Britain's Brown rejects Afghanistan criticism

LONDON, England (CNN) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Monday rejected the charge that British troops are dying unnecessarily in Afghanistan because they do not have enough helicopters.

"British armed forces are better equipped today than at any time... in the past 40 years," Brown insisted.

"In the last two years we have increased helicopter numbers by 60 percent and... capacity by 84 percent," he told the House of Commons.

The United Kingdom has been shocked by the death of 15 British troops in Afghanistan in 10 days, including eight in a 24-hour period.

The eight dead are the largest number of British troops killed in a single day since the Falklands war in 1982.

Brown named them individually at the beginning of his statement to lawmakers, noting that several were "just 18 years old."

Opposition lawmakers, among others, have argued that some British troops have been killed because they had to travel by road rather than air for lack of helicopters.

"If we cannot move our forces by air, they are more vulnerable on the ground," Conservative defense spokesman Liam Fox said Monday, asking if the Labor government had made a mistake by cutting the helicopter budget in 2004.

Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth dismissed the criticism.

British forces are "taking on the Taliban in one of their heartland areas," he told lawmakers. That kind of "hand-to-hand fighting... cannot be conducted from inside a highly armored vehicle and it cannot be conducted from a helicopter."

Ainsworth said more helicopters were on the way, but that many operations "cannot be conducted from helicopters."