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Libya

I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive remarks. It is inherently true that the use of attack helicopters in contested territory is dangerous, but we are deploying all our assets through NATO and if we were to decide to use attack helicopters it would be through NATO co-ordinated efforts, so the assets of other partner countries would be available to us to help defend them. We have experience of using Apache helicopters in contested territory and we have successful ways of minimising the threat to them, but it is an inherently dangerous business—there is no way of getting around that.