Low flying - by Richard... Thursday, March 08, 2012

Low flying - by Richard... Thursday, March 08, 2012

This administration – bad by any measure – has plumbed new depths in responding to a routine enquiry from SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson, on the details of defence equipment based in Scotland.

The written answer from Lib-Dim armed forces minister Nick Harvey appeared to suggest that the number of aircraft based in Scotland had risen from 66 to 80, despite the closure of two of the three RAF bases north of the Border.

However, for the first time it was not specified whether the aircraft were Tornado or Eurofighter jets – and it later emerged that the MoD had included 13 gliders used for cadet training in the statistics – the first time this had ever been done.

The aircraft included five Viking cadet gliders at Kirknewton (type pictured above) and another five of the same model in Arbroath, as well as three Vigilant Power gliders based at Kinloss and Lossiemouth in Moray.

This really is getting seriously bad when the MoD is effectively including training gliders in the order of battle, although if the cuts continue it may well be that these aircraft find their way onto the front line. The impact on the enemy could be quite profound – with hundreds set to die laughing.

Worryingly though, the MoD probably wasn't joking.

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The source of our problems - by Richard... Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Is it very easy to draw a range of conclusions from the Warrior incident, not all of which are consistent with each other or sustainable. And. given the circumstances, some might venture that Taliban have only just worked out how to destroy a Warrior, in which case it would be valid to speculate on where the Taliban are getting the expertise to improve their IEDs.

And, on this basis, it would be quite logical to point the finger of suspicion at the Iran - the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards Corps, which "is the regional expert in the development of weapons of this kind".

However, the Taliban have already twice taken out Warriors with fatalities reported, the first time in November 2008. This incident was then – nearly four years ago - considered by The Daily Mail(headline below) to be "proof" that the Taliban were "turning to bigger and deadlier bombs targeted at British troops".

By then, the Warrior had been in theatre for sixteen months and, in the previous eight months, theMail reported that at least three Warriors had been damaged "beyond repair", "as the Taliban bomb makers set ever bigger charges in British soldiers' paths." Out of a fleet numbering only fourteen, this was (and is) a high proportion.

Thus, there is nothing really new about the Taliban capability and although there are suggestions that this current incident will make it essential to introduce new and expensive countermeasures to protect the remaining fleet, there is very little that can be done to the Warriors to enhance their protection.

The weapon of choice, the Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil (AFNO) bomb, is a formidable instrument, but it is very old technology and has been used for many years by the Taliban. At weights of up to 250Kg, used in culverts, it can have devastating results.

As to countermeasures, rather than armour, surveillance and patrolling are the maincountermeasures. Certainly, there is only a limited amount that can be done in the way of adding armour protection to a design which is not optimised for mine/IED protection.

Much more could have been done in the past, but with troops scheduled to depart by 2014, there is little more that probably will be done over the next two years. But one does look askance at Dannatt's comments, with him saying that the deaths of six soldiers were a matter of "great sorrow and sadness".

Had it been left to him, British troops would have been equipped with Piranhas, under the guise of FRES, with far greater slaughter than we have already experienced – as recounted in Ministry of Defeat.

Iran, thus – in this case – is probably the least of our problems and we need to look a lot closer to home for their source. One of them, currently, is sitting in the House of Lords.

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Self-aggrandisement - by Richard...

The GWPF are pulling their usual stunt of attempting to take "ownership" of an issue by commissioning a new report , this one "revealing" not very many details about wind power that haven't been said before … many times (and sometimes better).

What these people do not seem to realise is that efforts to create "noise" are far more successful if you build on and extend existing work, rather than keep reinventing the wheel and claiming it all for your own. Not least, Google ranking depends not only on traffic levels but on the number and type of links. Thus, cross-referencing other work is an important way of building profile.

Despite this, you see "top dogging" in a wide range of fields, from Open Europe and its attempt to dominate the EU agenda, to Taxpayers' Alliance and others. They all do good work, but are dragged down by their own egos, and their attempts to own the agenda in every field that they touch. Nothing exists, nothing ever came before, until they "discover" it.

As a result, they treat the internet as a zero-sum game. Instead of capitalising on the synergy afforded by the media, developing a "conversation" which expands over time as more and more join in, they plop their offerings into the domain, which enjoy but a short half-life before disappearing.

The sum of the parts thus becomes less than the whole, when the other way around could so easily have been achieved. When other sites are recognised, their authors tend to reciprocate with their own links. Those links are picked up by others, who often then pick up of the original work, passing on the message, which grows rather than diminishes. A stand-alone site, which makes itself out to be above the fray, will never benefit from this dynamic.

All of this suggests that the primary purpose of campaigning groups of this nature is self-aggrandisement. One suspects that winning the battles is by no means their main or even desired objective. And that may be one of the reasons why, very often, there is so little progress against enemies who seem to have a better grip of campaigning tactics than our own side.

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Warrior down - by Richard...

Six British soldiers were missing and believed to have been killed after their Warrior MICV was hit by an explosion while they were on patrol in Helmand, reports the Reuters news agency.

The soldiers, five from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment and one from the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, were on a mounted patrol when their vehicle was struck.

This brings the total number of British military deaths in the theatre since 2001 to 404, topping the 398 recorded on 13 February when SAC Ryan Tomlin was shot dead while on a routine patrol in the Western Dashte area.

This is the largest number of deaths from a single incident since September 2006 when 14 British personnel were killed in the crash of the Nimrod MR2, and is the most deadly single incident involving Army personnel on ground duties.

Given the significance the media attach to century events, there must be a suspicion that the media-savvy Taliban have mounted a "spectacular" to maximise media impact, and thus the embarrassment for British political leaders.

If that was the case, then - from their perspective - they have chosen well. Although the Warrior is an impressive-looking vehicle, with considerable ballistic protection, it is dangerously vulnerablewhen exposed to mines and IEDS, reflecting the traditional reluctance of British military specifiers to incorporate such protection in their armoured vehicles.

For its precise role, however, there is nothing else that can provide its combination of off-road mobility and fire power, and it has been a valuable attribute in so-called "kinetic" operations.

Unfortunately, the Taliban have shown themselves only too well aware of British vehicle vulnerabilities and, in this case, seem to have exploited the limitations of the Warrior to particularly deadly effect. The explosion occurred on the main Highway One, a tarmacked surface, so it was almost certainly a culvert bomb of the type that gave our troops in Northern Ireland so many problems.

The incident comes at a times when domestic political stresses are already pre-occupying British leaders, and this stark reminder of a "forgotten" and unpopular war can only serve to reaffirm the political determination to pull out before the next general election.