THE Army’s first high-tech digitally tuned brigade is being sent to Iraq with a new radio that is supposed to provide every soldier with secure and clear communications.
However, after a decade of trying to resolve fundamental technical problems, the brig-ade’s Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured fighting vehicles will still have to rely on an obsolete radio system whose origins date back to the 1970s.
The Americans, by contrast, introduced a fully digitised system several years ago and fought the war in Iraq in 2003 with a radio network streets ahead of the British version.
The British all-hearing Bowman communications system, which was supposed to have replaced the ancient Clansman radio in 1995, will be 13 years late by the time all three Armed Services are equipped with the modern digital replacement in 2008.
In its first operational test, 12 Mechanised Brigade will be taking Bowman to Iraq when it deploys to Basra at the end of April, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday, although Clansman, which was criticised in all post-operational reports after the military campaign in Kosovo in 1999, will still have a role to play.
Advertisement
The price for the whole project has been cut back and now stands at £2.4 billion. The plan is to train 75,000 personnel in the use of Bowman and to fit it eventually to 2,000 vehicles, including the Challenger 2 tank, five of the Royal Navy’s biggest warships, all frigates and destroyers and Chinook and Merlin helicopters.