Put the MOD on the front line!

The MOD has finally woken up to the fact that there are insufficient fully armoured vehicles, and insufficient helicopters to be used instead to ferry troops about safely. They also seem to have taken on board, (after how many troops killed by IEDs?), that it is better to invest in surveillance equipment to detect Taliban movement and bomb laying, to prevent explosions.

But the word is that they have decided to buy a drone called Watchkeeper.
Their coming up to date, belatedly, is thus undone by buying a machine which will be delayed in availability and will not carry any munitions, rather than the cheaper, more quickly available Reaper, which the Taliban have come to fear.

We are already using one of the US Reapers, launched by our troops in their part of Helmand, but then taken over in flight by Americans thousands of miles away!

There is one thing you can say for the MOD - they are consistent in lateness and incompetence.