American Marines may have nothing but respect for their British counterparts in Helmand but, make no mistake, their deployment is seen as a rescue mission for a British effort lacking the resources to succeed.

By swamping southern Helmand with 4,000 Marines in Operation Khanjar, American commanders hope to avoid some of the perils faced by British troops, whose numbers they regard as inadequate to the task.

“The way we have placed ourselves, we are a little more robust than those who may have preceded us,” Colonel George Amland, the deputy commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, told The Times.

In three years, British Forces were unable to venture farther south than their embattled fort in Garmsir, where a single company of 120 troops held the Taleban at bay. In areas where British troops captured territory, their low numbers meant they could rarely hold it.

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“Although it was a fairly robust force in equipment it was given, it was given tasks wider than its numbers allowed it to do,” General Stanley McChrystal, the new Nato Commander told The Times. With the Marine influx, he hopes to change all that. But their arrival has brought unfavourable comparisons between the equipment given to British and American forces.

At their new base next to Britain’s Camp Bastion, American Marines looked sceptically at the unarmoured British Snatches and clanking Warrior armoured vehicles that brave the daily threat of roadside bombs on Helmand’s dusty highways.

Roadside bombs are the biggest killer of British Forces in Helmand, accounting for 12 of the 15 deaths in the past two weeks.

“Ours are a bit heavier than theirs,” said Lieutenant Armenio Sal, “and I guess ours look a bit cooler.” Others picked out the British Scimitar, an armoured vehicle, as something of a museum piece. The vehicle was designed for service in the insurgency-ridden rubber plantations of Malaya, though its Afghan incarnation boasts new armour, a 30mm cannon and cutting-edge optical sights.

“The thing I notice is that the US vehicles, they all have a V-shaped hull, so that it deflects the blast, but the British vehicles seem to be mostly flat across the bottom,” said one US Marine. Another looked critically at the gun turrets, always the most vulnerable position on any vehicle. “They don’t seem to have any protection for the gunner,” he said. “Our vehicles have much more around the gunner.”

The American vehicle of choice is the MRAP, or mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, a heavily armoured monster developed in response to the sophisticated bombs used against military convoys in Iraq.

But MRAPs were built for the concrete highways of that war and are already struggling in the sandy terrain of Helmand. A lighter model is in development.

Adaptation is the key to defeating insurgencies, say experts. And not just in the area of technology. “This fight is increasingly not about equipment but about how much they can use local leverage,” said Seth Jones, counter-insurgency expert at the Rand Corporation, an American think-tank.

Mr Jones noted that in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, American lives were saved by armour and by co-opting locals who would then inform on where and when the roadside bombs were being laid. “The British have talked about dialogue but they haven’t taken enough advantage of the tribes in Helmand who are not supportive of the Taleban,” he said.

If such initiatives are not seized, he warned, the Americans could quickly find themselves facing a similar rise in losses as their British allies, prompting a backlash in America.

The relatively easy fight the Marines have had so far in southern Helmand is a sign of the Taleban’s firm discipline. The Taleban leader there, Mullah Zakir, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee and explosives specialist, ordered a withdrawal to let the Marines take space in preparation for an asymmetric attack. That may be paired with a spectacular guerrilla move such as an assault on Lashkar Gah, where the British provincial reconstruction team is based, or an attempt to overrun a US base. “There’s no doubt the Taleban are trying to pull off something like that,” Mr Jones said.

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