honourable exceptions – been almost totally ignored by the British political "blogosphere".

Nevertheless, the combined effort of the blogs that did engage, with the help of a cross-party and cross-House alliance of Parliamentarians, the support of Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph and the intervention of The Sunday Times, the Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne was forced to purchase armoured vehicles for our troops.

This does show the power of the political process when it is harnessed properly and focused, hence my irritation when the growing power and influence of the blogosphere is frittered away on trivia and puerile "tee-hee" comment.

A graphic illustration of that dynamic comes from Ian Dale's website which has recently made a rare expedition into defence issues, but only to report on this issue of utmost gravity:

As part of the government's Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), it was decreed that the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) - don't they just love acronyms - should merge.

I see from the the (sic) current edition of Jane's Defence Weekly that, from 1 April 2007, the merged organisation will be known as Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S). Even by the standards of NuLab, it seems a bit much that the Secretary of State should be naming part of his empire after himself!

RG-31%20survivor%202[i-RG-31%20survivor%202]By his own estimation, Iain Dale's site is third in the rankings of top British political blogs and thus in a position to influence the political process for good or bad. And, while it is not entirely fair to single out Dale's abysmal efforts, his output typifies much of what is wrong with British political blogging – and illustrates how it is failing to capitalise on the blogosphere's growing power and influence.

Although not of a religious bent, I am reminded of the parable of the talents. More prosaically, one of Rudyard Kipling's quotations comes to mind.

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Heseltine as defence minister, 1984 - He is with Lt Gen Martin Farndale and Dr Worner. The picture was taken on or around the 21 Sep 1984 on Exercise Lionheart, one of the last very large West German cold war exercises.[i-Heseltine as defence minister, 1984 - He is with Lt Gen Martin Farndale and Dr Worner. The picture was taken on or around the 21 Sep 1984 on Exercise Lionheart, one of the last very large West German cold war exercises.]This is a defence posting, and one almost feels the need to apologise for putting up yet another one. However, that is the way the cookie crumbles. This one has wider implications than just defence – posts on other subjects will follow.

Something of the debate about defence spending that should be happening in the UK is beginning to emerge in Germany, where the German Armed Forces have announced ten "mission-oriented procurement and modernisation programmes" worth a total of €5.5 billion (just short of £4 billion).

While the programmes await parliamentary approval, critics have already piled in, saying the Army needs more protected vehicles than have been called for in the procurement plans.

The Dingo 2 mine protected vehicle[i-The Dingo 2 mine protected vehicle]Not least, it has emerged that, while defence minister Franz-Joseph Jung has issued orders that German ISAF forces in Afghanistan should to conduct patrols only in protected vehicles, this order cannot be obeyed. Despite the deployment of mine-protected Dingos, and the decision to buy more, there are not enough to go round. Thus, most of the troops must ride in unprotected “Wolfs” – the Mercedes Benz equivalent of the Land Rover.

While the Army goes begging, however, the big winner is the Navy which gets €3.18 billion, mainly for new frigates and submarines. One of the key items of expenditure, though, is a Luftwaffe programme worth €1.1 billion which includes "Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft role adaptation, integrated logistics support for role adaptation, adjustment, retrofitting and role equipment". This will cost a cool €540 million.

This has had retired Lt. Gen. Manfred Dietrich, president of the German Army Association, fuming. He says that "although the Eurofighter is an important and necessary asset in the German Armed Forces, one cannot draw a requirement of 180 aircraft based on today's missions conducted by the Bundeswehr and other nations."

On the other hand Bernd Siebert, defence spokesman for the ruling Christian Democrats has asked for an extra €2 billion on top of the budget to be spent on military equipment over the next two years.

He is backed by Dietrich, who has called for an "annual special programme fund, which is not part of the defence budget" worth €2 billion "carefully controlled by the parliament", enabling the Bundeswehr to acquire, even on short notice, what they need for missions.

He says the Army needs more than "3,000 protected vehicles and a lot more Future Infantry Systems," just to give the Bundeswehr protection for its current commitments.

One immediate point emerges from this. Like in the US, defence procurement spending requires the specific approval of the elected representatives, which does ensure that there is debate on the proposals made by government.

This is quite unlike the UK where the Ministry of Defence has a global budget, voted annually as part of the government's general expenditure. Announcements are then made piecemeal by the Ministry, most often by way of a ministerial statement, with no debate and no specific parliamentary approval required. Decisions are examined after the event and any debates that follow can only deplore government actions, without being able to force changes.

If there was one reform in the UK which would substantially enhance MoD performance, it would be to make all defence procurement decisions subject to parliamentary approval.

But the central point here is the similarities here between the German Army situation and that of the British Army. Both have forces deployed in Afghanistan and both are starved of resources while the "big projects" get the funding, not least the Eurofighter.

The European white elephant - aka Eurofighter[i-The European white elephant - aka Eurofighter]With 232 of these machines on order for the RAF, at £60 million each – with the bills only now coming in – we are saddled with a Cold War project which has little relevance to our current operational needs – as indeed even The Daily Telegraph recently observed.

Whatever the merits of the current machines, it must be remember that the multi-national project was originally conceived for wholly political reasons, as a means of fostering European defence integration via common defence industrial projects – on which basis it was enthusiastically endorsed by that rabid Europhile Michael Heseltine.

Had we then bought US F-16s – at a third of the cost of the Eurofighter – we would have been better served not only financially but operationally as, unlike the current Eurofighter version, these aircraft have a potent ground attack capability. Even now, the MoD is having to spend another £73 million on preliminary work to develop the Eurofighter for the ground attack role.

This is by no means the end of the expenditure as European-designed weapons for the Eurofighter are far more expensive than their US counterparts, all of which means that our forces are struggling to make ends meet, while money drains into the sand to fund the great European fantasy.

That is the legacy of Mr Heseltine and the malign effect of a failed experiment which, even now, is costing lives.

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Hit%20rate[i-Hit%20rate]Some time about midday, while I was furiously writing my last post, the counter clocked up our two millionth hit, a singular milestone in the life of any blog – and one I missed. By the time I looked at it, it was recording the figure shown left.

At the beginning of this year, looking at past performance and extrapolating the slow but steady growth in readership, Helen and I estimated that we would reach the one million-mark some time about the end of October. But that was before "Qanagate", an event neither of us could have anticipated.

By that reckoning, that single issue brought us over a million hits, demonstrating the strong public interest in our investigation. It says something of the British media that none of the mainstream news organs have carried it in their main sections and, while various media outlets have been happy to promote some British blogs, references to EU Referendum are noticeably absent in articles which have relevance to the issues we cover.

Nevertheless, two million hits is a happy event. Amongst those who made up the number, it has brought us many new – albeit "virtual" friends and many have stayed on after the "Qanagate" coverage, to become regular readers. To them we extend a special welcome, as well as thanking those that were with us from the start and who have joined us on the way. AS I have written before, without our readers, we would simply be lonely voices, squeaking in the wilderness.

That we need readers is self-evident but more so as we are a campaigning blog – we are not in this for our egos or for the pleasure of seeing the "hit counter" tick over, but to get things done. I would be happy to stop blogging tomorrow if we felt our job was done.

But we are changing things. Although, in the final analysis, it was a team effort which included my good friend Christopher Booker and, latterly, The Sunday Times, we feel that we did make the difference on the "Snatch" Land Rover campaign. I take some pride and comfort in the fact that, when new armoured vehicles finally do reach Iraq, they will save lives and, because of the input of the blog and our readers – as well as the other bloggers who joined in - there will be good people alive who might otherwise have died.

For that reason, we will continue with the Pinzgauer farce, those "coffins on wheels", as we have described them, and with the tolerance and support of our readers (but with little help from the MSM) will keep "banging on" until these death traps are withdrawn and more suitable equipment is put in place.

Perversely, this was not what the blog was set up to do – and not something we anticipated when the EU referendum was first announced in April 2004. But, when the French and Dutch deep-sixed that project, we decided to widen our scope and change our strap, which became, after much discussion: "to discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world".

We have more or less kept true that that line, although the relationship between an increasing number of our posts and our blog title is becoming more and more tenuous, almost to breaking point. That has been pointed out by some of our readers, and in particular in some very kind and thoughtful e-mails we received in response to my recent post (to which we will reply shortly).

Therefore, Helen and I are thinking hard about where we go – whether to set up a new blog - and many incidental issues, not least whether we can afford to migrate and lose our "brand identity" as EU Referendum. We must also think hard about financing the operation as it is now absorbing so much time that the idea of a "day job" is also becoming rather tenuous. It is only with the support and tolerance of our "employers" that we have managed so far.

That said, which is probably too much, we must thank again our readers past and present, and our forum members – many of which we will continue to vex – and look forward to our next million, either in this or another format, depending on the outcome of our ruminations.

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soldiers[i-soldiers]Under the heading, "They deserve more", The Sunday Telegraph today is launching a campaign to "get the Government to reward our soldiers properly".

Central to this campaign is the argument that the government now pays a newly qualified teacher £52.49 per day whereas a private "dodging bullets, bombs and missiles in Afghanistan is paid £39.24p a day for the privilege".

Illustrating just how lame this argument is, the paper is referring to the lowest level of wage, which would be paid to an 18-year-old soldier after 20 weeks of (free) training, a young man who may have no qualifications or experience.

By the time a soldier reaches the age of 21 – the age at which a newly qualified teacher might start – he will be on £54.60 a day (with no student loan repayments), unless of course he has been promoted, whence as a lance-corporal he will be earning £57.10 or, as a Corporal, a minimum of £64.48p. And, of course, certain specialists (such as parachutists) receive additional special pay, currently £4.85 per day.

Add to that a non-contributory pension – which can be carried over to other careers – plus tax-free lump sum after completing 18 years service, and the last problem soldiers have is their pay-scale. It is certainly not, as The Sunday Telegraph claims, a "pathetically inadequate level of pay", and far from being an "outrage".

Snatch%20bombed.0[i-Snatch%20bombed.0]What is an outrage though is their pathetic level of equipment, which Booker addresses in his column. He writes:

When Cpl Mark Wright of 3 Para was killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, attempting to rescue six comrades who had been badly injured when their patrol vehicle was hit by a mine, this brought to 35 the number of our Armed Forces killed since their new deployment in Helmand. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been at pains to conceal the vehicle's identity, but the evidence suggests that yet again it was a Snatch Land Rover.

When Canadian and German patrols were also hit by explosive devices, their occupants escaped largely unscathed because their vehicles, an RG-31 and a Dingo, are designed to be "mine protected". This underlined the MoD's scarcely believable folly in sending our troops into action in Afghanistan and Iraq in unprotected vehicles, with the wholly predictable result that more than 30 have now died.

The MoD seeks to reassure us that it will soon be sending 100 Pinzgauer patrol vehicles to Afghanistan, costing £487,000 each. What they do not admit is that these "coffins on wheels", as they are known, offer less mine protection than the £60,000 Land Rovers. Meanwhile the RG-31s used by our allies, costing just £320,000, have saved scores of lives. Not the least forgivable aspect is how the MoD uses spin and deceit to conceal its incompetence.

Put it to the average soldier to whether they would prefer a wage rise, or decent kit that might keep them alive, and I have no doubt where their choice would lie.

So what is it with these gormless hacks that they so consistently grab the wrong end of the stick?

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