Col Thorneloe threads

[Stephen]

In the journalist's account I find it very disturbing the Taliban were able to plant multiple bombs on a supply route w/in 2 miles of a British base and the British had no clue they were there.(Else either a recovery vehicle would have been w/the convoy,or a reaction team would have been on standby.) Suggets some very ugly implications. And evokes British forting up in Basra.
I would suggest rather than more helos,a s**t-load of armed UAVs to keep the vital supply arteries under continual surveillance is needed. After all,if a small group of men stops on a road and starts digging,chances are they are not looking for buried treasure!

Peter,
Even should Britain withdraw all her troops overnight from Afghanistan the issue of how to equip the Army is not going to disappear. Any military operations in 3rd World countries will in all probability encounter the same sort of IEDs found in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Robert of Ottawa]

Hey, the Viking is amphibious! That's just the trick for Afghanistan.

[jim greenhalf]

When soldiers are killed a solemn hush descends momentarily. This is only right, only respectful, one says. But is it?

Personally, I would prefer a little more fuss to be made about looking after the soliders in Afghanistan, who are there because the Taleban - whom the Americans mistakenly thought they had crushed in battle earlier in the decade - returned with different tactics.

To dissent from indulging in the emotionalism stirred up when dead soldiers are returned home in red, white and blue-draped coffins is to invite accusations of callousness or indifference.

My friend Richard North is neither callous nor indifferent. He is bloody angry - on behalf of the families of soldiers killed and maimed unnecessarily and on behalf of those still serving in Afghanistan. In an age of press and marketing spin, he subjects received news to painstaking analysis. His current blog on the comparative safety of vehicles is an example.

He has persistently and consistently pursued this subject for the last four years or more, at times when public attention, including my own, was elsewhere. The death of a senior British commander has revved up the issue. I find this somewhat disgraceful. More than 40 soldiers have been killed in crap vehicles, but it takes the death of an officer to startle the media into asking the questions that Richard has been asking at less dramatic times.

[michael]

"what is getting our troops killed unnecessarily is having the wrong equipment, specifically, the wrong vehicles"

Surely, Peter's point is that if they weren't there it wouldn't matter what equipment they had.

[RAENORTH]

"what is getting our troops killed unnecessarily is having the wrong equipment, specifically, the wrong vehicles"

Surely, Peter's point is that if they weren't there it wouldn't matter what equipment they had.

My point is, they are there and are going to remain for the forseeable future. And if they weren't there, they would be somewhere else, or standing by in order to go somewhere else, in which case equipment still matters. Unless you think Trooping the Colours, to support the tourism industry is the only role for the British Army?

[michael]

"And if they weren't there, they would be somewhere else, or standing by in order to go somewhere else"

But should they be? I think the government just loves these arguments about vehicles and so on. Anything to avoid a serious discussion as to what, exactly, we are doing in Afghanistan.

[RAENORTH]

"And if they weren't there, they would be somewhere else, or standing by in order to go somewhere else"

But should they be? I think the government just loves these arguments about vehicles and so on. Anything to avoid a serious discussion as to what, exactly, we are doing in Afghanistan.

We're 'ere becos we're 'ere. We're 'ere ... get used to it.

[michael]

And then one day they weren't there any more - and no one could remember why they had been there.

[Ivan The Yid From Bradfor]

Lee Hannaford said ' The Welsh guards have now lost their CO, one of the Coy Commanders and a platoon commander. '

Their have not been any reports of multiple IED blasts - in other words each incident has been a single IED. Three IED's - three officer fatalities. Sounds like the Welsh Guards always have the 'senior' officer riding in the 'point' vehicle. Looks pretty when performing ceremonial events like 'Trooping The Colour' but having the senior officer travelling at 'point' is pretty idiotic in the real world. Also means that if the point vehicle is hit and the officer is killed who takes over sorting out the situation. Simple practical problems start to occur to whatever junior officer or senior NCO further back in the convoy starts to realise that they are now in charge. Do they have the radio frequency for the higher command radio net to hand or was only the point vehicle tuned in to the higher net ? All sorts of operational hassle which can be avoided by senior officers not riding in point vehicles.

Of course if SOP's were amended to order officers 'not to ride in point vehicles' it would leak out to the Press and give the Army massive negative publicity.

[RAENORTH]

Lee Hannaford said ' The Welsh guards have now lost their CO, one of the Coy Commanders and a platoon commander. '

Their have not been any reports of multiple IED blasts - in other words each incident has been a single IED. Three IED's - three officer fatalities. Sounds like the Welsh Guards always have the 'senior' officer riding in the 'point' vehicle. Looks pretty when performing ceremonial events like 'Trooping The Colour' but having the senior officer travelling at 'point' is pretty idiotic in the real world. Also means that if the point vehicle is hit and the officer is killed who takes over sorting out the situation. Simple practical problems start to occur to whatever junior officer or senior NCO further back in the convoy starts to realise that they are now in charge. Do they have the radio frequency for the higher command radio net to hand or was only the point vehicle tuned in to the higher net ? All sorts of operational hassle which can be avoided by senior officers not riding in point vehicles.

Of course if SOP's were amended to order officers 'not to ride in point vehicles' it would leak out to the Press and give the Army massive negative publicity.

In the last two cases, the vehicles were not up front ... which suggests they may have been deliberately targeted. And Thoreloe was a passenger, hitiching a lift - he was not the convoy commander.

[gareth]

The Daily Mail have suggested the vehicle was targetted.

Afghan civilians using mobile phones acted as lookouts for the Taliban before the convoy led by the most senior British officer to be killed in Afghanistan was attacked by a roadside bomb.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and 18-year-old Trooper Joshua Hammond died when their Viking armoured vehicle was blown up by the device last Wednesday during a major offensive in Helmand province.

I'm not quite sure how it's meant to happen. The article goes on to say the civilians left the area before the attack. I think what they are suggesting is the Taleban got word that a convoy was on the move and where it was going which allowed them to arm the device in time for the convoy to hit it. Does this mean the Taleban have many devices already in position and arm them only when neccessary?(As opposed to planting the device and leaving it armed to catch the next vehicle over it.)


EDIT: Just read this Mirror article.

Bungles meant bombproof vehicles didn't reach Afghanistan before death of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe.

An extra 50 super-safe bombproof vehicles had been due to arrive in Afghanistan three weeks before the death of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe.

But bungles in re-fitting the life-saving Mastiffs - in which no soldier has yet been killed - means they are still in Britain.

Both Lt Col Thorneloe, 39, and Trooper Joshua Hammond were killed when their Viking was struck by a Taliban roadside bomb. The vehicle is not as well armoured as a Mastiff and 20 soldiers have so far died in Afghanistan while travelling in them.

...

Yesterday it also emerged that during the operation in which the two soldiers died, troops found more than 100 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) as they stormed into territory previously held by the Taliban.

Military expert Richard Norton said both soldiers would have been far safer in a Mastiff. He added: "No one yet has been killed in a Mastiff, even though it's covering the same territory as the other vehicles in theatre and taking many hits."

[gareth]

Rupert should not have died for this
If we can’t develop a coherent Afghanistan strategy, we should not be risking our soldiers’ lives

A whole generation of Rupert Thorneloes, our bright and experienced middle-rank officers, is deeply uneasy. A recent British Army Review article uses the common analogy of mowing the lawn, going out time and time again to do much the same thing. It lambasts gobbledegook such as “strategy of delivering civil effect”, and laments the stultifying prevalence of ’elf ’n’ safety”: a sign warns its author to Take Extra Care When Using Stairways. An article by a recently retired major in June’s Journal of the Royal United Services Institute observes that the US Army has undergone a radical transformation as a result of early failures in Iraq, and the British Army has not.

It is tempting for some senior officers to lay the Army’s misfortunes at the door of our crippled Government, but the problem is more complex. Although the Army had considerable experience of counterinsurgency (and went on at unwise length about the fact), there is little sign that it applied its own doctrine in Iraq. There was palpable tension between the formal US-led chain of command from Baghdad and input from our own Joint Headquarters at Northwood.

[gareth]

I have a couple of questions that I wonder if anyone here could answer.

1. Was the Viking Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond were killed in one of the upgraded ones? It should have been. At the hearing into the death of Corporal Damian Mulvihill in January of this year, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Teare gave evidence that the 50 Vikings in Afghanistan were to be up-armoured with the programme due to be completed by April. If it was an upgraded Viking it does not bode well for the Warthog.

2. The Viking was part of a resupply convoy. Would heavier vehicles than the Viking be involved in that? Here are some pictures on the MOD's website of a resupply convoy in transit. The lorries involved are surely heavier than Vikings. If there were similar lorries involved in the convoy that resulted in Thorneloe's and Hammond's deaths the case for using Vikings because the bridges can't take heavier vehicles is a load of rubbish.

[RAENORTH]

I have a couple of questions that I wonder if anyone here could answer.

1. Was the Viking Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond were killed in one of the upgraded ones? It should have been. At the hearing into the death of Corporal Damian Mulvihill in January of this year, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Teare gave evidence that the 50 Vikings in Afghanistan were to be up-armoured with the programme due to be completed by April. If it was an upgraded Viking it does not bode well for the Warthog.

2. The Viking was part of a resupply convoy. Would heavier vehicles than the Viking be involved in that? Here are some pictures on the MOD's website of a resupply convoy in transit. The lorries involved are surely heavier than Vikings. If there were similar lorries involved in the convoy that resulted in Thorneloe's and Hammond's deaths the case for using Vikings because the bridges can't take heavier vehicles is a load of rubbish.

I believe it was an upgraded Viking. As for the supply convoy, the pictures show a convoy out in the desert. Thorneloe's convoy was in the green zone, with narrow roads and narrow, weak bridges. The Vikings themselves were being used as the logistic vehicles, rather than as escorts for larger vehicles.

[gareth]

Thanks Richard.

The Mastiffs and recovery vehicles made it to the destroyed Viking. Danish forces are operating Leopard tanks in that region as well. (though they did not cross a canal)