Billions worth of equipment to be left in the Stan
 

The link below from a short time ago looks at the plans for the British Military to remove about 4 Billion pound worth of Military major equipment out of Afghanistan, but recent problems and a cooling of relationships with Pakistan and other countries surrounding Afgahanistan, could result in billions worth of equipment been dumped or left to the Afgahanistan forces.

Britain begins preparations for Afghanistan withdrawal - Telegraph

Report in the Daily mail this morning now talks for 2 Billions pounds of Military vehicles having to be left, The UK military has 1900 major combat vehicles in place but only 700 have been identified for recovery and 1200 combat vehicles will be handed over free of charge to Afgahanistan security forces, (It would have been a dogs ear getting them all in but ten time worse getting them out) These figures do not include the 400 protected Landrovers already handed over. I think these figures do not include the hundreds if not thousands of support vehicles and rigs that will also be left, vehicles such as trucks, forklifts, ground equipment and spares.

The plan to leave these 1200 very expensive upgraded vehicles represents the largest inventory of equipment the British Army has ever left behind since the disasters of WW2 including Dunkirk and Greece. The last time this happened on a scale similar to this was in 1967 withdrawl from Aden when hundreds of Vehicles were left on the RAF runway and Bombed by the Fleet Air Arm to stop them falling in to the hands of the locals, but these were mainly old RL 3 tonners and Landrovers and not very very expensive kit with some of these vehicles costing more than £100,000 each.

I posted on the last man to die in stan thread earlier and it seems the disaster is starting to fold out before our eyes, let us all hope in just in material and not later on in lives.

Not new news, its well known that it would take years to remove all the equipment out there

I'm not an accountant (nor do I ever want to be...), but I can appreciate some of their points of view.

How much is this kit really worth? It might have cost £4Bn to buy, but is it worth that now, and those costs have already been spent.

Take one of your £100,000 vehicles. It might have cost that, brand spanking new and gleaming in fresh paint from the factory, but now? It has been working hard, in harsh conditions, for several years, has a considerable amount of miles on the clock, and no doubt will need to be refurbished as soon as it arrives back in UK!

So what are the transport and refurbishment costs if we bring it back to UK, all further costs on a tight Defence budget, and what are we going to do with it, apart from put it straight into storage, when it gets here.

The £4Bn figure is headline grabbing and eye catching, but what is the reality behind the headline...?

And in 60-70 years time a PM will visit and do a deal for it to be recovered as "historically valauble" - I'll get my coat!

There was a deal of kit left in the Canal Zone. Likewise when the US had a falling out with Nasser, their ex-new best friend, they just abandoned all their heavy construction plant. It was still there 15 years later, untouched and unuseable.

Cheaper to dump than recover. Besides, if you hand over 1200 clap out vehicles you can probably sell them spares and maintenance. Bring them home and to the transport costs you pay for that maintenance.

Equipment left behind
 

All the comments above are very valid, and this will not be the first time equipment has been left or will it be the last, but and it is a very big but, this is huge and will leave the British Army in a poor future position with even more money needing to be spent the next time they go on tour.

The US keep 3 types of Vehicles, Bradley, Humer, and Striker for normal combat, this does not include the odd specialist rigs for IED and other jobs. The UK has up to 26 types of vehicles doing the same job as the above 3, this in my view is the problem. Many of the 1200 vehicles costing hundreds of thousands have not been used and have been failures with many just stored, and quite a few specialist vehicles manufacturing companies have really filled their boots

1900 combat vehicles with 9800 personnel in place and that does not count all the support and logistic vehicles, and with the usual 80/20 rule with 20% doing the dirty jobs with the rest in support thats a lot of wheels.

Is it little wonder we are short of what is really needed Helicopters

I would never be against the troops doing their very brave job, but that a awful lot of equipment chucked at this job.

There is another, more fundemental set of reasons for leaving kit there - I'm sure it's been covered on PPrune before.

1. A lot of this kit was purchased under UOR; as such the Treasury paid for it out of the Reserve and therefore "own" it. The Treasury effectively writes off the kit asap as the kit's support costs are met by the Treasury until the end of the Op - they have no interest in bringing it back or, indedd, paying to do so.

2. The Army could pay to bring it back, but would then be liable for all of the support costs when it's back in the UK. Guess what? Defence is broke, therefore something else would have to be chopped to pay for it.

3. If it were brought back it would annoy Industry as it would require a huge hole to be blown in future procurements to pay for it, and future support money would go offshore as a lot of the kit is foreign.

4. A lot of the kit is heavily optimised for Afg and therefore would cost significant amounts of money to mod/upgrade for a more worldwide role.

5. Leaving kit to the GIRoA is a good political win.


and, as said before, a lot of the kit is tired and worn out after years of harsh use in an unforgiving environment. A lot of stuff will doubtless find it's way into the Core Orbat but not all of it. Lazy, sensational journalism methinks....

I think you just countered your self-righteous shock and horror.

Equipment left behind
 

The following link show the British Army operate 6000 combat vehicles included in that figure are the vehicles we are talking about.

Thats just short of 20% of the Army combat vehicle force to be dumped

Modern equipment of the British Army - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by SCAFITEhttp://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...s/viewpost.gif
Many of the 1200 vehicles costing hundreds of thousands have not been used and have been failures with many just stored,
I think you just countered your self-righteous shock and horror.

You are spot on I must have got it all wrong

Still as long as we can just willy nilly spend billions more on the next lot not a problem just leave the heaps behind in fact just leave the bloody lot behind and just move on and forget it ever happened, all just a bad dream really.

As has been noted above, many of the vehicles were bought under UOR funding purely for ops in Afghanistan. While good pieces of kit, they are not intended for wider roles, and often were bought so heavily optimised for HERRICK that they'd be useless in other theatres.
They are also shagged out, well used and have been purchased for a wartime role only.
I'd suggest the ones we want to keep for wider utility will come back. If they don't come back then thats because the British Army was unwilling to make the case to keep them or fund them. That should say something.

Some of these vehicles may be very Op HERRICK specific, but surely it's worth assuming we might operate in a similar landscape at some point again in the future....?

The big question is just how would you get them back?
With Pakistan blocking the passes south, the only other route is through the Central Asian Republics until you reach the ex-soviet rail system.
Its a hell of a long and arduous drive to a railhead followed by an even longer rail journey
And that assumes the ex-Soviet states would allow passage

Might conceivably be more cost effective to actually seize a Pakistani port and fight the way back with the vehicles through the Khyber Pass...

If it costs more to bring them back, than they will be worth, it makes complete economic sense to leave them there. To do otherwise is just plain old stupid - something MOD would have done years ago and about which people rightly complain.

Then take the amount of money that would have been spent on bringing back old, battlescarred vehicles and spend it on new vehicles.

Win for industry, win for the Army.

Not exactly rocket science is it ?

How far in to the future? Apart from the cost of recovery, the book cost of transferring to the MOD account, the cost of holding, the cost or training etc etc, how long before they are as effective as the Snatch Landrovers in the wrong context?

Surely after 12 years or so in Afg HMGs enthusiasm for another adventure will be blunted for long enough.

There are plenty of other ongoing projects that will see more capable kit being introduced in the meanwhile. Apart from someone close to me that wears blue and is involved, what has this to do with Air?

and a mention of GSE and rocket scientists.

Consider your home. You have lived there for 10-15 years, you have bought a lot of items which make the place better, some of which only fit in a particular nook or cranny, some of which would look awful if it were not for the type of house it is. And when you think about it, you have bought an awful lot of stuff and spent an awful lot of money!

Then someday, you decide/need to move house, somewhere smaller now the kids have left home.

How much of that stuff do you actually take with you? How much goes into storage, and just how much do you throw away or leave for the next occupants because it just won't fit, you have something better or you know you're just never going to use it again?

Add to that the fact that you now only have one car and a week to move house, and .... you get the idea. :(

As an AT mate, I would not anticipate the prospective kit return with any sense of joy, especially now we have an AT fleet the size of a single squadron. And how much do you think the commercial freighter bill will have to be?

Just drop a Herc load of pikies off at Bastion then relieve them of it when it hits the cross channel ferry.

No, the taxpayer owns it. And as usual, will be treated with contempt by the civil serpents.

"No, the taxpayer owns it. And as usual, will be treated with contempt by the civil serpents. "

You've clearly never worked in a proper HQ or Main Building have you?

At the end of this drawn out, pointless war the last thing I care about is an expensive loadof kit left behind.
Of far greater significance is the utterly desperate waste of life and blood we have lost out there.
No price can be put on that sacrifice!