What Does Jeremy Think? by Suzanne Heywood

Author:Suzanne Heywood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-12-31T16:36:30+00:00

By July 2009, Afghanistan was again dominating headlines after Operation Panther’s Claw in mid-June resulted in hundreds of British soldiers being flown into a Taliban stronghold to secure canal and river crossings. Although the military reported that this operation had gone well, it was followed by a surge in British casualties, including a horrific tally of eight deaths during a single day in July.

With the press, and particularly the Sun, vilifying the Prime Minister for sending British troops into the field with the wrong equipment, including vehicles poorly equipped to resist IEDs, Gordon Brown called Jeremy in. ‘I need you to find out what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Why are we losing so many people? Are our troops being sent without the right equipment? And if they are, what can we do about it?’

Jeremy consulted Nick Catsaras, the assistant Foreign and Defence Affairs private secretary, and Matt Cavanagh. They both said they were worried that there wasn’t enough of the right equipment in the field – though they also pointed out that it was the military who decided what kit to send with the troops, and who were keen to meet requests from NATO or the US for further reinforcements.

This may have been true, but it didn’t help the Prime Minister or change the facts of bereaved families or soldiers sent home with life-changing injuries. So Jeremy called in the relevant officials from the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury and the Foreign Office, armed himself with a strong, black coffee and started asking questions.

‘Can we get more helicopters?’

‘We’ve asked Westland, but it will take months.’

‘Why will it take months? Do I need to call the CEO of Westland?’

‘That’s our usual procurement timeline.’

‘If we can fix that, do we have enough pilots?’

‘No.’

‘How do we get more pilots? Can we shorten their training? Or the time they take off between tours? How do these timings benchmark against what the French do? Or the Israelis? I want numbers and detail, not just “this is how we do it”.’

Matt and Nick had been right. British troops had been sent to Afghanistan geared up to fight a conventional war rather than an insurgency. The department had also sold the previous generation of IED-resistant armoured vehicles after the Balkans and their orders for new equipment had been too limited and were taking too long to be delivered.

The good news, however, was that the correct orders were by that stage mainly in place. The bad news was that, even after the kit’s arrival, it would take a long time to get it out into the field. For vehicles, this usually took two years; for helicopters, four or more. This was frustrating, but what really puzzled Jeremy was why the Ministry of Defence couldn’t make better use of the equipment it already had in service.

‘Why,’ he asked the department, ‘does a quarter of the kit have to be in training, a quarter in light maintenance and a quarter in deep maintenance? Is the hold-up deep maintenance or light

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