Today’s Telegraph reports that our forces in Afghanistan do not have enough helicopters. How come there is a shortage of helicopters when we are spending £1 billion replacing the ageing Lynx?
Simple. Because that money gets spent in the interests of a few defence contractors, rather than our armed forces.
Something called the Defence Industrial Strategy (more reto 1970s than a space hopper) means that we have to build a new sort of helicopter, at twice the price - and which will not be ready until 2015.
2015 must seem a long time away if you happen to be in Helmand. Yet even when the tax-guzzling Future Lynx helicopter finally gets to you, don’t expect it to be operationally superior to the "off-the-shelf" alternatives available today from Sikorsky or Eurocopter.
Defenders of our monumentally useless defence procurement policy like to imply that somehow Sikorsky helicopters et al might not be up to the task of ferrying British troops around. Really? They seem to do a pretty good job ferrying those Americans about - but what do they know, eh?
It might enrage them to point this out, but the defence-industrial dinosaurs have much in common with Gordon Brown. That is, they want lots and lots of extra public spending, but without the reforms needed to ensure that the money is better spent. It is time to scrap the Defence Industrial Strategy, and have a policy that equips our armed forces with the best kit in the world.
