No more helicopters will be bought for British Forces in Afghanistan, the Defence Secretary said yesterday as he admitted that troops had been relying on the use of US Blackhawks.

Bob Ainsworth said that up to eight Merlin transport helicopters would be transferred from Iraq to Afghanistan and eight Chinook Mark 3s, which are being converted from special forces aircraft to basic troop carriers, would also be sent.

The Chinooks, delivered in 2001 at a cost of £259 million for special forces operations, have been grounded for the past eight years because of a software problem.

RAF sources said that they would not be ready for operations in Afghanistan until next year at the earliest. So far, only one of the Chinooks has been “reverted” to a basic utility helicopter and test-flown.

Mr Ainsworth said that he had no plans to buy more helicopters. His remarks, during a speech at the Chatham House think-tank in London, drew a furious response from a former senior diplomat in the audience.

Sir Brian Crowe, a former Ambassador to Austria, said that troops in Helmand province had had to “borrow” ten American helicopters for Operation Panther’s Claw, in which 3,000 British soldiers are fighting the Taleban. He described the situation as a real scandal.

Mr Ainsworth admitted that British troops in Operation Panther’s Claw had used American helicopters but added that they were fighting as part of a coalition force. “We could never match the helicopter assets of the Americans,” he said.

In the Commons, Harriet Harman, standing in for Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions, said that the number of helicopters had increased by 60 per cent over the past two years.

Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said: “Why do we still not have enough helicopters so that troops do not always have to travel by road? We have got roughly the same number of helicopters for 9,000 troops now as we had for 4,500 in 2006.”

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