EU Referendum


Defence: a shortage of joined-up strategy


08/12/2014



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Britain is considering sending Tornado GR4 bombers back to Afghanistan, a mere six weeks after it officially ended its war in the country and only weeks after the aircraft left the country "for the last time". Plans and costings have been drawn up, although Downing Street is denying that any decision has been made to send equipment.

The evaluation has been carried out in response to direct pleas from the country's president to David Cameron, and we are informed that more troops and fast jets are expected to be sent next year in what is seen as an admission that Britain had withdrawn too quickly.

However, barely more than a week ago, Janes was pointing out that three Chinook helicopters had been retained in Kabul, adding that training and support would be needed for many months, and probably years. Other aircraft deployments, it said, "are very likely to take place in the future".

What no one is admitting, though, is that this situation was predictable – and predicted. Given that coalition forces were heavily dependent on air support, it was never going to be the case that less capable Afghan security forces could be expected to confront the Taliban without some measure of air support.

In this, the short-sightedness of the politicians and the military is a major issue, represented by their abject failure to build up an organic air support function within the Afghan military, to equip it for the day when the coalition forces were ready to leave.

We were writing about this need in January 2008, having already raised it at high level within the MoD, and latterly in the Commons with Lady Winterton, calling for Super Tucano bombers to be supplied. At that point, nearly seven years ago, the United States had already started a programme of building up an Afghan air corps, estimating that it would take eight years to bring the work to fruition.

The UK, on the other hand, had Harriers in operation, whence I observed that the RAF offensive effort was doing very little to develop the Afghan national capabilities, unlike the Army which is not only providing mentors for ANA forces but also integrating its formations into their own.

In my view, this added "legs" to the argument we were making for Super Tucanos, suggesting that the RAF should operate a squadron of these machines, into which Afghan pilots could be integrated. By this means, they could have acquired experience under controlled conditions, before moving over to form their own independent squadrons which could gradually have taken the load off the coalition forces.

Anticipating that it would take the Afghans eight years before they reached a state of readiness – which, had we started a programme in 2008 would have brought us to the end of 2015 - I suggested that we were going to be in Afghanistan an awful long time unless we do start thinking how to speed up the process.

Even then, it turns out that the eight-year estimate was overly ambitious, following the expensive debacle of the 16 sixteen G222 military cargo aircraft, scrapped at a cost of nearly $500 million, after the Afghans had proved incapable of operating them.

This was not entirely the Afghans' fault, though as the US-funded project managing office and Nato's Afghanistan training mission command "did not properly manage the effort to obtain the spare parts needed to keep the aircraft flight worthy".

Despite this experience, the US has gone ahead with the procurement of 20 A-29 Super Tucanos, built in the United States under license, the first one of which rolled off the production line in September. I had by then already been announced that some 30 Afghan pilots were to be trained by the US, with the programme set to continue in Moody Air Force Base, south Georgia, until 2018 – at a cost of $429 million. 

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There can be no doubt that the Super Tucano is the right aircraft for Afghanistan. It has recently been acquired by Ghana and Angola, proving once again its suitability for the air forces of developing countries.

But failure of the UK to support the programme extends far beyond the need to maintain an expensive outpost in this troubled country. In its own procurement programme for the Afghanis, the US government has insisted that the aircraft were built in America, supporting more than 1,400 jobs in 30 locations in 16 states, centred on Jacksonville, Florida.

When the UK programme to supply 130 Tucano T-1s as basic training aircraft for the RAF was executed in 1985, the aircraft, worth £126 million, were built under license by Shorts of Belfast, leading also to a number of export sales. A similar arrangement for this project could have created much-needed jobs for a deprived area of the UK, as well as supporting Afghanistan.

Similarly, the training and development programme would have created UK jobs, while the basic aircraft could also have been used as the basis for a home-built replacement for the now ageing Tucano T-1s. Instead, the planned replacement is the US-built Beechcraft T-6 Texan, an aircraft which was actually rejected in the light air support competition.

Days ago, I was writing about the need for joined-up policy and here is a classic example. In the fate of the Afghans, we have elements of defence, industrial and foreign policy, on top of overseas aid directed at real need.

And, if the RAF could climb down off its high horse, it too could acquire some respectable ground support aircraft – or even allow the Army to operate them instead of the ridiculously expensive Apache attack helicopters. The type could even equip a certain equipment-free aircraft carrier, giving a formidable punch to a ship which only has helicopters to play with until the F-35s arrive.

Instead of all this, we are facing more years of armed intervention in another country's war, repeating the same mistakes, leaving us doomed to the same outcome, at great expense. Fighting other people's wars is not the answer. Teaching them how to look after themselves, and equipping them for the task, is a far better option. Unfortunately, it seems, we don't do joined-up policy in this country, so the lesson still hasn't been learned.