The whole question of “bonuses” amounting to £47 ‘this year’ - presumably they are talking of the financial year of April-March. The total since the Iraq war started amounts to £287m since 2003. This year 50,000 civil servants will benefit, The government in one of its more blatant lies tried to pretend that the bonuses were for civil servants going to ‘the front line’ . Just think that one through ! 50,000 civil servants in Afghanistan. How did that many get there? Where did they go? Camp Bastion must be seriously overcrowded with about 5 civil servants to each man fighting! It’s obscene to suggest such a lie.
Below is a description of the processes that these chair-bound wallahs go through to get any equipment produced at all. It’s horrifying, This from a reader of these postings who was hiself a former serving officer who spent weary years seconded to the MoD.
“MoD UNFIT FOR PURPOSE
This malaise has a trinity of causes. It s a combination of MOD Civil Servants, MOD Top Brass, and The Treasury, aided and abetted by sundry UK and international Arms firms and Intelligence services. This unholy trinity needs unpicking and this is difficult. The problem has a tendency to compound itself because each new system (or “platform”) becomes more complex and expensive than its predecessor and has a yet longer gestation. The problem is also bedevilled by the Treasury requiring vast amounts of detailed staff work to justify any new system or to explain overruns and ask for extra cash.
MOD procurement civil servants thus multiply in order to respond to an obese and sclerotic Treasury. This plethora of over bonussed people with zero front line experience, force the Arms Industry to staff up also to counter the avalanche of paper and electronic mail from the “customer”.
Meanwhile as the gestation lengthens, the threat is perceived as growing and the basic science advances too. Thus a significant delay leads to a recast of the whole project. New performance ideas influence new Top Military Brass who naturally want to do the best they can for their servicemen and incidentally often want to advance their chair borne careers too. These Top Brass are also egged on by Intelligence Staff who, while not telling lies, are perhaps rightly, cautious of understating any threat!!! It is against this back ground that Service Operational Requirement Teams and Service Trails Team struggle. It is often a shortage of people and funds that leads to inadequately tested equipment entering service. (the money has gone elsewhere!) ”
Christina
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TELEGRAPH 13.11.09
The MoD can barely run itself, let alone a war in Afghanistan
The rank ineptitude of the Ministry of Defence cannot be allowed to continue, says Con Coughlin.
Never has the phrase "not fit for purpose" been more applicable in Whitehall than to the shambles that today passes for the Ministry of Defence.
Whether it is wasting billions of pounds on equipment that is completely irrelevant for the conflicts the military is fighting, or failing to get even the most basic kit to the front line, the MoD is a department drowning in the mire of its own institutional incompetence.
The bulk of Britain's military efforts are focused on low-intensity but highly challenging counter-insurgency campaigns. First in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan, the Army has been stretched to breaking point in its efforts to defeat a determined and resourceful enemy. But rather than equipping our troops with adequate numbers of helicopters, or vehicles that afford proper protection against deadly roadside bombs, or the equipment necessary to detect and defuse such devices, the MoD has blithely pressed ahead with a range of high-profile and highly expensive procurement projects totally extraneous to the war being fought in the plains and foothills of Afghanistan.
The RAF's new Typhoon fighter is a breathtaking piece of engineering. No one who has seen the jet soar into the skies can fail to be impressed by its speed or manoeuvrability. In mock skirmishes with its equally sophisticated American rivals, such as the F-16, it invariably triumphs.
But so far as Afghanistan is concerned, it is useless. Conceived when the British military was still structured to fight the Cold War, it is brilliant at intercepting and destroying Russian MiGs. It is less effective at taking out Taliban insurgents lying in wait to attack British patrols, because it has no ground-attack capability – the ability to drop bombs, to you
and me. However, that has not stopped the MoD blowing a cool £20 billion on purchasing 232 of the aircraft.
Some are now undergoing an expensive refit, in the hope that they can be adapted for duty in Afghanistan. But whether the Typhoon will ever be deployed for combat operations is an open question; meanwhile, we must make do with our ageing squadrons of Harrier jump-jets – perfectly suited for the Afghan terrain – and Tornadoes, which can only function when weather permits.
Then there are the two new gargantuan aircraft carriers that have been ordered for the Royal Navy, and are to be built at the Rosyth shipyards close to Gordon Brown's Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency. At more than £8 billion each (at current estimates), they will be an impressive sight at any future Fleet Review, but not much use in Iraq and Afghanistan, where sea access is at a premium, to put it mildly.
The list goes on. The Joint Strike Fighter, the new Type 45 destroyers, the A400 air transporter that is due to replace the C-130 Hercules, the backbone of the "air bridge" to Afghanistan – all have been dogged by delays and overspending. All told, Bernard Gray's recent report into defence procurement found that the MoD has wasted a staggering £35 billion through internal incompetence and "political fudge". No wonder its reputation is at such a low ebb.
Understandably, the MoD – in the shape of Bob Ainsworth, our hapless Defence Secretary – did its level best to suppress Mr Gray's report, so explosive was the exhaustive catalogue of ineptitude deemed to be. But even when "Mr Jobsworth", as the Defence Secretary is unflatteringly referred to by his subordinates, was forced to reveal its contents, he quickly booted the central recommendation – that private-sector management be drafted in to overhaul procurement – into Whitehall's long grass.
In fact, far from being mortified by the sheer magnitude of their ministry's incompetence, officials have awarded themselves £47 million in bonuses for their performance this year. Presumably, this includes the morally bankrupt decision to initiate court action to claw back payments awarded to two servicemen injured while fighting for their country. One hopes that no such awards have gone to any of those responsible for the appalling trail of negligence that resulted in an RAF Nimrod exploding in mid-air over Kandahar in 2006, killing the 14-man crew.
Much of the blame for the ministry's plight rests with Labour, which encouraged the payment of bonuses in Whitehall as part of its attempts to incentivise the Civil Service. They are not universally popular, particularly with serving military officers, many of whom do not believe they should be rewarded simply for doing their duty. One officer who recently declined to accept a bonus was warned that he could face disciplinary action as a consequence, as he would be deemed to be in breach of his conditions of service.
There are still many talented and conscientious officials at the MoD. Their problem, though, is that they are required to work in a system that is overly bureaucratic, and in a departmental culture obsessed more with meeting Treasury spending targets than the defence of the realm. They are also required to do the bidding of politicians put in place by Downing Street, which under Gordon Brown has consistently failed to appoint men of the right calibre to the post of Defence Secretary: Mr Ainsworth is just the latest sorry example.
The same problem applies to the senior civil servants who run the department. In the past, the Permanent Under-Secretary was an official of significant stature and clout, such as Sir Frank Cooper or Sir Michael Quinlan. They had spent most of their careers steeped in defence issues, and were well equipped to fight the ministry's corner in the departmental turf wars. Bill Jeffrey, the present incumbent, can hardly be described as a Whitehall heavyweight. His previous experience relates to more prosaic domestic matters, such as prisons and immigration, where his contribution during the 1990s won few plaudits. But he pleased his political masters enough to be parachuted into the MoD in 2005, with precious little defence experience.
The consequences can be seen by all. Mr Jeffrey was, by all accounts, as complicit in the attempts to suppress the Gray report as the equally inexperienced Defence Secretary he was supposed to be advising. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of leadership in what should be one of the most prestigious departments of state, particularly in time of war.
Clearly the MoD's rank ineptitude, which is having a detrimental effect on departmental morale and the combat effectiveness of troops in Afghanistan, can no longer be allowed to persist. As a matter of national urgency, the MoD needs to be made fit for purpose. The best way would be to streamline decision-making and remove unnecessary bureaucratic barriers. Only then will we have a ministry that is equipped to fight the wars of the 21st century
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