Brits leasing Russian planes and crews for Afghan operations

Daily Mail:

British frontline troops in Afghanistan are so short of helicopters and transport planes that they are being bailed out by the Russians.

The Mail on Sunday has established that the Ministry of Defence is using civilian Russian-built Mi-8 and Mi-26 transport helicopters to ferry supplies and soldiers in Afghanistan. The pilots are freelance Russians and Ukrainians.

Britain is also hiring massive commercial Russian Antonov aircraft to fly vehicles and heavy equipment from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to Afghanistan.

Even more extraordinary is that elite British special forces troops have been forced to use helicopters from a Third World nation to mount covert operations because of a desperate lack of UK aircraft.

Senior defence sources have confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that the SAS, the SBS and the Special Forces Support Group are using troop-carrying helicopters on loan from another country's army.

The aircraft - camouflaged but carrying no British insignia - are flown by an elite team of UK Army Air Corps pilots, trained at a secret special forces base in Afghanistan.

British three-man crews - two pilots and an engineer - use the helicopters to fly about 24 special forces soldiers at a time on dangerous night-time missions deep into Taliban strongholds.

The humiliation of Britain's crack regiments having to beg a lift is a stark example of the shortages of men and machinery that sparked the row between the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, and Gordon Brown.

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Britain's Prime Minister probably thinks of this as good financial management of assets or lack there of. The problem is that he will not always be able to count on Russians to provide equipment when the UK needs it.