Report demands helicopters for Afghanistan
Updated on 17 July 2009
An emphatic parliamentary report is calling for more helicopters to be sent to Afghanistan.
The cross-party Commons Defence Committee claims a shortage of air transport is undermining the protection of British troops serving there.
Its warning - ahead of a special Commons debate on Afghanistan - came as the funeral took place in London of the highest-ranking officer to die since operations in the country began in 2001.
Earlier this month, 15 UK service personnel died in Afghanistan in just 10 days.
However, Gordon Brown is insisting UK troops are "properly equipped" and promised: "We will do whatever is necessary and what is right to equip our armed forces."
But the Prime Minister has side-stepped demands to confirm whether military chiefs asked him for 2,000 additional troops for Afghanistan. He also declined to say how many British helicopters are currently in the country.
In its report, the defence committee said: "Helicopter capability is being seriously undermined by the shortage of helicopters, particularly medium-lift support helicopters, capable of being deployed in support of operations overseas.
"We believe that the size of the fleet is an issue, and are convinced that the lack of helicopters is having adverse consequences for operations today and, in the longer term, will severely impede the ability of the UK armed forces to deploy."
Committee chairman James Arbuthnot said: "It seems to us that operational commanders in the field today are unable to undertake potentially valuable operations because of the lack of helicopters for transportation around the theatre of operations.
"We are also concerned that operational commanders find they have to use ground transport, when helicopter lift would be preferred, both for the outcome and for the protection of our forces."
Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the Commons that the number of helicopters available to commanders in Afghanistan had been increased by 60 per cent since 2006, while capability had grown by 84 per cent.
He told MPs Britain is taking steps to increase numbers further "because it is obvious that helicopters are an important part of the battle plan".
There are understood to be fewer than 30 UK helicopters for the 9,150-strong force in Helmand, compared to around 100 for a similar-sized contingent of US Marines in the area.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: "It is now irrefutable that Labour's £1.4 billion cut to the helicopter budget in 2004, in the middle of two wars, has had an extremely serious impact on the number of helicopters available for operations in Afghanistan, and potentially on future operations."
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