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Defence Policy

I shall come on to equipment very shortly in my speech. Nothing can eliminate completely the dangers of the battlefield. The nature of the mission in Afghanistan—a counter-insurgency campaign among the people—means that our forces need to get out of the Chinooks and the Mastiffs and engage with people. As long as they are providing security for the people of Helmand in the face of an insurgency they will be in harm's way, and we have to expect further casualties. Because of our successes against them, the Taliban-led insurgents are relying heavily on attacks using improvised explosive devices. These are responsible for the majority of UK casualties and are taking a heavy toll on civilians as well. Tackling this threat is our priority and we are doing all that we can to minimise the risks to our forces while they do the job that they need to do. It is always a challenge to balance the need to send new kit to the frontline as soon as possible with providing the best possible equipment for training purposes. We have deployed more specialist counter-IED troops to find and defuse mines and to identify and target the networks that lay them. We are continuing to invest in our intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance capabilities to provide vital real-time intelligence to track and target bomb makers. In addition to the surveillance capability in theatre from Sea King and airborne stand-off radar, we will increase flying hours in our unmanned aerial vehicle fleet by 33 per cent. for Hermes and 50 per cent. for Desert Hawk by the end of this year, and by 80 per cent. for Reaper next year. We have approved over £3.2 billion of urgent operational requirements specifically for Afghanistan, some 70 per cent. of which has been for force protection. We will ensure that support systems are robust, that spares are available in theatre when they are needed and that sufficient equipment will be in place to conduct pre-deployment training. On vehicles, in the past three years, we have approved £1.2 billion for new vehicles for Afghanistan. Over the past 12 months alone, we have procured 500 protected mobility vehicles and several hundred more are on contract. For the new Mastiff 2 and Ridgback, an advance stock of spares will be issued to theatre and stocks will continue to be monitored to support the current tempo of operations. Compared with November 2006, by May next year, we will have doubled the number of battlefield helicopters and increased the flying hours by 130 per cent. That will include the deployment of the Merlin fleet to Afghanistan for the first time after its service in Iraq.