Call it what you will — I even heard one mentally acrobatic senior officer describe it not as being "out-fought", merely "out-governed" — but 2009 was the year they were getting beaten. Casualties among British infantry units were running at a one in four ratio, similar to that suffered by their forefathers against the Germans in the 1944 European campaign. The Taliban frightened us and our people more than we frightened them. They killed us more cost-effectively too. Things were so bad in parts of Helmand that some troops were    refusing to go out on patrol. Others were vomiting with nerves at the patrol base gates before stepping outside. In one instance in 2010 a British commanding officer, considered careless toward his men's lives, was heckled and jeered while addressing his battalion at an end-of-tour muster at Camp Bastion. The regimental sergeant-major stepped in and tried to control the scene but received the same treatment. Army blogs among embittered veterans started speaking of effecting a "regime change for the dead brothers" when they returned home. Helmand was uglier in so many more ways than anyone in the UK could ever have imagined.

Now, though, if not "winning", at least the British are no longer "losing" in Helmand either. Troop density, the belated reward of General Stanley McChrystal's Afghan surge, is responsible for much of the see-saw in fortune, smothering the insurgency and allowing Afghan authorities to kick-start local development and economy. The current density of soldiers in the British zone, where they serve alongside a brigade of Afghan National Army (ANA) troops, police and local militias, is more concentrated than at any stage in the war so far. Having handed far-flung war zones such as Kajaki, Sangin and Musa Qala over to the American surge force, the British army in Helmand is currently operating in territory so reduced that it is half of the area patrolled by a single company in 2008.

From a helicopter, the vista is one of massive militarisation. Patrol bases and outposts buttress the passage of every major route leading to Helmand's provincial capital, Lashkar Gah — the white whale silhouettes of surveillance balloons marking out the British locations. Underneath them spy cameras provide an overlapping mesh of real-time footage, the basis for the new era of counter-insurgency warfare. Long gone are the days of costly attrition operations against the Taliban. Instead, utilising the full panoply of drone, balloon and unmanned aerial surveillance, combined with the signal intercepts and human intelligence resources, commanders know the movements and locations of insurgents in their area better than before, and can track or target them remotely.

"Kill TV" the soldiers call it: I have seen it countless times now and it never gets boring. The grainy figures of Taliban fighters are monitored on a flickering surveillance screen, digging in an improvised explosive device or moving to an ambush position. They suddenly freeze on hearing the thump of an overhead Reaper unleashing a Hellfire rocket. The more experienced insurgents try to make a run for it. The newer recruits, immobilised and puzzled, usually stay still, sometimes staring skyward. Then a dark cloud envelopes them. Occasionally a broken torso spins out of the blast. The honour of soldiers is enshrined by their being prepared to die as they kill, so there is always an uneasy quality in watching machines slay to order. Even so, it is hard not to enjoy it — Candid Camera with consequences.

But it won't win the war. Foreign technology is at best a one-eyed God in Afghanistan's labyrinthine conflict. The British know it too.