Original story here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12291372
Have scoured the web for a viewable ‘outside the UK’ version of this if you cannot see the video at the link above
Anyway, that will be £4.1 billion please, or in other currencies
4,7 Billion Euros
6.5 Billion Dollars
Still, we do have to save £200m per year, wouldn’t want to sacrifice the defence of the UK in order to fund colonial guilt trips, African Mercedes dealerships, Indian space programmes, condoms for Africans or government grants to make sure lesbians can play squash would we.
I don’t want to hear about lessons learned, smart procurements, intelligent customers or any of the other complete bollox that regularly spews forth from the MoD, what I do want is a public enquiry so the whole country can see why £4 billion, enough to give every single secondary school in the UK a million each, has been so shockingly wasted.
We need to find out who is responsible.
Some stories from the media
http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=15313
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/27/nimrod-loss-massive-gap-former-defence-chiefs
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8284697/No-need-to-scrap-Nimrod.html
It is time to close the book on Nimrod but I thought I would end on a quote from Liam Fox about the SDSR
But defence as a whole will, and must, come out in a stronger position
the us rivetjoint aircraft that the uk are buying are apparently great aircraft and we will be getting tech that was previously unavailable to us .
do we know if the nimrod was acctually the best or is the american one better ?
A very sad and sorry sight hope this doesn’t come back to bite us. The guy on the video make a argument that’s hard to argue with.
@mark the rivet joint will replace the R1 in the sigint role not the MR4 in the MPA role.
SAR C-130′s
Sea Surveilance E-3D/UAV’s
ASW Merlins
Long range ASW for task force coverage, will be the issue. But with the option limited to decommissioning more frigates or withdrawing the Nimrod, the choice is clear, but painful. The task group is not going to be fighting the Soviet submarine fleet anytime soon.
TD – what really grips my is of course the comments at the end. I work with a number of very very intelligent chaps from India, most of them Chartered Accountants (at least), some quite senior auditors. Not one of them has a good thing to say about their own government and one of them will take the slightest excuse to go on (yet another) rant about corruption and waste …….
So, even if my leftist leaning used to make me think the amount we send in aid might be a good thing, my new Indian colleagues have led me to believe that such money would have been better spent on 200 mil per year in Nimrod running costs
“Some defence sources say there were safety fears over the new Nimrods, after difficulties during manufacture, though BAE Systems insists those were easily fixed, the BBC’s defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said.”
When this came to light last year – not least on PPRuNe – it was clear that the Nimrod was unlikely to be flying for a number of years. Sad loss, but instead of moaning about it should we not be investigating the parties to this GBP4 billion folly?
@ mark
thanks for your answer
so the rivet joint is replacing the sentinal r1 or the nimrod r1 .im sorry if thats a dumb question,it just seems very odd that the sentinal which almost brand new is being scrapped.
As far as I can recall, this entire sorry project, in all it’s mutations, has been a weapons grade fxck up for what feels like most of my adult life. The aircraft being wrecked look like something a hyperactive three year old would have made with 2 egg cartons, a fairy liquid bottle and glue made from flour and water. That anyone is shocked or surprised that the project is finally getting a headshot is in fact, the only surprise. It’s been so compromised over the years it’s a miracle that we didn’t end up with the sort of contraptions made famous by the Birdmen of Bognor. Perhaps the horrible truth is that we did and they’ve been scrapped before anyone discovers that for £4bn we ended up with something that couldn’t actually fly. Enquiring minds might have raised an eyebrow when the quite stunning discovery was made that the wings didn’t fit; must have been a scratch on the slide-rule. Obviously, everyone responsible for the project, past and present should be dragged out of their retirement and publicly flogged before being sentenced to spend the remainder of their feckless lives sentenced to hard labour in late night kebab shops.
Not to worry though, I’m pretty confident that BAE Systems will conjure up another wheeze to rape and pillage the taxpayer for the next 30 years, to be announced by another stupid politician with the phrase, “thousands of jobs in high technology,” whilst the urgent search begins to find a new batch of remedial teenagers on YOP schemes to manage it until their eventual retirement from the MOD.
Well said HUNKOFJUNK , There should be an investigation by the buisness secretary on how the MOD managed this whole sorry fiasco from inception to final destuction.Weve got to cut this umbilical cord that we seem have with BAE .Its time to look at other suppliers and im afraid to say buy equipment of the shelf .Take the uss freedom ordered may 2004, laid down june 2005 ,launched 2006 in service nov 2008 . Ok only 3000t ,115m in length 2 x seasprite helos ,1x57mm gun, 21x ram surface to air missiles how hard can it be !
“As far as I can recall, this entire sorry project, in all it’s mutations, has been a weapons grade fxck up for what feels like most of my adult life.”
The sad thing is that this would be equally true even if the author was born in 1938. Half a century on and we’re still flying Comets, and they’re still coming to bits in mid-air and killing people. One thing you can say about MRA4: it would certainly have killed more RAF crew than it would enemy submariners over the course of its life. Just like all its predecessors.
Nice to see the MSM has caught up with the criticism.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766
Isn’t this outrage by former Senior officers way, way too late? The entire fiasco from start to inglorious finish needs to be investigated, and a effective, VFM replacement bought/built as soon as possible.
Nimrod soaking up money seems to have been something of a constant throughout my whole life.
It was one of those early memories I have from watching the news as a kid; along with Greenham Common, Thatcher/Reagan, the Evil Empire, and Angela Rippon’s reports of Gwer-reeel-lazz fighting some proxy war somewhere I would never be able to point to on a map.
There’s a neat little article summarising Nimrod AEW3 here at Spyflight (cold war aircraft site) for those of you suffering deja vu.
http://www.spyflight.co.uk/Nim%20aew.htm
I don’t think we should only focus on the decision to scrap MRA4, but rather we should be looking at the decision to begin the programme, and the management of the programme throughout.
It is my personal opinion that we should give up on this overseas expeditionary stuff. As no one takes any notice of what I think, I’m really surprised to find that they are going to take my advice.
After 2015 we won’t have the manpower, equipment or money to interfere with anyone except the people living in the Isle of Wight!
PS. Not even in the IoW if they sink the ferries!
@Brian Black: I read that article last night and agree completely. Add the fact that the Nimrod was ordered in preference to a BAC project because HSL were running out of work and the whole sorry saga turns into a farce. Why retain a 3.12m diameter fuselage when even the A319′s is 3.95m?
As for the top brass bleating about the cancellation, who was not supervising the contract properly? Was anyone in charge for longer than two years? Are they all like this RAF officer?
Cheap shot Brian, bloody funny though
2 things in the last 24 hrs have caught my attention over this. 1) daily telegraph reporter did a piece on this, quoting the nimrod best in the world blah blah blah, in the comments some pleb wrote “we should’ve bought AWACs” The reporter replies is it better than nimrod? Only then did someone comment back they were two different capabillities, to which the reporter confessed he wasn’t sure! Then here’s an idea mate do some research before you write an article slagging people off, probably same bloke who keeps writing that prince harry flies RAF apaches! quite apt as chopper is the word that springs to mind.
second point and probably more important on the lunchtime news today, doc fox said that the MR4 failed it’s tests both flight and equipment and would be still testing for a couple of years. Hmmmm…..any comments on that BAe?
i don’t often agree with lewis page, but i think he was right to highlight the actual words of the generals/admirals rather than the editorial byline that the article shipped with:
“But one should note that the signatories – including the air marshals one would naturally expect to find condemning cuts to the RAF, but also the admiral and general who won the Falklands war – don’t actually state that they think the Nimrod itself should have been saved. What the ex-brasshats are bemoaning is the UK’s loss of long-range maritime patrol aircraft in general, not the Nimrod MRA4 in particular.”
I also notice that the Daily Telegraph has a piece saying how pleased the Russian Baltic Fleet would be – a free pass to their subs. I think the last nuke based in the Baltic was the November class about 40 or more years ago. I also listened to the Sky News paper reviewer this morning having a rant. He was obviously under the impression the MR4 was the AWACs! Quite depressing rally.
Do you think the Japs would sell us some P1′s or are the cupholders the wrong size?
As I have stated several times now. If BAE has not delivered a working aircraft then they should be being sued!!
If they aren’t then tge mod have something to hide!!!
In which case a public enquiry is needed.
The APM (Association of Project Management) dud a piece on the MRA4 last year. Tge biggest single problem (PM wise) was lack of customer involvement / customer NOT fulfilling their role in the project. As a former PM (who has worked on mod projects) I can confirm this is a common problem and not confined to the mod. There is a major misconception that once you appoint a pm the customer and sponsor are no longer needed until tge project is complete. Thus us totally wrong and the supplier, customer and sponsor need to be actively involved throughout the project.
I can imagine the problems that BAE uncovered and got zero guidance from the mod which inevitably led to a series of poor decisions.
With hindsight, the biggest problem was reusing the existing fuselage. Most of the technical issues would have eminated from that key decision. Which I guess the mod failed to fully understand the consequences of!
Ooh-’eck!
Even CBBC Newsround understand that Nimrod is a ten year-old technology demonstrator that ain’t worth fixing. Please people: move-on.
FT so the total waste of £4.1billion is of no consequence then?
I agree with the general concensus here…as much as we hate it, and as bad a program it is…its the loss of long range patrol and the skills it involved thats the sting, not really just the aircraft… but if it were nimrod or keeping a few more frigates in service, then I’d choose the latter…and this from a crab!
I also agree with hunkofjunk bar the end of his speech;
“whilst the urgent search begins to find a new batch of remedial teenagers on YOP schemes to manage it until their eventual retirement from the MOD.”
Do remeber its the future generations we are risking with the decisions taken now (and in the immediate past), this fiasco has many heads to blame…but it’ll be those who replace us in our jobs when we retire (not to mention pay for our pension) who’ll stomach the worst of it. I generally feel sickened at how we have f@cked up things for the next gen good and proper…in many fields, not just defence
In the end I’ll remember the MRA4 and Nimrod in general as an embarassing episode in our military and industrial history.
As TD said though, its dead now…wont be coming back…the dramatic and stupid episode is over and the series continues, obviously not much will be learnt from it, and people will rant on, but alas, we’ve got to carry on…right equipment/capability or not.
£4-billion spent doing what, where and why? Whether in defence, education, the NHS, DFID, the Arts, etc. it is symptom of the past administration. Better to cut our losses now then wait a few years for fifteen year-old technology to fly (and in doing so keeping Kinloss open).
As for the threat to Olympic security, surely we can borrow a few Rivot-Joints to fill the gap? The money has gone, the gamble has failed: move-on.
Bit unfair to implicate Fox in stuff like the lesbian squash, given that happened under Labour’s watch – methinks there’s going to be rather less of that kind of stuff from now on.
Ditto your pet example of India – it was Gordon Brown who signed future governments up to £825m of aid to India (hmm – spot a theme here?), whereas the current mob have at least started to question the concept of giving aid to India, with the implication that it may well end up in more deserving hands once we’ve got out of Brown’s fiscal handcuffs. And rather than bleat about it on a blog, you (and others) might want to contribute to the body requesting public comments on where aid goes to.
Playing devil’s advocate a bit – rather than a £200m subsidy to India’s C-17′s, how about looking at is as a £200m subsidy to intelligence and troops on the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, without having to get our hands dirty? They’re much more of a threat than Russian submarines, we don’t have to exert power via shiny things with a roundel on them.
And I’m not playing devil’s advocate at all is saying that sending condoms to Africa is one of the cost-effective things we could do for our national security. As an extreme thought experiment, imagine if a few decades ago, every woman in Somalia had been sterlilised. No need to send frigates on anti-piracy duty, no Blackhawk Down, no al-Shabaab, no Somali immigrants to the UK, you’d have wiped out what is now regarded by MI5 as one of the main centres for terrorism in the world.
Extreme example. But many of the conflicts in Africa and the Middle East boil down to too many people chasing too few resources, whether that be water, farmland or whatever. That starts wars, and the losers end up as immigrants. Discouraging overpopulation should be a major goal of our security policy. As a side benefit, condoms reduce the transmission of HIV, which hits the most productive members of society – young adults – hardest, making the country as a whole more dependent on handouts than ever.
As for the whole Mercedes thing. Obviously, we should try to minimise it, but I reckon it just goes with the territory. Just like if some foreign charity wanted to give away free petrol to poor Britons, they’d find that for every £5 they spent on fuel, £4 would be siphoned off to pay for ministerial Jaguars and cleaning moats. Is UK fuel duty so very different from funds diverted to an African dictator?
Take another example, I’ve read it takes £4 to transport £1 of fuel to Helmand. That £4 gets spent on men and Apaches to guard the fuel convoys, payoffs to the local warlords, and whatever. However, we’ve taken the view that having a gallon of fuel in Helmand is sufficiently important that we are prepared to pay that price. Exactly what that extra £4 is spent on doesn’t really matter, it’s just the price of doing business in Helmand.
So it is with the Mercedes tax, just a price of doing business in the Third World. If we think it’s important enough to be doing Project X in Somalia or wherever, then that’s the price tag. What you should be angry about is that the money isn’t ending up in Range Rover dealerships or Aston Martins!
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s bonkers for both Labour and the Tories to be increasing the DfiD budget at the current time. On the other hand, I do recognise it has a role to play in our long-term security, and in the exercise of soft power. I just wish we were less wet about it, and less afraid of using it to explicitly help UK plc like other countries. OTOH, I’d also note that the DfiD budget has historically funded quite a few nefarious activities, that I suspect the average TDer would thoroughly support, and that are arguably some of our highest military priorities right now. So don’t assume it’s necessarily a case of cutting DfiD to allow more military shiny toys.
In fact it’s the opposite, when other departments see the MoD urinating away £4.1bn as they so obviously have this week, they are entitled to ask, why the hell should the MoD get any more money when they are clearly completely incompetent? The MoD needs to get its own house in order before anyone should think of raiding other departmental budgets to fund our military. Don’t blame the politicians for that, blame Abbey Wood’s ongoing incompetence and the contractors who take advantage of it.
Looking at the pictures of the dismantling and the lack of wings in at least one example it occurred to me that there may have been an element in the cancellation similar to the moth balling of the Chinooks.
Maybe the fixing of the new machine produced wings to aircraft with much more handmade fuselages produced such variability that it was not possible to make a claim for safety that would be acceptable to the CAA?
If each wing fixing was a separate configuration then
A ) a stress model needs to be developed and validated for all possible such configurations or
B) Even worse, the aircraft are not a type but amount to 9 new aircraft forms (at least in part)
Hence the flight testing and flight envelopes for all 9 would have to take place as separate activities
All the above would make a dizzying cost………still not paid at the time of cancellation, and as per the Chinooks it might have been the case that it was finally not possible (regardless of cost) to say with authority how the wing attachments would behave in flight.
An iron bird test for each aircraft would amount to either a test to destruction or more sensibly only support a very limited flight envelope.
Good article on MRA$ from RUSI’s Michael Clark:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/8287334/Nimrod-a-sorry-saga-with-a-messy-ending.html
Can we be a bit realistic about looking for a magic pony in other people’s budgets? That lesbian squash grant was six grand. Not six billion; not six million. Six grand. You couldn’t buy a decent car for that. You certainly couldn’t buy anything relevant to defence for it. Consider this: the statistical variance in the consumption of hot drinks within MOD is certainly far more money by several orders of magnitude. Let’s grow up. There is no magic pony in the budget marked “old stories from the Sun in about 1987″.
DFID’s budget is about £5bn or 0.11% of MOD’s. This excellent chart should be in the forefront of everyone’s mind as a reminder of the no-pony constraint.
You cannot get on by saying “we’ll cut things I don’t like”. 1) there is no guarantee there are enough of them, 2) your preferences are not universal, 3) you can’t complain about “micro-managing Treasury bureaucrats” one minute and then start whining about £6k line items in some town hall’s accounts (which are the business of the people who live there at the next election, not the central government). The Government is currently learning this the hard way and it should be a reminder to everyone.
Good point Alex, but one minor quibble: DFID is 11% of the MOD budget, not 0.11%.
Maybe they should be rolled together into one big “Department of Doing Things To Foreigners”. That’d help matters in Afghanistan – DFID and the forces have not been playing well together at all.
It might not be that good for the armed forces though, because the DODTTF would be in an excellent position to ask naughty questions like “so how many water purifiers could we deploy in Helmand for the cost of that GMLRS? And which do you think will win more hearts and minds?”
You could think of it as “effects-based government”. After all, there isn’t a Department of Hospitals and a Department of Community Nurses and a Department of Adverts Telling You To Eat More Fruit. There’s a Department of Health. Job: keep folk healthy.
But the MOD is misnamed, because it’s not actually in overall charge of defence. It’s the Department of the Armed Forces. Defence is also covered by the FCO (job: persuading foreigners to be our friends), by the Home Office (job: via the security services, stopping small numbers of foreigners from blowing stuff up) and so on. The real Ministry of Defence is the National Security Council.
Alex, using the figures in the chart you link to, DfID’s budget in 2008/9 of £5.2 Billion is 11.7% of MoD’s. I make no further comment.
The 2010 Spending Review cuts Defence by 8% to £33.5 billion in 2014/15 but increases DfID to £11.5 billion by 2014 as described in this article. Apparently, 0.7% of out money has to be remitted abroad to satisfy a UN target. I just hope it gets spent on Scotch, Jags and Range Rovers instead of Mercedes.
Hi a,
A good point “The real Ministry of Defence is the National Security Council.”
So far quite low profile? Is the manning pitched at a wrong level, people busy doing other things?
No implications for manning necessarily – but renaming the MOD as the Armed Forces Ministry might focus minds. Don’t forget that the first ever Minister of Defence saw his job as a cross-department one; that being Winston Churchill. If you think of defence as being just the MOD’s job then you naturally tend to focus on solutions to defence problems that involve armed force (if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail). Defence is a core state function – arguably the core state function – so it shouldn’t be hived off like that.
There you are; mostly serious reform proposal.
Abolish the post of Secretary of State for Defence, and formally add the title to the title of Prime Minister; so he would be Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Secretary of State for Defence.
Rename the Defence Secretary the Armed Forces Secretary. Reporting to her, two ministers: Equipment and Procurement, and Personnel and Training.
a, A very interesting idea. I’d welcome your (and anyone else’s) criticism of this proposal. Dive in!
Had Nimrod MRA4 been new build, I would guess it would have been in service five years ago at less cost. Whoever decided to reuse old fuselages is to blame.
The coalition plan that defence will drop to 2% of GDP, while foreign aid will rise to 0.7% (roughly one third of defence budget).
We cut defence budgets before for financial reasons, we said there was no risk, we only had a few policing duties in Iraq & Afghanistan/Northern frontier. That was the 1930s. We know what happened next.
There is an arms race in the Far East no one talks of here. We may hide, but trouble may come looking for us.
Brian
Ref your blog posting and proposal. I think many of us would support much of it, if not every detail. We have all ranted about the lack of grand strategy, from which should fall military strategy, doctrine, budget appropriates, procurement policies etc etc.
As for the details I am not sure a zero based budgeting process with a five year horizon is going to fit the bill. There needs to be a longer time line for some investments, R & D, basing and other infrastructure elements. Also not entirely sure how your ‘triad’ would replace the current National Security Council setup etc.
ministry for war, big letters over the door. Says to me come in, have a brew/wet/cup of tea (covered all 3 services there) however annoy us and we will dry bum hump you to death!!
@ a – excellent idea. I’ve been thinking we need a change of structure at the cabinet level. The two possible ideas I came up with were more ministers without portfolio assigned cross-department goals eg coordinating social mobility efforts (via Education, welfare, health, etc) or super ministries/councils eg Foreign Affairs, infrastructure, etc. I think your idea better.
@ Brain – I have to echo Jed, some good points but need longer periods of investments. However, a separate defence budget similar to the United States may be a good idea.
Sorry for the decimal place error. It’s like the rule that mocking someone’s spelling means that you’ll inevitably have an embarrassing typo yourself.
“Overlord” ministers have been tried a few times before without setting the world on fire; there’s always a problem as to whether other ministers answer to them or to parliament directly. I think one of the Blairite thinktanks (Demos?) did a paper on “ministers for problems” back in the late 90s.
@ Alex – Thanks for the tip, I’ll see if I can find it.
The more I look at the P8 the better it looks. Sorry.
The P8 can look as nice as you like, the simple fact is it wasn’t even on the drawing board when we ordered the MRA4, and we won’t be buying any for the simple fact that the whole reason for scrapping the nimrods is to save the cost of manning and running them.
Morning Grey,
You might be right unless the reason we cancelled them is the combination of running costs, and still needing to invest significant amount of money to make them airworthy and bring them into service (plus the rumoured requirement to upgrade them in under a decade to counteract the fact that procurement has taken so long their systems would be out of date).
At present I am cautiously optimistic, the Government is now spinning the cancellation as being about the cost to bring them into service not the running costs thus allowing them to back track, and Prof Malcolm Chalmers from RUSI who was sadly rather to close in his predictions of what would be cut in the SDSR is suggesting that a P-3C purchase is on the cards as they cost less to run. Plus I cannot help but wonder if the oil companies (natural Tory friends) have been lobbying for a new MPA to help drive down their insurance costs.
don’t airbus offer a P3 upgrade at the moment? A bit of jobs for europe spin, blah blah blah!!! (me a cynic)
On the aid front, this piece has some useful historical and international comparisons:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6668668/the-pope-reopens-the-international-aid-debate.thtml