Firing blanks

Under the headline, "Cheap bullets put lives of paratroopers at risk", the Daily Telegraph has the all too believable story of cost cutting from the Ministry of Defence putting soldiers lives at risk. According to one Para, the cheapo ammunition, bought as a cost saving measure, was "crap".

A Parachute Regiment officer involved in the fighting said: "The ammo we had was rubbish. It just kept jamming. At one point we refused to go out because it was so bad. Eventually we managed to scrounge some Canadian rounds.

"If we had not got that ammo we would certainly have lost a lot of people."

After the protest, senior technical officers tested five different batches of ammunition. They were all defective.

Tags: Afghanistan.