UK to provide armoured vehicles and body armour to syrian rebels

[WASALOADIE]

BBC News - UK to send armoured vehicles to Syrian opposition (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21684105)

Pity they couldn't have provided this for our own troops in the early days of the Afghanistan saga.

[Jumping_Jack]

Un-freakin-believable. Anyone want to join a sweep on when our own kit will be used against us? :mad:

[Load Toad]

How nuts is this...?
Can't equip our own country properly but can spunk cash on a bunch of 'opposition' that contain a fair % of extremists that will hate us...

[Lonewolf_50]

Keeping the civil war going. It's not as though arms and armaments are not being provided to Assad by a few of the usual suspects:

Iran (apparently flying stuff in through Iraqi airspace)
Russia (not sure if their maritime transport has been resumed or not. Suspect some gray shipping ops are getting stuff through to Assad)

Others?

[Lightning Mate]

.....and the Desert Rats are about to lose their armour.

:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

[Rosevidney1]

Fair makes one proud to be British.:rolleyes:

[Not_a_boffin]

Madder than Mad Jack McMad, only it's not funny.

I'm sure there's a good reason why we're doing this, as opposed to letting our Turkish friends deal with issues on their borders. Apparently, not being seen to support the "Arab Spring" on the BBC is just too politically incorrect.

[Lonewolf_50]

Boffin, is it not possible that our Turkish allies have asked for just such a thing, in the coffee or chai sipping meetings that don't get massive media attention?
I'm sure there's a good reason why we're doing this, as opposed to letting our Turkish friends deal with issues on their borders. Apparently, not being seen to support the "Arab Spring" on the BBC is just too politically
incorrect.
As to the this Arab Spring: why should Westerners interfere with "their" movement?

Keep the "Arab" in "Arab Spring." ;)

[Melchett01]

Brilliant,

Just how many irrelevant, nasty little wars are Cameron et al going to drag us in to this year?

And just how much will the Defence budget be cut by at the same time to help keep the rest of the world in the comfort to which they've become accustomed to?

Incandescent doesn't even come close to it :mad:

[Bill Macgillivray]

I don't B***DY BELIEVE IT!!! On second thoughts, why am I suprised at our "leaders" amazing grasp of the "non-essentials", they are merely continuing in the only manner they know!:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

[NutLoose]

Take it they have to collect it from our regional depot in Afghanistan.... I cannot believe we are chopping the Military, chopping the Armoured divisions and then giving the equipment to those militants that we are fighting in the rest of the world..... Call me old fashioned, but that is barking mad.

The cuckoo has well and truly left the clock and is residing in Downing Street.


I am still trying to get my head round the rationalisation that moving the Pongoes out of Brawdy and into St Athans at a cost of 100 Million pounds is a good move in a period where money is tight...

Ohh and shutting down serviceable power stations early to abide to EuroCraze when there is nothing to replace them.. Pollution being the reason, WELL, the coal fired power station near me was closed years ago, the mechanics of which with the generators etc were removed for the Chinese and shipped to China where they have no qualms over such things and is now spewing its smoke out over the other side of the world. But still spewing it out into the same atmosphere.

..

[Ronald Reagan]

They simply can't help themselves can they!!! Yet again we will get involved and ruin another country. Another nation can be added to the recent long list of disasters we have got involved in! Good job we are awash with money and the economy is doing well to pay for these little adventures, oh.......

Its as if these foreign adventures are like drugs to the political elite and they cannot get enough of them! Considering they are so good at telling other nations what they should do you would think they had made brilliant success stories of their own nations, rather than being the total failures that they are:ugh:

[Not_a_boffin]

Lonewolf - our Turkish friends have plenty of their own kit. Can't see a single good reason for us to supply it.

As for the Arab Spring being Arab - clearly you're not listening to the Beeb - "something MUST be done"....

As I'm sure you're well aware!

[NutLoose]

Trials are underway with promising results to airdrop the vehicles to them, live drops will use Snatch Landrovers. The results below show that we can be seen to have aided them without actually having aided them

What Happened To This Flattened Truck? (http://jalopnik.com/what-happened-to-this-flattened-truck-451016958)


4th SQDN 73rd CAV, 4th BCT 82d ABN at Ft Bragg, NC. That's my unit! Seriously, the truck burned in on a heavy drop attempt last week. The parachute failed to deploy. I believe the drop was from 800 ft AGL. Monday 7:11pm

[VinRouge]

Wtf? The so called FSA are the same idiots that 5 years ago were regularly using hand drills for executions in Iraq. Why the hell are we supporting the bad guys? Assad may not be perfect, but its a damn sight better than what has ended p happening in Libya for example.

[orca]

On the plus side, had we not sold them to the USMC we would probably be offering 70 or so Harriers to them as well. So maybe there was a happy ending afterall....every cloud!

Sorry - didn't mean to mention Harrier per se, you could put MRA4 or Ark Royal in the above sentence if the H-word upsets you!

[TEEEJ]

I expect that this is outdated lightweight body armour held as surplus? The Libyan rebels received similar.

Libya

Q36 Chair: How much is this body armour worth? That may seem a very small question in the overall cost of all of this, but I am just wondering who provided it and who paid for it.

Dr Fox: It came from contingent stocks, which won’t affect current UK operations. As for the price tag, I am unable to give you that, but I shall look to see what it is. I am not sure if Mr Watkins is able to do that. He is very good with numbers.

Mr Watkins: I don’t have a precise figure, Mr Chairman. This is basically armour that we had in stock against our potential needs. We are in the process of replacing that armour as part of our routine replacement programme so it was available to be given to the opposition in the way we are saying.

Uncorrected Evidence - Operations in Lybia (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmdfence/uc950/uc95001.htm)

[500N]

UK given the rebels armor while they hold 21 UN people hostage
and won't release them until the Syrian Army retreats from a
village close by !!!

Sounds like we have it arse about again.

[Pontius Navigator]

We need a Syrian car wash in our market town to balance the Latvian one up the road, the Iraqi one and the Polish one.

[Roland Pulfrew]

WTF Is Hague up to? I always thought he was a sensible bloke, but I think we are backing the wrong side here. :ugh:

Interestingly the Arab world don't really seem to be doing much to help sort out this Arab problem. Funny that!!

[tonker]

Making mistakes is part of life, not learning from them......

[Pontius Navigator]

WTF Is Hague up to? I always thought he was a sensible bloke, but I think we are backing the wrong side here. :ugh:

Now according to the Torygraph, the Shia are the moderate good guys and the Sunni are becoming the increasingly extremist bad guys. So we decide we don't like one side to our enemies enemy becomes our friend.

Now remind me, what happened in 1941, then what happened in 1945?

the Arab world don't really seem to be doing much to help sort out this Arab problem

What problem? If they don't see a problem then it's not a problem for them. Once again it is the modern western world that cannot live with the traditional eastern model.

[Not_a_boffin]

If the two wings of the "Religion of Peace" can't come to a peaceful solution, then I personally think we should stay well out of it.

It's not armour they need - it's a good even-handed mediator. Nice job for the new Pope?

[sycamore]

NaB, I thought there was a man in that job already....ex -PM...Bla..?

[Pontius Navigator]

NaB, I thought there was a man in that job already....ex -PM...B...?

A new B-word? The original, two ex-PMs, and the proper meaning of the word.

Bastards all?

[Dunky]

Great, we can afford to give away all this kit, and start to get involved in yet another war in the Middle East, yet can't afford to give a pay rise to the military to at least keep pace with inflation, after two years of no pay rise. Meanwhile our own military are having cuts in equipment, manning, and bases. I'd also like to know how they propose delivering all this equipment. Also, how are they going to get fuel to run these vehicles, and what about spares for maintenance and repair?

The line "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" springs to mind. Though in the usual manner of our politico's the term "rush" is relative.

[diginagain]

...we can afford to give away all this kit, ...We can afford to give away kit that has been replaced by better kit and is costing us money to store and maintain it.

[Sandy Parts]

no amount of body armour will protect the rebels once Assad finishes the Death Star....(that's a film I hear you say? hmm, about as grounded in reality as current UK FCO policy!)

[Not_a_boffin]

NaB, I thought there was a man in that job already....ex -PM...Bla..?

Is it just me or has all this kicked off since he started swanning around the ME in that role?

[Rosevidney1]

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first send mad. Can't argue with that as our glorious leaders really are barking mad.