6.3  |  Military equipment (pre-conflict)

459.  On the delivery of UORs to theatre Mr Flaherty wrote:

“The processes currently in place for tracking UORs only tracks them until they

arrive to the original consignee in Theatre. There is therefore no means of tracking

whether UORs reached the end user for whom they were intended. Work has

been set in train to establish this and separate advice is being submitted by CJO

to VCDS.”

460.  Mr Flaherty also covered the issues of desert clothing and Combat ID in separate

annexes which are detailed later in this Section.

461.  On Lord Bach’s copy of the minute, his Private Secretary wrote:

“This is – at last – a serious attempt to respond to your concerns about equipment

delivery/supply … and acknowledges the importance of providing Ministers with

proper advice. The story it tells … about the flow of information from theatre which

has obviously been lamentable – is pretty depressing.”225

462.  Mr Flaherty’s note was discussed at Lord Bach’s meeting on 12 May.226 Lord Bach

believed the note went “a long way to addressing some of the issues he raised about

the availability of equipment at the front line”. He accepted “the proffered explanation for

this” but was “disappointed that a variety of factors” appeared to have undermined the

efforts to equip troops as well as possible.

463.  The note of the meeting recorded that Lord Bach:

“… regrets that – aside from the very practical consequence for our people, a

number of whom might be expected to complain about having been sent into battle

without relatively basic articles of key equipment – an unfortunate side effect has

been that the advice provided to Ministers, albeit on the basis of advice from theatre,

has turned out in retrospect to be less than wholly accurate. He agrees that these

issues, particularly the lack of an effective asset tracking system, will need carefully

to be examined during the lessons learned process.”

464.  In addition to ECBA, desert clothing and Combat ID kit, Lord Bach had heard at

a meeting that morning that concerns had been expressed by commanders in theatre

about shortages of morphine and NBC equipment. He sought advice on those points by

the end of the week.

465.  Lt Gen Reith provided a spreadsheet detailing when UORs had been delivered

to theatre and an assessment on their effectiveness for ACM Bagnall on 15 May.227 He

explained that there had been “some inaccuracies in earlier reporting from theatre” but

those had now been corrected.

225  Manuscript comment PS/Min(DP) on Minute PJHQ Civ Sec to PS/Minister(DP), 9 May 2003,

‘Iraq: Op TELIC UORs’.

226  Minute APS/Minister(DP) to CM(M) and PJHQ-Civ Sec, 12 May 2003, ‘Iraq: Op TELIC – UORs’.

227  Minute CJO to PS/VCDS, 15 May 2003 ‘Operation TELIC – Equipment Performance’.

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