Defence of the Realm

Those interested in the Afghan issue are doubtless aware of the recent McChrystal assessment report, and most will have either read the redacted copy or, at the very least, read one or more of the numerous media reviews of it.

Those who have done neither could, if they so wished, read the speech delivered today by Liam Fox to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

With the working title, "Beyond the Smoke: Making Progress in Afghanistan", its substantive parts are unashamedly lifted from the McChrystal assessment report, comprising an evaluation of "three areas in the current struggle in Afghanistan". These are the role of the Afghan population in the war, capacity building of the Afghan Security Forces and the need to improve governance across Afghanistan.

Fox even admits the source, stating that they have been identified as priorities by the General, then somewhat rashly declaring that they form the basis of future strategy in Afghanistan.

Whether McChrystal was defining a strategy or simply a new (as applied to Afghanistan) tactical approach is moot, but the strategy comprises in essence the implementation of the "Integrated civil-military campaign plan", which goes well beyond the three areas enumerated by Fox.

Crucially though, Fox seems to have fallen into the trap (one of many) of assuming that the McChrystal assessment is a done deal. He is behind the curve, seemingly unaware that president Obama has not acted on it and, instead, has commissioned his own strategic review. Whether McChrystal's recommendations will become policy, therefore, remains a matter of speculation. They certainly cannot be taken as read.

The "game changer", of course, was the Afghan presidential election. It is recognised that any successful counterinsurgency requires a stable and legitimate political partner in the host country and, whether Karzai manages to cling on to power or not, there is general agreement that he will be weakened and that his administration will lack legitimacy.

On that basis, there are serious doubts as to whether the classic counterinsurgency strategy, advocated by McChrysal, can actually work. It was that which led Obama to commission his new review, from which an entirely different strategy might emerge.

Apparently completely oblivious to this development, Fox – in his only substantive reference to the election - states that it is "crucial" that it "must be seen to be credible and reflect the wishes of the Afghan people." This is wishful thinking beyond peradventure.

Thus, we are left with what amounts to a slavish adherence to the McChrystal creed, with not one scintilla of critical exploration. Fox's only concern is to ensure that the "strategy" is properly resourced. That much is picked up by The Times, which provocatively headlines: "Tories would send 2,500 more troops to Afghanistan, says Liam Fox".

The paper then reports that the shadow defence secretary had "indicated" that a Conservative government would increase British troop numbers in Afghanistan by up to 2,500 and deliver more helicopters, armoured vehicles and "other key battlefield enablers".

In what could have been an opportunity to set out a new direction for what is evidently a failing campaign, Fox has therefore sold the pass. Like so many before him, he pays lip-service to the received wisdom that the campaign cannot be resolved by a "military victory", but he then defines success as securing security – which of course he seeks to achieve by military means.

No one, it seems, can see the logical absurdity in this approach – least of all Fox. A military solution is not possible ... therefore we must seek a military solution. "The reconstruction will follow," says Fox. "The factors of prosperity, individual freedoms, and free markets ... may someday come to Afghanistan. We should do all we can to help this to happen but it will not happen overnight," he adds.

It does not dawn on him, the simple precept that the order might be reversed. Focus on economic reconstruction, build prosperity, and protect a people who then have a stake in their society and something to lose. Security will follow. In the final analysis, security comes not from the barrel of a gun – it comes from the will of the people. But then, that is probably too difficult for Fox to understand.

COMMENT THREAD

If our opposition politicians had been listening last night – which is doubtful – they might have learnt something from General Sir David Richards, the new Chief of the General Staff.

Prominent in his speech to Chatham House he made a declaration which would have shocked the purists, had they noticed, telling us that we must "rebalance our investment in Defence". Furthermore, he said, we must rebalance, "not from one service to another but from one type of conflict to another, for we simply can't afford to retain a full suite of capability for all eventualities."

All professional groups have their secret languages – their jargon, which serves to mark them out as different from the rest of the herd – with its own special vocabulary, where ordinary-sounding word have very special meanings, not immediately apparent to the outsider.

"Balance" is one of those words, as is "rebalance". For General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former CGS, "balance" was one of his favourite words, applied in the context of "balanced force".

Cracking the code, this means an Army which maintains a full range of capabilities, able to fight a full-blooded conventional war against a technologically advanced enemy, as well as the "lesser" tasks of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency.

Even in early August, when delivering his, valedictory speech, Dannat was pitching for his "balanced force", capable of fighting his "future wars" – battles of mass manoeuvre on some unspecified plains, involving huge mechanised armies, fielding tanks, guns and all the high-tech weaponry which comprises the inventories of modern forces.

But if that thinking held back the reshaping of the Army to deal with the insurgencies in Iraq and then Afghanistan, Richards is a breath of fresh air. He wants to "rebalance", based on the idea that the character of warfare is fundamentally changing.

Globalisation, he says, is increasing the likelihood of conflict with non-state and failed state actors, and reducing the likelihood of state-on-state (i.e., conventional) warfare. It will not disappear – but its character will change, becoming more asymmetrical, complex and mosaic.

Thus says Richards, our armed forces and other national security instruments across government must get better at tackling the challenges of this new security environment. This includes re-engineering non-military means to be relevant and effective security tools and, he adds, "Ensuring our armed forces are relevant to emerging security challenges and the increasingly sophisticated adversaries we will face."

Once you have cracked the code, this is heady stuff – amounting to nothing less than a revolution in thinking at the highest level of the cobweb-infested Army.

Successful armed forces adapt and transform at a pace faster than their potential adversaries, Richards observes. Cromwell, as an example, unlocked the synergy of discipline, training, new equipment and new tactics in a manner that left the Royalists looking like barely gifted amateurs. This process can be found throughout history although rarely is it accelerated with the vision and drive of a Cromwell.

Borrowing from his earlier speech, where he warned that the Army was facing another of those "horse and tank" moments, Richards noted that, "although not yet culturally internalised," there has been a radical change in the way wars are fought.

We cannot, he said, go back to operating as we might have done even 10 years ago when it was still tanks, fast jets and fleet escorts that dominated the doctrine of our three services. Instead, we have to face up to such "non-kinetic" requirements as "counter-IED, information dominance, counter-piracy, and cyber attack and defence".

Soldiers had to operate in a "complex combat, joint, interagency and multinational environment in which success is measured in terms of securing people's confidence instead of how many tanks, ships or aircraft are destroyed."

Then, straight out of the Gates book of procurement, Richards declares that the pace of technological change has left every nation's mainstream procurement process struggling to deliver equipment that will remain relevant against more agile opponents satisfied with cheap and ever-evolving 80 percent solutions.

Too often, he says, we still strive for hugely expensive 100 percent solutions – "exquisite solutions" as Secretary Gates calls them – relevant only in a traditional hi-tech state on state war but that risk being out of date before they are brought into service.

In sum, he adds, tactical, operational and strategic level success in today's environment is beyond that of a military that draws its inspiration from visions of traditional state on state war, however hi-tech in nature.

Much later in his speech, Richards returns to this theme, telling us that those who seek to continue investment in traditional forms of conflict at the expense of the new fail to understand the degree to which inter-state dynamics have changed since the Cold War era.

The asymmetric war, he says, is the war of the future and countries like the UK need only possess a deterrent scale of traditional warfighting capability - one that reflects our stated policy of only going to war as part of the NATO alliance or, in a regional context, with the USA.

He is not advocating the scrapping of all our aircraft and tanks to the point that traditional mass armoured operations, for example, become an attractive asymmetric option to a potential enemy. But ensuring tactical level dominance in regional intervention operations or enduring stabilisation operations and to deter is going to be achieved with allies, not by ourselves.

Accepting this logic will free up resources needed for investment in other more likely forms of conflict. It will also go a long way to finding the money needed to allow our armed forces to contribute to important stabilising activity in fragile and failed states as well as to that Cinderella activity of peace-keeping.

And that is what he means by "rebalancing" – spending less on the expensive "toys", accepting that we can no longer afford a capability for autonomous "high-end" warfare and tailoring our resources so that we can work alongside allies to common effect. If this "horse and tank moment" is not gripped, our armed forces will try, with inadequate resources, to be all things to all conflicts and perhaps fail to succeed properly in any.

Yet the only newspaper really to have got the point was The Guardian, which was the only one to report the speech properly. Even then, it missed the political dynamic – Richards, on the face of it – is at odds with the world view expressed by Liam Fox. We are in for some interesting times.

COMMENT THREAD

A major public speech by a shadow defence secretary of an opposition party which will in all probability win the next general election should, by any normal measure, be an important event. It is in that light that we approach yesterday's keynote speech from Liam Fox to the UK Defence Conference 2009.

Fox takes as his theme the thesis that the world is becoming a more dangerous place and that we are living in "a deteriorating global security environment". He takes in Afghanistan, next door Pakistan, and then Putin's Russia, which he tells us is "an ever more assertive state" which is rearming, is still occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia and has threatened to militarise the Arctic region, to the great concern of our close allies in NATO, especially Norway and Canada.

To his mix, Fox adds the piracy "running rife not only off the Horn of Africa but also in other less frequently mentioned places like the Gulf of Guinea and the Strait of Malacca." He mentions Iran, on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, North Korea, which has tested a second nuclear bomb, and then declares that, "in all parts of the globe new threats are emerging which require a response from the international community."

Next, we are told that "defining our strategic interests and determining how to protect them is one of the biggest challenges facing any government," which one might expect to be preparatory to Fox's ideas for when he takes control of the MoD.

However, there then follows a lengthy dissertation on the failings of the Labour administration – which is fair enough. This is what party politicians do, and have to do. They attack the other parties, especially when they are in opposition.

Once past this obligatory section, though, Fox is still not ready to offer his recipe for defence under a new administration. Instead, he continues with his analysis.

We learn from him that the world is "becoming more complex." Globalisation means that Britain's economic and security interests are increasingly interlinked to others with an unavoidable shared set of interests and the unavoidable importation of strategic risk. We are also reminded that instability in one corner of the globe can quickly affect everyone.

Fox then tells us that "this interdependence must have major implications on how we organise our national (and international) security structures and identify our threats." It goes without saying, he says, that the challenges this presents to our Armed Forces are numerous and complex.

Thus are we informed that the 21st Century strategic environment demands that Western militaries are able to simultaneously conduct war fighting, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. Furthermore, says Fox, it requires Western Governments to supplement these military operations through an array of soft power tools, such as international aid, diplomacy, and the spread of information and ideas.

This is followed by a warning that organising our Armed Forces to combat the current insurgency in Afghanistan, "coupled with a defence budget with a black hole of £35bn", offers a temptation to lose sight of future conflicts for the sake of the ones we are fighting today.

This has led many, Fox adds, to believe that we have to choose between fighting the war or a war - but this is a false dichotomy. Insurgencies are not a new phenomenon and the operations currently being conducted in Afghanistan are not a guarantee of what warfare will look like in the future.

As to the future – and still in analytical mode – Fox is prepared to make some "educated guesses". Although state-on-state warfare is still a possibility, he says, it is unlikely to take the same linear, symmetric, and conventional form as state-on-state warfare did in the 20th century.

Rather, he opines, it is likely that many of our potential adversaries, knowing that they cannot match our technology, resources or conventional firepower, will resort to strategic and tactical asymmetric measures in an attempt to defeat us. Attempts to disrupt our social and economic well being through international terrorism, cyber attack or threats to our energy security can be anticipated.

This, Fox declares, has implications for our procurement plans. "We need to focus more on capability and less on specific equipment." However, we are told, "the equipment programme is only one piece of the puzzle." All three services need to be asking if they have the correct up-to-date doctrine to meet and defeat the challenges they may face now and in the future. "Do they have the institutional framework in place to ensure that our military leaders can grow, learn and adapt when required?"

Now we learn that it is the Government's role to ensure that our military has the tools and resources needed to make this possible. Saying that we can only focus on the war at the expense of a war is not good enough for the British people.

And then more questions: How do we balance competing defence priorities? How do we ensure that current commitments are properly resourced without neglecting future strategic challenges? And then answers. A future Conservative Government will immediately do three things: launch a wide ranging and detailed strategic defence review; conduct an in-depth capability review; and carry out a radical root and branch reform of the procurement process.

The purpose of the SDR will be to define what Britain's strategic interests are and where they exist at home and abroad. Unless you have clear foreign policy objectives you cannot have a proper defence strategy, says Fox. This will allow the strategic environment and the threats posed to our interests to be assessed within reasonably predictable limits. It will then determine the capabilities we need to protect those interests.

Only then, Fox tells us, will we be able to look at specific programmes and the shape of our Armed Forces to see if they can deliver the capabilities we need. "Of course," he adds, "the main challenge here is between equipping our forces to succeed in our current conflicts and preparing for any future contingencies."

Finally, Fox announces, we will have to determine the affordability of the designated equipment programmes and whether they offer value for money. All defence programmes, he says, will need to demonstrate their value for money before we start spending taxpayer's money.

Then, strangely, we get to some detail. The capabilities review will be used to get the structure of the Armed Forces and civilian component inside the MoD correct to ensure that we, as a department, are best configured for the tasks we have to accomplish.

It is time for the MOD to get its house in order, Fox says. There are questions for all three services as to whether they have an over abundance of senior posts. Furthermore, there is one civilian for every two armed forces personnel in the Ministry of Defence. In other words the total of civilians in the MoD is larger than the Royal Navy and the RAF combined – 16 percent of the civil service is in the Ministry of Defence.

We need to do a proper capability review which looks at all aspects of manning and force structure to ensure that we have the right balance of personnel-both in and out of uniform.

As to defence procurement, this will have four main objectives. Firstly, it will provide the best possible equipment to our Armed Forces when they need it, where they need it and at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer. It will underpin Britain's strategic relationships. It will provide better stability to the Armed Forces and better predictability to the defence industry. And it will preserve UK defence jobs by maximising exports.

To meet these objectives, any future equipment programme will be tested against five criteria.

First, the question will be asked: does this piece of equipment enable our Armed Forces to fight effectively and win on the modern day battlefield? Second: can we afford not only the initial procurement costs but also the through life costs? Third: how can we get the greatest flexibility, while ensuring that as many potential roles as possible are fulfilled? Fourth: will this piece of equipment allow the British Armed Forces to take part in Combined and Joint military operations with our allies, specifically in NATO? And finally, will this piece of equipment have a high export demand which, may in the long term, create jobs at home and positively affect the British economy?

And so the peroration. The MoD needs a new vision, fresh thinking, and new leadership that only a new Government has the energy and confidence to provide. You can delegate authority, but not responsibility. Labour Ministers are to blame for the failings at the Ministry of Defence - not the Civil Service or the Armed forces, says Fox. In the sphere of security we need to stay ahead of the curve-changing if we wish to stay ahead of the threats. We need to adapt if we want to keep safe and time is not on our side.

That is the Fox view. That is the platform on which the Conservative Party, presumably, will go to the people during the general election. Make of it what you will.

COMMENT THREAD

The Sun continues its coverage today, ostensibly campaigning for better equipment for "Britain's servicemen and women in Afghanistan." To promote this agenda, it focuses on the Viking, rightly pointing up its vulnerability, but then makes a case that this vehicle continues in use because the Army has "insufficient Mastiff armoured troop carriers".

Having thus reduced complex issues to a pastiche, it then firmly pins the blame on "the Government" for its alleged "failure to show true support", personalising the issue by inviting a "squaddie" to tell us that "I would like Gordon Brown to spend 48 hours with an infantry battalion on the front line."

To complete the parody, the paper then enlists the support of "Tory leader David Cameron", whose support for the "campaign" is duly reported by Conservative Home which also records, with apparent approval, shadow defence secretary Liam Fox accusing the prime minister of leaving British forces to face an uphill struggle while he plays "the invisible man of politics".

This reductio ad absurdum technique is what passes for journalism these days and ignores, as a somewhat inconvenient truth, the fact that the staunchest advocacy for the Viking resides within the military. The MoD itself was extolling its virtues in June, as it has done previously and, as late as this July, the case was still being made.

Furthermore, in a dishonest sleight of hand, the paper fails to make the obvious point, that the Viking and the Mastiff are not comparable vehicles – that the Mastiff could not perform many of the roles currently allocated to the more mobile and lighter tracked vehicle. To do so would destroy its core assertion that troops were being forced into Vikings because of the shortage of Mastiffs.

Nor, to add to the dishonesty, does it recognise that the Viking is scheduled for replacement with the better-armoured and heavier Warthog. One may have views about the utility of thus replacement, but the fact is that the government is responding to concerns about the vulnerability of the Viking, replacing it not with Mastiffs, but with another high-mobility tracked vehicle.

That Cameron should so easily lend his name to The Sun's dishonesty, however, reflects poorly on his political judgement. He is quoted as saying, "Yesterday's front page (pictured) was in a great British tradition which has seen our newspapers so often play a crucial part in holding politicians to account in wartime."

What we are seeing, of course, is cynical exploitation of the deaths of British service personnel in pursuit of a political agenda, without the least attempt to address the factors which are in part responsible for those deaths.

It is right and proper that newspapers should hold our politicians to account in wartime – and more so opposition politicians holding the government to account, something Cameron's defence team has transparently failed to do – but it is quite another for a paper to distort and falsify the arguments in order to pursue an attack on the government.

Here, as we have so often observed, much of the fault – such as it is – with the selection and deployment of vehicles in theatre lies with the military. Ministers do not as a rule challenge military decisions and the likes of The Sun would be (and has been) the first into the fray when it perceives political intervention in such matters.

But then to turn round and blame politicians for the decisions made by the military is perverse. More to the point, it is dangerous. The military command – cravenly hiding behind the skirts of the politicians – escapes any degree of scrutiny and, thus protected, is not held to account for its own mistakes.

By this means, there is no corrective and no deterrent. The military can continue making mistake after mistake, confident in the knowledge that the politicians will take the fall. And if Mr Cameron and his team honestly believe that by supporting this dynamic, they are in any way helping "Our Boys", then they are sadly mistaken. This they will find to their cost when they are in the hot seat.

COMMENT THREAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENT THREAD

It was in December 2006 that we published our own "shopping list" for new equipment to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of which addressed the urgent need for better surveillance capabilities.

To give him his due, on 27 February 2007 Chris Bryant, who had then recently been to Basra Air Station, asked in Parliament what was to be done to ensure that we have better ISTAR — intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance.

On 21 March 2007, we offered "cheap and cheerful" options for achieving improved surveillance. Like Bryant, our comments went unreported.

Then, on 22 April 2008, we were writing about Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, observing how difficult it is to get the USAF "old guard" to change its ways, and address the realities of fighting counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was addressing officers at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, telling them that the US military needed more UAVs and equipment to collect intelligence and conduct surveillance in Iraq despite a big boost in those capabilities since 2001.

On 5 August 2008, I was writing of complaints, voiced in The Daily Telegraph that the MoD has been "slow to appreciate' potential of drone aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan". To that, I ventured that we would say, in a voice laden with irony, "You don't say!" We might also add the question, "what took you so long to notice?"

However, it was on 4 December 2007 that I had written, in the specific context of securing adequate surveillance assets: "Until and unless we start getting grown-up discussions ... we are going to get nowhere."

There has been very little in the way of grown-up discussions since, certainly not in the British media, but now we get The Daily Telegraph picking up on Gen Dannatt's call for 24 hour surveillance in Afghanistan.

This follows his "shopping list" of more equipment he delivered last month, and we are now told that his demand for more surveillance systems is his most explicit yet. Sir Richard wants an increase in resources for Britain’s Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) programme, "a network of planes and unmanned drones that collect images and listen in on enemy forces."

As the same time, a document submitted to the Commons defence committee, has the MoD admitting that it does not have enough ISTAR specialists. "Manning shortfalls in these groups vary widely and may apply at different levels within a trade group. The ones of particular concern from the point of view of current operations are linguists, human intelligence operators, image analysts and Royal Engineer (geographic) and manning shortfalls in these areas range from 10 per cent up to around 40 per cent."

Then, in evidence to the committee, senior military officers expressed concern about the shortage of ISTAR specialists in Afghanistan. Brigadier Kevin Abraham, Director Joint Capability at the MoD described the staff shortages as "a serious challenge" to ISTAR operations.

With the scene thus set for him, Liam Fox makes a foray into what for him is virgin territory. Despite having had hundreds of opportunities to raise the issue, in Parliament and elsewhere, only now does he finally observe that: "Good ISTAR capability, in addition to more helicopters, earning the trust of the local population and increased armour, is the best way to counter the IED threat. If there is a shortage of this capability, the Government must do everything it can to fill that gap."

He, the media, the military and, in particular, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, could have been saying these things three years ago. They weren't. But, in his own intervention, David Cameron accuses ministers – and only ministers - of paying inadequate attention to the Afghan operation, saying the government must show more "focus" on the mission there. His remarks could, however, equally be addressed to his own defence team and also to the MoD and military.

Speaking personally – we are allowed to do this occasionally – I am getting tired of all this posturing. I take a great deal of flak from all and sundry, about not "being there", about my lack of military experience, about being "ill-informed" – and all the rest of the crap.

Yet I was writing seriously about the role of surveillance in counter-insurgency as early as November 2004 - getting on for five years ago – and have made over 70 references to the need for surveillance on this blog alone, with a particularly strong piece about equipping for counter-insurgency warfare in August 2006 and one in November 2006 on surveillance.

Then, in that November, I was complaining that "all we hear is silence". Now, all we hear is complaints from the very people whose voices we should then have been hearing. I think that I'm more than a little justified in saying they're a bit bloody late.

COMMENT THREAD

General Stanley McChrystal, the US military commander in Afghanistan is at least being candid, readily admitting that the Taleban have gained the upper hand in the fighting.

His widely reported statement came from an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Hours after it appeared, the Taleban launched a major attack on a provincial government and police headquarters near Kabul - 10 days before nationwide elections.

This episode rather confirmed McChrystal's view that the Taleban strength had grown as they had moved beyond traditional areas in southern Afghanistan to threaten formerly stable regions in the north and west.

Within the heartland areas of the south, however, the strength is matched by what commentators are beginning to acknowledge is an increased professionalism, with defence correspondent Robert Fox in today's London Evening Standard suggesting that the deadly ambush of the three members of the Parachute Regiment in Helmand indicated a great improvement in their tactical skills.

This is particularly the case in the use of their basic weapon, the buried IED, which emplacers seem to be able to lay at will, using greater imagination and skill in how they lay their traps.

That much is evident in the account of the latest British death, where we are told that Private Jason Williams was caught by an IED as he and his unit returned to the site of a previous ambush in an attempt to recover the body of one of three Afghan soldiers who had been killed. In what appears to be becoming something of a pattern, the Taleban had got there first – unobserved – and had prepared the ground, with devastating results for Pte Williams.

What is also evident is that both the British (ploughing up the desert in their Jackals - pictured right) and the better-equipped US forces in Helmand have been caught out by the scale and inventiveness of the Taleban bombing tactics. Thus, while the British lost 22 soldiers last month, the Americans lost 45. This month, while we have lost five, the Americans have so far lost 18.

Interestingly though, the national responses, seen through the prisms of their respective media, seem to differ. In The Washington Post today, we see staff writer Ann Scott Tyson offering an informative account under the heading "Potent Bombs Slow Marine Offensive", describing the experiences of US Marines in dealing with the IED threat.

The bombs, we are told, have forced Marine commanders to put long stretches of road off-limits, requiring troops to walk instead of drive. Marines on foot patrol must keep a keen eye out for dug-up dirt and "ant trails" that could cover a wire.

All of that, Tyson reports, has made for delays in supplying the troops - and, she writes, as one Marine company discovered in late July when its mission went badly off track, it has also required a diversion of manpower to the mundane but vital task of watching the roads, hoping to ambush anyone who attempts to plant a bomb.

This a carbon copy of the situation vividly described by the anonymous Captain, whose report we analysed yesterday. It is instructive, therefore, to look outside the narrow national perspective of the British media to find that US forces are facing exactly the same difficulties.

On the one hand, though, the Tyson piece points up the utility of the MRAPs, recounting how a Humvee is ripped apart by an IED, despatched to help recover a mine-resistant vehicle that had become stuck in a canal.

The bomb went off under the Humvee as it was returning with chains to hitch to the MRAP, preparatory to towing it out. And in one of those tragic ironies of war, the crew were only riding a Humvee because their own MRAP had been disabled by an IED. Two died and two were seriously wounded.

Had been in an MRAP, they probably all would have survived, was the view of the unit commander, 2nd Lt. Brendan J. Murphy. The battalion's weapons company commander, Capt David Snipes, was shortly to test that thesis when he approached the shattered Humvee, riding an MRAP. It too struck the bomb. The impact was like "hitting a brick wall," Snipes recalled later. The vehicle reared up and crashed back down.

Tyson records that, as Snipes made his way through choking dust to open the rear hatch, he was amazed to see the vehicle's 50-calibre machine gun sitting in the sand. "The 50-cal somehow went from the mount, past [the gunner's] head, and landed behind us," said Snipes. Surprisingly, the gunner was not badly injured.

Even the US forces are struggling with this attrition rate and, it would appear, lack enough surveillance assets to enable them to keep watch over the stretches of road down which they must travel. They too must commit to the manpower-intensive work of keeping watch 24 hours a day.

Seemingly uncomplaining – at least to Ann Scott Tyson, although the Marines reflected with some bitterness over the loss of their friends, and questioned whether many Americans appreciate, or even know of, their daily grind in the windswept purgatory of Helmand – an entirely different "line" is taken by the London Evening Standard.

Here, the paper has John Geddes, a former SAS warrant officer complaining that "futile" vehicle patrols during daylight were leaving troops as sitting ducks for the Taleban and costing lives.

His antidote is to learn the lessons of earlier conflicts, such as Northern Ireland and he thus calls for better intelligence — including gathering crucial information from paid informers — so that targeted night-time operations could be mounted to "take out" the insurgents' leaders. In the interim, troops should be moved by helicopter or only at night in targeted raids.

Once again, therefore, we see a one-dimensional approach to a complex problem, but with an added sour twist. Geddes blames the military's failure to adopt such tactics on interference from "grubby politicians who think they are generals".

This theme is expanded as Geddes argues that the fundamental problem is poor tactics. He adds: "Don't waste fuel on high-visibility patrols that turn into Taleban bomb runs; better spend the money on paying informants, so we can target the Taliban in their beds."

"Get their identities, the location of their arms caches and the co-ordinates of their encampments then go after them, turning the terror tables the other way round," he advises. "Carefully planned, covert night-time raids on known targets should replace the endless patrols."

Geddes then claims that the failure to pursue a more effective approach is because military chiefs were being restricted by political meddling. "Untie the hands of the army and unleash them on the enemy," he demands.

It is this willingness to focus blame on the politicians, or the amorphous MoD which seems to mark out the British "debate". This latter target comes under fire in The Daily Telegraph, which has Col Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, attacking the MoD for keeping hundreds of armoured vehicles "parked up doing nothing" in Ashchurch. "You have to ask why our troops are still running around in Vikings, when they could be using the types of vehicles parked up in Gloucestershire," he says.

This focus perpetuates the narrative which, in its most simplistic form, paints the black and white picture where "Our Boys" and their gallant commanders, are the good guys, much put upon by the heartless bureaucrats of the MoD and the uncaring, penny-pinching Labour politicians.

Not for one moment does the narrative deviate to allow that, under no circumstances, do politicians interfere with Army tactics – as Geddes alleges – or that, when it comes to the paucity of mine-protected vehicles in theatre, this as we have reported is most definitely the results of decisions made by the Army high command, in defiance of the politicians' wishes that the protected vehicles should be deployed early.

Such is the power of the narrative though that, for want of informed comment, The Daily Telegraph enlists the ever-willing renta-mouth, Patrick Mercer, to blame "cost concerns". "This is outrageous," he shrieks. "I have been talking to men who are out in Afghanistan. They are crying out for these armoured vehicles." Then we get the narrative: "The vehicles are not being sent where they are needed because of tight defence budgets – no more, no less than that."

In truth, both the US and the British military have been caught out, in what was an entirely predictable development. Once again, we have to recall that, in June 2006 – over three years ago – Ann Winterton asked the defence secretary:

As our forces appear to be winning the firefights in Afghanistan, does he expect those who oppose our troops there and in other theatres to revert to the use of improvised explosive devices? If so, what vehicles are our forces to be equipped with to counter the threat?

We have been very effective in Afghanistan. We have a potent force in the Apache attack helicopters. We are up against intelligent and capable enemies, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, and we know that they will continue to look for ways to attack land-based vehicles or air-based platforms. We have a lot of measures in place. The hon. Lady will understand that it is not appropriate to discuss all the detail, but where we identify a threat - be it a new or technological threat - we identify a quick way to deal with it. Sometimes that takes time as we come to understand the threat before developing the technical response. Our focus at all times is the protection of our personnel, whether it involves fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, land-based systems or maritime systems.

There seems to be no limit to the crass foul-ups of which the MoD is capable – but this one takes the biscuit. With British troops being torn apart by IEDs, there is a desperate need for better protected vehicles in Afghanistan, to which effect, an Urgent Operational Requirement has been raised to procure highly effective Ridgebacks which offer optimum protection.

The vehicles have been rushed into production and, so desperate was the MoD to get them into service that they even flew them from the United States, where they were built, in giant Antonov 124s (pictured above) so that they could be converted here to theatre standard with the minimum of delay (picture of converted vehicle, below right).

From here though, they were sent by sea to Dubai, where they were supposed then to be flown on to landlocked Afghanistan. But, as The Daily Telegraph and The Sun now reveal, nine (or eight) of them have been stuck in Dubai for the past month because the RAF does not have enough aircraft to fly them on to Afghanistan.

These vehicles are just the first – out of the 157 ordered – of a batch of fifty which is scheduled to have arrived in Dubai by November. But the whole delivery programme is stalled as the RAF's C17 Globemaster aircraft are committed to removing British equipment from Iraq, after the Iraqi government kicked us out.

The situation has been compounded by a ruling that the equipment carried by the Ridgebacks is so secret that it has been categorised as "UK Eyes Only". This means they are not allowed to go on allied or commercial aircraft shuttling out of the airbase.

No doubt the MoD is influenced by a recent incident where Polish Wolverine armoured personnel carriers, despatched by Ukranian-owned Antonov 124s arrived in a damaged condition, with sabotage being suspected.

But, for whatever reason, this kit has been stuck on the tarmac at Al Minhad airbase outside Dubai, with their specially-trained drivers kicking their heels, frustrated because "they want to get out to Afghanistan where they know these vehicles will protect their mates."

For once, we can actually agree with Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, who declares: "The idea that we would have bought potentially life-saving vehicles and then not have the ability to ensure that they would get to those that need them is inexcusable."

Actually, he is being far too mild. Commercial freight aircraft are readily available and all it needs is for an armed guard to accompany every vehicle and the problem is sorted. But even that is beyond the MoD, which – it seems – would rather see men die than get its act together.

Bereft of words as I am, to do justice to this crass, malign stupidity, readers are invited to lodge their own offerings on the forum. There must be a word – or group of words – in the English vocabulary which will describe the people responsible.

UPDATE: The story is also picked up by The Daily Mail, the BBC and the Press Association. The BBC cites "security concerns" as the reason why the vehicles could not be flown on by civilian transporter. Apparently, the Ridgebacks arrived in 16 July, which was just after the Polish Wolverine incident. It is possible that we are seeing a knee-jerk reaction from the MoD.

The story has now also been published by The Times.

COMMENT THREAD

Twice we've called "time" on the controversy over equipment for our troops in Afghanistan, yet it continues almost unabated. It was with more than some interest, therefore, that we watched author and analyst Michael Griffin on BBC News 24 yesterday, expressing similar puzzlement over the intensity of the "debate".

Viewed wholly objectively, with the focus narrowed down to whether troops have enough helicopters, there is nothing to sustain it. As it stands, there is no shortage of helicopters in theatre to support current operations. The prime minister is right on this.

That most of the helicopters are American is neither here nor there. But there are Dutch, Canadian and British as well, all "pooled" in a vast coalition fleet which is being used not for British or American operations, but for coalition operations, of which the national contingents are an integral part.

In that sense, complaining about the shortfall of British helicopters is about as rational as anyone arguing against the use of B-17s of the US 8th Army Air Force to extend the strategic bombing campaign against Germany in 1943. Allies work together, and harness their collective assets to the common cause. That is what we did then and that is what we are doing now.

In seeking to explain the furore, however, Griffin linked the campaign in Afghanistan with Iraq, suggesting that in the latter, the British Army had not performed well, to the disappointment of the Americans. And in Helmand too, its grasp of counter-insurgency had been maladroit, again leading to a less than admiring response from the Americans.

To an extent, ventured Griffin, the military were seeking to transfer the blame for their own poor performance onto the politicians. Similarly, he felt, the military had some considerable control over the types of helicopters purchased and their deployment. Problems could not be laid entirely at the doors of the politicians.

If that is one element which is driving the controversy, the other is clearly the Conservative Party, anxious to find yet another stick with which to beat the government. The attitude is summed up in the recent comment from Liam Fox, who declares: "It is abundantly clear that we are asking our troops to fight a war for which Labour has not properly equipped them."

Notice there, the use not of the word "government" but of "Labour", revealing an overt partisanship which puts the alleged default wholly in a political context. There is no room in Fox's kitbag for any equivocation or shared responsibility.

Gordon Brown, nevertheless, is playing his own political games, relating helicopter requirements to current operations, but the distinction between these and the "general campaign" is becoming clear, with an acknowledgement that, while troops are able to fulfil their tasks at the moment, there is an overall shortfall of helicopters. This, we are told, is to be redressed by the Merlins which will at last be despatched by the end of the year, by the re-engined Lynxes and, next year, by additions to the Chinook fleet.

That things could have been done quicker, better and considerably more cheaply is indisputable, but the fact is that issues are being addressed, further confirming the "totemic status" of helicopters. In other words, this controversy isn't really about helicopters at all – or even about equipment.

Returning to Griffin, at the end of the interview – to the evident discomfort of his BBC interrogator – he broke away from the script to express his concern over the exaggerated level of publicity about an issue which lacked that substance. He warned that the Taleban would be monitoring programmes such as these, and the furore would improve their morale considerably.

Therein does lie a huge trap, created by the concern over casualties and the focus on helicopters. We have alluded to this before, in that if the Taleban were successfully to bring down a Chinook laden with troops, it is very hard to see how continuing the campaign could be politically sustainable.

The problem is that the Taleban know that, and they will do everything possible to make it so, while seeking generally to maximise the British casualty rate. This much is being recognised, with Dannatt at last taking the IED threat seriously.

As to the remarkable controversy that we have been witnessing for the best part of three weeks, this – if Griffin is right – is a dangerous self-indulgence which we simply cannot afford, motivating the Taleban to greater efforts on the basis that the home front can be so weakened that British troops will have to be withdrawn. We are, unwittingly, sending them a message that there is everything to gain from killing British troops.

This is not a happy message, and one that is difficult to change, as these media storms tend to have a life of their own. But the military, the politicians and the media – and indeed this blog – need to think very hard about the message they are sending, and to whom.

COMMENT THREAD

There is a report today of another Russian helicopter going in, an Mi-8 – this one at Kandahar, sadly with at least 16 deaths. Enemy action is not suspected.

The operator was the Russian air company Vertical-T, another of those dodgy Skylink "partners", although there is no information yet as to whether this was running a Nato or British contract. It could have been, but it could also have been ferrying for an NGO or other outfit in the region.

Meanwhile, in a lazy, ill-informed article by Christopher Leake in the Mail on Sunday, we see the paper wake up to part of the story about civilian contractors supplying helicopter lift to the MoD in Afghanistan.

Under a plainly wrong headline, which declares: "Now we are borrowing Russian helicopters to fight the Taliban", we get Leake proclaim that "British frontline troops in Afghanistan are so short of helicopters and transport planes that they are being bailed out by the Russians."

Actually, we may be using "Russian" helicopters (although the new models are not built in Russia) but there is no direct Russian involvement in the helicopter supply. As we know, the contract is held by the Canadian firm, Skylink, which then subs out to all manner of operations.

In typical Mail style, pompous and self-important, however, we get this piece of information dressed up as "The Mail on Sunday has established that the Ministry of Defence is using civilian Russian-built Mi-8 and Mi-26 transport helicopters ... ".

All the key information here, and much more of which the Mail is evidently unaware, has actually been announced in Parliament or tabled as responses to Parliamentary written questions, starting with an oral statement by Des Bowne on 20 May 2008, with a question from Dr Fox on 2 June 2008, followed by two questions from Ann Winterton, on 25 March 2009 and 20 April 2009 respectively.

And, for all Leake's hyperventilation, he completely misses the main story about the Mi-26 going in, fact that it was shot down and the very shady history of the operators. All Leake can manage is, "The pilots are freelance Russians and Ukrainians." No doubt, he calls this journalism.

And the thing is, in missing the real story, Leake is making drama out of a non-story. It makes absolute sense to augment lift with suitably qualified and reputable civilian operators. It is cheap and highly flexible. The MoD should be commended for saving taxpayers' money - it took them long enough.

But then, Leake even makes a big deal out of the fact that we are hiring "massive commercial Russian Antonov aircraft to fly vehicles and heavy equipment from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to Afghanistan." And the point is? Everybody uses these aircraft, even the Americans. They are simply the biggest in town ... chartered from perfectly reputable operators, including several based in the UK. And if he looks at some of the MoD press handouts, he will see pics of Antonovs, going way back, with military kit being loaded on them.

For his "scoop of the week", however, Leake has picked up bits of information about the use of Mi-8 MTVs by Special Forces. But, he tells us, they are being used "because of a desperate lack of UK aircraft." Er ... nah! They are being used because they are the best aircraft for the job – and very successful they have been.

Then Leake tells us they are "on loan" from an unspecified "Third World nation". Er ... nah! The RAF bought six of them in 2007 (or could be a bit earlier) – there are five left. We may occasionally "borrow" others, but then that is normal in the theatre. The Yanks operate them as well – anonymous machines, camouflage-painted and no markings, just like ours.

To add to the mystery, Leake embellishes what little detail he has with the legend that they are flown by an elite team of UK Army Air Corps pilots, trained at a secret special forces base in Afghanistan. Er ... nah! In the main, they are flown by serving RAF officers. And they train in Boscombe Down, where two machines are kept for "evaluation" purposes. For sure, the pilots do theatre-specific training when they get there ... as do all operational pilots.

To Leake, though, this is a "humiliation" and he gets some talking heads – anonymous, of course – to say they are "dismayed" about being forced to borrow helicopters.

At times, you can understand the MoD's reluctance to tell the hacks anything. They will only get it wrong, or "spin" it. Clearly though, the best way for the MoD to keep things secret is to get the defence secretary to announce them in Parliament. Hansard, websites and Google are clearly beyond the reach of Mr Leake.

COMMENT THREAD

When it was raised in Parliament yesterday by the redoubtable Ann Winterton - the ONLY MP who raised the embarrassing report of a British-chartered helicopter ferrying military supplies to a British base getting shot down by the Taliban, Miliband and Ainsworth did NOT want to talk about it. The full exchange is here.

Of course, there is every reason why they should not want to be up front. Not only was the prime contractor Skylink subcontracting the work to dodgy Moldovan gun-runners – in breach of the contract requirements – the Moldovans were subcontracting the operating of the aircraft to an equally dodgy Ukrainian outfit, which explains why six of their number were killed.

Moreover, as more details come in, it is now very clear that this was a deliberate Taleban ambush, mounted directly under the noses of the British, aimed at bringing down a Chinook – one of the main strategic aims of the Taleban. The unfortunate Mi-26 happened to wander along, in company with an Mi-8 MTV. Both took fire and the Mi-26 bought it. Bad luck on the Ukrainian crew and bad luck for the Taleban. They wanted an RAF Chinook, and will keep trying until they get one.

As for Skylink, this is an aviation company that has no aircraft. It specialises in supplying aircraft in war zones for the UN and other tranzies like the EU, for NGOs and any shady outfit that happens to be passing with a dodgy cargo it wants moved in a hurry. It buys contracts top dollar, with brown envelopes passing freely. It is so corrupt that even the UN blew it out, until it bought its way back into favour by greasing the right palms.

The company then subs out the work down the chain to dodgy Moldavans, Ukrainians and the rest, mostly operating clapped-out ex-Soviet hardware with safety certificates that owe more to photoshop than they do any certifying authority, their aircraft banned from any and all Western airspace. These outfits work as a group, sharing and swapping assets when they get outed, forming and reforming companies, appearing and disappearing, and cropping up with new names and the same aircraft just as frequently.

These are the people that are working for the MoD, the contract carefully laundered through Nato to give plausible deniability, thus avoiding a Tory and media uproar when it was learned that the MoD was hiring dodgy ex-Soviet choppers to make up for capacity shortfalls.

The trouble was that the original arrangement was that the aircraft should serve the transport hub between Kandahar and Bastion. They were not permitted to fly into FOBs – that is military airspace, from which they were to be excluded.

However, once there, the mission creep set in and, with the desperate shortage of lift, the brief was extended to the aircraft uplifting into the FOBs like Sangin. The Ukrainians, desperate for cash, were squared off with generous bonuses and thus agreed to fly into hot war zones, where even RAF Chinooks will only fly with Apache escorts.

The MoD was happy, being able to release Chinooks and Apaches for operations, Skylink was happy with the extra hours and the bonuses, and the Ukrainians at the sharp end needed the money anyway. And hey! They are expendable.

As long as the contract was piggy-backed off Nato, and thus totally deniable, no one had to be told and everyone kept schtum ... including the Tories. And now, no one wants to talk about it. Says Ainsworth: "I do not want to trespass on to operational details." You bet he doesn't.

As for the Tories, having decided to make "helicopters" their cause celebre, the last thing they want to know is that the Taleban are parking outside the gates of British bases, waiting for an opportunity to down a Chinook. Rather shoots the Fox - to coin a phrase - about more helicopters saving lives.

So goes the conspiracy of silence. The British media ... forget it. E-mails from special advisors? MPs' expenses? Dead safe ... nay problem. If you look too deep here, you don't live.

COMMENT THREAD

Challenged by Liam Fox as to why the defence secretary was not bringing more helicopters into Afghanistan, Ainsworth trotted out the "usual statistics" and then rounded on the shadow secretary, declaring, "I have yet to hear how he thinks we can get more helicopters in ... ".

Yet Ainsworth, in common with his predecessors, is fighting with his hands tied behind his back. He could bring more capacity into theatre within weeks – it could already be there, and could have been for years. But, for he or his predecessors to have done so would have been in the teeth of opposition from the military itself, which has blocked endless attempts to bring more machines into use.

Options on the table have included the leasing of Mi-8 MTVs and Mi-26s (pictured), of purchasing Blackhawks off-the-shelf from the American manufacturers, or buying and refurbishing US Huey-type machines – in use by US Marines and Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

Each time proposals have been made, they have been blocked – sometimes for good reasons, but none of the problems insurmountable. Mainly the blockages have been inter-service rivalry or because the military have been holding out for "better" machines, sometime in the future, as in the Future Lynx.

Maybe in 30 years time, historians will be able to get access to the government records and tell the full story of what has been going on, but the Future Lynx story also involves a strong element of "pork barrel" politics – keeping Augusta Westland in business – the future of the Army Air Corps, of which Dannatt is commandant general, and protecting Navy requirements for a light ASW airframe.

Perhaps a more robust, Churchillian prime minister could have cut through the maze of competing priorities and sectional interests and issued an "action this day" directive. But such is the febrile atmosphere that it would be a very brave – and foolhardy – politician who over-rode his "defence chiefs" and imposed his own choice on the military.

Any of the alternative options would have involved extra risk – over and above that of buying a fully kitted-out helicopter of a type already on the British forces inventory.

The Russian-built helicopters are not as reliable or as safe as the European and American machines, and there are problems integrating the full defensive suites into these airframes. Nevertheless, Mi-8s are in use with special forces in Afghanistan, flown by serving RAF pilots, and the users speak highly of them.

The Huey airframes are old, and have relatively limited capabilities, but they are better than the Lynxes in that they can operate in "hot and high" conditions, albeit with reduced payloads. As for the Blackhawks, they are currently on the US forces inventory, but even then there are problems with integrating the electronics and defence systems with the British fleet.

Thus are ministers handicapped. The British military has acquired a rare ability for finding "reasons" for not doing things it does not want to do, and then deflecting blame onto the politicians when the consequences become apparent, briefing all the while to a media willing to "out" ministers who "put troops at risk". They would just have to wait for one of the "minister's" helicopters to crash, and he would be toast.

The politicians have yet to find a way of dealing with this – a disease which was apparent in 1996 when Douglas Hogg deferred to his "experts" over BSE – which means government has become a process of ministers allowing their "experts" free rein, then acting as their spokesmen and taking the can when things go wrong.

Ainsworth is following in this long tradition and, in time, his successors will do the same. Fox could have put him on the spot, offering alternatives. But he too knows that, to promote them, he would have to take on the military – something he would not do, conscious that he would also be at risk of being denounced.

That in some way explains the current unreality of politics. Ministers and their opposition counterparts are emasculated, and cannot even explain why.

COMMENT THREAD

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.

Simon Jenkins takes up the cudgels on defence spending in The Guardian today. When he focuses on specific issues, rather than advocating complete withdrawal of our forces, he usually has quite interesting things to say, and this is one of those times.

His general theme, borne out by the title, "As soldiers die, the MoD is stockpiling for the cold war," is summarised by the strap which declares that: "Defence ministers are too concerned with showing off their military muscle to provide what fighting forces actually need."

Generals, writes Jenkins, are always teased for preparing for the last war but one. "They laugh. Not us, they say. Then they go out and prepare for the last war but one." Now they are preparing for the cold war.

We could argue with the details of what Jenkins then has to offer, but not the thrust of his argument, that far too much is being spent on "glamour kit" and not enough on fulfilling actual operational needs.

Jenkins notes that one of problems is that what defence ministries buy has nothing to do with what fighting soldiers need. It is rather to do with what the arms industry wants to sell, illustrating Eisenhower's famous warning in 1961 against "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power … of a military/industrial complex".

What particularly strikes a chord though is his view that, "The opposition performance here is a disgrace," even if the Jenkins rhetoric about "Tory foreign policy still stuck in the neocon mode adumbrated by William Hague during the Bush/Blair years" is not to everyone's taste.

But the fact is that every one of the "big ticket" defence projects proposed by Labour – including FRES – have been supported by the Tory front bench and, as Jenkins observes, David Cameron seems as eager as was Blair not to be thought weak by the defence lobby.

This issue is explored further by James Kirkup on his blog, where he asks, "what exactly are the Tories promising on defence?" He, in turn, refers to a recent article in the Financial Times which has an account of a private dinner between Liam Fox and the defence industry. It records, in respect of the promised strategic defence review, that "…industry executives have privately been assured that this will not lead to big programmes being abandoned."

All rather smells of back-door deals where, it seems, all interests are being catered for, except the defence interest.

Kirkup speculates that, "at best, the Tories are practising a form of creative ambiguity around defence, avoiding a full debate until they make their minds up and put their suggestions to the voters, the forces and the industry." At worst, he writes "they’re saying one thing to one audience and something different to another," adding that "the lack of clarity is a shame."

There is a good and important debate to be had about Britain's military forces and our place in the world, he concludes, and when and if the Tories are clear about their thinking on defence, they'll find there could be significant rewards for a party willing to join the conversation.

We suspect, however, that the current political calculus within the higher echelons of the Tory party leans towards the view that there are greater rewards in keeping defence out of the political arena. In that, it seems that the Tories have something in common with the military. Us plebs should not be invited to the debate.

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