Training with an Armed Forces helicopter

A hundred and eighty-four British troops have now been killed in Afghanistan.

That's more than in the entire Iraq war and there's a growing row over whether some of those lives could have been saved if troops in Helmand had more helicopters.

At a military airfield near Salisbury helicopters are landing and taking off all the time on training exercises.

It's the last chance for 11 Light Brigade to get vital time on helicopters before they're sent out to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Wing commander Spats Paterson is leading the training on Salisbury Plain.

"They need to onload and offload safely with the aircraft running," he explained.

"They need to understand how loud and noisy it is in the back of a helicopter, so that they're used to it, so it doesn't come as a surprise when they get into theatre."

Bomb threat

Most of the recent British deaths in Helmand have been because of roadside Taliban bombs.

Many people are now arguing that more helicopters would mean fewer soldiers travelling by road and therefore there would be fewer deaths.

Soldiers carry out a training exercise on Salisbury Plain

Wing commander Spats Paterson said: "The actual threat of road bombs out there and the helicopter crews that go out there are as well trained and clearly they are not as exposed to roadside bombs as anybody on the ground."

But he refused to comment on whether he thought there were enough helicopters in Afghanistan to do the job properly.

"That's not a question I can answer," he said. "We, here, on Salisbury Plain are ensuring that they are as well trained as possible before they deploy out to Afghanistan."

Britain's top soldier, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said publicly recently that there weren't enough helicopters. When he was in Helmand he travelled in an American Black Hawk.

Now a group of MPs, the Defence Committee, say they're worried too that there aren't enough helicopters and there look like being even fewer in years to come.