'10-year wait on armoured vehicles cost 30 lives'

Defence chiefs wasted almost a decade on trying to develop new armoured vehicles - while soldiers were being killed in ageing Land Rovers.

A scathing report by the Commons Defence Select Committee today describes the Ministry of Defence's efforts to provide battlefield vehicles as hampered by 'a sorry story of indecision, changing requirements and delay'.

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Opposition critics accused the Government of putting the lives of servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan at greater risk due to their 'indecision and mismanagement' of the issue.

More than 30 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq by roadside bombs since 2003 - many of them while travelling in poorly-protected 'Snatch' Land Rovers.

MPs claim they identified an urgent need to equip the Army with new medium-weight armoured vehicles as long ago as 1998.

But despite Labour spending hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on failed or aborted schemes, the entire project remained little more than an idea.

Labour first promised the Army a new fleet of armoured vehicles in its 1998 Strategic Defence Review.

Ministers announced that medium-weight vehicles were needed to bridge the gap between heavy Challenger tanks on the one hand and thin- skinned or lightly armoured vehicles such as Snatch Land Rovers on the other. But nine years on not a single vehicle has been built or ordered.

The vehicles - expected to be eight-wheeled armoured trucks - must be tough enough to protect troops from small roadside bombs or rocket - propelled grenades, but also light enough to be carried in the RAF ' s long awaited A 400 M transport aircraft - which is itself years behind schedule.

Today's report reveals how the MoD first wasted £182million on two failed joint projects with the U.S. and Germany.

The expected date for the vehicles to enter service has slipped from 2009 and now looks doubtful before 2017, MPs said.

Meanwhile the MoD has spent £120million buying 'off-the-shelf' bomb-proof Mastiff and Vector vehicles - although they have no fighting capability.

Committee chairman James Arbuthnot said: 'The Army needs a new generation of armoured fighting vehicles, capable of being deployed overseas.

'Meanwhile, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to make do with a mix of old vehicles and stop-gap purchases.'

Shadow defence spokesman Gerald Howarth said: 'The Government's indecision, lack of direction, and mismanagement has led to its inability to provide our servicemen and women with the equipment they need when they need it.'

Defence Procurement Minister Lord Drayson said the delays were partly because of changing requirements, based on the Army's experiences in Iraq.

He said the MOD was now making 'rapid progress'.