Of course, they've forgotten to mention that the other important lesson from Northern Ireland is that you'll need about 10-16 battalions of infantry - plus atts and dets - to control a province twice as large as PEI (5,345 sq km vs. 2,195 sq km according to Wikipedia). Oh, and you'll need to keep them there for about 30 years.... and even then it won't be fully done. :
Lack of helicopters in Helmand costing lives of British troops
The British Army stumbled into Helmand in 2006, unprepared and ill-equipped for the insurgency their presence immediately created – and commanders have been playing catch-up ever since.
By Sean Rayment
Published: 7:30AM BST 05 Jul 2009
Given the stalemate which now exists in Helmand, it almost seems incomprehensible that the government thought it prudent to send a force of just 3,500 troops – of whom around 1,000 were infantry – into the most mined country on earth, with a limited number of helicopters and a fleet of ageing armoured vehicles, against an enemy of which virtually nothing was known.
Valuable military lessons from as far back as the Troubles in Ulster and Iraq after 2004, should have warned commanders that a resourceful adversary, such as the Taliban, would switch tactics in the face of potential failure.
But it seemed to come as a surprise to the British and Nato when the Taliban, who in 2006 suffered unsustainable casualties in a series of desperate pitch battles with the Paras, went "asymmetric" in a bid to seize the initiative.
Instead of suicidal full-frontal attacks on British compounds, the Taliban began planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by the hundred. Initially some senior officers, desperate for some tangible measure of success, attempted to class this ruthless change in tactics as something of a victory for the UK's military strategy, until of course the body count began to mount.
Between 2006 and 2008 the number of IED attacks soared by 400 per cent and the weapon is now the main killer of British troops in Afghanistan.
There was a time when the Taliban would plant IEDs in so-called vulnerable points such as track junctions and river crossing points. Today, however, bombs are laid everywhere.
The flimsy armoured vehicles which were first sent to Helmand – the Snatch Land Rover, stripped down desert Wmik Land Rovers, armoured personnel carriers dating from the 1960s and rebranded as "Bulldogs", and the increasingly discredited Viking, offered little or no protection. Survival was, and remains, more a matter of luck than judgement.
As the casualty toll mounted, commanders called for more helicopters – but there was none to be sent despite the fact that Tony Blair in 2006 infamously promised commanders that they could have whatever they needed to defeat the Taliban.
The size of the force in Helmand has almost trebled in the last three years but the number of helicopters remains virtually unchanged.
It is true of course that the new generation of armoured vehicles arriving in Helmand will save lives.
No one has yet been killed by an IED while travelling in a Mastiff, the sturdy US built armoured personnel carrier – but that will change. The Taliban can always make bigger bombs. And then what?
The Government has spent more than £1 billion on new armoured vehicles for use in Helmand but virtually nothing on helicopters.
One officer, a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan – recently described this failing to me as "negligence bordering on the criminal".
Helicopters are not a panacea for the problems in Helmand but they are definitely part of the answer. Until they begin to arrived in realistic numbers the stalemate which currently exists in Helmand will continue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/5742742/Lack-of-helicopters-in-Helmand-costing-lives-of-British-troops.html
