AFGHANISTAN - GORDON BROWN'S LIES ON HELICOPTER PROCUREMENT

Brown lying, as usual

Some Shithead, described as a senior recently retired army officer, has just appeared on the BBC news to confirm that, yes indeed, lives are being lost in Afghanistan due to a lack of helicopters, the proper usage of which would allow the movement of troops to take place without relying on the few, highly predictable, road routes which are, equally predictably, heavily mined and booby trapped. This is a consequence of a lack of funding, said Shithead; in other words, it’s all down to money.

Well, pardon me if I disagree, and seek to place the blame, instead, on people like Field Marshall Sir Shithead being let loose inside the MOD without adequate supervision, or perhaps being shot at fucking dawn.

In 1995, the Army, desperately short of general-purpose lift helicopters, managed to free up some cash in a desperate attempt to acquire some more. The order, of course, had to go to the Westland factory in Yeovil so as to protect the 700 British jobs and our technological knowhow in building helicopters, even though Westland is a Franco-Italian company and many of the bits in the helicopters are American. Twenty-two Merlins, each capable of lifting about four tons, were ordered, costing around £35m each and which to this day are plagued by low availability. (Merlins, incidentally, cannot operate in Afghanistan, due to the altitude and heat, without substantial, expensive, modification and even in Iraq we never managed to have more than five flying from a fleet of twenty-two.).

For the same money, we could have ordered almost twice as many Chinooks, with two-and-a-half times the payload, greater speed and range, reduced operating costs, all of which would be suitable for operations in Afghanistan.

But it gets worse. In 2006 the MOD gave AgustaWestland a billion pounds, for which the Army and Navy will get a fleet of 70 “Future Lynx” battlefield and shipbourne helicopters costing, supposedly, £14m each, with delivery not starting until 2011.

Just for comparison, had we ordered from Sikorsky, we could have had their Seahawk choppers, each twice as powerful as a Lynx, for about £6m each. The Blackhawk, the Army version, comes in even cheaper, at £4 million each. These bulk of such an order would already have been delivered and would now be operational in Afghanistan.

The Future Lynx deal is Merlin all over again. If we'd spent the Merlin money on Chinooks in 1995, we'd have more than doubled our Chinook fleet and seriously addressed our lift problems. Had we spent the Future Lynx money with Sikorsky, we could have had an equal number of Seahawks or Blackhawks, had a more capable machine, got them sooner and still have £580m left - enough to buy another twenty Chinooks, minimum.

If all this had happened we’d now be in the happy position of having a more than adequate supply of helicopters, and 19 year old squaddies who’ve hardly started their journey through life wouldn’t be having their lives thrown away needlessly.

The acquisition of military equipment should never, repeat NEVER, be a jobs programme. How many times do we need to learn that particular lesson? The aircraft carriers we need like a hole in the fucking head, but which are being built, conveniently, in Gordon Brown’s backyard being another such disgraceful example.

But to go back to my issue with Shithead, the problem has never been money but, rather, the decisions taken by the politicians, jobsworths at the MOD and, yes, cunts like him.

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Bill Rammell, Armed Forces Minister on Newsnight Interview 13th July

I watched Brown’s interview on News at Ten and the Rammell interview on Newsnight. I listened very carefully, but in neither case did I once discern anything that might, even with an enormous amount of goodwill and a following wind, come close to being a truthful account of the past, present or future conduct of the Afghanistan campaign.

What I did hear were half-truths, evasion, statistical sleight of hand, deceit and outright bare-faced lies and the telly can thank it’s lucky stars that it lived, somehow, to see another dawn.

Absolutely classic was Brown’s response to being asked why, in 2006, after being told by the National Audit Office that the Army was severely under-resourced in helicopters, did he then cut £1.4 billion from the helicopter budget?

“I can only refer you to the men in the ground - sorry, sorry, - did I say men in the ground, I meant, of course, the men ON the ground, who have today said that those casualties suffered in the recent period of time, who were on the ground, but only briefly, were then off the ground and will shortly be in the ground, only not yet as we haven’t finished sweeping up all the doings, let alone got round to planting it, would not have been avoided by more helicopters.

Do you see what I did there, Alistair? I took a statement by Lieutenant Colonel Poor- Bastard, the Army media spokesperson, who is of course under strict orders, on pain of court-fucking-marshall, not to criticise tactics, strategy, equipment, manning levels, government policy or especially me, the Prime Mincer, and who is under constant personal bombardment from my own battalions of No 10 spin doctors just to make sure he knows on which side his bread is buttered, and I conflated it with a decision I took three years ago to deprive the Army of the helicopters it clearly needed, but which I was determined to deprive them off in an act of petty juvenile spite against that cunt Blair. This is what passes, in what I am pleased to describe as my brain, for reason.”

We have 18 year old kids being blown to bits thanks to being starved of the manpower and equipment they need and deserve and these cunts are playing word games. Reality doesn’t interest them, public perception - that’s the ticket. Not a shred of decency, courage or honour between them; utter, absolute scum.

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Author: Daisy, Call me Ishmael (Cribbed from the comments)

AFGHANISTAN - GORDON BROWN'S LIES ON HELICOPTER PROCUREMENT