Yes, sir, I'd be delighted to speak to that. There are two aspects of the mission and setting success for the mission that helicopters enable, overall, under the umbrella of flexibility.
The first aspect is force protection. We have soldiers, sailors, airmen, and airwomen, not just our nationalities, in places throughout Kandahar province, at forward operating bases, or patrol bases, or out at police substations. As I mentioned earlier, the number of roads and the number of kilometres of road in that area are very limited. So when you're moving back and forth on the ground, you become predictable. Most of the roads and the ones we're trying to pave now that will reduce that somewhat are gravel roads. Therefore, it's very easy to dig them up; it's very easy to put in an improvised explosive device of any size and then camouflage that so you're not going to see it.
We take a lot of steps, obviously, to prevent that, but the first thing you can do, and specifically with the leased helicopters, is the hash and trash, getting all the beans and bullets and water and spare parts, and all those kinds of things, from Kandahar airfield out to that forward operating base, or that patrol base, or that police substation, and quite literally jump over that route, not be predictable and not be constrained to it, and therefore not be such a vulnerable target with a high probability of getting hit by an IED.
That's part one with the helicopters. It really does reduce the logistics support traffic, and that, I believe, would lead to a reduction in some of our casualties, along with other things we do.
The second part, given our manoeuvre forces, is a mobility throughout to be able to take the initiative away from the Taliban and to go to wherever we consider they're staging and strike them there before they can strike in Kandahar City or in Panjwai.
That's why something like the Chinook helicopter gives us an air mobility option. All of a sudden, you're into the area. You're not seen a long way off, coming down a road and raising clouds of dust and therefore somebody is either waiting for you with an ambush or else has long disappeared. That gives flexibility, a mobility that reduces vulnerability and allows us to take, in a huge way, the initiative away from the Taliban and therefore be more successful at improving the security in Kandahar City and the districts surrounding it, and just enabling a bit more space to build the other things we're trying to do: the army, the police, and the developmental projects.