Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Rhagfyr 1973.
I agree, and I was about to come to that very point.
As for surface-to-air missiles, another intriguing statistic is that the Israeli air force had a loss rate of 0·9 per 100 sorties—in other words, less than 1 per cent. of their aircraft failed to return from each sortie. That said, they made more than 11,000 sorties, and that accounts for their loss of more than 100 aircraft.
It is also important to realise that for the first three days the Israeli air force was not able to operate, as it would have done had the initiative been with the Israelis, by attacking the missiles themselves. For three days Israeli aircraft had to operate in the full air defence environment on both fronts, especially on the Golan Heights, to provide first aid to their hard-pressed ground forces and to give close ground support. It was in those three days that the Israelis sustained very nearly two-thirds of their total aircraft losses.
Later in the conflict, when they turned their attention to the equally sophisticated and concentrated belts of SAM missiles on the west side of the Suez Canal, the situation was very different. Although there were only seven SAM batteries within the enclave taken by Israeli ground forces on the west side of the Canal, four times as many SAM missile sites were destroyed by Israeli air strikes by Friday, 19th October, three days before the cease-fire. That was done with a very low level of loss and it is significant to notice the difference.
Israeli aircraft, above all her Phantoms, were able with relatively limited losses to attack and destroy the sophisticated SAM missile systems when they were their target. Obviously when they were operating to provide ground cover their losses were very high.
One of my hon. Friends referred to the effect of new missiles in the land warfare. This is much more far reaching than the development of the SAM missile. The Sagger anti-tank missile requires very little training to operate. It means that an infantry man by himself, hiding behind a rock or in a trench, can pot a tank at a range of just under a mile, and do so before the tank commander has a chance of identifying from where, the missile is coming. Sagger missiles are not invulnerable. Even though they are wire-guided, within a few days the Israelis were able to develop electronic means to deflect them to a very large extent. Although it is clear that the tanks is not obsolete, none the less this conflict has reinforced the point that there is a necessity for evenly-balanced forces on the battlefield in terms not only of armour but of artillery and infantry and above all of infantry equipped with effective personal anti-tank missiles.
I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary what this country has on the drawing board in terms of anti-tank missiles, especially anti-tank missiles operated by a single soldier. Will my hon. Friend see that the highest priority is accorded to the development of such a system and to its deployment to every platoon in the British Army?