The report by Bernard Gray, a former adviser to Labour defence ministers, has found that the problems were so severe they were "harming our ability ... to conduct difficult current operations". It concluded that the MoD's equipment programme was £35 billion over budget, five years behind schedule, and could not be afforded in the long-term. "The problems, and the sums of money involved, have almost lost their power to shock, so endemic is the issue," said the report, obtained by the Sunday Times. "It seems as though military equipment acquisition is vying in a technological race with the delivery of civilian software systems for the title of 'world's most delayed technical solution'. Even British trains cannot compete." The report was originally commissioned by the former Defence Secretary John Hutton and was supposed to have been published before Parliament broke for the summer recess last month. However, ministers have now said that it will "feed in" to the forthcoming defence green paper, to be published early next year, which will pave the way for a full-scale strategic defence review once the general election is out of the way. The decision to effectively bury the document is thought to reflect the acute political embarrassment over its withering assessment of the defence procurement process at a time when British troops are engaged in fierce fighting in Afghanistan. Although extracts have been leaked already, The Sunday Times said that it had now obtained the full 296-page document. It shows that Mr Gray is unsparing in his criticisms of the MoD. "How can it be that it takes 20 years to buy a ship, or aircraft, or tank? Why does it always seem to cost at least twice what was thought? Even worse, at the end of the wait, why does it never quite seem to do what it was supposed to?" he demands. The report warns that the MoD has a "substantially overheated equipment programme, with too many types of equipment being ordered for too large a range of tasks at too high a specification". It says that agile enemies such as the Taliban were "unlikely to wait for our sclerotic acquisition systems to catch up" while delays in the shipbuilding programme meant Britain could not have fought a Falklands-style campaign any time over the last 20 years. "We would have risked significant casualties, the very significant costs of acquiring adequate equipment at short notice (if available) or the embarrassment of not fighting at all," he said. A MoD spokesman said: "The former Defence Secretary, John Hutton, commissioned a review on acquisition reform from Bernard Gray because we want to ensure that we are buying equipment as efficiently as possible. "This report is currently in draft format and we are working hard with him on the issues he has identified. "The work will feed into our recently announced Green Paper on defence. We are constantly improving the procurement process which has seen us deliver £10 billion of equipment to the front line over the last three years. "The Government will be publishing the report in due course."Defence procurement "harming" military's operational ability
A secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) report has concluded that the department's systems for acquiring new equipment are so inefficient they should be privatised.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Posts
