Not Quite Apocalypse Now

"Afghanistan is not Vietnam - we haven't any helicopters."

(from a cartoon in The Times)

The army goes off to war, the body bags start coming home and questions start being asked.

A bit late now really. If you're going t send your young men and women off to war you really need to think about these things in advance, but there you go - the press needs something to write about.

So where are our helicopters then? The answer is that they don't exist. It must be one of the least enviable jobs in government defence procurement. Everything costs a fortune, a lot of it doesn't work and if you don't buy the right kit people get killed.

A few years ago the military had the job of replacing the venerable old whirly birds that had served through the Cold War: the Lynx, the Wessex, the Sea King Commando and the Puma. New and better helicopters were available, but they all cost a fortune.

What the military wanted was the Apache attack helicopter, the Blackhawk tactical lift helicopter and more of the Chinook heavy lift helicopters. Unfortunately once the budget had been spent on Trident, the Navy's new carriers and what else, the money that was left would only stretch to two of these three.

The army helicopters fight and the Apache gave them their own tactical air force, so they bought them. RAF helicopters carry things and whilst if necessary the infantry can travel in Chinooks, you can't get a Land Rover in a Blackhawk, so they bought more Chinooks. This left the Blackhawk on the shelf, which was a bit of a pity as the army is now in a war where the Blackhawk would be rather useful.

When we invaded Afghanistan in 1878 the army's supply lines consisted mules and Indian 'coolies. At the Battle of Maiwand, which took place in Helmand Province in 1881, the Afghan cavalry picked off so many of the latter that the troops in the front line started to run out of bullets and water. Today the problem is roadside bombs and the army would rather, if it could, bring up everything in Blackhawk's rather than the lumbering, unarmoured Chinooks.

The army has been here before. In Northern Ireland the IRA became so proficient in using culverts to blow up army convoys that eventually everyone and everything in 'bandit country' moved by helicopter. However whilst the IRA never managed to find a way of shooting down helicopters, the Taliban seem to have become quite good at peppering choppers with antitank missiles and similar. Blackhawk's are designed to withstand this sort of attack (although they are not indestructible - hence the film Blackhawk Down) but Chinooks aren't.

The government will no doubt say that they are going to do their bit to plug the 'helicopter gap', but unless they can pull a rabbit (or a Blackhawk) out of a hat they're going to struggle.