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27 Oct 2009 : Column 26WH—continued
From the same stable as the Mastiff comes the Ocelot light protected patrol vehicle, which was launched at the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition
held in London in September. The Ocelot is based on simplicity and quick change of modular use and, like the Snatch, has a rear dismounting capability. Its competitor from the Jackal camp is a future model of the Supacat, the SPV 400, which, interestingly, has a curved windscreen. I wonder if that has a practical purpose or whether it is just a bit of window-dressing for marketing purposes, because curved armoured glass would cost a small fortune to manufacture.
I hasten to add that I am not favouring one manufacturer over another. One should always consider the basic overall design. That issue was obvious from the start with the Vector and, as a result, affected its performance, because more weight was added to armour it, which caused problems once it was operational, as the number of injured and the number of body bags that have resulted show.
Money has been poured down the drain because of poor procurement decisions on vehicles. So is it any wonder that the United Kingdom cannot now pay its Territorial Army? After the propaganda of the past two years, promoting one Army of regulars and reservists, we are now experiencing massive discrimination against reservists and we could be portrayed as a country that cannot pay its soldiers.
Another flawed vehicle is Tellar, the totally unprotected bomb disposal vehicle, which is discreetly being replaced by a variant of the Mastiff, which was seen in Operation Panther's Valour. I also have doubts about the new Husky vehicle, which will probably not survive an IED attack, but which is the preferred choice of the Army.
Insurgents always find the weak spots in vehicles, and they know which ones are vulnerable. That is why it is so important to understand the physics in blast deflection-to save life and limb. Just like the British public, I am a complete outsider on military affairs, but we are all becoming wary of the unreasonable level of death and injury, the human costs involved and the financial cost of the military's choice of vehicles and platforms. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the military's belief that state-on-state conventional high-intensity warfare equipment can be used in long-term conflicts, such as Afghanistan, is flawed. No nation on earth can afford to put such equipment through such long, drawn-out warfare.
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind): Since the hon. Lady has mentioned Afghanistan, does she agree that safe mobility is the key issue for British troops there? She may not be aware that three companies of the Royal Anglian Regiment from my constituency flew to Afghanistan last week and are probably engaging the enemy right now, in their usual brave, totally professional manner. Does she have any estimate of how quickly we can improve safe mobility and armoured mobility in Afghanistan? Does she expect the Minister to give her answers on that this morning?
Ann Winterton:
The whole tenor of my speech is about safe mobility of one sort or another. I commend the hon. Gentleman's constituents, who are fighting and are probably in an engagement in Afghanistan as we speak. It is for the Minister to reassure those Members of Parliament present about how quickly some of these
vehicles and aircraft-I have not got on to those yet-can be brought into theatre. Certainly, safe mobility is what we are all about. That is why Ricardo and Force Protection Europe have produced the Ocelot for ease of maintenance, versatility and a low centre of gravity. How many personnel have been killed or injured, including, sadly, being drowned, when their vehicle has turned over into a canal and they have been trapped underneath? The overturning of a vehicle can be an exceptionally difficult thing to handle and is a horrible way for people to die.
A typical example of using expensive equipment is the use of the Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft, which costs a cool £30,000 an hour to operate. Compare that with the Iraqi's using a Sama CH2000, which can be purchased for about the cost of 12 hours of Nimrod flying and can be operated from theatre, unlike Nimrod, which clocks up massive airframe usage. Of course, the Sama uses the same camera. I think that it takes a considerable time for Nimrod to get to theatre from wherever it is based, so there is a lot of unnecessary wear and tear.
I will gloss over the A400M airlift aircraft and those original six or eight not-fit-for-purpose Chinooks, the history of which goes back over successive Governments.
Yet another suspect case is the Merlin helicopter, about which reservations have also been expressed by others. I understand that the Danish Merlins that we purchased are not the same version as ours, so they will require different training to be involved. At RAF presentations, that aircraft was presented as the most brilliant going, but it still has to be upgraded to go to Afghanistan, no doubt including Carson blades. I am concerned that this aircraft is so complex that, in the heat and dust of Afghanistan, it will be a nightmare to service, just like the Typhoon Eurofighter. Getting spare parts is difficult, as they cannot be bought off the shelf, as most equipment can be. Therefore there are delays in getting parts to keep the aircraft in the air.
For the money that has been poured into helicopters that are still not working, and in trying to make the Army's Lynx version work at huge expense because of the Navy requirement, we could have had the US Blackhawk helicopter at a third of the cost and a fleet of Hueys-Bell 212s or 412s. To call those cheap and cheerful might be a slight exaggeration, but they work in high and hot environments and their size makes them ideal for counter-insurgency work, as the concept of the Rhodesian Fireforce tactics teaches. There is no need for a helicopter shortage. Do not let us forget that, in the Rhodesian conflict, damaged helicopters were often repaired by the crew when they landed in the bush. These days, it seems that we only blow up our damaged Chinooks, which could only have been airlifted out of the unsecured areas that they were in by the Russian-built Mi-26. The one that the UK hired was blown up by the Taliban and was described as a transport aircraft at the time; but of course, it had a much more important role.
Many areas of present helicopter use could be undertaken by single engine, fixed-wing aircraft, such as the PC-6 Pilatus Porter, which would be safer, more practical and cost-effective. What an asset such aircraft would be, operating as an integral part of the brigade reconnaissance force. There is no doubt about the future and benefit of unmanned aerial vehicles, but again we must not forget how much has been squandered on such projects as the Phoenix-is it millions or billions of pounds? There are
so many noughts on the end that one gets confused, but I believe that the actual sum was £350 million. For the same sum, we could have had small, fixed-wing aircraft undertaking surveillance work, which would also have tied in with future Afghan air force requirements.
I have often mentioned the Super Tucano ground-attack aircraft simply because the RAF presently uses the Tucano trainer, but there are many other types of fixed-wing aircraft available. Boeing, for example, is considering restarting production of the OV-10 Bronco turboprop, which is a twin-engine aircraft upgraded with modern defensive suites. That is a Vietnam-era light attack and observation aircraft, which was last produced way back in 1976. In contrast, in future, we will use up the airframe time of the Eurofighter at £90,000 an hour. In addition, the Tornado has to be massively upgraded to increase its shelf life: the first aircraft will cost £28 million and, if successful, a further 40 aircraft will be upgraded at £5 million each. For a further £1 million, we could have had a fully equipped, brand new EMB-314 Super Tucano, which can carry the same ordnance as a Harrier but with greater endurance.
Time after time, I have suggested that the use of hi-tech, high-intensity warfare equipment, designed for short-term conflict operations, sets the wrong tactics for counter-insurgency, or however we want to describe long-term stabilisation wars. Horrendous present and future financial problems face us, with money coming from different budgets, but all of it coming finally from taxation or borrowing and with the Territorial Army being one of the victims. General Sir David Richards has said that
"we simply can't afford to retain a full suite of capabilities for all eventualities."
That is the crux for consideration in the defence review.
What does the United Kingdom want the military to do? That is what must be decided-not what the military believe it should do-and that will not be easy. Hon. Members are campaigning for the two new aircraft carriers, but will we have any aircraft to put on them? Did we need all those Eurofighters, or is the contract so expensive to break that we are stuck with them? A correspondent told me recently that
"they fly over us at work in fours, and they are"
"for about ten seconds so we see a thousand pounds worth of cost fly by."
Those are large sums. I also wonder what will happen to the A400M.
If the military continue to be obsessed with high-tech, high-intensity warfare, pushing aside practical alternatives, they will bankrupt themselves and us. Some people seem to believe that they have a divine right to an unlimited pot, but General Richards seems to think differently.
If we are not careful, our defeat in Iraq may be repeated in Afghanistan, so a decision must be made on whether we should ever again be involved in anything similar. On present performance, we should stay out of conflicts unless we have equipment and platforms that are simple, practical, cost-effective and able to be sustained in the long term.
Mr. Hoyle:
I thank the hon. Lady, who is being generous in giving way. The A400M is not high tech-far from it. It has a joint Rolls-Royce-Snecma twin-turboprop
prototype engine, which will be very good. It could be the workhorse, as it comes midway between the C17 and C130 jets, and it could have a civil application throughout the world, as well as a military application. There would be many benefits if we went ahead with it.
Ann Winterton: The hon. Gentleman has made his case and almost made his speech. I am sure that all hon. Members hung on his every word. He is a very good salesman, or should I say a good member of the marketing team? I shall leave that rhetorical question. I do not propose to go into it today, because I have had more than enough to say on different vehicles and aircraft.
Simple, practical and cost-effective platforms that can be sustained in the long term should enable sensible tactics to evolve to win without having to enter a propaganda war to pretend that we won, when in reality, we lost. The new Parliament and the new Government will face some difficult decisions following the defence review, which will set the agenda for decades to come. I trust that I have added some food for thought to the process, and I wish those hon. Members who will be involved in that review and its aftermath every success.
11.23 am
Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) on securing this debate. She raises some important issues. I agree with her general principle that we need a strategic defence review, that we must decide our objectives, and that we must put an end to the ad hoc arrangements.
I am reminded of a Christmas cracker that I opened many years ago. As with all crackers, it had a motto in it, which said that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. It is a cheap little joke for Christmas, but there is an element of truth in it, and when it comes to military campaigns and procurement there may be more truth in it than is comfortable.
Mr. Hoyle: I have always heard it said that history always repeats itself.
Richard Younger-Ross: The principle is exactly the same. Those are two ways of saying the same thing.
We must examine our defence needs, and try to find the equipment that fits them. That is why we need the strategic defence review. As politicians, we must be truthful about the cost, but we have not been. We have always said that we must work within the defence budget, but then expected people to pull the proverbial white rabbit out of the hat without giving them the money to buy the white rabbit to put in the hat in the first place. That makes it difficult for our commanders, the Ministry of Defence and the forces on the ground who ultimately pay with their injuries or their lives because we have not provided them with the right equipment at the right time. We had a phase of the "just in time" principle, but I heard it said in Iraq that the "just too late" principle would have been more accurate.
I take issue with the hon. Lady on a couple of matters. She said in ePolitix that
"we were virtually defeated in Iraq and are sadly heading the same way in Afghanistan."
She is not contradicting that, so I take it that it is an accurate reflection of her view. I thought that the war in Iraq was illegal, that it was immoral, and that we should
not have gone there, and I voted against it. However, I do not hold the premise that we were nearly defeated, because that would make an assumption about what we were trying to do while we were there. That raises an important point. When examining our equipment and what we are trying to achieve, the equipment will not necessarily achieve our objectives. The Army, Navy and others have understood what is required, but politicians and those in Departments often did not understand what was required in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I visited Iraq in 2003 with the armed forces parliamentary scheme, which is excellent and I recommend it to any hon. Member who has not been on it. We were there in the June just after the President of the United States had declared the fighting to be over. I went out in Snatch Land Rovers, and on top of a Challenger 2 tank, so I know the difference between heavy and light armoured. Both were appropriate for what they were being used for. The Snatch Land Rover was perhaps the right vehicle at that time and in that place. However, we were quite unprepared for what to do with the peace. We might have won the war, but we lost the peace that followed. That is the danger in Afghanistan-that we will lose the hearts and minds because we are not putting enough in to secure basic resources.
In Iraq, we tried to put in electricity, but local people dug up the cables that we put in, stripped out the copper and sold it over the border because they needed the money. The Iraqi army's containers full of munitions were left unguarded, so kids went into the containers, stripped out the mortar shells, left them on one side, and took the wood back to their houses because they needed to boil water. They also played genie games by opening up the mortars. Our preparedness after Iraq was totally lacking. We did not put in enough resources, the Americans did not put in enough resources, and we thought that we could operate on a shoestring. We nearly lost Iraq-at one point I thought that we had-because of that lack of preparedness.
We followed exactly the same pattern in Afghanistan. We diverted ourselves by first going into Iraq, so we did not have enough troops and resources on the ground, and we did not do enough on the ground to secure the peace, to rebuild, to replace the opium poppies and so on.
Ann Winterton: I have spoken about that in debates, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the reconstruction, bringing civil enterprises into being, and so on, but that is a different argument. When we went into Iraq, we were inadequately prepared militarily because we simply did not have the vehicles to save soldiers' lives. We had Snatch Land Rovers, which were deployed because we had nothing else at the time.
Richard Younger-Ross:
That point is right. We had no other replacement, but this is about the pre-planning; we were not prepared. We knew we were going in, but we did not work out in advance what we required to build the peace. This is where hindsight is a wonderful thing. We did not see the insurgency that was to follow. In not securing the peace and security afterwards, we allowed the insurgency to grow. We left those people all the armaments in the containers, so they could take the
explosives and use them. We did not do the other things required, so we created, politically, the circumstances that meant that the vehicles that we put there were inadequate, and in addition we did not plan to replace those vehicles.
The point that I am trying to get to in a roundabout way is that circumstances change. Sometimes they change because of our lack of planning-I think that in Iraq it was our lack of planning-and circumstances are changing in Afghanistan, in a way because of our lack of planning and lack of determination to build the peace.
Generals have to deal with that change on the ground. They also have to deal with-the hon. Lady referred to the high end-future war. I do not know what the next big conflict will be. I do not know the type of weaponry that we might need if there is a major conflict elsewhere in the world. I would like to think that the idea of Russian tanks rolling across the plains of western Europe is something of the past, but military planners must assume the worst and certainly until the early 1990s, they were still working on the basis that there would be that type of major conflict. Military planning is in tramlines; it is blinkered at times-the hon. Lady made her point in that regard-and is slow to change. She also made a point about FRES. Sometimes military planners have been slow to get away from that kind of thinking, but that does not mean that they should think, "We don't need the high tech", because at some point we might. If we discard that totally, we will perhaps do an even greater disservice to our services than we are doing by our rather blinkered thinking at the moment. I shall come on in a moment to the detail of what the hon. Lady said.
Ann Winterton: The fact is that the next Government, after the defence review, have to decide what we need as a country because we cannot afford to have it all. My point is that we have ensured that young men and women have served in Iraq and are serving in Afghanistan and while they are in mortal danger, we should do our best to support them with appropriate vehicles and aircraft. In the long term there may be different decisions, but frankly, bearing in mind the economic situation in this country, we cannot afford a full suite of capabilities, as General Richards said.
Richard Younger-Ross: Unquestionably we cannot afford the full suite; that is the purpose of a defence review. That is perhaps why we need to consider working more with our European allies and colleagues in the European Union and others so that we can examine where we can make savings in costs and bring together resources to ensure that we are more effective.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con): The hon. Gentleman has just made a point that I cannot let go without challenge. He suggests that the solution to our budgetary problems might be to engage in more extensive co-operation with our European partners. I gently point out to him that it is that collaboration with our European partners that has resulted in equipment taking an inordinate time to produce and coming in at vastly excessive cost. It has been much more expensive and taken much longer to bring in than it would have if we had gone it alone in the first place.
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