The deaths last Wednesday night of two men, when their RAF Regiment Land Rover was blown up by a mine as they were patrolling Kandahar airport in Afghanistan, were more than just another tragedy. It was an avoidable and therefore unpardonable blunder.
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We have continued to lose dozens of these hopelessly unprotected Land Rovers to mines and roadside bombs, at a time when almost every other front-line force in both Afghanistan and Iraq has been equipped with properly mine-protected vehicles, such as the Bushmaster, which have saved scores of lives.
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Even the lives of British troops have already been saved by the handful of mine-protected Mastiff patrol vehicles which the Ministry of Defence has sent to both countries (although it won't tell us how many).
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Last November it was reported that the Taliban were planning to make much more extensive use of mines, to "demoralise" Nato forces in Afghanistan. Every other nation except Britain has equipped its troops accordingly.
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Uniquely, the MoD is still happy to ask most of our young men to patrol in vehicles in which far too many of them have either died or suffered horrible wounds (again the MoD won't tell us how many have been injured).
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This is not just a tragedy: it is an outrage, a national disgrace, for which senior figures in the MoD should be held personally responsible.
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