Posted on 08/01/2002 2:59:37 PM PDT by knighthawk
LONDON (AP) — British troops on desert exercises were plagued by melting boots, guns that jammed and radios that frequently went on the blink, an auditors' report said Thursday — failings that raise questions about Britain's role in any future military attack on Iraq.
While the report praised British forces' overall performance during last year's Operation Saif Sareea II in Oman, critics fear Britain's proud military is too poorly equipped to serve alongside its U.S. allies.
``At the moment, on the ground as far as infantry is concerned, we have a rifle which is deficient and a communications system which is deficient. These are the two basic infantry tools. That's of great concern,'' said Mike Yardley, a defense expert and former British army officer.
The National Audit Office report said Britain's helicopters, guns and heavy-lifting vehicles all struggled in the heat and dust of Oman, while standard-issue boots fell apart or even melted in the sun.
Auditors said Britain's Challenger 2 tanks lasted just four hours before their air filters became clogged by the fine desert dust. Almost half the tanks had broken down by the end of the exercise.
The SA80 rifle — already widely criticized as unreliable — was prone to jamming in the sand. Plastic air filters on the AS90 artillery melted in the heat, while wear and tear on parts meant almost half the helicopter fleet was out of service at any given time.
Some equipment, such as the decades-old Clansman radio, was outdated and ``completely inadequate'' for desert conditions, the auditors said. Tank crews sometimes had to halt maneuvers to communicate with shouts and hand signals when radios failed.
``Stopping a brigade of tanks and getting them into a huddle is not the best way to operate,'' said David Clarke, one of the audit team.
Specialist personnel such as medics were also in short supply during the exercise, the auditors said.
The report said some of the same equipment problems had been noted during the Gulf War in 1991. ``Some lessons identified during previous operations were relearnt,'' it said.
Defense analyst Francis Tusa said the failings had implications for Britain's participation in any U.S.-led invasion of Iraq now.
``The tanks, the armored personnel carriers, artillery systems, the helicopters would all be the same,'' he told Sky News television. ``One of the reasons the exercise was held in Oman was to ensure British forces are ready to operate in desert conditions.''
Some 23,000 British personnel took part in Saif Sareea (Swift Sword), a joint exercise with the Royal Omani Armed Forces staged last September and October. It was designed to test the ability of the military's rapid-reaction forces to mount major expeditionary operations overseas.
On that level, auditors said, it was a success. The report said the exercise ``demonstrated that the United Kingdom is capable of mounting a balanced, coherent force over a long distance. Among the United Kingdom's allies, only the United States has shown it could undertake a deployment of similar size.''
But it is the United States against which Britain will have to measure itself if Prime Minister Tony Blair — President Bush's strongest ally — commits British troops to a future U.S.-led bid to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
On Wednesday, the House of Commons Defense Committee said European countries needed to increase military spending if their troops were to close the ``capability gap'' with the United States.
Britain spends around 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, compared with the United States' 3.4 percent. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the government was committed to a $5.5 billion increase in defense spending over the next three years.
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