14.1 |
Military equipment (post-conflict)
811.
Lt Gen Figgures
told the Inquiry that “FRES had been used as a regulator
for
the defence
programme. Money had actually been taken out of the FRES
programme
in order
to attempt to balance the programme.”428
812.
Mr Hutton
told the Inquiry that, if it had gone ahead on the original
timescale, some
of the
equipment from FRES would have been available for deployment in
Iraq.429
813.
In
Mr Hutton’s view, the problem had been:
“We
couldn’t settle on the specification. We changed our mind about
certain aspects
of how we
wanted to go ahead with the procurement. We started, we
stopped.”
814.
ACM Stirrup
told the Inquiry that the FRES programme was “overcomplicated
and
overcomplex”.430
He said
that the “critical battleground” was the need to “interact
with
the
population”. That required “smaller and lighter vehicles”;
“commanders need a wide
range of
vehicles”. FRES “would not have solved the problems that we had
been facing
in Iraq and
Afghanistan, with, perhaps, one exception, which is the Scout
variant … our
top
priority at the moment … to replace the CVR(T)”.
815.
Gen Jackson
told the Inquiry:
“As the
situation deteriorated in southern Iraq of course the
vulnerabilities of the
Snatch Land
Rover became tragically more and more apparent, and we then
enter
a difficult
and muddled story as to the replacement, or the addition of better
protected
vehicles
into the deployed army’s inventory, and the whole FRES story comes
into
this as
well.
“… there is
a limit to the amount of metal you can stick on a vehicle … and the
ability
of the
opposition to up the kinetic energy that can be applied can go
rather faster
than our
ability to withstand that. So the amount of metal on a vehicle is
important
but it is
not the complete answer, and you would finish up with a vehicle
which is far
too large
often to go down small streets in an urban area. So again the
picture is not
black and
white, and there is not some sort of fence you can jump over and
all of a
sudden you
have a vehicle which is immune to whatever your opponents may
try
816.
Gen Dannatt
suggested to the Inquiry that FRES had been delayed by the MOD
so
that
funding originally allocated in the Equipment Programme for the
FRES in 2007‑2009
could be
used for other priorities.432
428
Public
hearing, 27 July 2010, page 73.
429
Public
hearing, 25 January 2010, pages 24‑25.
430
Public
hearing, 1 February 2010, pages 68‑71.
431
Public
hearing, 28 July 2010, pages 75‑76.
432
Public
hearing, 28 July 2010, pages 58‑62.
139