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spider wrote:

> What we are saying then is that the British Army is still
> equipped to fight a late 20th Century War.
>
> May be our political leaders need to consider this next time
> they step forward to say they are going to fight the Yanks 21st
> Century Wars for them.

The army's top brass certainly need to face the reality that wars in the 21st century will be largely counter-insurgency affairs, as they have been mostly since 1945. The reason the likes of General Dannatt did not want to spend money on mine protected vehicles such as the Mastiff was that they had a new family of armoured vehicles collectively called FRES, Future Rapid Effects System, planned. The FRES programme was going to be a ?15 billion re-equipment of all the army's vehicles, to be a light, airmobile force able to be quickly deployed anywhere in the world. They did not wish to jeopardise this plan by spending money on simple but effective anti-mine vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, it was actually the politicians who forced them to, because the loss of a few squaddies has never really been an issue for the brass. Anyway, FRES has fallen victim to the cuts, it will never happen, and the soldiers who died in unsuitable vehicles did so, not to protect Iraq or Afghanistan, but to protect the viability of a defence project which will now not even happen. Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?

"The FRES programme was going to be a ?15 billion re-equipment of all the army's vehicles, to be a light, airmobile force able to be quickly deployed anywhere in the world."

Was that "to be quickly deployed anywhere in the world" where the Yanks told us to go?

I can't see the yanks 'telling us' to go to the Falklands, if and when it kicks off again but the UK will still send troops down there.
The UK lead the way in helping to end the Sierra Leone crisis.
Fairly sure it was the UK and France who did the donkey work over Libya, with the best supporting actress oscar going to the U.S.

I take your point over the last 3 big'uns, i.e. The gulf war, afghanistan and Iraq. I would say that we weren't exactly alone in jumping up, when the U.S. shouted 'walkies'.

"I can't see the yanks 'telling us' to go to the Falklands".

I can't see them sending any troops to help us either.

Having read about "friendly fire" incidents in the 3 big uns perhaps that's best.

Didn't the UK lose more troops to US "friendly fire" in the first gulf war than to Iraq enemy action?

Not by along way. The most infamous and biggest friendly fire incident, that involved US on UK forces, was the A10 firing on the 2 warriors, killing 9 of our guys.

Another one was a US missile battery, that was defending an airbase, fired on two of our aircraft returning from a mission. The first plane managed to dodge out of the way, unfortunately the 2nd was hit and both occupants killed.

I think that was it. It's still eleven too many, however, we lost around 40 guys to enemy action and a few more to accidents. It wasn't the walk in the park, that a lot of people seem to make out.
Please remember that, at the time, the Iraqi army was one of largest in the world, they were battle hardened from a decade of war with Iran, which we supported them in and in some respects they had far better kit than we did.

We even took some of their captured communications vehicles (Made in the UK!) back with us to use in Germany.

We have our own dodgy history of friendly fire incidents as well, although they tend to be UK on UK.