The Great Debate UK
When is the wrong vehicle the right vehicle?
-Patrick Hennessey is the author of “The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars.” The opinions expressed are his own.-
In the same week in which Major Sean Birchall became the 169th British service person to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in 2001 (and perhaps more significantly, as is often unmentioned, the 164th serviceperson to die since the British moved into Helmand Province only three years ago), four families announced that they were planning to sue the Ministry of Defence over the deaths of loved ones in the lightly armoured “Snatch” Land Rover in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Major Birchall was on patrol in the Jackal, a vehicle with less protection than the Snatch but much more mobility and firepower. The 10th person to die in the vehicle it seems that similar concerns are being raised over the suitability of the Jackal as have been being voiced for some time now over the Snatch.
As someone who spent months on patrol in Iraq in the Snatch and even longer driving both on and off road around Afghanistan in the even more vulnerable WMIK (the topless Land Rover largely unchanged since the Long Range Desert Group charged around North Africa in it in the Second World War and the vehicle the Jackal was brought in to replace) the public concern over military vehicles is at once understandable, praiseworthy and a little disconcerting.
Understandable because grief is a terrible thing and grieving families will always want to try and understand why they have lost husbands, sons and brothers and praiseworthy because it is only right that societies should try and ensure that the men and women sent to fight on their behalf are equipped as well as can be, but disconcerting because the argument always seems to lose sight of certain considerations; the devil, as always, is in the detail.
Consider, for a moment, a Snatch Land Rover driving down the Strand. A few people will no doubt stop and look, some will point and a few will know what it is and wonder why it is there, but it will likely go mostly unremarked, dwarfed by the buses and (no doubt) mostly stationary in traffic.
If the exercise were repeated with a Mastiff, one of the better protected vehicles in Afghanistan, or one of the Warriors which have done such sterling work in Iraq, or even the British Army’s most heavily protected vehicle, the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, then traffic would grind to a standstill as people dropped their shopping and either ran or stared.
With reference to Mr North’s comments about a better comparison being between the Snatch and RG-32, I would point out that the British Army has Snatch vehicles and Mastiffs – but not the RG-32. It does have the Panther – being phased in after a lengthy and expensive upgrade to fix some major problems. That might have been a better comparison – but the Panther would not have been around in Hennessy’s time.
As far as the notion that no-one in the Army understands that “Protection and operational efficiency, therefore, are not mutually exclusive – “, I would say that this is a very clearly understood issue which has taken up a lot of thought over the last few decades. However, Mr North should be aware that vehicle designers are no longer under the direct control of the military customer and more and more equipment is effectively bought off the shelf and then modified as required.
Furthermore, increasingly onerous demands are being placed upon vehicles in terms of operational performance levels and these make it harder to create a well protected vehicle that also makes for a good “hearts and minds” street patrol unit.
I speak from some experience as I am the designer of the the Cougar, the base vehicle for the Mastiff, a vehicle which Mr North has praised n a number of occasions.