So, the first compulsory redundancies have been announced as we inch closer to the conclusion of Planning Round 11.
11,000 service personnel will be made redundant as part of the SDSR plans to reduce the total number by 17,000. The 11,000 figure comprises about 5,000 from the army, 3,300 from the Navy and 2,700 from the RAF. The remainder of the cuts will be achieved by a reduction in recruitment.
Although Jim Murphy, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, has a habit of forgetting the past decade or so he is actually quite an effective Shadow for Liam Fox, landing several effective blows to which Dr fox had very little response.
Jim Murphy said
It’s clear that some of our brave forces taking on the Taliban will be welcomed home as heroes by the public but sacked by their government
To which Liam Fox responded
I have repeatedly made it clear that we have compulsory redundancy schemes in the armed forces because we need to maintain the rank structure and skills base required. When compulsory redundancies are announced, they will not affect those in receipt of the operational allowance, those within six months of deploying or those on post-operational tour leave, as I made clear in the House
Which will I am sure provide some relief to those on their short post operational tour leave, POTL, depends on the tour length but for a 6 month tour would be 20 working days or a month.
Those within 6 months of deploying will be training for deployment so any redundancies there would severely impact operational planning.
We all understand the difficulties but Liam Fox should not try and take any credit for ‘sparing’ those who are deployed, in the pre-deployment training cycle or on POTL, it makes him look rather pathetic, especially neglecting to mention that POTL only lasts about a month.
The RAF was first out of the traps to announce details, approximately 1,020 RAF personnel will be selected for redundancy in Tranche 1, including the 170 personnel already announced form the training pipeline. A total of up to 100 each will go from the Weapons System Officers Branch and Weapons Systems Operator Trade, as well as up to 529 ground tradesmen and up to 121 officers of Air Commodore rank and below. Reductions in officers of Air Vice-Marshal rank and above are also planned outside the redundancy programme. No trained pilots will face redundancy in this tranche despite the recent announcement that two Tornado squadrons will be scrapped.
Does this look a little disproportionate?
Reduction of 2 Tornado squadrons, withdrawal of Nimrod and yet no compulsory reductions in trained pilots. Perhaps the ones that were facing the chop have all voluntarily buggered off or the pilots are being saved for Tranche 2, nice.
Speaking of those Tornado’s, 14 Squadron, based at RAF Lossiemouth, and X111 Squadron at RAF Marham will be disbanded. These disbandments will occur on 1st June, leaving the RAF with 136 Tornado GR4 swing wing strike aircraft spread across five operational squadrons.
14 Squadron returned from Afghanistan on only recently and had their homecoming parade on the 19th of February.
More to come, the Royal Navy and Army will make their announcements in due course
11,000 redundancies not all of them will be compulsory. In fact I believe that volunteers across the 3 services will outstrip the numbers required. The problem will be that these are not the people that the Forces want to go.
APATS,
That’s a grim good point, an “Options” brain drain only worse.
The entire North African region just exploded with repercussions for years to come, and all we do (“we”, as in most of Western Europe) is cut defense.
Again I fear that the wrong kit is being sold off. There’s this talk about a no-fly zone over Libya; the British Admiralty must be banging its head against the wall repeatedly for having to stand-down the (Sea) Harrier force way back…
I will refrain this time from commenting on the proportion of the cuts being borne by each service. But ouch, the junior service is on the verge of not being able to field an effective offensive system. (Heck that means we are like New Zealand, bodes well for the world cup.) And an army who out of 130,000 odd bods can only deploy 6,000 to fight a less than Third World army………..
I remember the ‘options for change’ redundancies. The folks who jumped ship and took voluntary redundancy were often the best of the bunch – the people that you realy didn’t want to lose.
RE ” and yet no compulsory reductions in trained pilots”
- any idea of the sunk cost per fully trained fighter pilot?
- that alone should be the explanation
@ACC, sunk costs are irrelevant when you need to make savings now, look at Nimrod and Sentinel etc
Hi TD,
No wonder TSR2 has made it to the world literature both for Project Management and VFM
Human Capital Accounting has emerged since; MoD could give it a try, and then reconsider what to write off (in this case they, or the RAF, had!)
Now I must mention a swear word:
- LP had a count of GA qualified Typhoon pilots in his 4-page article
Was the Tornado force not due to reduce to 96 a/c and a reduce FE@R if there keeping the total at 136 does that mean a bigger a/c compliment per squadron and just a reduction in squadron admin is being implemented.
@ACC – the pilot training costs as of 2008 were :
£6.69m – GR4
£7.14m – F3
£10.61m – Harrier
£12.32m – Typhoon
Obviously the GR4 will need the navigator training as well, but that’s far less expensive.
thanks El Sid!
I would love to take the age “pyramid” of the head count, multiply by
£6.69m – GR4
£7.14m – F3
£10.61m – Harrier
£12.32m – Typhoon
and prove there is no problem. (Don’t have the figures, of course).
- fast-forward to the year when all of the (supposed) 107 +40 are in service
@ Mark, along that time line, wasn’t the 96 (Tornado)number due to some unspecified, post A-stan upgrade (already contracted for; if only budgeted for, in that case flushed down the toilet plenty-quick)
FOr the sake of balance, could I also point out that the MOD CS voluntary redundancy scheme was also announced this week to try to find the 25000 redundancies required there as well.
I always thought dumping Jaguar after that wonderful upgrade was the best example of scrapping good kit that was needed.
@ ACC
I am now trawling through Mr Page’s article. If TD loved us he would compile some figures for us on Eurofighter because I am a confused little bear.
Hi x,
The brand new NAO Typhoon report had lots, RE ” compile some figures for us on Eurofighter “
Hello ACC!
The numbers on Eurofighter are frightening. HMG should keep a couple of dozen for QRA and never ever let the others take to the air.
I know TD doesn’t like anti-RAF talk. But you have to hand it to the Air Marshals they are better than Satchi & Satchi at selling crap.
x,
“Heck that means we are like New Zealand, bodes well for the world cup.”
New Zealand has an effective and advanced MPA…
X
What is frightening about them the NAO report states there in line with similar aircraft and that the aircraft is extremely capable. Indeed it blames 2/3rd of the development cost increase on having to work with international partners and ridged work share.
blame ze Germans, they are without doubt the worst international development partner. France, by comparison, is a breeze!!
@ Mike
So they do!!! But they don’t have anything fast and pointy any more.
@ Mark
There was a report done a while back that said if we had built “Tornado” ourselves it would have cost similar without the international help.
@ TD
I don’t know. I think De Zeven Provinciën / Sachsen frigates are good. Properly armed. Even have a proper sonar.
The French lead Europe in the same way cows go through a gate….
@ TD – if that is true (and I’m having trouble accepting anyone is worse than the French…) Why do we insist on multi-national projects? I can’t recall any one being on time or on budget; and I have heard on this site criteria also slip/change. I realise the development costs/risks are high but any more than with partners (like these)?
Indeed the germans can be very difficult to deal with on these engineering project. The French want control of everything and you do what they say or the toys get thrown out of the pram. Gareth its all politics governments only see these projects in 5 year election terms then its someone else fault. I know its not without its problems but the JSF has the best framework for success if you dont want to go it alone. 1 overall company in charge and then outsource varies bits to other companies problem was that when Euro-fighter started most of the high end experience was in UK and France. Multi national defence contracts will not work unless politics and work share arguments are taken out of the equation and left up to the overall company in charge. However you wont convince a government to invest billions in a development project and get nothing in work share/jobs in return.