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"As I sometimes find myself, things are much clearer if you flip the coin and look at the other side and ask ’What if we were to pull out unilaterally? What if we were to just come out of this mission?’ Frankly, the consequences of that are appalling so we will succeed, we must succeed."

General Dannatt added: “We have got to think through the ways we operate, the resources we have got, the numbers we have got and all that kind of stuff - we can talk about that another time - but to make sure we are giving ourselves the absolute best chance of succeeding and part of that is the ability to minimise on casualties."

Separately, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) insisted today that it maintained “strict airworthiness standards” following reports that it ignored safety warnings which could have saved the lives of more than 30 service personnel in three separate air crashes.

MoD officials learned of technical problems before the collision of two Sea King helicopters in the Gulf in 2003, a Hercules plane crash in Iraq in 2005 and a Nimrod jet explosion in Afghanistan in 2006 in which 14 people died, the BBC reported.

An MoD spokeswoman said: “Our aircraft are maintained to strict airworthiness standards and, if we did not have confidence in the aircraft, we would not continue to allow them to be flown.”

The BBC’s File On 4 programme was shown restricted flight documents, interviewed engineers and air crew and learnt of safety breaches where warnings were either ignored or overruled.

A total of 14 British servicemen were killed when a Nimrod XV230 exploded in mid-air near Kandahar in Afghanistan in September 2006.

A board of inquiry into the crash found it was caused when leaking fuel came into contact with a hot-air pipe after mid-air refuelling, and recommended the replacement of fuel seals and engine bay ducts.

A restricted flight safety investigation report into an incident two years before that Nimrod crash showed another Nimrod had a hot air leak - up to 400C - that was effectively boiling a fuel tank.

Another report from the defence firm QinetiQ found 26 faults in Nimrod planes which had implications for the jets’ “potential airworthiness”.

Air Vice Marshall Stephen Hillier said: “What the loss of the Nimrod has tragically demonstrated is that there were shortcomings in our understanding of the airworthiness of that platform.”

A further 10 members of the armed forces were killed when an RAF Hercules crashed into the desert in central Iraq in January 2005.

The Hercules C130K, from RAF Lyneham’s 47 Squadron, was brought down between Baghdad and Balad after enemy fire hit a fuel tank, causing it to explode.

Last year a UK coroner concluded that the men were unlawfully killed and criticised the MoD’s decision not to fit “explosive suppressant foam” (ESF) around the plane’s fuel tanks, which experts said could have saved their lives.

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