Spotlight Back on Viking Vulnerability

The deaths of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond have put the spotlight once again on the vulnerability of armoured vehicles used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Troops and coroners have repeatedly criticised equipment, including the "Snatch Land Rover", which is slowly being replaced.

The Viking tracked armoured vehicle, in which Thorneloe and Hammond were killed, was deployed to southern Afghanistan at the end of 2006 to traverse the bridges, trenches, and irrigation canals of the "green zone" along the Helmand river. It was originally developed as an amphibious vehicle for the Royal Marines, not as an armoured vehicle.

Since it was deployed seven soldiers and marines have been killed in Vikings. Last year the Ministry of defense said the Viking had reached the limit of how much they could be armoured as the Taliban was developing heavier and more sophisticated roadside bombs.

Corporal Damian Mulvihill, of 40 Commando Royal Marines, was killed in an explosion while traveling in the front seat of a Viking in February last year in Helmand. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Teare, of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, told the inquest in Plymouth that the Viking was designed to defend small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades and therefore most of the armor was on the top of the vehicle.

Viking vehicles will be replaced next year by more than 100 new, larger and more heavily-armoured tracked vehicles to be known as Warthogs. The MoD says it will take this long to equip them with communications systems.

Former officers defended the decision to deploy Viking vehicles. "You are sacrificing protection for mobility but mobility is itself a form of protection", said Amyas Godfrey, a former infantry officer.