A report for Britain's Ministry of Defence leaked yesterday said the department's procurement program was hugely inefficient and harming Britain's ability to fight enemies like the Taliban.
The report emerged as a former army commander warned that a lack of political will in Britain to provide more troops and equipment for Afghanistan risked seeing British troops lose the fight there.
The draft review of the way the ministry acquired new equipment found the system was riddled with endemic failures, The Sunday Times newspaper reported after receiving a leaked copy of the 296-page document.
The report said the ministry's equipment program was 35billion ($A69.4billion) over budget, five years behind schedule, and could not be afforded in the long term.
The report by Bernard Gray, a former adviser to defence ministers, said the scale of the ministry's inefficiency was ''harming our ability ... to conduct difficult current operations''.
''How can it be that it takes 20 years to buy a ship, or aircraft, or tank? Why does it always seem to cost at least twice what was thought? Even worse, at the end of the wait, why does it never quite seem to do what it was supposed to?'' Mr Gray wrote, according to the newspaper. ''The problems, and the sums of money involved, have almost lost their power to shock, so endemic is the issue.''
Flexible enemies such as the Taliban ''are unlikely to wait for our sclerotic acquisition systems to catch up''. The recent spike in troop deaths in Afghanistan the toll stands at 206 has renewed debate in Britain about the country's role in the conflict, the equipment available to protect its troops and whether any progress is being achieved.
Many British troops have been killed by roadside bombs, with much public criticism directed at a perceived lack of helicopters to avoid troops travelling by land, and adequately armoured road vehicles.
The Ministry of Defence said the Government would be publishing the report ''in due course''.
Mr Gray's review was commissioned ''to ensure that we are buying equipment as efficiently as possible'', a ministry spokesman said. ''This report is currently in draft format and we are working hard with him on the issues he has identified.
''We are constantly improving the procurement process which has seen us deliver 10 billion pounds of equipment to the front line over the last three years.''
Meanwhile, Colonel Stuart Tootal, who led the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, in southern Helmand Province in 2006, said a lack of the proper support from London was threatening to undermine the battle against extremists. ''There is a real risk that we could lose the war in Afghanistan. If it is lost, it will not be in places like Helmand, but in the corridors of power in cities like London and Washington,'' he wrote in the Sunday Mirror . AFP
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