A story tucked away in today’s Sun shows just how short of helicopters our force in Afghanistan is:
“BRITISH troops in Afghanistan have only a quarter of the Chinook helicopters required under the MoD’s rules of war, the Tories claimed last night.
A force like the one deployed in Helmand should have at least 47 of the twin-engined choppers, according to the Strategic Defence Review drawn up in 1998.
Instead, there are the equivalent of only 12 – insufficient to transport the 9,000 soldiers and their supplies.” But this story poses questions to the Tories too. By the calculation they’re using, there should be 47 Chinooks—or equivalent—in Afghanistan. But the Royal Air Force only possesses 40 of them, of which only 18 are in working order.
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