nastyleg
11-22-2009, 03:30 AM
Iraq report: Troops 'rushed' into battle without armour or training
“Never again,” says the main “lessons learnt” report, “must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle.” The kit shortages that plagued British troops - from missing body armour to lack of chemical weapon protection - have become a familiar theme of the Iraq operation. But the detail contained in the leaked documents still has the power to surprise.
By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:00PM GMT 21 Nov 2009
Previous
16 Air Assault Brigade, the formation including the Paras, is supposed to be the most rapidly deployable part of the Army, the “tip of the sword”. Its title gives a clue as to how it should be sent into the combat area — by air. But according to the brigade’s post-operation report, 16 Air Assault suffered from “the total absence of even a slice of air flow [military aircraft]”.
So serious was the problem that, for the first time in any of its war deployments, not one of the brigade’s vehicles travelled by plane — and some of its men ended up deploying to battle “by civair” — normal civilian flights — with “tentage, generators” and other equipment “brought in by hand luggage” (presumably checked in at the airport, rather than heaved into the cabin’s overhead lockers).
But the men of 16 Air Assault had it comparatively easy. Some Royal Marines from another elite formation, 3 Commando Brigade, also flew and were not allowed to take anything deemed a dangerous weapon — including pen knives and nail scissors — through airport security. Other things were confiscated, too. For their time in the desert, “some troops were required to deploy with compo [composite] rations,” says the main lessons learnt report. These are usually heated up to be eaten, but the men “were not allowed to take lighters or matches on the aircraft”.
Once the troops arrived in theatre, things were no easier. The report starts out by saying that British and US equipment was “generally modern, highly effective and reliable” — but thanks to the “rushed” and “not well spent” planning process, “critical stores and equipment did not arrive in time”.
At the most basic level there were, for instance, “significant shortages of small arms ammunition in some units as they began operations”. Not surprisingly, this is described as a “significant risk” to the operation and the lives of troops.
One commanding officer, Lt Col M L Dunn of 9 Supply Regiment, Royal Engineers, described how his soldiers, going into action, “only had five rounds of ammunition each, and only enough body armour for those in the front and rear vehicles”.
After months of concealment, as the Government tried to win public support for military action, the planning process had been finally allowed to come into the open at the very end of 2002. Only then could the “urgent operational requirements” (UORs) needed to fight a war, £510 million-worth of them, be actioned and the kit ordered. But by then, only three months before the fighting started, “orders were placed with factories too late for equipment to reach the front line in time”.
Some UORs, such as extra armour for all the Army’s Challenger 2 tanks, did make it by the skin of their teeth – fitting was completed, says the report, the night before the war started. Others, however, did not. “Only about 10 per cent of logistic demands were met on time,” says the report. Only half the required number of light machine guns arrived.
In the past, the military kept stockpiles of equipment to avoid the need for so many UORs. But there had been big “reductions” in these stocks “to achieve cash savings” in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget — a key reason, says the report, for the equipment shortcomings.
Tanks had only six hours of protection against chemical and biological attack. The MoD ordered decontamination systems to protect the Army’s vehicles against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – the central premise of the war, according to the Prime Minister. By the first day of combat, only 10 per cent of them had arrived. How lucky it was that the WMDs turned out to be a myth.
There were “material difficulties in medical supply, both to medical units and across the force”.
“Morphine was not available to scale,” says the report, meaning that some injured soldiers are likely to have suffered unnecessary pain. Mass outbreaks of diarrhoea and vomiting were a problem — “British forces are beginning to lose the standards of field hygiene displayed previously”.
And as is well-known, other key undelivered UORs included body armour and desert boots, whose absence “caused trench foot” in many soldiers, according to the report. These scarcities led to some ugly behaviour by British officers, NCOs and units. “Large-scale theft can become institutionalised, as unit and sub-unit commanders turn a blind eye or even encourage the organised raiding of other units to make good local shortages,” said the report. “There is some anecdotal evidence that this took place. It is one unpleasant consequence of a supply chain that did not function properly, and requires moral principle to overcome.”
Nor was all the equipment effective and reliable. Communications caused difficulties, “some of which were very serious”. There were four main radio systems. “Clansman radio struggled, but coped,” says the report. “Patron was inconsistent, Brent was overloaded and most calls on Ptarmigan were weak and broken.” In some cases, “mobile phones [using the Kuwaiti network] were the only means of communication available to troops in contact [combat]”.
Lt Col John Power, a commander in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, described how Ptarmigan, the main longer-distance radio, “tended to drop out at around noon because of the heat”.
Col Power was particularly scathing about the supply chain. “The in-theatre asset tracking was absolutely appalling,” he said. “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”
The main “lessons learnt” report is also fiercely critical of the overly bureaucratic nature of the Army. “The overall impression is of headquarters which were large and busy, but which produced relatively little output … Deployed HQs contained too many people, busied themselves with too much nugatory planning and did not run well internally.
“Orders were excessively long … HQ Armoured Division produced a base plan [which] … ran to almost 13 pages. It is very difficult to read the order rapidly to gain any real sense of what was intended.
“In retrospect, this would be similar to inviting (say) the 11th Armoured Division to write a single order which would have it land in Normandy, fight the breakout battles, advance through Belgium, cross the Rhine and link up with the Red Army somewhere in Germany in 1944-45.”
Training was also short-circuited. Normally, when troops move to an environment so different from their normal one — in climate, in terrain, and in culture — it is considered vital for them to do at least some “in-theatre training.” However, the report says that in Iraq, “very little time” was available for this. An option to take up a low-profile deployment with a routine training exercise in the region in early 2003 “was rejected because the additional cost could not be found”. The additional cost involved was just £5.4 million.
In the end, of course, as the report says, the Iraqi army barely fought — “it was described by a senior officer as one of our battle-winners”. Above battalion level, conventional forces “largely evaporated”. British troops’ superb general training, and qualities of initiative and self-reliance — described by the report as “in accordance with the highest traditions of the Services” — saw them through.
“The high quality of personnel was displayed in many areas… Displays of machismo were almost completely absent,” says the report on the war-fighting phase.
The report adds that the highest mortality rate among the “participants” in the war zone was not that of soldiers but journalists. “It now appears that those who report the conflict are more at risk than those who participate,” says the report. But it makes clear that British troops may not always be able to rely on having opponents who run away.
The lessons learnt report is frank about Britain’s failures. “A more capable enemy would probably have punished [our] shortcomings severely,” it says.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/6625692/Iraq-report-Troops-rushed-into-battle-without-armour-or-training.html
“Never again,” says the main “lessons learnt” report, “must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle.” The kit shortages that plagued British troops - from missing body armour to lack of chemical weapon protection - have become a familiar theme of the Iraq operation. But the detail contained in the leaked documents still has the power to surprise.
By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:00PM GMT 21 Nov 2009
Previous
16 Air Assault Brigade, the formation including the Paras, is supposed to be the most rapidly deployable part of the Army, the “tip of the sword”. Its title gives a clue as to how it should be sent into the combat area — by air. But according to the brigade’s post-operation report, 16 Air Assault suffered from “the total absence of even a slice of air flow [military aircraft]”.
So serious was the problem that, for the first time in any of its war deployments, not one of the brigade’s vehicles travelled by plane — and some of its men ended up deploying to battle “by civair” — normal civilian flights — with “tentage, generators” and other equipment “brought in by hand luggage” (presumably checked in at the airport, rather than heaved into the cabin’s overhead lockers).
But the men of 16 Air Assault had it comparatively easy. Some Royal Marines from another elite formation, 3 Commando Brigade, also flew and were not allowed to take anything deemed a dangerous weapon — including pen knives and nail scissors — through airport security. Other things were confiscated, too. For their time in the desert, “some troops were required to deploy with compo [composite] rations,” says the main lessons learnt report. These are usually heated up to be eaten, but the men “were not allowed to take lighters or matches on the aircraft”.
Once the troops arrived in theatre, things were no easier. The report starts out by saying that British and US equipment was “generally modern, highly effective and reliable” — but thanks to the “rushed” and “not well spent” planning process, “critical stores and equipment did not arrive in time”.
At the most basic level there were, for instance, “significant shortages of small arms ammunition in some units as they began operations”. Not surprisingly, this is described as a “significant risk” to the operation and the lives of troops.
One commanding officer, Lt Col M L Dunn of 9 Supply Regiment, Royal Engineers, described how his soldiers, going into action, “only had five rounds of ammunition each, and only enough body armour for those in the front and rear vehicles”.
After months of concealment, as the Government tried to win public support for military action, the planning process had been finally allowed to come into the open at the very end of 2002. Only then could the “urgent operational requirements” (UORs) needed to fight a war, £510 million-worth of them, be actioned and the kit ordered. But by then, only three months before the fighting started, “orders were placed with factories too late for equipment to reach the front line in time”.
Some UORs, such as extra armour for all the Army’s Challenger 2 tanks, did make it by the skin of their teeth – fitting was completed, says the report, the night before the war started. Others, however, did not. “Only about 10 per cent of logistic demands were met on time,” says the report. Only half the required number of light machine guns arrived.
In the past, the military kept stockpiles of equipment to avoid the need for so many UORs. But there had been big “reductions” in these stocks “to achieve cash savings” in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget — a key reason, says the report, for the equipment shortcomings.
Tanks had only six hours of protection against chemical and biological attack. The MoD ordered decontamination systems to protect the Army’s vehicles against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – the central premise of the war, according to the Prime Minister. By the first day of combat, only 10 per cent of them had arrived. How lucky it was that the WMDs turned out to be a myth.
There were “material difficulties in medical supply, both to medical units and across the force”.
“Morphine was not available to scale,” says the report, meaning that some injured soldiers are likely to have suffered unnecessary pain. Mass outbreaks of diarrhoea and vomiting were a problem — “British forces are beginning to lose the standards of field hygiene displayed previously”.
And as is well-known, other key undelivered UORs included body armour and desert boots, whose absence “caused trench foot” in many soldiers, according to the report. These scarcities led to some ugly behaviour by British officers, NCOs and units. “Large-scale theft can become institutionalised, as unit and sub-unit commanders turn a blind eye or even encourage the organised raiding of other units to make good local shortages,” said the report. “There is some anecdotal evidence that this took place. It is one unpleasant consequence of a supply chain that did not function properly, and requires moral principle to overcome.”
Nor was all the equipment effective and reliable. Communications caused difficulties, “some of which were very serious”. There were four main radio systems. “Clansman radio struggled, but coped,” says the report. “Patron was inconsistent, Brent was overloaded and most calls on Ptarmigan were weak and broken.” In some cases, “mobile phones [using the Kuwaiti network] were the only means of communication available to troops in contact [combat]”.
Lt Col John Power, a commander in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, described how Ptarmigan, the main longer-distance radio, “tended to drop out at around noon because of the heat”.
Col Power was particularly scathing about the supply chain. “The in-theatre asset tracking was absolutely appalling,” he said. “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”
The main “lessons learnt” report is also fiercely critical of the overly bureaucratic nature of the Army. “The overall impression is of headquarters which were large and busy, but which produced relatively little output … Deployed HQs contained too many people, busied themselves with too much nugatory planning and did not run well internally.
“Orders were excessively long … HQ Armoured Division produced a base plan [which] … ran to almost 13 pages. It is very difficult to read the order rapidly to gain any real sense of what was intended.
“In retrospect, this would be similar to inviting (say) the 11th Armoured Division to write a single order which would have it land in Normandy, fight the breakout battles, advance through Belgium, cross the Rhine and link up with the Red Army somewhere in Germany in 1944-45.”
Training was also short-circuited. Normally, when troops move to an environment so different from their normal one — in climate, in terrain, and in culture — it is considered vital for them to do at least some “in-theatre training.” However, the report says that in Iraq, “very little time” was available for this. An option to take up a low-profile deployment with a routine training exercise in the region in early 2003 “was rejected because the additional cost could not be found”. The additional cost involved was just £5.4 million.
In the end, of course, as the report says, the Iraqi army barely fought — “it was described by a senior officer as one of our battle-winners”. Above battalion level, conventional forces “largely evaporated”. British troops’ superb general training, and qualities of initiative and self-reliance — described by the report as “in accordance with the highest traditions of the Services” — saw them through.
“The high quality of personnel was displayed in many areas… Displays of machismo were almost completely absent,” says the report on the war-fighting phase.
The report adds that the highest mortality rate among the “participants” in the war zone was not that of soldiers but journalists. “It now appears that those who report the conflict are more at risk than those who participate,” says the report. But it makes clear that British troops may not always be able to rely on having opponents who run away.
The lessons learnt report is frank about Britain’s failures. “A more capable enemy would probably have punished [our] shortcomings severely,” it says.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/6625692/Iraq-report-Troops-rushed-into-battle-without-armour-or-training.html