With both main parties committed to carrying out later this year Britain's first big strategic defence review (SDR) for more than a decade, service chiefs are already squabbling about where the inevitable budgetary axe should fall. One thing they can probably agree on is that, whatever else is cut, it should not be helicopters. That is partly because of the recent public outcry that too few helicopters have contributed to the high casualty rate in Afghanistan. But it is also because helicopters are useful in fighting both an insurgency and a conventional war.
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