EU Referendum

I just could not resist the temptation of putting this up - the Mamba in British Army colours before being flogged off and snapped up by the Estonians - only to re-appear in Afghanistan alongside British Army unarmoured Land Rovers.

You really could not make it up.


But, since truth is evidently stranger than fiction, perhaps the MoD could sell off its unarmoured "boy racer" WMIK Land Rovers (above left), with which it is currently equipping the Army in Afghanistan, and provide some M3A1 Half-tracks. Don't worry that these are actually World War Two vintage - they would be a significant improvement over what we have in Afghanistan right now.


I suppose we could go the whole hog here. With the addition of WWII Daimler Armoured Cars and Sherman Tanks, we would see a massive leap in our armed forces capability. All we have to do is raid the museums and we're home and dry... perhaps unrealistic, but it does illustrate the point that the Army in 1944 was better equipped than it is currently in Afghanistan.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: defence, Mamba

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 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.

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.

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

Labels: afghanistan, land rover, Mamba

We did it on 3 July, barring a key bit of information that we had to tease out of the MoD through a Parliamentary question. This the Scotland on Sunday picked last week and we followed through last Friday.

Now, today – two months after we broke the original story - the Mail on Sunday has finally run it. Yet, at the end of the same month that we first ran it, little Shane Richmond, Telegraph web news editor, was happily pushing out an inane comment from Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker journalist, that blogs are "derivative".

Yet again this illustrates that sections of the MSM are so far up their own backsides that they haven't even begun to realise that, increasingly, blogs are running the agenda on certain issues. They are ahead of the curve.

As for the MoS, typically, it has gone for the cheap, sensationalist angle and has missed key parts of the story. That makes it just another space-filler rather than a contribution to the debate about the inadequacies of the MoD, which would have moved the issue forward.

Not least, it parrots uncritically the MoD line that the Mambas were "too heavy", without stating why - and that they "were not designed as a patrol vehicle". Yet, that is precisely what they were designed for, a task - even as we write - at which, in the form of the RG-31, they are excelling in Canadian hands in Afghanistan.

It then mentions that, last month, the MoD "revealed" that the Army is to get 300 new, "tougher" armoured vehicles for use in Iraq and Afghanistan - failing, of course, to note that 100-plus of these are the useless Pinzgauer coffins on wheels. This, incidentally, is from Whitehall correspondent, Jason Lewis, who should have been aware of what was happening. When the butcher's bill comes in, you can bet the MSM will be waxing indignant but now, when there is an opportunity to do something and actually save lives - they are silent.

And, although all the information for the MoS piece came directly from the exertions of this blog – they even used the same photographs – was there any mention of EU Referendum? I'll give you three guesses.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Mamba, Pinzgauer, RG-31