The Board of Inquiry into the loss of the Hercules C-130K XV206 on landing at Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan on the 24th of May last year (see here) has reported (pdf link). More documents are here. After much effort, and extensive exploration of all sorts of other options, the Board concluded that (as was blindingly obvious…
Read More Reading the Documents: XV206Ages ago, during a comments thread discussion here about British nuclear weapons and Trident replacement, Chris Lightfoot (peace and blessings be upon him) suggested the option of “virtual” nuclear capability; that is, maintaining all the necessary technology, keeping the plans on the books, but not actually making a bomb. The canonical example is Japan, which…
Read More Fear of a Swedish BombHas Dan Hardie actually infiltrated the Chief of the General Staff’s private office? Mick Smith reports that Dannatt is gagging to create another brigade or so of infantry, which is not only roughly Dan’s prescription, but would just about equal last year’s four battalion cut. Hell, there are some fine old colours laid up in…
Read More Just Who Is the 5’O Clock Blogger?Since 1982, it’s been a piece of conventional media/political wisdom that Britain prevailed in the Falklands War because of invaluable American support. This is especially true of Margaret Thatcher, both in office and in the post-ministerial Thatcher industry, as well as a wide range of pundits, Tories, and others. Up to a point, it’s also…
Read More Falklands Myths 4: American and European SupportHere’s part two of Wired‘s interview with John Robb on the occasion of his book. It’s cracking stuff – they got Kris “Alexander the Average” Alexander to grill him. But the really interesting thing here is the curious way Robbo and his arch-rival Thomas Barnett are increasingly locked in violent agreement. Consider Robbo’s positive recommendations:…
Read More Violent agreementThe Falklands War represents a big part of the Thatcher mythos, to the extent that it’s become part of the media’s operational code that you can’t divide the two. This is founded on a couple of facts, and more myths. The fact is that it undoubtedly helped her win re-election from a fairly ugly starting…
Read More Myths of the Falklands 2: Thatcher’s WarLast Friday, the Guardian reported that servicemen on leave from Iraq were spending their time camping in a queue at RAF Coltishall in the hope of buying the houses their families lived in before they were sold to the public. It’s another fine achievement of Michael Portillo’s 1996 deal to flog the entire MOD housing…
Read More All the atrocities, and how to take advantageWell, who else saw Sean Langan’s film from the mission down to Garmser last year? Still can’t stop thinking about it. A small advisory/training team and a company or so of Afghan police were sent down from Camp Bastion to Garmser in the far south to establish a government presence on roads leading in from…
Read More to all of those men..Yet more stupid giant floating radar news. Not only can’t it keep the sea if the weather turns bad, not only is there no sea boat, and no security – but its support vessel won’t be able to go alongside it most of the time, according to the US Coast Guard. This really is one…
Read More I see a ship in the harbourI knew roughly what Resource Accounting and Budgeting was all about, but I never imagined they could invent a system that would require NHS trusts to pay back any overspend twice. Especially as, at the same time, the introduction of payment-by-results means that their income scales directly with their output. So, they can’t reduce the…
Read More Paying the cost to be the boss (of the civil service)