British troops were 'supplied with defective ammunition'

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The Daily Telegraph reports today that a platoon from the 3Bn The Parachute Regiment refused to go on patrol until the problem was resolved.

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The MoD has confirmed British troops were forced to borrow ammunition off American and Canadian troops as they battled the Taliban.

The Telegraph reports the batch is believed to have come from the Czech Republic or Pakistan, where a round costs 60 US cents, compared to 1.50 US dollars for British, Canadian or American ammunition.

The ammunition was for the .50 calibre Browning heavy machine gun, which can be also be mounted on a Land Rover.

The newspaper reports one paratrooper demonstrated how poor the rounds were in a video posted on the internet site YouTube.

The video shows two soldiers in a sandbagged position struggling to operate the machine gun. One is shown constantly re-cocking his weapon as a colleague tries to feed through the ammunition belt while enemy fire can be heard in the background.

The Browning machine gun fires up to 550 rounds per minute and can penetrate buildings and lightly-armoured vehicles.

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman told the Press Association: "Three months ago there was a single defective batch of .50 ammunition.

"Some ammunition was borrowed from the Americans and Canadians for the short time it took to be replaced.

"At present there are no problems with .50 ammunition or any other kind of rounds used in theatre.

"Southern Afghanistan has extremely hot and dusty conditions which can sometimes interfere with the moving parts in a weapon. It would be misleading to blame this on defective ammunition."

The spokeswoman was unable to comment on whether disciplinary action would be taken against the paratrooper who reportedly posted a video of the poor quality rounds on YouTube.