Q31 Chair: What are you not going to be able to do?
Lieutenant-General Coward: I don't think you can say specifically as yet. As I think you will appreciate, the funding available for the armoured vehicle programme has now been set, and the Army is reappraising what the best mix will be within that pipeline of funding. We would be crystal ball-gazing to say, "We couldn't do reconnaissance in the way we would like. We couldn't do armoured infantry, couldn't do this or couldn't do that." There will be compromises that we will have to make.
Q32 Chair: Have you got enough helicopters? My information is that there aren't even enough helicopters.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: The announcement that we were moving ahead with the Chinook programme gives us the capability-
Q33 Chair: When?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: The order has been made, and they are in production at the moment.
Chair: Will you have enough helicopters?
Nick Smith: Particularly for reconnaissance, given you've highlighted that as problem.
Vice-Admiral Lambert: We have enough helicopters for Afghanistan at the moment. Have we got enough helicopters for Future Force 2020 and all the missions that we're likely to want? With the timetable for delivering we will look at what capability shortfall-
Q 34 Chair: What does that mean? When are you going to get them? Will there be enough?
Lieutenant-General Coward: The new Chinooks will start coming in in 2015.
Q35 Chair: In 2015. How many have you ordered?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Fourteen.
Q36 Chair: So you will get the first one in 2015 and the last one in-
Lieutenant-General Coward: I think slightly before that. But their capability, with people trained, will be around 20153.
Q37 Comptroller and Auditor General: As I understand it, the argument says, "Of course you can do reconnaissance with something other than one specific vehicle." Who could argue with that? You can use something else in your defence capability to do all those. Of course that makes sense. But when you've got less of everything, the amount of these tasks in total that you can do at one time steadily goes down, doesn't it? Isn't that also fair? It is an answer, but it is not a solution to everything.
Q38 Mr Bacon: Could you remind us what the Government's policy is on British troops coming out of Afghanistan-the draw-down?
Lieutenant-General Coward: We are due to be out of combat operations by the end of 2014. The reduction over time between now and then is still being developed: will it be a glide slope, a cliff edge, a convex, or whatever?
Q39 Mr Bacon: The combat side is expected, at least under current plans, to be finished by the end of 2014.
Lieutenant-General Coward: Correct.
Mr Bacon: The helicopters arrive in 2015.
Lieutenant-General Coward: The additional helicopters, yes.
Q40 Mr Bacon: But they won't be used in combat in Afghanistan if current plans are stuck to. Is that right?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Correct. The point is that they are, in part at least, replacing some platforms that will be going out of service in future. The Sea King, for example, of which we withdrew a number from Afghanistan last month, is going out of service in 2016. Replacing those as a capability for defence is, at least in part, what the additional 14 Chinooks will do.
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3 Under current plans, the first of the new Chinooks will enter service with the RAF in May 2014, while 3 aircraft will be available for deployment with trained crews and all necessary support in January 2015.