The Armoured Dogs of War

The Armoured Dogs of WarBritish responses to five years of military fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and future opportunities for military suppliers

JAMES HASIKVersion 1.0 – 4 March 2007

British fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq: a case study

British forces have suffered 177 fatalities in five years of fighting. Studying the causes of the losses points to

opportunities by which military planners and arms industry strategists can improve performance in the next war.

British troops have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for just over five years, and in this time, have suffered 177 fatalities. The Ministry of Defense has three sound reasons for caring about the rate and overall size of the loss:

✦ Care of the troops. Government ministers care about their soldiers, but even if this were not enough, fatalities are expensive. Every lost soldier entails a real expense to the government in death benefits, recruiting costs, and training costs for replacements.

✦ Continuance of the war. While the losses have not terminated either campaign, they have rallied some opposition to the war effort in Britain, and enough opposition could eventually interfere with Her Majesty’s Government’s pursuit of its political objectives.

✦ Operational freedom. If British troops and their commanders can be more confident of their security, they can act more boldly in pursuing the enemy. The alacrity of British forces in pursuit of Sadrist militiamen in Basra and Maysan Provinces in Iraq has been debated recently, but the option for more energy in the pursuit of the enemy is rarely harmful.

Defense ministries and their suppliers around the world might consider the British experience in Afghanistan and Iraq as they

prepare for campaigns that they might consider undertaking or supporting in the next decade or so. British fatalities are particularly useful to study for three reasons:

✦ Completeness of information. The Ministry of Defence maintains excellent websites providing rather complete details of the causes of and circumstances around each fatality that British forces have suffered. Even where details have been omitted for a reason of operational security (e.g., the dead soldier’s membership in the Special Air Service Regiment), the British media have been particularly adept at uncovering the details. While US forces have suffered many more fatalities, the US military services have varied in the details they have provided. The US Army has deliberately (and more successfully) obfuscated the circumstances of some fatalities to enhance security, and the US Marine Corps never provides any cause of death more specific than “as a result of enemy action.”

✦ Comparative operating environments. British forces have been at war in two rather different countries for several years, and the differences in the nature of the fighting provides opportunities to compare threats.

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JAMES HASIK The Armoured Dogs of War: British responses to fatalities in Iraq • March 2007 page 2

✦ World (non-super) power status. Britain is a world power, but not a superpower. The two campaigns in which British troops are fighting are challenging tactically and logistically, and indeed, would be a challenging assignment for the armed forces of almost any other country in the world. The British forces waging these campaigns are well-equipped, but they have significantly greater resource constraints than American forces.

Studying British problems thus can provide lessons to military planners in the US and elsewhere, and to armaments industry strategists interested in serving global markets.

As shown in the table on the preceding page, British fatalities over the past five years can be grouped into seven categories:

✦ Own goals is possibly a flippant term for non-hostile fatalities, but the moniker defines the problem. These are fatalities in which British forces or their own equipment were the cause of the death in question. The group includes aircraft accidents, traffic accidents, a single maintenance accident, accidental weapons discharges, fratricides, suicides, and a single homicide committed by a British solider against another.

✦ Hostile gunshots are the next leading problem. Almost all of these fatalities have been suffered on foot, but a few rounds have penetrated Land Rovers or killed top sentries on armored vehicles.

✦ Bombs (so-called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs) and land mines have been the next leading killer, particularly in Iraq, where building better devices seems to have become a sport amongst the insurgents.

✦ Two losses of British aircraft to hostile ground fire contributed over eight percent of all operational military fatalities in the theater in the past five years.

✦ Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) have been a significant problem in Afghanistan, though seemingly far less a problem

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British fatalities in Iraq, by cause,March 2003 through March 2007

cause Afgh. Iraq total

Total fatalities 50 127 177

Own goals (accidents, fratricides, etc.) 22 45 67

Hostile gunshots 13 30 43

Bombs (mines, IEDs, etc.) 6 33 39

Hostile anti-aircraft (missile and gun) fire 0 15 15

Hostile rocket-propelled grenades 9 0 9

Hostile cannon, mortar, and AT missile fire 0 1 1

Complex attacks 0 3 3

in Iraq. This is notable, given the fuss that has been made over the threat from RPGs, and the efforts that have gone into devising defenses against them.

✦ Cannons, mortars, and anti-tank missiles have contributed just a handful of fatalities. This is probably not surprising, since roadside bombs, Kalashnikovs, and RPGs are the favored weapons of insurgents.

✦ Complex attacks are those in which the enemy coordinated the fire of multiple categories of weapons against a single target. The analysis here assumes that RPGs and small arms can be lumped into a single category of infantry weapons. This approach looks for losses in which a bomb attack was followed with mortar fire, or in which an anti-tank missile or mine was used to stop an armored vehicle so that automatic weapons fire could be directed at whomever popped the hatches to shoot it out.

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Own Goals

Aircraft crashes and traffic accidents have caused almost as many deaths (44) amongst British troops in Afghanistan

and Iraq as anti-aircraft fire and roadside bombs (49).

Own goals (if one can include the homicide) have accounted for 45% of all British fatalities in Afghanistan and almost 36% in Iraq The fatalities in this category can be separated into five groups:

Non-hostile British fatailities in Afghanistan and Iraq, by cause, March 2003 through March 2007


Own goals 22 45 67

Aircraft crashes 14 15 29

Ground vehicle crashes 3 12 15

Weapons accidents 0 5 5

Other accidents 1 2 3

Suicides fratricides, homicides 4 11 15

Aircraft crashes have been by far the leading contributor. Almost half of these, and more than half of all non-hostile fatalities in Afghanistan, were suffered in a single incident:

✦ Fourteen dead in the loss of a Nimrod MR2 of 120 Squadron near Kandahar on 2 September 2006. According to the conclusion of the subsequent RAF board of inquiry, the aircraft came down after a massive internal explosion caused by a combination of a fuel line leak and an electrical fault.

Three helicopter crashes comprise the other incidents:

✦ Eight dead in the crash of a USMC CH-46 Sea Knight on 21 March 2003. Since neither the aircraft nor its crew were British, not much can be said about remedial actions.

✦ Six dead (all Royal Navy flight lieutenants) in a collision between two Sea Kings of 849 Squadron the very next day

✦ One dead in the crash of a Puma of 33 Squadron at Basra International Airport on 19 March 2004

It is notable that ground vehicle crashes have accounted for nearly one-tenth of all fatalities of British forces in Iraq. The fatalities do not appear clustered in time. At least, this is true if the deaths of two SAS men in Baghdad in the early morning of New Years’ Day, 2004, are considered an anomaly. Only three traffic fatalities have occurred amongst British troops in

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Afghanistan in the past five years, though this is probably expected, since Afghanistan is a considerably less urbanized country than Iraq.

Of the suicides, accidental gunshots, and other unspecified accidents, some details have been published, but the publicly available details do not seem to point to an overarching problem that is easily addressed.

Bombs

Roadside bombs and landmines have vexed British troops almost as much as they have their American allies.

Bomb attacks are another matter: the objects of the assaults have generally been identified in either the official casualty reports or subsequent newspaper articles. Land Rovers (as has been widely reported in the British press) have taken the brunt of the attacks, as indicated in the table on the next page.

Of the 22 killed in bomb attacks on Land Rovers, 13 were from infantry regiments, 5 from cavalry regiments, 2 from the Royal Artillery, and 1 from the intelligence corps. The artillerists were from 12 Regiment, Royal Artillery, which had largely been operating in the infantry role in Iraq. The Warrior fighting vehicles in question belonged to the Black Watch, the Light

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A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter in better times (at the Royal International Air Tattoo in July 2005).

Photograph courtesy of Adrian Pingstone.———————————————————

Infantry, and the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. The relative success of the insurgents against them parallels that against the Americans’ Bradley fighting vehicles. The single Rigid Raiding Craft in question was attacked by a bomb hung from a bridge on the Shatt al Arab; the craft and some of its crew came from 539 Assault Squadron of the Royal Marines.

British fatalities due to bomb attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, by vehicle, March 2003 through March 2007


Bombs 6 33 39

in Land Rovers 2 20 22

in Warrior fighting vehicles 0 5 5

in Rigid Raiding Craft 0 4 4

on foot 4 3 7

in an ambulance 0 1 1

The loss of 22 soldiers in Land Rovers to mines and roadside bombs has caught the attention of the Ministry of Defence. As I will note later, the Land Rovers are being replaced immediately, if in part, by Bulldog and Mastiff armored troop carriers, and later and more fully by Panther Command and Liaison Vehicles (PCLVs).

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A rather large IED found by the Iraqi Police in Baghdad in November 2005. Photograph courtesy of the US Army.

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Small arms

Hostile gunshots have killed about a quarter of all the British troops lost in the past five years.

Hostile gunshots have accounted for 27% of fatalities in Afghanistan, and 23% of all fatalities in Iraq. All of the fatal enemy gunshots in Afghanistan were suffered by men on foot, as have been two-thirds of those suffered in Iraq.

The three military policemen killed in August 2003 in an unmarked SUV (Major Matthew Titchener, Company Sergeant Major Colin Wall, and Corporal Dewi Pritchard) were run off the road by militiamen firing automatic weapons and hurling grenades. Since the primary weapon used in the attack seems to have been an assault rifles, I have coded the fatalities in question as primarily the result of gunshots.

The three soldiers killed by gunshots in Warriors were hit by sniper fire as they rode part way out of the top hatches. This has been a considerable problem for American troops in Iraq, at least until the wider introduction of remote weapon stations for armored vehicles. Why more British troops have not been killed in this fashion by snipers is not completely clear, though the most recent in question is the last in the database, as of this update (Private Jonathon Wysoczan of the Staffordshire Regiment, killed in Basra on 4 March 2007).

As I will describe later, the problem is considerable, but it is also part and parcel of fighting insurgents.

British fatalities due to hostile gunshots in Iraq, by vehicle, March 2003 through March 2007

cause Afgh. Iraq Total

Hostile gunshots 13 30 43

on foot 13 20 33

in a Land Rover 0 4 4

in an unmarked sport utility vehicle 0 3 3

in a Warrior Fighting Vehicle 0 3 3

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Anti-aircraft fire

Two shots have accounted for over 10% of British fatalities in the two campaigns combined.

The next category comprises two losses of aircraft to hostile fire from the ground, as indicated in the table at right.

Not counted here is a fratricidal loss of a Tornado fighter jet of IX Squadron RAF, and its two crewmen, on 23 March 2003, to a Patriot missile fired by the US Army. While this incident was listed earlier with the other fratricides, its mention here highlights the difficulty in avoiding anti-aircraft weapons like the Patriot. An F-18 Hornet jet of then US Navy fell to another missile of the same brigade that same month.

While it is difficult to determine exactly what weapon brought down the Sea King and the Hercules, it is clear that just two weapons (whether missiles or guns) have accounted for over ten percent of all British fatalities in Iraq so far.

Note that no British aircraft have been lost to hostile fire in Afghanistan. While Mujahideen Stinger missiles (supplied by the US) were effective against Soviet aircraft in the 1980s, it is not

thought that many serviceable rounds remain at large from that time frame.*

British fatalities from anti-aircraft missiles over Iraq, by incident, March 2003 through March 2007

cause fatalities

Anti-aircraft fire (missiles and guns) 15

Ground fire (classified source) vs. Hercules transport, 47 Squadron (30 January 2005)

10

Insurgent’s shoulder-fired weapon vs. Lynx helicopter, 847 Squadron (6 May 2006)

5

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* Examination of Soviet combat records has indicated that the appearance of Stinger missiles in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s did not greatly increase Soviet aircraft losses. Rather, they immediately lead the Soviet 40th Army to severely restrict daylight flying at low altitudes, which itself had an adverse affect on the war effort. See the editors’ note on page 222 in Valentin Runov, The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost, translated by Lester Grau & Michael Gress, The Univer-sity Press of Kansas, 2002.

Rocket-propelled grenades

RPGs have become a significant killer of British troops, but only of late and only in Afghanistan.

RPGs, while seemingly unthreatening in Iraq, have accounted for almost one-fifth of British fatalities in Afghanistan. All of these fatalities have been suffered in Helmand Province since June 2006 (when British and Canadian forces began significant offensives against the Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar).

British fatalities due to RPGs in Afghanistan and Iraq, by vehicle, March 2003 through March 2007

cause Afgh. Iraq Total

All losses to RPG fire 9 0 9

in a CVR(T) 3 0 3

in a Land Rover 2 0 2

on foot 2 0 2

pending 2 0 2

Three of these fatalities were suffered when a Taliban grenadier destroyed a Scorpion CVR(T) light tank in August 2006. Another

two were killed in a Land Rover, which admittedly provides rather little protection against RPGs. Two more soldiers died when RPGs were used against the field fortification that they were defending—this tactic is reasonably common, having been used by Hezbollah fighters against Israeli positions in the 2006 Lebanon campaign, and by US Army airmobile troops in their attack on Saddam Hussein’s sons in August 2003.

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Canadian soldier fires an RPG back at Taliban fighters during the first Battle of Panjwaii on 18 June 2006. Image by Scott Kesterson.

Addressing the causes of fatalities

Three courses of actions by the Ministry of Defence are already addressing the causes of almost half of the fatalities

suffered by British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

By combining fatalities from related causes, we can theorize that almost half of British fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years could potentially have been avoided by three sets of actions:

Remedial actions for addressing British fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq suffered over the past five years

Remedial action fatalities

Retrofitting better fuel safety systems in fixed- and rotary-wing transport aircraft

24

Fitting better collision avoidance and defensive aids to rotary wing aircraft

11

Replacing Land Rovers with more bullet-, blast-, and crash-resistant vehicles

28

total 63

Note that I say potentially. This does not mean, by any means, that all 63 fatalities could have been avoided. The insurgents in Afghanistan Iraq are rather more capable than that, and no amount of bullet-(or blast-) proofing can account for all contingencies. Rather, it merely points the way to three fertile areas for developing and marketing solutions for lowering fatalities in combat, at least according to recent British experience in Iraq:

Retrofitting better fuel safety systems in fixed- and rotary-wing transport aircraft.

Two aircraft and 24 men have been lost after fuel vapor explosions, whether caused by internal faults or enemy action:

✦ Fourteen dead in the loss of a Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft of 120 Squadron near Kandahar on 2 September 2006.

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✦ Ten dead in the loss of a Hercules transport aircraft of 47 Squadron in central Iraq on 30 January 2005

The loss of the Nimrod was covered earlier. In late February 2007, the RAF grounded its entire Nimrod fleet after a dent was found in a fuel line during a routine maintenance check. Safeguarding the Nimrods is of some strategic importance, as the RAF has a fleet of only 15 remaining.

While the details are classified, the Hercules crashed after taking fire, while flying at low altitude, from either a shoulder-fired missile or a minor caliber cannon burst. The right wing tank exploded after the hit, and the aircraft almost immediately plunged into the ground. Since then, the RAF has made plans to retrofit all 44 of its remaining Hercules aircraft with explosion-suppressing foam in the fuel tanks by the end of this year.

Fitting better collision avoidance and defensive aids to rotary wing aircraft.

The Lynx helicopter lost over Basra from 847 Naval Air Squadron is known to have carried an infrared jammer, chaff, flares, a radar warning receiver, and a laser warning receiver. That said, it was not the best defensive aids suite available to British aircraft today. Selex’s well-regarded HIDAS (Helicopter Defensive Aid System) has been selected for the 70 Future Lynx helicopters that the British Army (40) and the Royal Navy (30) are planning to receive from Agustawestland starting in 2011. The HIDAS has already been installed on the British Army’s WAH-64 Apaches, the RAF’s EH101 Mark 3 Merlins, and the Royal Navy’s Sea King Mark 4 support helicopters. While the details are not clear, each HIDAS installation will cost several hundred thousand pounds.

However, it is only strongly suspected that the aircraft was brought down by a missile—it was flying so low that a good shot from a rocket propelled grenade or even a machinegun may have done the trick. Against such basic threats to low-flying aircraft, there are no overwhelming material solutions.

As with the Lynx that was lost over Basra, there is only so much that can be done against minor caliber cannons at low altitude. Fortunately, the Ministry seems to be doing much of what can be done.

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A Nimrod MR2 (XV254) taxis for takeoff at the Royal International Air Tattoo in Fairford in July 2006. Photograph by Adrian Pingstone

Replacing Land Rovers with more bullet-, blast-, and crash-resistant vehicles.

Armoring the troops is an appropriately pressing priority for the Ministry of Defense. Under new management—specifically, Lord Drayson, the rather energetic new procurement minister—the ministry recently contracted for the remanufacturing of 100 up-armored FV430 Bulldog troop carriers from BAE Systems, and

the new production of 100 blast-resistant Mastiff Protected Patrol Vehicles (PPVs) from Force Protection Industries.The PPV is a version of the 6x6 Cougar troop carrier already in service with the US Army and Marine Corps.

That said, the ministry considers these armored dogs of war an interim step in advance of the Army’s pending Future Rapid Effects System (FRES). FRES’s development had suffered from slow-going akin to that of the US Army’s Future Combat System (FCS). To wit, the Defence Committee of the House of Commons recently criticized the Ministry of Defence for what it called years of indecision in first the Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment (TRACER) program, then the Multi Role Armoured Vehicle (MRAV) program, and now the FRES:

Nine years on from the Strategic Defence Review, the Army's re-quirement for a medium-weight vehicle remains unmet. Despite having spent £188 million on the TRACER and MRAV programmes and at least £120 million so far on FRES, the solution is nothing more tangible than a concept.

The trouble is the laws of physics have intruded on what both the British Army and the US Army can hope to accomplish with a new vehicle. Devising a vehicle that is fast, survivable, fuel efficient, voluminous, and still light enough to be carried on a transport aircraft has proven elusive. In short, the services want a pony, but they are not likely to get one.

Still the Committee’s criticism is rather backward-looking. Lord Drayson has also determined that the first phase of the FRES program would not be yet another attempt to develop a vehicle

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The new Mastiff Protected Patrol Vehicle being demonstrated on the Salisbury Plain. Photograph by Andrew Linett, courtesy of the MoD.

from scratch, but would rather be a standing-start competition with whatever ready vehicle interested parties could bring by 2008. Likely contenders for the contract include

✦ General Dynamics, which will probably bring a Piranha IV or V extension of the ubiquitous line of MOWAG Light Armored Vehicles (LAV). The largest customer to date has been the US Army, has been buying a version of the LAV (Piranha)-III as the Stryker.

✦ Patria Vehicles, which will bring its Armored Modular Vehicle, or Xa-360, which has recently gained large orders in Finland, Poland, Slovenia, and South Africa.

✦ Nexter, which will offer its Véhicule Blindé de Combat d’Infanterie. The company has just begun serial production of a 700-unit order of VBCIs for the French Army.

✦ FIAT-Iveco, which will offer a troop carrier version of the 8x8 Centauro assault gun, which is basically a wheeled tank with a 105 mm cannon.

✦ ARTEC, a consortium of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), Rheinmetall Landsysteme, and Stork PWV; which will offer the Boxer—the result of the MRAV program from which the British MoD withdrew in 2003

✦ BAE Systems, which will offer an 8x8 version of the Spitterkyddad Enhets Platform (SEP), which is being developed by its subsidiary Hägglunds in Sweden. This vehicle is arguably the least mature, as it was only shown for the first time in Britain in February 2007.

At this stage, the real question is how FRES could improve on the capabilities being procured in the Bulldog and Mastiff purchases. There are a few

✦ Maintainability. The Bulldogs will be thoroughly reset, but they remain forty-year-old vehicles, so the Army may not get another forty years from them.

✦ Firepower. the FRES utility vehicles may only carry overhead remote-controlled machineguns. which the Bulldogs and Mastiffs are entirely capable of mounting. Only later reconnaissance and fighting vehicle types (which may be of a

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A VBCI undergoing trials in July 2005. Photograph by Daniel Steger—————————————————————————

different design) will carry cannons and anti-tank missile launchers.

✦ Mobility. As 8x8s, they will probably prove more agile off-road than the commercially-derived Mastiffs, and more efficient and comfortable than the tracked Bulldogs.

✦ Protection. Here the answer is not obvious. The FRES utility vehicles may offer more armor, but ballistic protection beyond that required to stop a 14.5 mm machinegun round at close range may be overkill. Insurgents don’t carry 25 mm cannons in their backpacks, and the fighting vehicles that do are better engaged at long range with anti-tank missiles.

That said, if RPGs continue their relative resurgence as a problem, as they seemingly have in Afghanistan, interest may grow in protecting vehicles against them. As seen on the front cover, the Bulldogs are already sporting explosive-reactive tiles and slat armor to deflect RPGs.

This suggests a potentially important middle space in the armored vehicles market: a vehicle with the blast-protection and commercial maintainability of the Cougar or RG-33, but the off-road mobility and shaped-charge-protection of a purpose-built 8x8. Given the tension amongst all the competing engineering factors in ground vehicle design, that may yet prove to be a pony.

The obvious lacuna

Doing something about the quarter of British fatalities caused by small arms fire is proving difficult.

The Ministry is indeed trying, and to considerable extent, it is now spending money on the logical priorities. In July 2006, Lord Drayson remarked that spending on ‘urgent operational requirements’ related to combat in Afghanistan and Iraq had thus far totaled £527 million.* This has included £181 million on aircraft protection, £199 million on electronic countermeasures (ECM), and £147 million for new armored vehicles and body armor. Through the end of that month, British fatalities in

Afghanistsan and Iraq had totaled 120. Thus, given the following broad estimates:

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* Ministry of Defence press release, New Protected Patrol Vehicles for Iraq and Afghanistan put through their paces, 14 September 2006

✦ Each fatality costs £0.5 in death benefits, recruiting costs, and retraining costs,

✦ Each fatality is accompanied by 3.4 severe traumas,each costing roughly £1.5 million in insurance payouts, net present lifetime healthcare costs, recruiting costs, and retraining costs*

We can suggest that the Ministry has invested

£1.4 in serious casualty avoidance for every £1 that it has incurred in the taking those casualties in the war (not counting aircraft replacement costs), or

£4.4 million per fatality already suffered

If fatalities are not expected to rise significantly in the future, this seems neither financially imprudent nor particularly parsimonious.

That said, losses to small arms fire may prove the most difficult to prevent. Forty-three deaths in the first five years of fighting have been caused by small arms, but to some degree, this may be a regrettable part of the business of being a foot soldier. Bullets fly on battlefields, and no amount of body armor will stop every round. Indeed, the new Osprey and Kestrel body armor sets that the Ministry has ordered to improve soldiers’ chances of surviving bullets and blasts have been criticized as being too bulky and heavy to effectively use in combat.

Indeed, it can be argued that some of the investment is found in areas that seemingly have nothing to do with small arms. In January 2007, two Royal Marines were killed in Helmand Province in circumstances that, by the official Ministry of Defence announcements, may be considered a bit old-fashioned:

✦ Lance Corporal Matthew Ford, 45 Commando, on 15 January 2007, while “assaulting a walled compound”

✦ Marine Thomas Curry, 42 Commando, on 13 January 2007, while “in the process of clearing an enemy compound”

Whilst the details of the battles are not apparent from the announcements, two things can be observed: walled compounds are excellent candidates for destruction with precision-guided bombs, and the RAF’s Harrier force has been criticized for shortcomings in its close air support capability. This is nothing new: one Harriers have twice been lost in part because they have long lacked good targeting systems:

✦ Squadron Leader Bob Iveson of 1 Squadron was shot down by an Argentine anti-aircraft cannon on his third pass over a target at Goose Green on 27 May 1982

✦ Lieutenant Nick Richardson of 801 Squadron was shot down by Serbian heat-seeking missile on 16 April 1994 on his fifth pass at a T-55 tank that he couldn’t quite line up in his sights.

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* See James Hasik, Professional Grade: a working paper on recent fatalities in military vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan (rev. 3.1), 31 October 2006; Scott Wallsten & Katrina Kosec, The Economic Costs of the War, American Enterprise Institute, September 2005; Joseph Stiglitz & Linda Bilmes, The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: an Appraisal Three Years after the Beginning of the Conflict, January 2006

Both pilots survived and avoided capture, but that’s insufficient consolation alone: the aircraft were lost, and their targets survived.

Twenty-four years is a long time to wait to correct a problem, particularly as US aircraft had LITENING targeting pods in time for the 1991 campaign in Iraq. Here again, though, the Ministry has taken action. In response to a UOR request from front-line RAF commanders in late 2006, the MoD contracted quickly with Lockheed Martin for its new Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod. The first flight with a Sniper ATP on a new Harrier GR9 took just sixty days; the first operational deployment is scheduled for July 2007.

So, while it’s unlikely that every walled compound can be blasted by a waiting Harrier jet, the Ministry is taking action.

The British experience and future material solutions

The operational demands of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq point towards two obvious markets—armored vehicles and

transport rotorcraft—and both are showing vigorous growth.

While the demands of the counterinsurgencies and peace enforcement operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have opened a host of markets for military suppliers—from catamaran naval transports to drone attack aircraft—two stand out as particularly relevant to limiting fatalities on the battlefield. As the

operational challenges of companies from Bell Helicopter to Force Protection Industries indicate, the biggest problem in the helicopter and armored vehicle industries today is figuring out how to build all the stuff that has been ordered. This is a high-class problem to have, but it also points to the the opportunities for any

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An RAF Harrier GR7 hovers at the 2006 Farnborough Air Show. Photograph courtesy of John Mullen

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company—whether in the business currently or not—that can deliver a better and cheaper blast-protected vehicle or rotorcraft defensive suite.

Armored vehicles: it’s all about blast.

Money is flowing into blast-protection, and not just in Britain. The just-starting Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicle program of the US Marine Corps is planned to encompass over 4,000 vehicles at roughly $500,000 each—a $2 billion program. Just as significant, five different initial awards have already been made in the program:

$55.4 MM for 90 RG-33s from BAE Systems

$67.4 MM for 125 Cougars from Force Dynamics, the joint venture of Force Protection and General Dynamics

$37.4 MM for 60 Golans from Protected Vehicles, the start-up by Force Protection founder Colonel Garth Barrett

$30.6 MM for 100 Bushmasters from Oshkosh, which is licensing the design from Thales-Australia

$11.0 MM for 20 RG-31s from General Dynamics, or BAE indirectly (GD holds the license in North America)

These awards, of course, come in addition to the more than 300 Cougar and Buffalo armored vehicles that the US Army and Marine Corps have purchased from Force Protection, and theand 200 or so

RG-31s from BAE Systems and General Dynamics (its North American licensee).

While MRAP is the largest program to date, it doesn’t begin to cover the full scope of purchasing worldwide. The Swedish Army is buying RG-31s; the Bundeswehr Dingos; the Swiss Army Eagles; and the list goes on. Even still, blast-protected vehicle purchases

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A convoy of American blast-protected vehicles—RG-31, Buffalo, and Cougar—sorties from its base. Photograph by Lieutenant Colonel

Erik Peterson, 12th Marine Regiment—————————————————————————

should continue to rise over the next five years worldwide, as more military land forces supplement their tracked vehicle fleets with ve-hicles more suitable for counterinsurgency and constabulary work. My forecast (compiled from press releases, contract announce-ments, and probably emergent requirements, and shown in the ad-joining chart) suggests a market worth nearly $2 billion annually by 2012. The surge in 2008 represents emergency purchases in the US and the UK, but this spending will not consume future market op-portunities. Peace-enforcement and counter-insurgency campaigns are, after all, the more likely types of contingency in which Western and allied military forces may find themselves embroiled in the near future. If preparations for the big war in the Fulda Gap were once the dominant considerations in NATOn defense ministries, this time is probably passing. The British (and allied) experience in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate how and why.

This also means that the long list of eager suppliers to the market will not quickly shorten. The market for blast-protection is still be-ing contested by at least two competing concepts: steel, v-shaped hulls (the approach taken by most firms) and flexible composite floors (KMW’s approach with the Dingo). While Force Protection’s Cougar and BAE’s RG-series are the leading products, the market has only recent surged again after the flurry of activity in South Africa tapered off with the change of government in the late 1980s. This means that technological advances may yet shift the industry’s design paradigm, and that, in turn, should continue to attract investment from interested suppliers and defense minis-tries.

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Past and Projected Sales of Blast-Protected Military Vehicles Worldwide, 2002–2012

$0 MM

$500 MM

$1,000 MM

$1,500 MM

$2,000 MM

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Rotorcraft: high, hot, heavy-lift—and hardened.

Waging war in the Hindu Kush has required big, multi-engined air-craft that can lift entire platoons at a time to nauseating heights. This has thus meant a bonanza for Boeing, through its H-47 Chinook program, and Sikorsky, with the continuation of its Super Stallion program with the fully redesigned CH-53K. Across Europe, smaller, shorter-ranged machines are being replaced with NH-90s, Agustaw-estland EH-101s, and Eurocopter Cougars.

However, if RPGs and roadside bombs can kill soldiers one or two or a few more at a time, shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles can kill them by the dozen or more. Indeed, as the average size of battlefield helicopter is growing larger to accommodate larger loads to greater distances, the potential for larger loss of life increases. Concentra-tion of more soldiers on single aircraft thus increases the attractive-ness of equipping the fleets with more robust missile defenses.

While many of the stocks liberally scattered around the world by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s are no longer serviceable, the continuing efforts by the US federal government to

sweep up what remainders it can—even amongst the armed forces of friendly states like Nicaragua—indicate how seriously the problem is being taken.

If we accept as roughly accurate

✦ the most recent annual estimate by Rols-Royce and the Teal Group: 600 new military helicopters annually, worldwide, for the near future, and

✦ the assumption that most of those helicopters will be equipped with relatively sophisticated defensive aides, costing roughly one million dollars each

the annual worldwide market is seen to comprise several hundred million dollars.

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About the Author

James Hasik holds an MBA from the University of Chicago in finance and business economics, and a BA from Duke University in history and physics. He is a member of the Institute of Navigation,

a member of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs, and Senior Defense Consultant to CRA International.

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On the cover

An up-armored FV432 Bulldog from BAE Systems undergoes trials with the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment in Iraq in December 2006.

Date post:	08-Sep-2014
Category:	Automotive
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The Armoured Dogs of War

Automotive