Tank think
From Mr Kevin Dobson Sir: Michael Vestey (Arts, 22 February) suggests that the government was right to station tanks at airports, and that this was not a 'stunt'. He feels that there must be a real threat of some kind to which this was a sensible response.
I confess that I cannot for the life of me think of any circumstances in which a tank and crew could deal with a terrorist attack on an airport any more effectively than could an armed soldier with access to a car. The only thing I can think of is that I would certainly prefer to be in a tank if a bomb went off, but I'm not sure that is the point.
Maybe the intention is that the tank crew survive the blast and pick off the perpetrators with a well-aimed armour-piercing shell. Or perhaps there is a squadron of tanks, stolen or smuggled in tiny parts in copies of the Koran and reassembled in mosques at dead of night, even now secreted in garages and sheds throughout the suburbs of Hounslow, waiting for the call to attack Terminal 3.
Perhaps someone with specialist knowledge of counter-terrorist tank warfare could enlighten me.
Kevin Dobson
Chippenham. Wiltshire
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