For centuries historians have struggled to explain the United Kingdom's frequent military defeats,but it was not until the advent of internet forums that the military illiteracy behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers became well documented,however,senior officers have long recorded their ignorance for posterity through the medium of defence procurement and herein we shall discuss several current projects.
An equivalent to and contemporary of the British Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle,A.S.CO.D. (Austrian Spanish COoperative Development) was developed by Austria and Spain,but despite needing a much larger number of vehicles,the British Army chose the improved A.S.CO.D. 2,rather than an all new design or a Warrior variant,as the basis of it's transformational Future Rapid Effects System which later became Ajax,an armoured reconnaissance vehicle which has neither the protection to withstand hits from weapons such as the 9M133M Kornet-M missile and 2A46 tank gun nor the fire power to suppress them,and which therefore must conduct reconnaissance by stealth,a task which requires neither medium armour nor a medium cannon,however,as Ajax currently does not work it may never enter service,which would be most fortunate.
Designed almost half a century ago,the Apache attack helicopter,as one of the few aircraft capable of delivering large numbers of precision weapons at night,had it's "happy time" attacking Iraqi forces during the liberation of Kuwait in Nineteen Ninety-one,a dozen years after that,during the invasion of Iraq,a force similar in size to the British Army's entire front line attack helicopter fleet was shot to pieces,in half an hour,by the poorly trained and equipped Medina Division over Karbala and in the Afghan war and Iraq wars combined more Apaches were lost than any other manned aircraft type,nevertheless,British Army officers decided that in an era of precision guided weapons a helicopter,with a large signature,which flies at slow speed and low altitude in close proximity to,and direct line of sight of,the enemy was the future of air warfare,before ordering another fifty,which may still be in service for the aircraft's eightieth birthday.
The Boxer armoured truck,which shall already be a dozen years old by the time it enters British service,uniquely combines a modular hull which increases it's size,weight and cost for negligible benefit with a profile larger than a Main Battle Tank,ground pressure four times higher than an equivalent tracked vehicle,mechanicals which are exposed to enemy fire,a machine gun armed remote weapon station and protection against cannon fire both of which are inadequate in the front line and unnecessary anywhere else,and an ability to drive across Europe which,as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated,is utterly irrelevant.
