Last month Brigadier Ed Butler, who commanded 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand province in 2006 told MPs that the lack of helicopters meant the Taleban had been able to force British troops off the roads by using roadside bombs. He pointed out that in Northern Ireland there were 70 helicopters for 10,000 to 15,000 troops but in Afghanistan, with casualties rising steeply in the fiercest fighting since the Korean War, there were far fewer.
Ed Butler is a very shrewd man and excellent to work for. Also I'll bet that in Ireland the temperatures were not +45*C and the ground a minimum of 3000AMSL. All these things have a detrimental effect on performance and lift of the limited rotary assets. Then factor all the platforms are very old (barring Apache) and perform as such
. Would you trust a 20+ yr old car to get you to work each and every day in a very harsh environment?
SIA