In my head-on-the-block post regarding the unlikelihood of an attack on Iran, I mentioned that most of the Royal Navy is engaging in a large exercise off Sierra Leone, with the involvement of the Fleet Lead Commando Group, HMSs Ocean and Bulwark, and a large supporting cast. Now, many miles away indeed, the Royal Marines…
Read More Tony Blair: ChopperMost things in this report are terrible, but I’m especially worried by this.. General David Richards, the British general who recently assumed command of Nato forces in Afghanistan, had expressed his reservations about this strategy and was expected to withdraw them when he took over at the end of July. But so far this has…
Read More A bad signJust a quick update on this one. The Nimrod MR-2 lost with its entire crew over Afghanistan was XV230, the first one to be delivered to the RAF in October, 1969. She was also the first to get the colour display version of the Thomson Searchwater 2000 radar, which is a detail. What is less…
Read More Nimrod UpdateThis is very bad news indeed, especially if it turns out to have been shot down. The Nimrod MR-2 fleet has been increasingly in demand in the last few years for very different roles to its primary mission, patrolling the North Atlantic looking for submarines and the shipwrecked, as the Army has become aware of…
Read More Very bad newsAsked about last week’s fuckup, General Richards says NATO drivers will “accept more risk” in order to avoid accidents like the one that set off a riot, and that he aims to be “a very people focused and a very people-friendly force,” and “use military power not necessarily just to defeat the Taleban but just…
Read More Richards: “Accept more risk”OK, so our last fit seemed to have got results. The MOD had, it seemed, finally found the cash to give the RAF’s C130s the explosion suppressant foam in the fuel tanks that the Americans and Australians fitted 40 years ago, after the loss of XV179 on election day in Iraq and an unprecedented campaign…
Read More Foam Party: We’re Going to Lashkar GharDoes Operation HERRICK, the British-led expansion of ISAF to southwestern Afghanistan stand a chance of success? What is “success” anyway? Just as importantly, does it stand a chance of disaster? Well, the deployment is now well under way, as the 16AAB less two infantry battalions and plus assorted DFID and NGO civilian personnel establishes itself…
Read More AfghanitasticThe Home Office unaccountably continues to survive my best efforts to compass its abolition. On the other hand, though… Nobody ever did try to explain why the RAF Harriers in Kandahar were being withdrawn just as 3,000 British soldiers were deployed there, but the MOD did better than trying to explain it: they reversed the…
Read More Winning the other argumentBig media pick up a bit on the Hercules defensive-aids suite story (see here and here). Not much dig-in, though. This is just the latest in a sea of bullshit – there are 9 out of 25 RAF C-130s that have the full fit of defensive gear, including some really clever stuff like the Directional…
Read More DAS Again