It strikes me that it has become the universal excuse for anything to do with reducing defence funding, blaming the previous government is an all too easy excuse.

The number is repeatedly said to be £38 billion but the government has never published the make up of this number, is it a mixture of capital and support costs, if so what is the split, over what period is it measured and what is the current status are many interesting questions that don’t seem to attract any answers.

The latest news from the Telegraph indicates that the scale of the black hole was underestimated (the gift that keeps on giving) and more cuts will be needed. The figure reported was an additional £2 billion to be found in Planning Round 12 (PR12)

One might expect to see the usual round of leaks and speculation in the next few months and again, nothing seems to be off the table except the Red Arrows, public duties and a certain large ship currently being built somewhere up North.

Rumours persist about greater reductions in MoD civil servants, Army manpower and FRES, FRES in particular has been absent from recent communications from the MoD, unlike the Warrior upgrades. BAE of course got their digs in early with an announcement about reviewing the Portsmouth shipbuilding facility, convenient timing given the stage that the Type 26 frigate is nearing announcement time and PR12.

The games they all play

To paraphrase; the appointment of Phil Hammond to the post of Secretary of State for Defence is a poor choice by David Cameron and will ultimately undermine his foreign policy objectives (whatever they are) because Phil Hammond is inexperienced and uninterested in defence. The argument is that just because he has no background in defence matters he will quickly come under the spell of the gold braid and be unable to say no and/or drive through the SDSR reforms.

Aaron asks how Phil Hammond is qualified for the role apart from having administrative competence and suggests a list of alternative candidates who would be better suited precisely because they have some military or defence portfolio experience.

I fundamentally disagree with this notion for a number of reasons.

The first is inter-service rivalry; even if the person in question was scrupulously fair and even handed there would always be the suspicion from the other two services that there will be some bias. This is corrosive and counter-productive and assumes that no bias exists, as we know, bias is incredibly difficult to eliminate. So being a neutral cuts those suspicions off at the knees.

Secondly, we have to question the relevance of that military experience, does being a junior or mid ranking officer actually assist with strategic direction of the whole of defence and a £35 billion budget, or, does it hinder it?

Experience and knowledge might be seen as the clincher, how is it possible to have a successful SoS Defence if they don’t know a torpedo from a Tornado as the quote goes?

Perhaps we might ask Lord Robertson, former SoS Defence and head of NATO. Although he had the opposition defence portfolio for a period this apparent lack of experience did not hinder him, the 1998 SDR was widely accepted as a wide ranging and competent strategic document. Going even further back, what about politicians like Richard Haldane or Edward Cardwell, both noted and effective military reformers yet with very little directly relevant military experience

What the MoD needs more than anything at the minute is not some former Secretary of State for Defence because they might have been part of the problem, not some former mid ranking Army officer who might be accused of bias, possessed of irrelevant experience and certainly not some back bencher with an axe to grind.

It actually needs a period of stability; the cuts have been made and need to be managed.

Above all though, the MoD needs to regain a measure of financial credibility, this should be a strategic objective because the lack of credibility is ultimately far more damaging in the future of resource led defence reviews than anything else. Financial credibility means living within ones means and not exhibiting the financial control of a drunk who has just found a tenner in the gutter. The reason defence is often seen as a soft option for cuts is because it is widely perceived as a financial basket case with plenty of fat to cut.

For all his faults Liam Fox put the MoD on the road to financial credibility and if this is his legacy it will be a good one.

If one looks at major corporations the CEO will always have a ‘background’, sometimes the organisation needs a salesperson, sometimes it needs someone with an operational background but other times an accountant or Chief Financial Officer is elevated to the be the head of the ship, why, because as an organisation changes it needs different approaches.

As we approach the challenges and realities of a draw down from Afghanistan, a reducing defence vote and myriad of other pressures the MoD might just be at the point in time where a grasp of financial reality is more important than knowing the difference between a torpedo and Tornado.

Maybe Phil, with his business and finance background, is just the man?

The figure most often quoted is £38 billion.

A figure that Liam Fox and the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government take full credit for eliminating in a swift and decisive manner.

All well and good but has anyone ever seen the breakdown of this £38 billion, does anyone actually know what it comprisedof, line by painful line?

Has the National Audit Office verified this, does it appear in the MoD’s annual report and accounts for example?

Just asking.

Only time will tell if they manage to make the MoD a more efficient organisation

A roundup of the news sources

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=16711

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13923042

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8600391/Generals-admirals-and-air-chief-marshals-face-sack-Liam-Fox-warns.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8600041/MoD-is-bureaucratic-bloated-and-indecisive-warns-report.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/27/liam-fox-approves-plan-cut-armed-forces-top-ranks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/27/uk-armed-forces-cuts-fox

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7054848/whitehalls-monolith-faces-reform.thtml

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/06/defence-reform-defence-revolution

If you cast your mind back to August last year when Lord Levene was appointed to the Defence Reform Unit I predicted sparks woudl be flying round about now, especially in light of continued budgetary issues and the fact that he has form in this area.

The Guardian has reported today on some of the suggestions in a draft copy that has been circulated and no doubt designed to be leaked to the press to gauge initial reaction.

Some of these include;

Thinning the ranks at the very top of the military. At the moment each service has, effectively, two chiefs – one responsible for strategy and management, the other for operations. Levene believes that there should only be one chief for each arm. Under this model, operational control would be pushed down the chain of command from a four star rank to a three star.

Absolutely, but it shouldn’t stop at the top. All services have suffered from rank inflation and a balooning of staff positions. If we are to get the knife out, lets be serious about it and ignore the cries about skills and experience loss.

Establishing a new appointments committee that would be responsible for choosing the highest ranking officers in the army, RAF and the Royal Navy. The committee would be chaired by a non-executive director, chosen by the defence secretary. At the moment, the services make most mid-ranking and senior appointments in-house.

I think I would rather see the CDS appointed by the Defence Select Committee rather than the SoS Defence, but in general this makes sensem, my only reservation is that there has already been an over politisization of the senior officers and we should guard against this making it worse. There is room for free thinkers and radicals but although they seem to get aqueezed out now would this make it worse?

Creating a new defence board that will have only one member of the military sitting on it. This would be the overall chief of the defence staff, currently General Sir David Richards. At the moment, chiefs from all three services sit on the board.

Expect competition for the CDS to get ‘proper serious’ and I am not sure about this one, on the face of it, the Cheif of the Defence Staff is supposed to be service agnostic but human nature means this is a tough trick to pull off.

Getting rid of many of the other minor boards that are responsible for managing different projects. In their place, individuals would be appointed to run them, and be held accountable for delays or overspending. This would cut down on bureaucracy and save money.

Like it

Extending the time that some officials spend in posts at MoD headquarters from two to four years. This could provide greater continuity, particularly in important areas of procurement and strategic planning.

This has been a long time coming as the merry go round of both civilian and military posts, especially in major projects, has led to a culture of change for change sake, career driven decision making and a serious lack of continuity that results in our depressingly familiar cost and time over runs.

Is 4 years enough?

An interesting quote from Himan G Rickover on the matter

When doing a job — any job — one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in that job forever. He must look after his work just as conscientiously, as though it were his own business and his own money. If he feels he is only a temporary custodian, or that the job is just a stepping stone to a higher position, his actions will not take into account the long-term interests of the organization. His lack of commitment to the present job will be perceived by those who work for him, and they, likewise, will tend not to care. Too many spend their entire working lives looking for the next job. When one feels he owns his present job and acts that way, he need have no concern about his next job.

Angus Robertson, the SNP Member of Parliament for Moray asked the following question,

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many (a) press officers, (b) internal communications officers, (c) external communications officers, (d) communications strategy officers and (e) other positions with a communications remit were employed by (i) his Department, (ii) its agencies and (iii) each other non-departmental public body sponsored by his Department on the most recent date for which figures are available.

The answer was pretty surprising, or not, depending on how cynical you are.

Communication of defence is important to support the reputation of the armed forces, understanding of military operations and other activities and to support recruitment. These figures include both military and civilian posts throughout Defence, including armed forces’ commands and operational theatres. Savings have been made across the communications area during the course of the current financial year and further substantial reductions are planned. The latest figures for the numbers involved in specialist communications roles are for financial year 2009-10 and were produced in support of a Cabinet Office led exercise to capture such information across Government. They are as follows:

The answer of course failed to provide a total, they never do when questions like this are asked, perhaps the MoD think no one will notice or be bothered to add up.

Leaving aside the trading funds like the Met Office or DSTL and the NDPB’s, the MoD has a grand total of 697 personnel (likely a mix of military and civil servants) engaged on communication activities.

Now we should step back from the initial shock and ask what do they do?

It is fair to say that some of them will be involved with recruiting, dealing with Press/Parliamentary questions and vital internal communications like equipment safety for example,  but can we really justify an infantry Battalions worth of communications officers at a time when we are shedding capabilities and personnel left, right and centre?

As ever, there is a story behind the numbers, are those personnel involved in communications activity in Afghanistan in support of the main effort, are they involved in communicating best practice and safety information, doctrinal publications or any of the various other things that need to be ‘communicated’

It would also be interesting to see the job descriptions, what, for example, is the difference between an external communication officer and a communication strategy officer.

Whatever the real story, on face value that is an awfully big number when we are sacking a handful of Warrant Officers to save money.

UPDATE:

One of the commenters posed the question about whether these are full time posts, I suspect they are Full Time Equivalent posts but maybe some clarification will be forthcoming from the MoD.

The MoD  police are now investigating the preferred bidder, Soteria, after allegations that a former member of the joint Ministry of Defence/Department for Transport integrated project team (IPT)  assisted the consortium in its bid preparation by providing access to commercially sensitive information.  The individual then apparently went to work for Soteria.

The Secretary of State for Transport (Phillip Hammond) said;

“On 16 December I and my Rt Hon Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced that information had come to light regarding the preferred bid in the Search and Rescue Helicopter competition which required clarification.

“In mid-December, the preferred bidder in the SAR-H competition, Soteria, voluntarily came forward to inform the Government of irregularities regarding the conduct of their bid team which had only then recently come to light. The irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopter, to commercially sensitive information regarding the joint MOD/DfT project team’s evaluations of industry bids and evidence that a former member of that project team had assisted the consortium in its bid preparation, contrary to explicit assurances given to the project team at the time.

“Since December, our two Departments have been working with Soteria to better understand the situation and its implications for the procurement process. In addition, the Ministry of Defence Police are investigating how the commercially sensitive information came to be in the possession of the bidder. It would be inappropriate to comment further on the details of the investigation until it has finished.

“However, even without the outcome of that investigation, the Government has sufficient information to enable it to conclude that the irregularities that have been identified were such that it would not be appropriate to proceed with either the preferred bid or with the current procurement process.

“The Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence will now consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer term arrangements can be put in place.

“We will make a further announcement once a way forward has been agreed.”

Soteria is a consortium comprising the Canadian operator CHC, Sikorsky, Thales and the Royal Bank of Scotland (yes, the one the taxpayer owns) although RBS bailed out just before Christmas when the allegations emerged. In all fairness to Soteria, it was they who fessed up with their concerns,it wasn’t of course the MoD, lets face it, they would be lucky to find water if they fell out of a boat.

Currently, SAR helicopter operations are carried out by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force flying the Westland Sea King, and by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) using a mix of S-92s and AW139s provided by CHC under an interim contract. Under the Soteria SAR-H bid, this mixed fleet would have been replaced with a single fleet of Sikorsky S-92As based at 12 stations around the country. The service was due to be in place by 2016, when the Sea King is planned to exit service. The losers, AirKnight (Lockheed Martin UK, VT Group and British International Helicopters) will no doubt feel rather agrieved. British International Helicopters currently service military contracts in the Falkland Islands and for Royal Navy Operational Sea Training.

It was reported that the MoD would pay two thirds of the costs and the Department of Transport, the balance. The contract was reportedly was designed and the service would have been a boost to capabilities, much better aircraft for example, S92′s instead of Sea Kings and AW139′s. However, some doubts were raised such as the the differences between the words capability and effectiveness when used to describe the level of service comparison between the existing and new.

Scheduled to start operation in 2012 the requirements included launch within 15 minutes during the day, within 45 minutes at night and be able to reach all ‘Very High Risk Areas’ and 75% of ‘Medium Risk Areas’ within 60 minutes, the service also had to have the ability to surge aircraft when required.

The Soteria bid was widely recognised as being excellent, the requirements had been refined over a number of years and the bid process open and detailed, I am sure it would have been a highly professional, if PFI style expensive, service.

Always ready with an interesting quote, Bob Crowe, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union said;

‘This whole sordid and botched episode shows that the raw greed of the private sector should never be allowed anywhere near life or death rescue services on the high seas. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted and the whole plan should now be scrapped, not shelved.’

More Than Meets the Eye

I wonder if the ‘bad apple’ narrative is a cover for something else and whilst I started this post with a cheap shot at the MoD the more I think about it, the more I think there is more than meets the eye.

Despite the technical requirements being very detailed, the desire to retain military aircrew and a politically motivated desire to retain 12 operating locations (possible more than needed with the modern helicopters being proposed) meant the contract vehicle ended up being a bit of a hybrid, restraining the ability of the operator to drive down costs and make a profit. Soteria are not a charity, they have a duty to their shareholders, lets not forget that.

In the period between naming Soteria as preferred bidder and contract award that never happened, two crucial events took place.

First, it was announced in December that military aircrews would not be part of the deal in a bid to cut costs.

Second, RBS withdrew from the consortium, again in December, without stating why.

The current narrative is that Soteria became aware of irregularities, reported it to the MoD and upon hearing of these issues, RBS wanted to put some distance between them and the deal. The news about the member of the IPT was released and everyone assumes that the skullduggery is the open and shut reason why we are where we are.

How about a few of idle conspiracy theories;

Removing the military aircrew makes the contract extremely difficult to deliver against and signals a lack of commitment from the PFI hating government, RBS realise they are never going to make a return and pull the plug. Soteria decide their best route out is to suddenly own up.

or

The government know that the deal is hugely expensive, have been scathing about PFI’s in opposition (some quotes from Phil Hammond and Liam Fox here) and after Nimrod and other MoD failures decide enough is enough. How could they collapse the deal without looking even worse than they do now, have a quiet word with RBS and suggest it might be in everyone’s interest if they withdraw from the consortium and did they know about a member of the IPT who went to work for Soteria?

or

Facing the prospect of ‘signing on’ Prince William was subsequently reported to be lobbying David Cameron to reverse the decision. David Cameron decides not to go forward with a contract that would see the heir to the throne issued with a P45 and concocts some means of cancelling the contract, see above!

Now some of these may well be the product of a fevered mind and I don’t have the first clue what actually happened (I would point out I am not making an accusation) but some of the timing does appear somewhat convenient. The individual has been named but I am not inclined to repeat it here because the man’s reputation has been ruined before the facts come to light.

Is there more to this than meets the eye or is it simply a case of a bad apple, I suspect we will never know.

What Next

Whatever the conspiracy theory, whatever the actual reality, the fact is we need to decide what comes next.

Before what happens next is decided the Sea Kings will have to soldier on, although some of them are not as old as you might think. Merlins were discounted early on because of their massive costs and significant rotor downwash so punting the RAF’s Merlins on to the SAR force seems a non starter.

I have mixed feelings about SAR remaining as a military task, retaining it within the MoD allows a larger pool of aircrew to be maintained, reduces ‘brain drain’ to the private sector and improves the image of the armed forces within the country but how much ‘actual’ movement between SH and SAR communities occurs and is it really a military task?

The more combat oriented search and rescue, or joint personnel recovery on operations, is carried out by the Support Helicopter function or more likely by the USA and in the context of a decreasing defence vote I think it becomes less and less important to retain it as a military task.

The search and rescue task, fixed and rotary, is an extremely complex task and the current mixed provision does not on face value seem to be an efficient means of delivering that task.

Whilst I do not think it is necessarily a military task it certainly is a public sector task, the actual responsibility still rests with the Department of Transport, not the MoD.

Is it about time we had a coastguard that was equipped for all aspects of maritime patrol and search and rescue?

Or even a Government Aviation Service that provides all non military aircraft, fixed and rotary?

With the sale of DERA/QinetiQ and reduction in technical skills in favour of management skills, the MoD becoming a commissioning entity rather than a systems developer, the costs are only starting to become clear now.

The example I used in the previous post was the humble ladder, much used in Afghanistan for small gap crossing and getting onto a compound roof.

Defense News ran with a story describing how when faced with a requirement from Afghanistan for a portable short gap crossing system (thats a ladder  to you and me) instead of calling on the resources of its 22,500 employees it outsourced the job to BMT.

Responding to an urgent operational request from the frontline to come up with a better method of crossing ditches and scaling walls than a conventional ladder the Ministry of Defence turned to BMT Defence Services to provide an answer.

In the space of five weeks this summer the Bath, England-based consultancy conducted a survey of possible solutions and completed a competition involving more than a dozen bidders from the U.K. and overseas.

Eugene Morgan, the director of systems at BMT Defence Services, says the consultancy team running the project spoke to designers ranging from a supplier of ship gangways to a Formula 1 racing team in order to find the best possible solutions.

Morgan said recommendations on the top three or four designs for the 3 metre bridge requirement was submitted to the MoD last month.

I suppose it’s a good thing that the requirement was met in double quick time but when ministers talk up the UoR process as a triumph for the MoD, how it is responding to need, being flexible blah blah do they actually mean

‘ we just pay someone else to do it for us because we are tooo busy buying aircraft carriers’

Is this another indicator of something we covered earlier, it’s not the numbers of civil servants that count but the types. If DE&S doesn’t have the bandwidth to run an acquisition exercise for what is more or less an upgraded ladder, then we need to be concerned.

A year after BMT submitted their recommendations the MoD has released details of the resulting product.

Short Gap Crossing (Not a Ladder)

Short Gap Crossing (Not a Ladder)

Short Gap Crossing (Not a Ladder)

Roger Pidgeon, the DE&S team’s project manager for the short gap crossing, said:

“We received an urgent request for an ultra-lightweight and man-portable short gap crossing capability.

“In the first instance we looked to deliver a commercial off-the-shelf solution, but none was immediately available on the market.

“BMT’s engineering knowledge helped us to reach specialist suppliers in the motorsport and aerospace sectors who have extensive experience in lightweight aluminium, carbon fibre or composite structures.

“Our requirement was turned into a bespoke design solution by BMT in just four weeks.”

The bridges designed by Alpha Composites can be carried by each member of a patrol. Troops can also use the system as a lightweight assault ladder, replacing the bulkier, heavier in-service equipment. Alpha Composites are a market leading company in hi technology materials and I wonder if any of the trials team or IPT managed to blag themselves a gucci briefcase !!

What does this tell us?

First, there is valuable and cutting edge capabilities within the UK manufacturing sector that we absolutely need to exploit so the MoD/Automotive sector partnership that was started a few years ago has to be nurtured and expanded.

Second, whilst BMT are no doubt an excellent organisation, this kind of facilitated access to manufacturers and technical evaluation role should be a core MoD function. If the MoD and DE&S is going to improve its woeful record on buying equipment for the armed forces it needs to bring back in house the expertise it hastily discarded.

Finally, here is an excellent example of not buying off the shelf, not going with the 80% or ‘good enough’ solution. However, given the quite staggering loads being carried by infantry soldiers in Afghanistan it is equally an example where insisting on something other than good enough and developing a bespoke solution was absolutely the right thing to do.

Those advocating more of the former might perhaps like to carry those extra kilograms in 40 degree heat.

Of course we don’t know if it is any good or substantially lighter than the traditional alternatives.

Maybe it really is a Short Gap Crossing and definitely not a ladder!

Sitting and watching the TV or reading the news online this week it would seem that old habits die hard.

Splashed all over the media was the excellent news about the new National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Centre for Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. The reports also featured the fact that the NHS has benefited from techniques pioneered in Afghanistan by the medics in theatre, many of whom are NHS employees.

Absolutely brilliant news, the synergy between military and civilian medicine being realised for the benefit of all.

What better time to release news about a significant reduction in allowances for service personnel.

I don’t think anyone was surprised by the cuts and many of them are anachronisms anyway, the whole system has needed simplification for a long time but it will hit many people hard.

But the timing is pretty shoddy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s hard not to have some sympathy with him, dealt a pretty tough hand of cards by the previous shower, presiding over a basket case MoD and held hostage by the needs of the coalition, but, the talk of tough decisions, sacred cow massacres and making every penny count all seems to be a bit hollow.

When there is a need to save big amounts you can almost understand the logic behind getting rid of whole equipment types but for the small amounts you really do have to question the decisions. We have already questioned the decision to delete a supremely useful Bay Class to save less than £20 million a year but this next decision is another ‘spit your coffee out’ moment.

One such inexplicable decision is the closure of BATSUB or less snapily, the British Army Training Support Unit Belize. BATSUB is located at Price Barracks next tothe airport in Belize City and provides a range of training but focussing mainly on operations in jungle terrain to about 3,000 personnel per year. BATSUB will be reduced to a skeleton staff of just 10. It will be possible to regenerate in the future and there might be other locations but realistically, how likely is this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The withdrawal from Belize will be greeted with howls of protest from the local brothels but can we really not afford to run a jungle training location.

Of course we can bloody well afford it, reducing training is a soft option, it avoids tough decisions but it always bites you in the arse later.

It might be a bit hackneyed to attack the overseas aid budget so how about a new target, The UK Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) new research ship, RRS Discovery is currently under construction in Vigo, how much, a snip at £75million or  about 8 years of BATSUB running costs. This of course contrasts quite neatly with the shoestring budget for the HMS Endurance replacement.

What else does £9m a year buy, a group of shiny red aircraft for poncing around at air shows. Before anyone moans, yes I know they are a valuable recruiting tool and yes I know they offer training opportunities but at a cost of £8.8million per year what do you think offers the best contribution to the defence mission.

Option A, a unique training opportunity for 3,000 personnel a year

Option B, the Red Arrows

We could always close down a load of Coastguard stations to save a few quid, oops, too late for that idea.

Not of all these are under Liam Fox’s control but taking the decision to reduce training in favour of a display team really does beggar belief and don’t even get me started on ceremonial.

I have got a great idea, let’s save on blank ammunition and instruct recruits (sorry, soldier under training) to shout bang instead*

They say there is nothing new under the sun, shouting bang instead of using blank has been done before.

A Romanian network security enthusiast has claimed to have compromised the Royal Navy website at http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/

The site is currently down for maintenance with nothing but a screenshot being displayed

The alleged compromise has been carried out by someone who goes by the online handle of ‘TinKode’ and claims to have used SQL injection techniques to gain access. TinKode’s blog offers this information and the Twitter feed simply links back to the original post.

==[ Author  : TinKode
==[ WebSite : InSecurity.Ro
==[ Date    : 05.11.2010
==[ Hour    : 22:55 PM
==[ Target  : www.royalnavy.mod.uk
==[ Document: Minister_Of_Defence_UK.txt
==[ Method  : SQL Injection
==[ HackTXT : http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=M2MUEdv4

The vulnerable URL is not disclosed but the hack text link shows a list of technical information including web server type, operating system and IP address.

It also shows a list of tables, administration usernames and passwords for the Global Ops and JackSpeak sections. The Jack Speak section is a blog (highlighted in our recent post on MoD websites) that would appear to use WordPress. Lazy arse bloggers like me sometime leave the default admin user name active but a professionally run site would normally remove this as a day 1 page 1 security activity. Incredibly, it seems to have still been active.

The Jackspeak blog would also appear to have a user called jonathonband, wonder who that might be?

If it is Admiral Sir Jonathon Band then that would be another golden rule broken, the rule that says when the user leaves, so does their user login credentials.

We shouldn’t get over heated about this, its most unlikely that there is a route to the launch system for Trident from the public facing website but its more than a touch embarrassing!

It is also worth noting how much money we spend on MoD websites, some answers here and here

No doubt there will be much behind the scenes activity to harden every single MoD website and one must expect there to be several ‘interviews sans coffee‘ on Monday morning!

H/T Galrahn at Information Dissemination

Army Jobs

Army Fit

Army Website

National Army Museum

Army in Education

Acquisition Operating Framework

Aeronautical Information Documents Unit

Admiralty Online Catalogue

Admiralty Leisure

Searchable Notices to Mariners

Wellbeck College

Thunderer Squadron-Defence Technical Undergraduate Scheme

Royal Navy Submarine Museum

Service Personnel and Veterans Agency

Soldier Magazine

SBA Cyprus

National Employer Advisory Board

Royal Navy

Royal Naval Museum

Royal Navy Community Website

Royal Marines Museum

Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force Museum

Royal Air Force Museum Shop

Royal Air Force Community Support

Ministry of Defence

MOD Police and Guarding Agency

Met Office

Hadley Observatory

Joint Data Link Management Organisation

ICS Catalogue

UK Hydrographic Office

Future Navigation

Fleet Air Museum

Film Locations

MoD Science

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory

Defence Support Group

Disposal Services Authority

DES Careers

UK Defence Standardisation

Defence News Imagery

Defence Blogs

Defence Image Database

Defence Dynamics

Defence Contracts Bulletin

Defence Academy

Defence Analytical Services and Advice (DASA)

Army Crusaders Football Club

DSTL Counter Terrorism Technology

Civilian Jobs

Camouflage

British Forces Post Office

These are the social networking sites the armed forces manage

Army YouTube

MoD Headquarters YouTube

Royal Navy Blog

Royal Marines YouTube

Royal Air Force YouTube

Royal Air Force Blogs

MoD Twitter

MoD Flickr

MoD Facebook

British Army Blog

UK Forces Afghanistan Blog

Get clicking!

The following table shows the number of days lost through sickness absence over a rolling 12-month period. The table includes non-industrial and industrial staff and the staff of the four MOD Trading Funds, but excludes staff in the Royal Fleet Auxiliaryand locally engaged civilians for whom sickness absence data is not readily available.

Sickness absence rates by average working days lost (AWDL) per full-time equivalent (FTE) employee in the Ministry of Defence for the 12 months ending 30 June 2010, the latest information available, are shown in the following table.

The table includes non-industrial and industrial staff and the staff of the four MODtrading funds, but excludes staff in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and locally engaged civilians for whom sickness absence data are not readily available.

Source: Here and Here

Click to Download

The NSS, which has been coordinated and developed by the Cabinet Office undertaking strategic thinking on national security issues in support of the National Security Council, sets out two high-level objectives which will guide our strategic approach overall:

• To ensure a secure and resilient UK by protecting our people, economy, infrastructure, territory and ways of life from all major risks that can affect us directly; and
• To shape a stable world by acting to reduce the likelihood of risks affecting the UK or British interests overseas, and applying our instruments of power and influence to shape the global environment.

The NSS decides our priorities for action, and identifies 15 priority security risks to the UK; the following Tier 1 risks are judged to be our highest priorities for UK national security:

• terrorism
• cyber attack
• major natural hazards and accidents
• international military crisis

Afghanistan will remain our top priority while British troops are deployed there.

In a written ministerial statement to Parliament announcing the publication of the National Security Strategy, the Prime Minister said today:

“The United Kingdom faces a complex array of threats from a myriad of sources. The National Security Strategy describes the strategic context within which these threats arise, and how they may develop in the future.

“It describes Britain’s place in the world as an open, outward-facing nation whose political, economic and cultural authority far exceeds our size. Our national interest requires our continued full and active engagement in world affairs, promoting our security, our prosperity and our values.

“Our objectives are a secure and resilient United Kingdom, and shaping a stable world. In pursuit of these goals, our highest priorities are tackling terrorism, cyber security, international military crises and national disasters such as floods and pandemics.

“We will draw together and use all the instruments of national power to tackle these risks, including the Armed Forces, diplomats, intelligence and development professionals, the police, the private sector and the British people themselves.

“The National Security Strategy, together with the measures in the Strategic Defence and Security Review, will enable us to protect our security and advance our interest in the world.”

For this reason I want to try and do justice to what was a well intentioned documentary so will briefly go through it now and perhaps follow up some of the points in later posts.

The first blow was a pretty low one, a bit of class envy and a contribution from Patrick Mercer who would have well taken advantage of the same married quarters as being portrayed. The point about being top heavy is well made, its a point we have made before but in comparing the Army with the USMC the programme makes its first blunder.

The USMC is of course part of the US Navy and falls within its larger command structure, size is almost irrelevant in this instance because the USMC does not have the breadth responsibilities that the Army has. It would have been much better to look into the real facts about rank inflation rather than making inappropriate comparisons. We are not alone in suffering rank inflation, I will try and compare the France and the US in a future post and bring the issue up to date.

Helicopters for the Chiefs is a pretty shocking but the point about the married quarters brimming with servants is way off the mark, these are often used for official functions including medal ceremonies and entertaining foreign diplomats or military personnel, all part of the defence diplomacy activity.

Listing the cost of private school tuition is another pretty low blow because while the narration says ‘all service personnel’ it is narrated over a clip of people quaffing champagne to the sound of violins. Just to make the point, all service personnel can benefit from this but also have to make a contribution.

Kevan Jones talks about Abbey Wood having a railway station, Bristol Parkway, next door, like he used it every time he visited, but I thought it was Filton Abbey Wood.

In the round though, yes we need to address rank inflation but this is small beer.

We then move on to weapon systems with an introduction from Douglas Carswell.

First up is the Nimrod, to support the narrative about BAe being useless it selectively quotes from the Haddon-Cave enquiry but fails to point out that the words were directed at the MoD, QinetiQ AND BAe. This is selective quoting at best and at worse, would seem to be misleading and unfair. The whole issue of wings not fitting is covered but also fails to mention the role of the MoD or indeed Boeing in the whole MRA4 debacle.

Then it makes a bold assertion that in a recent report major MoD procurement projects run on average 40% over budget and 80% late, listing the poster child of the overun, the Astute and Type 45. Not sure what report that would be because the last Major Equipment Review from the National Audit office paints a different picture, an 8% increase in cost for example. The film states that all the projects that hove gone over by a billion pounds are BAe ones, without delving too deeply into this claim there are plenty of other non BAe projects that go over by proportional amounts, or more.

Douglas Carswell then goes on to make the ‘protectionist racket’ claim which is again, unfair. The Defence Industrial Strategy is a complex issue and just throwing the UK industry to the dogma of free market thinking whilst conveniently forgetting the very real issues of sovereign capability, returns to the taxpayer and the issue of overseas manufacturers enjoying the same so called protectionism that UK manufacturers do.

The reality is that the UK has one of the most open defence markets in the world is not for one second entertained, go and look at a French, German, Italian, Swedish, US, Russian or Chinese soldier and see what equipment they are using, or more importantly where it is obtained from. The defence market is becoming increasingly international anyway. Buying off the shelf just means you become the victim of an overseas monopoly protectionist industry. In fairness to the programme makers, a range of views on this were shown.

The SA80 gets a mention but credibility takes a bit of a nosedive when it says that if it is good enough for the SAS it is good enough for most soldiers, there are completely different issues at stake with a general service rifle and one used in niche roles and very small quantities. As for the shiny pop studs on issue body armour being visible to infra red sensors, have a look at any night image from the MoD web site and you will IR patches to do exactly that.

The revolving door issue between the MoD and industry is highlighted, making comparisons with other departments. I tend to agree that this needs seriously looking at but if you have been a soldier for 30 odd years and someone offers you a job that uses your accumulated skill and experience to carry on paying your mortgage its hard to refuse.

Quite rightly the short term saving versus long term cost increase issue and inter service rivalry comes in for serious criticism.

The final act looks at helicopters and particular re-supply. As we have seen, these have become the focus for the shortcomings of the MoD but it would be fair to say at this point that helicopters are not the only equipment that is needed for resupply, our focus on logistics in recent posts, everything from vehicles to containers to asset tracking software shows the issue is a bit more complex than just helicopters.

Future Lynx, the answer to a question that no one knows, is held up as a prime example of how the MoD gets things wrong. This gets interesting when the issue of Future Lynx, its non competitive contract, how generally poor it will be in the battlefield utility role, Sir Kevin Tebitt and revolving doors. We have covered this issue many many times and in general I agree that the Army Wildcat might be just about OK for a limited set of recce and light utility roles, medium lift it aint.

Comparing Wildcat and Blackhawk is like comparing a Transit van and Focus, the Puma would be a more appropriate comparison but then in what I think is the most incredible part of the programme, Sir Richard Dannatt continues to show why inter service rivalry is so pernicious. The Army has always seemed OK with the RAF/RN flying Puma, Merlin and Sea King so why not Blackhawk.

Frankly, if the issues highlighted in this section, that inter service politics dictated the Wildcat purchase ahead of something more appropriate like Blackhawk or NH90 then the service chiefs should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. I think things are a bit more complex than that but seriously, my gob was hanging loose when this particular section was aired.

The report mentions a £44bn budget and £17bn on equipment, is this right, I thought it was £37bn and £9bn.

Sorry if this post seems rushed, been rewinding and fast forwarding through the programme.

In general, it was a reasonable programme and made some good points, despite being  poor in places, one sided, innacurate and spectacularly missing the point in others. Perhaps it was too wide in its remit, distilling the issue in a balanced way in less than 60 minutes was always going to be tough and this lack of focus showed.

However, if it gets people talking then its a good thing.

The report ends with the words

Chronic waste and inefficiency is no longer an option

For all the issues we might take with the aim and accuracy I think we can all agree with this.

It’s hard not to want to like this but the trails so far seem a tad one sided and this paragraph from the introduction

A three-month investigation by the Dispatches team uncovered a ministry which has wasted staggering amounts of public money in buying inappropriate equipment that arrives years lat

seems like accusing bears of shitting in wooded areas or accusing the Pope of being a Catholic.

It doesn’t take much investigative zeal to read National Audit Office or Defence Select Committee reports which basically say the same thing.

Like Mystic Meg, I am going to make a prediction, the £8million Blackhawk and £27million Lynx Wildcat will get star billing with a supporting cast of BAe and gin swilling top brass. The introduction below, from Sam Kiley, mentions the Blackhawk.

The United Kingdom has one of the biggest defence budgets in the world. But for the last decade soldiers on the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan have struggled to get the right equipment. How the MoD Wastes Our Billions asks how this can be.

With a budget of around £42 billion a year, how is it possible that the Ministry of Defence is set to go over budget by some £36 billion over the next 10 years? Is there a way that the British taxpayer can make sure that men and women at war literally get bigger and better bangs, for the taxpayer’s buck?

The MoD will face savage cuts in the October spending review. It may lose up to 20% of its budget. But the current threats to national security have not evaporated just because the United Kingdom finds itself short of cash.

A three-month investigation by the Dispatches team uncovered a ministry which has wasted staggering amounts of public money in buying inappropriate equipment that arrives years late.

The excuse for this has been that Britain needed to preserve its defence industry to ensure ‘sovereignty of supply’. But the reality has been that much of the £17 billion spent by the MoD each year on equipment and supplies goes to BAE Systems and a handful of smaller firms.

The arms industry is effectively one of the last state-subsidised industry industries left in the UK.

Costs have also soared because of a ‘conspiracy of optimism’ in which MoD officials, and their defence contractors, are so keen to get new projects off the ground that they underestimate the real cost of production in order to get the projects going. Once the project is well advanced, and after tens of millions have been spent on it, the costs are allowed to creep up to reflect reality.

Dispatches investigated the cosy relationship which exists between the British arms industry and the top echelons of the military and civil service. More than a third of all jobs taken in the private sector by former government employees with relevant contractors involve MoD officials taking positions in the defence industry. Despite industry appointments having to be approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), critics suggest that such appointments should be more strictly controlled to avoid allegations of a conflict of interest.

On top of this, Dispatches found that turf wars over funding pit the army, navy and air force against one another.

The consequences of such inefficiency are sometimes fatal. Fourteen RAF personnel were killed when their Nimrod spy plane crashed in Afghanistan in 2006. The ageing aircraft was only flying because its replacement, the Nimrod MRA4, had been delayed by years which meant the older version had to be kept in the air long after it should have been retired.

Since the beginning of operations in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, in 2006 front line soldiers have been desperately short of helicopters. Paul Hartley and half a dozen other soldiers spent hours trapped in a minefield in Kajaki before an American Blackhawk helicopter could be found to winch them to safety. One of the men bled to death.

The workhorse of the US Armed Forces, the Blackhawk, has been the favoured choice of helicopter for soldiers in the field for years.

But Britain has recently opted to buy the smaller Lynx Wildcat, which is built in the West Country. It can carry only four infantrymen in fighting kit, compared to at least eight in a Blackhawk.

Senior army officers were wary of Blackhawk because it would have been defined, by its weight, as an RAF aircraft. The army wanted army pilots to be flying army personnel around the battlefield and so opted for the new Lynx as ‘better than nothing’.

Whether the MoD is buying rifles or radio equipment for the infantry, fighters and bombers for the RAF or Destroyers for the Royal Navy, successive defence ministers, former senior officers and top civil servants agreed that the ministry needs a drastic overhaul.

Dispatches found that the MoD has been desperately trying to balance the books in one year by shoving costs from expensive procurement projects into the next year, or delaying them even further. This has resulted in lengthy delays and huge cost overruns – not only of the original equipment but further costs from having to maintain ageing kit which, like the Nimrod MRA4, should no longer have been in service.

Strong vested interests exist inside the arms industry, which has hired former top level MoD officials who are able to lobby their former ministry. These top level officials, together with unions, will be keen to protect the tens of thousands of jobs generated by the defence industry, and will argue against heavy cuts.

Ministers know that if the British armed forces are to remain anything to be reckoned with then they will have to finally abandon a historic ‘buy British’ policy in arms, end the protection of the local defence industry, and drastically streamline the current procurement system by instead buying ready-made equipment ‘off the peg’.

Reform of the MoD would save the tax payer money and give British troops a fighting chance in Afghanistan and future wars.

I think we can expect the conclusions to be the over simplistic ‘buy off the shelf to protect our brave boys’ but I am looking forward to this, Sam Kiley and the Dispatches team are well regarded and I hope that it stirs things up a bit

As for much of the budget going to BAe and a handful of smaller companies, have a look at the MoD DASA site for a list of those ‘handful of smaller companies’

http://www.dasa.mod.uk/modintranet/UKDS/UKDS2009/c1/table117a.html

Didn’t take me 3 months!

The DRU will work with the Permanent Secretary, Chief of the Defence Staff and the Service Chiefs to find ways of devolving greater responsibility for the running of the Services themselves.

Lord Levene will therefore have tremendous power and this will no doubt ruffle some feathers, which is always a good thing but what are his qualifications for the job of reforming the basket case that is the MoD that can quite happily spend money on dubious nonsense like diversity conferences, can’t even run its accounts without having them qualified by the NAO, repeatedly wastes money on farcical procurement programmes and until very recently could not even properly clothe its own soldiers.

From the Telegraph

London-born Levene was introduced to the City’s quaint customs while at school in the Square Mile, but rather than join the family silver business he studied economics at Manchester. “I wanted to go to Cambridge but I was too stupid,” he says, self-deprecatingly. Then at 21, he joined United Scientific Holdings, selling army surplus telescopes and watches on London’s Tottenham Court Road.

He built the 20-man firm into a major quoted company. “We went legit by buying real manufacturers,” he explains. Acquiring the Alvis tank business helped turn United Scientific from a MoD customer into a supplier and Levene so impressed defence secretary Michael Heseltine he was made head of defence procurement.

The scandals of the Tigerfish heavy torpedo and Nimrod AEW aircraft bought about by inadequate ‘cost plus’ contracts led to the appointment of Levene as Chief of Defence Procurement in 1985. Like a new broom sweeping clean Levene revolutionised the procurement processes in the MoD. A much more adversarial and commercially hard nosed culture was introduced, gone were cost plus contracts and in came fixed price contracts with severe restrictions on the interaction between the MoD and suppliers once the contract had been awarded.

This limited interaction meant that opportunities for scope creep were reduced, scope creep being anathema to fixed price contracts. It also meant that any government funded research into relevant technologies could not be fed into ongoing programmes and led to the rise of the commercial, rather than technical skills family.

Behind these reforms was a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of defence programmes, whilst fixed price contracts might be OK for spare tyres or ammunition, they are wholly unsuited to complex programmes where there is significant technical risk and the dogmatic approach lead to an increasingly fraught relationship between the MoD and industry. Because of the need to nail down every aspect of a requirement, requirements documents and contracts grew increasingly complex and tested the capabilities of the MoD, competitions became slow and unwieldy which damaged both the customer and industry.

Open competition and fixed price bidding also encouraged under bidding and this became endemic as almost every contract was bid low. Cost and time overruns were as common with this method as before as fixed price contracts were always renegotiated after the fact and any cost savings, however they were trumpeted as a success, were in the vast majority of cases, achieved by de-specifying, delaying and reducing quantities.

Nothing very clever about that.

If a fixed price deal stays the same but delivers less, it isn’t really a fixed price deal and political and regional interference made a mockery of this approach anyway, step forward Westlands.

A number of serious scholarly research papers exposed the impact of this approach not only on the MoD but industry as well, the approach massively favoured US manufacturers because whilst in this brave new world of competitive tendering and fixed price deals UK companies had to compete with others, mainly the US, who benefited from US government funded research programmes. There is a very good reason that US systems appear to be cheaper, that is because they have a much larger market in which to generate economies of scale and benefit from a government funded research environment that dwarfs that of the UK.

The net result of the Levene Reforms was a transference of risk from the MoD to industry, industry responded to this by merging and entering into partnerships that would have the critical mass to accept these risks.

US companies started making serious inroads into the UK defence market, like General Dynamics for example, winner of the recast BOWMAN contract in 2001. The old situation where we had a small number of companies that made the same things has been replaced with a situation where we have an even smaller number of companies that still make the same things, only more expensive. The desire to increase competition resulted in less of it.

Faith in market forces as the saviour to the MoD’s acquisition woes was completely misplaced, buying complex military equipment is simply not the same as buying paper clips.

When the Labour government came to power they inherited a much worse situation than they left, many people conveniently forget that in the rush to call the MoD not fit for purpose. In 1998 the Levene Reforms  were cast aside in favour of Smart Acquisition where the less adversarial approach of partnering was introduced.

In evidence to the Defence Select Committee in 2006, Lord Levene argued;

“we did get value for money. We did get projects, almost without exception, delivered on time and on cost”

The National Audit Office reports on major projects for that and subsequent periods paint a somewhat different picture, in reality, lower costs were produced by less quantity and lower specification.

What of the others in the DRU?

Baroness Sheila Noakes, George Iacobescu, Dr David Allen, Björn Conway, and Raymond McKeeve

• Baroness Sheila Noakes, conservative politician and formerly head of KPMG’s government practice.
• Björn Conway is head of aerospace and defence at Ernst & Young
• George Iacobescu is the Chief Executive of the Canary Wharf Group
• Not sure about Dr David Allen and Raymond McKeeve but from initial research, I think the latter is a lawyer

An interesting group, obviously high performers in their respective industry sectors but a little light on military or security expertise. Maybe this isn’t a bad thing and having experience of transformational programmes in other large organisations is exactly what is needed.

Can’t help feeling a little dejavu about this though.

You might also want to have a read here but I will leave you with these two statements from the new man in charge of Defence reform, the Chairman of General Dynamics UK and former President of the Defence Manufacturers Association.

“We are delighted that the MoD has selected ASCOD SV for its SV programme, a decision we believe will sustain the British tank industry for future generations!

“WATCHKEEPER is a central program to the future ISTAR growth strategy of General Dynamics U.K. Ltd, and is viewed as an essential project in shaping the direction of our organization and the synergies with our existing U.K. business is clear”

We discuss merging services, cutting programmes, destroying capability and withdrawing from operations as a means of cutting cost.

Yet despite this intense atmosphere it seems the people at the MoD public relations/news management/web team can still find enough time to tell us all something vitally important to the coming SDSR or operation in Afghanistan, the rising up the Pink List for example!

So whilst the vultures are circling, the Treasury label the MoD as wasteful, the NAO refuse to sign off its accounts and the very real  prospect of irreversible and damaging budget cuts loom, one might think across the whole defence piece, the MoD might be pushing out stories about equipment, cost saving measures, think pieces on strategy and news about operations in Afghanistan.

To quote Liam Fox

“We must make sure that we make every penny spent on Defence count”

Absolutely bloody spot on Dr Fox

So can you please explain to the nation and service personnel from the RN, RAF and Army how this adds value or in any way counts?

Quoting from the article

Lt Cdr McBain is currently assigned as one of the Naval Service’s Equality and Diversity Policy Officers in the Naval Command HQ in Portsmouth. In that role she is part of a small team that develops and implements policy in relation to gender, gender reassignment, race and ethnicity, religion or belief, and sexual orientation

Why do we need a uniformed personnel to develop what are basically HR policies that could quite easily be handled by much cheaper MoD civilians or simply outsourced to HR service providers, thus neatly avoiding pension, leave and other costs?

One assumes the other services have similar organisations.

Think about this, a Lt Commander’s pay scale is £46,824 – £56,078 per year, plus pension, plus allowances, plus accommodation, plus office costs, plus IT costs and plus, well you get the point .

Lets say the Army and RAF have an equivalent, the capitation cost is likely to be somewhere near a quarter of a million pounds per year and this makes the assumption that there are no other more senior or junior ranks or MoD civilians involved in similar activity.

What does £250k buy these days in the world of defence, not a great deal, but hang on, also in the news today from the MoD is piece about the ‘black bag’ of kit issued to personnel deploying to Afghanistan that includes such luxuries as body armour and boots. Credit where credits due, this is a brilliant bit bit of kit and really does mean that the usual practice of personnel buying their own kit has largely been eliminated. The piece from the MoD described the the £3,000 price tag of the bag as ‘staggering’

One might argue with that description, especially in the current climate as it sort of implies it is a one time deal and we should all be jolly well grateful that the MoD is buying body armour instead of holding LGBT conferences or building new restaurants in Germany.

Back on the diversity theme, how many black bags does £250k buy; 85 or nearly an Infantry Company’s worth

Don’t take this as some homophobic rant, it is not

But seriously, how does this kind of activity

Make every penny spent on Defence count?

Maybe the MoD doesn’t deserve to be treated any differently from other departments, this kind of nonsense says loud and clear the MoD has more money that it actually needs and doesn’t consider itself to be at war.

Back to comparing ourselves to Gok Wan