PlayThe latest UK soldier to die in Afghanistan has been named as the head of the Army pleads for more helicopters.
Rifleman Aminiasi Toge from 2nd Battalion The Rifles, who would have turned 27 on Sunday, died on a foot patrol near Gereshk in central Helmand Province on Thursday afternoon.
His death takes the number of UK troops who have died in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001 to 185, six more than the total death toll in the Iraq war.
The Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, earlier said his forces needed as many helicopters as they could get.
Sir Jock said: "In this situation where you have lots of improvised explosive devices, the more you can increase your tactical flexibility by moving people by helicopters then the more unpredictable your movements become to the enemy.
"Therefore it is quite patently the case that you could save casualties by doing that."
Asked about the ongoing row over whether British troops in Afghanistan have enough helicopters, he said there is "no such thing as enough helicopters in an operational campaign".
"If you are an operational commander you can always do more and do things better the more helicopters you have," he went on.
"If I thought we had enough helicopters in Afghanistan frankly we wouldn't be busting a gut to get the Merlins we had deployed in Iraq ready to go out this time to Afghanistan."
Sir Jock spoke as the Ministry of Defence admitted one of its helicopters used in Afghanistan was a "cut and shut" combination of two aircraft.
The front of the twin-engined helicopter is from an RAF Chinook which crashed in Oman in 1999 and the rear of the aircraft was taken from a former Argentine Air Force Chinook helicopter seized in June 1982 during the recapture of the Falkland Islands.
The Ministry of Defence said the helicopter was air-tested successfully and re-entered service in 2003.
The ministry disclosed the helicopter's past in a letter to Ian Sadler, whose 21-year-old son Jack, a trooper in the Honourable Artillery Company, was killed by a mine in Afghanistan in December 2007. Mr Sadler, from Exmouth, Devon, has been fiercely critical of the equipment provided to British troops.
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