I appreciate that some of what I'm putting below is related to another topic that I've passed comment on (regarding the UAV, Project Phoenix), but thought it would tie in nicely with Jambo's comments in the 1st post about the Predators....
Link
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/09/squandered-lives.html
Below is a paraphrased transcript of the article (from Sept. 2006), which was initially made in reference to the crash of a Nimrod Aircraft in Afghanistan, with the loss of 14 lives.
"Thus, the announcement (in August 2006) that the UK government was to buy two Predators from the US, for use in Afghanistan, might not be entirely coincidental. Not only does it confirm that UAVs are needed for this theatre (as we have long argued) but it also suggests that the Nimrod was being used as a stop-gap, to make up for the lack of capability.
Therein lies the scandal. When you look at the MoD performance in seeking to equip British forces with UAVs, you are looking at a tale of incompetence which beggars belief and a colossal waste of money. So much has been wasted in fact, that we could have had the capacity already, for a fraction of the cost. There would be no wreckage of a fine aircraft and 14 men might still be alive.
The story actually starts with the Phoenix UAV, developed originally for the Army for artillery spotting and then – as the MoD so often does – given a role extension to take in battlefield surveillance, for which purpose it was entirely unsuited. The story is spelt out here and makes for sorry reading.
But where the real scandal lies was elicited by Tory MP Andrew Rosindell in a Parliamentary question, answered in July 2006. This revealed that the "Phoenix unmanned aerial vehicle system" had cost approximately £345 million since inception. Ignored by the media, this was for a system that was introduced in 1998 with a minimum 15-year in-service life, which had never functioned effectively – or at all- and could not be used in either Iraq or Afghanistan where it is most needed.
Now, the point is that the deficiencies of this abysmal machine were well known – and certainly to the MoD – by the year 2000, when the system failed to perform in Kosovo. It was certainly abundantly clear in 2002 when a reported upgrade to allow it to operate in hot weather was "put off to save money".
In fact, the "upgrade" was more likely cancelled because no amount of money would improve a basically inadequate design but, whatever the reason, this meant that the British Army went into Iraq without what is universally regarded as vital equipment.
We do now know that the MoD partly made up for this deficiency by leasing time on Predators in Iraq, but this, we also know, has proved unsatisfactory. The UAVs have been treated as "theatre assets" and have not always been available to British forces.
Instead of doing the sensible – and vitally necessary – thing, however, and buying more Predators from the US, not least to provide surveillance in other theatres such as Afghanistan, the MoD decided to launch on another programme of UAV development. And, with the speed of a glacier, that took until last October to finalise, with the government committing another £317 million to build 99 Israeli-designed Elbit Systems WK-450s, known as the Watchkeeper, the total contract running to £700 million.
But the worst of this was that, while the government was so eagerly committing troops to Afghanistan, the system was not due to come into service until 2010 – at the very earliest. Even then, its capabilities will fall far short of the Predator, which is already up and flying, proving its worth in both Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Thus, having so far committed the best part of £1 billion to providing UAVs for the armed forces – with no prospect of them seeing any capability until 2010, the MoD last week decided to spend yet another £30 million on two Predators for Afghanistan, to tide them over and provide at least some of the much needed support that these machines can give.
Nor, indeed, does the story end there. Predators are not line-of-sight vehicles – i.e., they operate out of sight of their controllers – which means you need satellites to convey the communications and control signals and to receive the data they produce. Furthermore, as the US has found out, UAVs chew up band-width to such an extent that this has proved a factor limiting their deployment, not least because other services compete for air time.
To operate these Predators, the British government will need satellite capability and there has been no announcement on how this will be provided – or at what cost.
We do know, however, that the MoD is seriously short of capacity and is relying on its new communications satellite system, Skynet 5, which will not be fully operational until 2008. This could explain why only two Predators are being bought – for an area four times the size of Wales. It is quite possible that there is no capacity to operate more.
In any event, this whole sorry saga is yet another example of inefficiency, waste and mismanagement. As always, the taxpayer pays the monetary price, getting less for more, while those at the sharp end pay with their lives.
And, if the media has noticed something is wrong, it has not even begun to understand why."
Systems Adict