Army denied vital equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims former SAS head

Sir Graeme is regarded as one of the Army?s most influential officers

British troops were deprived of the right equipment to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and were still being hampered by a lack of resources, the former head of special forces has claimed.

According to the Telegraph:

In a withering assessment of the “doomed” state of the military, the recently retired Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb said that the SAS had been denied even Vietnam-era equipment that could have saved lives. Resources remained insufficient to fight current and future conflicts, with much of the Army’s equipment

“either broken or lacking”,

Sir Graeme’s attack, in a speech to senior officers, is disclosed as Gordon Brown faces questions at the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war. The inquiry has been told that the Armed Forces were forced to cope without a wide range of equipment because of a lack of funds from the Treasury when Mr Brown was chancellor.

In his speech, Sir Graeme said that politicians and the Civil Service bore “considerable blame” for the decline of the military. He said that the Iraq conflict had “tarnished” Britain’s standing and, until recently, Afghanistan had been “stumbling towards failure”.

The Armed Forces were “pretty much doomed on our current course and thinking” and would become the “dumpster of irrelevancy” unless they changed direction radically and gained the right equipment to fight today’s wars, he said. The focus on investing in ships, aircraft and tanks had endangered lives because it had left forces such as the SAS inadequately equipped with basic equipment, he claimed.

He warned that the Armed Forces were “clearly in decline” and were increasingly seen as “irrelevant” by the public and politicians. Sir Graeme disclosed that the lack of equipment had compromised the Bravo Two Zero SAS raid into Iraq in 1991, which included the soldier-turned-author Andy McNab. Helicopters were not equipped with a basic infra-red device to allow pilots to see at night — a piece of Vietnam-era kit — which meant that the eight-man patrol was left on the ground at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s army. Three men died. A decade later, helicopters were still not equipped with the infra-red equipment, which almost led to the loss of two Chinooks as special forces tried to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. This was an example of a military that could do nothing more than “band-aid prevention”, said Sir Graeme.

The Ministry of Defence was buying equipment “we probably do not need” and unless it “mothball, cancel or break our procurement overdraft or sit down and reshape the force we so desperately need, we are unlikely to do anything”, he warned.

“The future is bloody grim either way,” he said, “and the Reaper, unless you are prepared to prevent him, is probably going to join us for dinner.” Sir Graeme said that the military had to share the blame for the situation. The officer, known for his straight-talking, said that the Army’s leadership needed to “look no further than the mirror to identify the guilty party”.

Sir Graeme, who has been credited by the American General David Petraeus as a key architect in defeating the Iraqi insurgency, said that the Army’s leadership was at a “crossroads” where either “you play safe and join us old blokes or cry havoc and do your duty”. “We in uniform, the Armed Forces of this nation, are at fault for failing to recognise the changing character of the threats we face and then to do our duty and to set our store by the defence of this realm: all in all a somewhat damning indictment,” he said.

He added: “What you face is simply a moral challenge, a test of will and commitment that if you believe that all is not well – change it; do not wrestle with the sum of your fears; but embrace the course you believe to be right and charge down it; forge the trail and drag the rest with you.”

We just have to look at stories like this about the Snatch Land Rover and it’s over long use in theatre to see what our Armed Forces have to deal with. Perhaps Gordon Brown will have read these articles before he goes before the Chilcot Inquiry tomorrow.

Army denied vital equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims former SAS head – Telegraph.

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