Army 'not ready' to fight in desert

The British Army is not ready to fight a desert war despite preparations for a conflict in the Gulf, defence sources said yesterday.

Contingency plans are in place to send a "light" armoured division of two brigades to Kuwait but the tanks are not "desertised".

Half of the Challenger II tanks sent to Oman during an exercise last year were left stranded when their engines became clogged with dust after a few hours in the desert.

But despite those problems, no British tanks have been desertised and an MoD spokesman said the time required to do so would have to be written into any deployment plans.

There are also problems with the Army's main infantry weapon, the SA80 rifle, which despite a refit suffered repeated stoppages during Operation Jacana in Afghanistan when dust blown up by the helicopters clogged its working parts.

The weapon is being tested under exercise conditions in Oman in a move senior officers hope will restore confidence in the weapon. But the Royal Marine commandos who used it in Afghanistan say it is a very poor weapon.

While any attack on Iraq is now certain to take place next year rather than this, the apparent lack of urgency in getting the tanks and rifles ready for war is "deeply disturbing", one source said.

It is also likely to suffer severe problems getting the tanks to Kuwait, an operation that would take around 10 weeks even assuming no problems cropped up.

The MoD allowed one of its three roll-on roll-off ferry charters to lapse, with the result that the French snapped it up. That has forced the MoD to look elsewhere on a very limited market for means of getting their tanks to Kuwait.

Nevertheless, the main problems remain the Challenger 2 tanks and the SA80. Senior Army officers remain convinced that the Royal Marines were not maintaining their weapons properly and that the SA80 A2 will prove its worth in Oman. But one Royal Marines officer said this was "complete nonsense".