Armored Vehicle Woes Endangering British Troops

This week, an English town honored four soldiers, all killed on the same day last week in Afghanistan. A National Audit Office report shows that there have been serious problems with the vehicles meant to protect troops from roadside bombs. A second report, from the Public Accounts Committee, warns that delays in buying equipment have led to obsolescent vehicles being used in Afghanistan.
The NAO report is upbeat about many aspects of support. The supply chain is becoming more effective, and delays are shorter than before. Two new initiatives –- pre-deployment training, and provision for forward medical facilities -– are both praised for being life-savers. Yet only 57% of equipment demanded in Afghanistan arrives on time, and there have been serious problems with armored vehicles, which may cost lives.

The Vector armored truck is singled out for criticism. Deployed to Afghanistan in April 2007 and Iraq in May 2008, Vector is a “light protected patrol vehicle”, based on the Pinzgauer transport. It was specifically intended to replace the Snatch II armored Landover, which had been criticized for having insufficient armor (a former colonel called the Snatch Landrover a “death trap“). But the Vector has had problems. Overloaded with extra armor and electronic counter-measures equipment to counter IEDs, the suspension’s reliability has been “poor,” according to the report. “When combined with low spares availability, [this] led to vehicle availability levels in Afghanistan being on average below 60 per cent in 2008. Vector also has limited under-belly armor to counter the evolving IED and mine threat in Afghanistan and as a result confidence in the use of the vehicle was low among commanders.”

No wonder, given incidents like this one last year, when a soldier was killed after a Vector struck a mine. The upshot is that “the use of Snatch Land Rovers has increased.” In other words, the Vector has been replaced by the vehicle it was supposed to supplant — leaving troops just as badly off as before.


Other vehicles, including the Bulldog and Spartan CVR(T) are also said to be suffering reliability problems, due to the added weight. The Mastiff, (a close relative of the Marine Corps Cougar) has performed well, but suffered from a shortage of spares.

A large-scale replacement program is under way, and the report says that this year, the British army will start to deploy some 564 new armored vehicles. These include a whole menagerie of types including Jackal, Ridgeback, Panther , Wolfhound and Husky. Total cost: £800m /$1.2 billion.

The new vehicles will be a great improvement, but operations in Afghanistan have been continuing for more than seven years now. The situation is a close parallel with the U.S. experience – Danger Room has previously reported the long delays in fielding Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored trucks.

But even when a new vehicle is agreed upon, designed and funded, it may still not get to the front line.

The Public Accounts Committee report – which reviews all major military spending projects — notes that there have been long delays in both the Soothsayer (a mobile electronic warfare package) and Terrier (a new armored engineering vehicle). “In-Service Dates have already been missed, forcing the Department to buy interim vehicles and continue using equipment suffering from obsolescence in Afghanistan,” the study notes.

The delivery date of the Terrier has slipped by 27 months, and the vehicle it replaces was officially retired in March 2008. Meanwhile the British army have been using JCB backhoe loaders, hich do not have the cross-country mobility or protection of the Terrier. (The loaders are actually military vehicles designed for the U.S. Army.)

The Major Projects Report concludes that it has been a ‘disappointing’ year, with the top twenty projects suffering from an extra 96 months of delays between them, making this the worst year since 2003. The problems are caused by “poor project management, a lack of realism, not identifying key dependencies and underestimating of costs and timescales” –- all of which had been previously identified and were supposed to have been fixed by reforms introduced in 2001.

British troops on the front line may be among the best in the world, but they’re still vulnerable without the equipment they need. And there still seem to be problems with providing it.
Wired

Nothing that ugly could be safe.