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Defence in the World

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I was once given a briefing at the MOD when I argued with a young gentleman about the Vector Pinzgauers. I said to him that bearing in mind both that the driver was right over the wheel and also the plain, ordinary physics of how bombs explode and where deflections go, it would be a death-trap, and it has proved to be so. I have stated the following many times in this House, and I will state it again on later occasions, because in politics we sometimes have to keep on repeating and repeating before finally, it is to be hoped, someone takes up the point being made: the design of vehicles is vital to saving the lives of the people in them. Unless that point is grasped within the MOD, we are whistling in the wind. The Snatch Land Rover has now been upgraded to the Vixen and more than 200 Huskys have been procured at a cost of just under £600,000 each. They will prove to be another failure, replacing an earlier failure. The Americans rejected this vehicle as it sustained a hull breach on the mine resistant ambush protected—MRAP—level 1 standard test. The 401 Panther command and liaison vehicles, which cost a cool £413,000 each, have taken longer than the duration of world war two to bring into service, with constant upgrades. They are in every way an expensive and inferior vehicle and were originally capable of NATO standard mine protection STANAG 4569 level 2a, which roughly translated means that they have protection against 6 kg of explosive, but they will be put into operation where 7.5 kg Russian mines are prevalent. Will the Minister please confirm in his winding-up speech whether the latest £20 million upgrade has taken protection up to level 3a and 3b, and if he cannot do that today, will he please drop me a note? When the procurement of the Jackal—or M-WMIK, as it was initially known—was announced, it was agreed that it would be good for special forces. Too much emphasis, however, was placed on the David Stirling, world war two concept when equipment acted as the predator, whereas the Jackal, by being used for general duties, has now become the prey. I remember a discussion on Radio 1 in which a young Territorial Army private infantry soldier who had just returned from Iraq took on a sergeant who was extolling the Jackal's brilliance by explaining the faults with the vehicle. What listeners were not aware of was that the TA private soldier was in civilian life an engineer working in force deflection, and in the TA he was a "pioneer" dealing with explosives. The 200 Jackals in service, and a further 110 Jackal 2s, have again highlighted the failed concept of bolting on armour, as proved by the American Humvee vehicle. Can the Minister confirm how many Jackals have been lost, because some reports suggest the number is as high as 20 per cent. of those deployed in Afghanistan? The whole protected vehicle fleet is, in General Dannatt's word, unbalanced, because if we add to the vehicles that I have previously listed the Coyote, Viking, Tellar and Warthog, then compared with the 306 Mastiffs, 157 Ridgebacks, 90 Wolfhounds and 24 Bushmasters, blast-absorption vehicles with added armour vastly outnumber blast-deflection vehicles which have their defence built into the original design of the distinctive V-shaped hull.