Any idea who he is talking about? Who is out there in the UK with the right helos, support equipment and crews for the theatre?.......
Col Tim Collins in Sunday Torygraph:
....................Several prominent members of the House of Lords have expressed their disquiet about helicopter support for forces deployed in combat zones. Senior ministers and civil servants tut-tut about this from the safety of Westminster. I commanded an Air Assault Battalion in war - here are the facts. The UK's helicopter fleet is exhausted. It is too small to begin with and many of the aircraft are elderly. The effects of operating in the deserts of Iraq and in the hot and high environments of Afghanistan have taken a serious toll of the main components, and there is a crisis in the availability of spares and, more importantly, in the skilled technicians who fit them. We have a finite number of pilots and they are badly overstretched, too.
The hostile conditions - physical and military - in both theatres dictate that much of the daily administrative movement must be done by air, increasing the workload on the airframes and crews, and depriving the front line of support. So the helicopters are not available when needed and soldiers are going on patrol on foot or in antique vehicles such as the Spartan in which three men were killed in Afghanistan last week. These were designed in the 1950s and provide no protection against the modern weapons with which most guerrillas are equipped. Like the Snatch Land Rovers, they are not fit for purpose in the 21st century.
No war can be fought without sufficient numbers of troops, so front-line units must reflect the age-old norms for deployment. And there must also be sufficient, uncommitted reserves - of one fifth to one third the size of the deployed combat troops - to deal with the all-too-common unexpected. Additionally, we need to hold an uncommitted reserve at home to deal with the unexpected globally.
Finally, there needs to be a realistic exploration of workable short-term solutions. There are available now, for instance, support helicopters with British firms, piloted by retired British Services pilots, some of them Special Forces, ready to go forward to do whatever is required in Afghanistan. The US already harnesses private companies for these tasks. Why not our own nation in support of the hard-pressed servicemen?