What a disgrace - how can we afford the Trident upgrade but not basic equipment for our troops ?
The SAS reservist commander in Afghanistan has resigned amid fresh controversy over the equipment available to British troops fighting the Taliban, it was revealed today.
Major Sebastian Morley is quitting after four his soldiers were killed when their lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover hit a landmine in Helmand province earlier this year.
Morley, the commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS, blamed "chronic under investment" in equipment by the Ministry of Defence for their deaths, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The paper said he believed the MoD was guilty of "gross negligence" and that its failure to supply better equipment was "cavalier at best, criminal at worst".
Corporal Sarah Bryant - the first female soldier to be killed in Afghanistan - and three SAS officers, Corporal Sean Reeve, Lance Corporal Richard Larkin and Paul Stout, all died needlessly, he said.
The Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former Army officer, accused the government of failing to respond with sufficient urgency to the need to protect troops.
"I think the government is guilty of a lack of urgency and a lack of empathy with the men and women they place in harm's way," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"It is not as if there are not better vehicles out there which can be bought and deployed relatively quickly. In fairness, that is starting, but by golly it has taken a long time.
"Men and women have been dying for three or four years now and will continue to as long as these unsuitable vehicles are deployed for unsuitable duties."
Soldiers are understood to refer to the Snatch as a "mobile coffin".
"You drive over a landmine in a very-lightly armoured Land-Rover Snatch - it's not much different from driving over it in a Ford Escort," a former member of the Royal Green Jackets who served in Iraq, Steve McLoughlin, told BBC Radio Five Live.
"At the very least you're going to lose limbs - horrific injuries if you survive - you're probably going to get killed outright."
The SAS reservist commander in Afghanistan has resigned amid fresh controversy over the equipment available to British troops fighting the Taliban, it was revealed today.
Major Sebastian Morley is quitting after four his soldiers were killed when their lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover hit a landmine in Helmand province earlier this year.
Morley, the commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS, blamed "chronic under investment" in equipment by the Ministry of Defence for their deaths, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The paper said he believed the MoD was guilty of "gross negligence" and that its failure to supply better equipment was "cavalier at best, criminal at worst".
Corporal Sarah Bryant - the first female soldier to be killed in Afghanistan - and three SAS officers, Corporal Sean Reeve, Lance Corporal Richard Larkin and Paul Stout, all died needlessly, he said.
The Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former Army officer, accused the government of failing to respond with sufficient urgency to the need to protect troops.
"I think the government is guilty of a lack of urgency and a lack of empathy with the men and women they place in harm's way," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"It is not as if there are not better vehicles out there which can be bought and deployed relatively quickly. In fairness, that is starting, but by golly it has taken a long time.
"Men and women have been dying for three or four years now and will continue to as long as these unsuitable vehicles are deployed for unsuitable duties."
Soldiers are understood to refer to the Snatch as a "mobile coffin".
"You drive over a landmine in a very-lightly armoured Land-Rover Snatch - it's not much different from driving over it in a Ford Escort," a former member of the Royal Green Jackets who served in Iraq, Steve McLoughlin, told BBC Radio Five Live.
"At the very least you're going to lose limbs - horrific injuries if you survive - you're probably going to get killed outright."
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