"Remember. Your kit is always made by the lowest bidder."

The British stopped keeping the British army updated with modern equipment in the late 80s/early 90s. Iraq was a real eye opener tgat showed them up.

I remember on 16th July 2006, I was riding in the lead snatch in our convoy. We were contacted by an IED. To this day I have no idea how there were no fatalities on the day. However our driver, Dave Forshaw took his own life when we came home. I think about him everyday.

Should have put Blair, Mandelson, Brown, and Cameron in a snatch, leave them in the middle of Afghanistan and let them get on with it... Pretty sure improvements would have happened quicker.

RIP Jack Sadler Thankyou for your service and sacrifice

Heartbreaking listening to that lads dad 😢

It IS damned unusual for a professional politician, even one who specializes in Defense issues, to personally helm a major procurement program solely because he identified a need. Now, I am an American. I have no real grasp of the politics of the British Ministry of Defense. Therefore, I make no comment about the system or its ability to outfit the British soldier. Undoubtedly there are complaints about it and just as undoubtedly those complaints will have some overblown hyperbole and some stone cold truth to them. You can say that about every bureaucracy ever devised. But that Paul Drayson was willing to put his name and stake his reputation on program to address an immediate need in an immediate time frame speaks volumes about the man's ethical courage. He'll never see or hear about it, but Lord Drayson has the respect of an old American cavalry corporal half a world away. Hopefully he also has the thanks of men and women who made it home because of the Mastiff program.

You know I really didn't expect this type of quality journalism from a Forces channel....keep it up.👍

I think one of the reasons the MOD were slow about this is due to the 'make do and mend' attitude that the army has had to adopt, due to the years of sub standard equipment we've had to deal with.

Nice vehicle. We in the U.S. obviously went through the same pain with the Humvee. But there's only so much you can do when you need light and fast transportation. Even the predecessor to the Bradley, the M113 (a dedicated armored personnel carrier) was a disaster. Our guys in Vietnam all rode on top because if you hit a mine and you were inside, you were gone. Even with those lessons the military didn't address mine resistance in the Bradley until a couple of years ago. There's definitely a reality gap between those who have to use the equipment and those who determine equipment requirements.

5:15 what he really means to say is we couldnt afford to ship a load of mine protected vehicles because it was expensive.

Sad to know so many lives were lost from them in Iraq. Shameful in fact. What annoys me though is we were still also using bloody CVRT’s in Afghan and Iraq also. They were just as poorly protected. So were the warthogs and FV432’s. But the CVRT took the biscuit for being the worst protected tracked vehicle in service in this time of IED threat. Shameful to know we sent them out there anyway because it’s all we had.

Better journalism than most news channels.

Unfortunetly 120 deaths v the cost of new equipment is a price the MOD were willing to pay.

No acknowledgement to the South African military designs which were dealing with IED’S and soviet mines in the bush war as far back as the 70’s.

was total madness... the Australian army didnt even think about deploying in land rovers... we went in to that war with Mine protected bushmaster PMV.s.. At a time when several of my friends lives had been saved by that vehicle the UK government was still refusing to protect its personnel

I don't understand why people 'forgot' about v shaped hulls when basically every SDKFZ the Nazis used in ths 1930s and 40s had an 'explosive resistant' V hull.

A good few years ago now I had the opportunity to build a new vehicle for our British army called the Foxhound. Was at a company called Ricardo. It felt good being able to be part of creating something that was going to help our troops. I'll never forget my time at that company. There was a real sense of pride in what we were doing. I'm glad I got to do my bit to help

When we say the Land Rover had been in service since the Second World War we mean in the years after it ended - not during. This should have been more clear. For more information on the Foxhound please visit our website: bit.ly/2TSOvdI

In the 1970s the Rhodesians modified landrovers so that they would provide a surviveable protection against TM46 mines for 2 occupants.

The way to move this forward quicker is to sit an MPs kid in the front of the Snatch till the new vehicles are on line...

Some of your favourite content - like this - has now moved to a new channel - BFBS Creatve: kzfaq.info Subscribe to make sure you don't miss anything!!!

Lost many a friend in these vehicles. Too little too late, though I’m glad the MOD has somewhat learned to keep up with kit and equipment to protect our soldiers. During the early days of op telic our lads were being deployed with body armour with one plate to protect against shrapnel and rounds. Fast forward to now and we had osprey now virtus, And the L85 has been upgraded beyond recognition to better help our guys and girls when they come into contact.

Like Medicine, Equipment always takes a leap forward in times of conflict.

The same problem we had on the US Military HMMWV(Humvee). Even the US Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Shinseki protested that some of the US Military Vehicles were poorly protected. He was ignored and thousands of US Soldiers and Marines died because of the arrogance on the Commander In Chief. Like they say funerals are cheaper than building a new equipment. Meaning Soldiers are expendable.

Much love too the families of of our fallen brothers and sisters in arms. Love from across the river The U.S.A.

I am an American of Irish, Scot, and Welsh descent, and proud of it. This is why I try to keep up with news and information about everything UK, especially the Military. I was overjoyed to hear about the new Foxhound. (MY Eldest Grandson was in-country for 2 years in that Hellhole.) Broke my heart to hear about Jack Sadler and all the rest of your Mother's and Father's Sons! Much Love and Respect from America.

Jack Sadler didnt die in a Snatch, I was there, he died when he was thrown from a WMIK which is a different land rover platform. Terrible nonetheless but the role we were in required small agile reconnaissance vehicles and that's all the brits had at the time. RIP mate.

People need to go to jail for ignoring the warnings and causing the deaths of all those soldier's

Not an Army anymore,too many cuts,now a defence force

I served with the British Army in Aden and the Oman in 1966 and obviously nothing had changed regarding soldier safety since then. We patrolled in Mk 9 Rovers and the only safety feature we had was wire mesh sides and tops to defeat grenades thrown into the vehicle. In Oman we had mine plated Mk 9's with a 1/4 inch of plating and a belly plate with a roll bar over the top behind the drivers seat, When other armies had body armour we had starched smart looking bush shirts. We didn't even have helmets on when patrolling. We knew that we were cheaper to replace than expensive equipment.

I've seen the vee hull used on mine resistant vehicles during the war in Rhodesia in the 1960s. They were in British military vehicle museums.

Many of us knew the snatch limitations years before Iraq. Very limited off road capability due to wieght..gearbox weekness due to wieght. But more importantly even the ira had the means to pierce snatch armour with improvised weapons. It was nothing more than a placebo to improve morale..it was a cheap implementation driven by mod purse holders with shares in land rover.

When you have sociopaths as politicians they will tend to value money over human life.

01:41 - 01:55 That small scene with well known object, sound and result. Suberb example of "show don't tell", nice job lads!

I find this just as unforgivable just as the Hummer. Neither the Hummer nor the Landy had any protection yet the South African Defense Force had mine proof vehicles since the late 70's and 80's and battle proven. It is unforgivable that stupidity and lack of focus caused all these deaths.

Thank you for creating this video. Very well produced. I'm glad I found your channel.

The Alvis Saracen was a good vehicle once the final marks came out only the wheel units would be blown off by an explosion. Though any sizeable amount of explosives will destroy any heavily armoured vehicle.

The problem is the political game playing that goes on with procurement that distorts the process and shifts the skill set in the staff. The procurement side of MOD has been allowed to move further and further away from the military. Getting anything out of the system is a bureaucratic nightmare and huge political game. Instead of people on the staff with technical knowledge and judgement, you get military politicians, playing short term games and generally avoiding the issue. The only equipment programmes that get any mileage are high profile blue chip programmes that will gain kudos for whoever happen to be in charge at the time.. The normal day to day equipment procurement is so painfully slow as to be largely irrelevant once it gets into service.. Look at the cluster that is the procurement of the communications system.. thank god most folk had mobile phones to cover the gaps.. but this would never have worked had a major punchup broken out!

ive seen foxhounds, and they are beasts. it looks like a hexagonal space station inside. great design, great comms, massive vehicles.

Another good video/documentary. Congratulations from your oldest ally (from 1438 ! Yes we had a English princess who became Portuguese queen)

Imagine thinking that looking "less intimidating" to the locals is more important than giving your troops the best chance of survival

Terrific little documentary. Keep up the good work team.

love the production quality and the showing human element of engineering was well done.

So Sorry For All Your Losses... Thank You One &All For Your SERVICE...

"[Brits] are not worried about being blown up" - Lance Corporal Sean Simmonds, US Marines

Hands off to you guys, this video is very well done, cheers to our soldiers.

"War is all about innovation ...and you've got to keep up" Best quote

No this is heavily inaccurate. I was 2LI/3 rifles and on tour as ROBG at SLB over 06/07, i was seriously injured by a 45kg EFP on the 25th of February 07 resulting in me having my eyes removed. I don’t care about my injuries as it’s a possibility that comes with the job, what I don’t accept is that mastiffs were in theatre in 06 and were not allowed to use them, I have photos from November 06 from camp 4 SLB of 6 to 8 mastiffs sat ready for us on patrols company to use. I went on r and r in November and did cat c for my first week of r and r so we could use them on our return, when we did return we were told we were not going to use them as they were returning to the uk to get differant turrets! There was nothing wrong with the GPMG mount ones they had. The vehicles were there but we were denied their desperate needed use by some stroaker back at land command and as a result blokes died and many of us were left with life changing injuries. Also the minister said there was no medium vehicle known.....yes there was! The yanks had used mastiff from very early on, i know this as i was based at BIAP in Baghdad for a while and saw them every day and yanks I spoke to swore by them as life savers and theirs were out the box configurations. Also as far as I know these are South African made vehicles and had been around for a good period

The LandRover is the British Version of the American Humvee Problem.

Hearing Jack's father speak is heart breaking. I cannot believe the Brits used these paper skinned vehicles for so long. Thank you to all the brothers and sisters from across the pond.

South Africa was using a v shaped hull on their armoured vehicles decades ago. The problem with the MOD is,they equate cost verses risk and when the risk is too high,they still drag their feet in order to save money.

Land Rovers weren't introduced until 1948, 3 years after WW2 ended.

If only all government ministers were the quality of this bloke. RIP Jack. Thank you to you and your family for your sacrifice.

This video is really well done, thank you very informative.

To the MP behaving like he had re-invented the wheel, and saved us all.... You were the one who sent the blokes to do your bidding.

South African Army have had a suitable vehicle for 30 years but you were never not interested....

As others have said, the problem runs deeper than slow defence procurement. If our/my DMO (Defence Material Organisation - Australia) was clever enough to realise, in 1991, that mine protected vehicles were worth spending precious pennies on and the MOD didn't, then I pity the poor Brits who serve in your army. Our DMO is full blown down syndrome at the best of times, so the MOD must really be something else.

When I was in Iraq, in 2003, we noticed that when our hummers, got hit, some if not all of the crew burned with the vehicle due to a plastic fuel tank. Even with belly armor on later models, the fuel tanks remained plastic!

my dad served in Aden in the 1960's they were using Land Rovers at the time and he said they were totally inadequate for the job even then providing little or no protection for the troops, he was surprised and quite shocked to see them in service in Iraq and Afghanistan forty years later, he always said they were fine for Northern Ireland against small arms fire and petrol bombs but not much else. He said that the quality of the British Army top brass was still as incompetent now as it was back in his day. Wolves led by sheep.

RIP Jack thank you for your service

“We like the land rovers because they’re less intimidating to locals.” How sad is that? Your soldiers lives are more important than the sense of security of the people who want to kill them.

Very insightful and well produced programme Thank you

really well done & informative video, great stuff,

If an anti tank mine can destroy a huge tank just imagine what it would do to these

I'd love to see the pictures of a Land Rover in WW2 seeing as they didn't exist until 48.

That was really enthralling. Good vid!

IED's? ie Land mines? V-shaped hull technology in Africa first saw the light of day in the Rhodesian Bush War 1965 -1979. The Rhodesian armed forces and civilian industries developed a whole series of home grown vehicles, (Funnies) designed to protect crews primarily from small arms fire, RPG's & Kalashnikovs etc and the infamous Soviet derived Land Mines, using V-Shaped hulls. High ground clearances, over sized wheels & tyres, mounted on outriggers. The crews inside, seated in bucket seats, with full body harnesses. Standardising components for quick repairs, to keep these vehicles operational and doing their job. The old SADF was fighting it's own border war in Northern South West Africa / Southern Angola and was quick to adopt this technology, developing their own unique range of troop carriers and transporters not only for the SADF but also the various South African Police, anti-terrorist elite special forces. These vehicles, Buffels, Casspirs, Mambas etc were used in their thousands from the early 1970's up to the end of the conflict in 1989. Africa's southern desert terrain doesn't lend itself to tracked vehicles, but rather vehicles with balloon tyres, to give speed and maneuvrability but more importantly protection for the crews. These vehicles weren't perfect. They were bloody hot, noisy and uncomfortable. But, better sweaty, rather than dead. And many came short, during those long war years. South Africas own home grown arms manufacturer Armscor (Armaments Corporation of South Africa) together with the private sector developed and continues to develope a bewildering range of anti-mine Armoured Personal Carriers. Many variants are battle tested and exported all over the World, to this day. I think sadly, the British were complacent that their own vehicles, (Snatch Land Rovers etc) despite the technology and sophistication would do the job, of protecting troops from IEDs. Hindsight is still a wonderful thing. Bureaucrats and bean counters don't win wars, but cost countless precious lives.

Thinking of Richard Larkin, a top bloke, great family man and all round good egg who died in a "snatch" in Helmand.

These people knew the LR platform was inadequate. They knew. When you right an enemy that operates asymmetrically they will use different strategies than an enemy operating a symmetrically. You will get more IED's, more Mines, more "assassination" type hits. They will strike, kill, then drop their weapons and blend into the crowd of civilians. You don't get that with a symmetrical force. So, they knew. They knew and still did nothing for years.

2:32 Kind of says a lot about the MOD's interest level in the safety of its military "It gets you from A to B and no ones scared of you when you're in it, in enemy-held territory"

Great vid, keep up the great work.

Free Enterprise beats out Government in all things, every time. When will we learn!

Put the political class in them it will be fixed very quickly.

I spent time working with the Brits in Al Muthanna province as part of the Australian TG. While we operated out of ASLAV, Bushmaster and Unimogs with armoured cabs the Brits where operating the Snatch . Watching this made me feel sick thinking back to the number of British deaths reported from the region at a time when we had none.

Seeing the dad talk about the two dead soldiers is heartbreaking. Excellent documentary. I hope people learn from this.

There were plenty of IEDs in NI that compromised vehicles. The snatch was not fit for purpose there either.

British Army bought variants of South African mine protected vehicles made in UK by Alvis for use in the Balkans - and once we finished there sold them off ! There is even more thins boggling incompetence to this story than described here. Also now We have the super modular Foxhound, are we going to use variants of it for MRV-P Phase 1? Nope, we will buy another new vehicle.....

This was really well done. Subscribed.

G'day Simon, I'm ex-Air Force and a military historian now. Thank you for your interesting but ever so sad video. The story of the 'mobile coffins' actually is the historical reverse of what usually happens as new wars develop. Usually it is the technology of war that is way out in front of tactics and strategy. This is clearly seen in the development of new, huge, rapid firing artillery which did the greatest damage of all during WW1 along with the advanced machine guns. There, the 'approved' tactic was for soldiers to walk slowly into the teeth of murderous machine gun nests with overlapping ranges of fire. In WW2 the technological development in aircraft, tanks, armoured cars etc. greatly outstripped high commanders' knowledge of how best to deploy tanks, for example. Of all countries, the UK and the MOD should have learned hard and fast lessons from WW2; that to win you need the latest most innovative technology and weapons systems on your side. That is why I'm so gobsmacked and angry that someone at the MOD and/or Army refused to react instantly to the IED threat. This brought about the needless deaths of way too many UK soldiers, simply because they were using old technology that could not, or would not, be improved to meet new threats. The new vehicles were fantastic but, as you say, 'Too little, too late'. If this is your first or second video I strongly suggest you keep making them because you are very good at it. You told a fair, well balanced story and you let your interviewees tell the nuts and bolts of your story themselves. I wish you every luck in your career as a video maker. I've subscribed, via Forces TV. I looked for a channel called 'INTEL' but all I got were computer channels. Cheers, BH

The Generals, like generals everywhere never leave England and don't want anyone interuppting tea time

2:30 "Less intimidating" is another way to say, "More likely to be attacked." A a war, less intimidating is very bad thing. If your enemy will only attack you if he thinks he has a chance of hurting you. If you seem invulnerable, your enemy won't attack, not even if such an attack means sacrificing his own life. You don't even need to actually be invulnerable (though it helps) so long as your enemy thinks he can't hurt you, you will not be attacked. There is no place for hippy nonsense like being nice on the battlefield. Only when your enemy is dead or utterly defeated can you start being nice. Once your enemy is defeated, then you start working on avoiding another war.

'' war is about innovation '' . war is about out-performing your enemy in every possible aspect trough innovation.

What were they doing there in first place. No war Only peace

I remember using SNACH during my time in NI, you felt safe but they were never really tested against anything more than petrol bombs and stones in NI, fast forward to 2003 onwards and they were found out to be wanting against ied’s. They were great in Belfast but shit in Basra..

The landrovers at the start of the film were apv far more heavily armoured to stop rpgs they were used in west belfast and the bogside far superior to the snatch these vehicles were donated to the iraqi police ?

Just subbed. Damn shame it took so long for this type of vehicle to be developed for our lads, fighting out in the middle of nowhere! Lets hope the inovations and tech keep up with this ever changing world & the threats that come with it!!!

Across the pond they did the same thing to us with the humvees. They were initially under armored, and even after they armored them up the wide flat bottom meant even relativley small IEDs flipped them. They also tended to eject the turret gunner. Of course the solution was very american, they dumped a ludicrous amount of money into building even more ludicrously huge MRAPs. Don't get me wrong, I survived 3 IED blasts in MRAPs, but those sow bellied pigs are so big and slow that we just traded fighting capability for IED survival. They couldnt move for shit, the only thing they did well was not kill you when they exploded. The turret sat so high off the ground that as a gunner moving from humvees to MRAPs I felt like we just traded being ejected for becoming a bullet magnet.

These are still being used by the police in Northern Ireland

God bless all that serve and protect us.

Brilliant piece guys!

That was far more heartbreaking than I expected.

Look up the Rhodesian version of the VW hippie kombi called the Leopard!

Sums up the MOD really, they aint got your back.

I'm 30 years old. I served in, what was technically, the same war as this elderly fellow. Let that sink in for a moment.

The us military was faced with the same situation with the HWMMV. We began replacing them with MRAPs in 2007.

It reminds of the gun debate they're having in the US. Except from with guns you have points for and against the ban;with this you only have points against them.

V shaped hulls aren't a new thing, the US M48-M60 series of MBT had a V shaped hull for better mine resistance and they date back to the 50's, the South African army also had a 'light' vehicle called the Buffalo that incorporated a V shape chassis back in the 80's. I do understand that forces are always forced to react to situations on the ground, for instance it would have been thought rather strange if Land Rovers had always had a V shaped hull, one cannot be pre-emptive but it should be possible to quickly cobble together an answer to the newly discovered threat, after all, there is no new technology involved in the Foxhound, it was all existant.

Honestly love defenders. My favourite vehical. Sad to see her go, but still in service which is good! ❤️ RIP to those lost

In Rhodesia we had a vehicle called the crocodile that was effective.