Fourth largest budget yet ranked 26th in the world

[greycoat]

From Sunday Times http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article2413314.ece

The Economist's Pocket World in Figures lists UK as having the 4th largest defence budget but only the 26th largest by numbers, outranked numerically by amongst others France, Italy, Syria and Morocco.

Why are we so expensive per head. How long can the argument quality over quantity be sustained in the current climate of overstretch? Discuss.

[Fg Off Max Stout]

My simplistic suggestion would be that we are have high-tech armed forces. Therefore our kit is expensive and our capability is not simply a matter of numbers of infantry, tanks, frigates or aircraft. For example, we might have 200 Typhoons whereas a country with a smaller defence budget might have 1000 MiG-21s. Who has the better capability? That would be us.

Unfortunately the government has been using this fact to justify many recent rounds of defence cuts and equipment / manpower reductions and has left us with barely enough capability to meet our commitments.

[greycoat]

But can there be a situation where the low-tech masses ultimately overwhelm a technologically superior but fewer in number force - asymmetric ops excluded - to the extent where we cannot successfully prosecute offensive ops.

Are we too focussed on numbers of platforms. ISTR 10 years or so ago that reducing the sqn strength by one FJ ac and instead investing the dosh in log support you could actually increase the overall available strength of the sqn.

[A2QFI]

Presumably the funds for this bunch of wasters comes out of the overall MOD budget?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/09/nmod109.xml

[Flik Roll]

There was a Flight International article back in the summer (July I believe) that showed the UK quite far down in the Armed Forces spending/budgetry. I'm pretty sure we were further down than 4th. US and China were top on the old spending front.

[Ali Barber]

I seem to remember some awfully expensive chairs being procured a while ago. Might account for some of the budget!

p.s. didn't someone once say quantity has a quality all of its own?

[D-IFF_ident]

Ah, statistics:

The UK spends 2.4% of its GDP on defence ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html#Military ) Putting us at number 69 ( http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_per_of_gdp-military-expenditures-percent-of-gdp ).

But in actual cash, we could arguably be 2nd ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures )

OR - possibly 6th ( http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig-military-expenditures-dollar-figure )

Personally, I prefer $ per Capita as the best guide - http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_pergdp-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-gdp - which puts us at 70th, behind Iran (10), Libya (15), Syria (23), Zimbabwe (26) etc etc.

[LFFC]

We might have a small number of military people in uniform - but we drag along an army of civilian Civil Servants.

What we've actually done over the last 10 years is replace far too many fighting personnel with civilians; it might be cheaper to swap military for civilian personnel, but we're paying the real price now!!!

Hands up everyone who feels that they've become a civilian personnel manager over the last few months.

[Pontius Navigator]

The other cost factor is cost of living. If France has a COL of 90% UK then they will get more bang for their Euro. We always talk of the $-£ being the same ie 1000$ in US and £1000 for the same thing in UK.

Everything is just more expensive here.

And there is my small pension too :)

[WorkingHard]

Perhaps PN is quite close to the mark since the entite pension and retired pay is out of the budget. Couple that with what appears to be nearly an inverted pyramid in rank numbers and you have a recipe for disaster. An interesting comparison might be how many personnel support how many aircraft in the different air forces. It may also be appropriate to look at the cost of 1) serving personnel, 2) retired personnel and 3) cost of civilian personnel.

[Pontius Navigator]

WH,

The other kicker is Mrs PN Mk 2, as a hypothetical example. Mrs PN Mk 1 may have been ditched late on and replaced by Mk 2 aged 25. When Mr PN, 3* rtd at age 57 he might expect to be drawing Betty's dosh for another 30 years or so until 2037 but when he eventually shuffles of Mrs PN Mk 2 might be sponging off Wil's son until 2070 of later. Scary.

If Mr PN was a much less senior officer then Mrs PN Mk 2 would of course have been much older when she married.

"What did the tall, drop-dead gorgeous, 25-yr old busty blonde see if the short, fat, balding Air Marshal?":}

[tonker]

40 Merlins or 250 Mil 8 Hips(with all the latest kit and extra aircrew armour..plus large retro fan on dash)

[Fareastdriver]

Great Idea PN. I'll get myself hitched to a beautiful 21 year old Chinese dolly. Shouldn't be a problem, put a notice on the door and there will be a queue by lunchtime. When I croak from heart failure or Viagra overdose I can lay there pushing up daisies happy with the knowledge that she is clawing back all my taxes.

[8-15fromOdium]

This may be part of the reason:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/09/nmod109.xml

I don't remember 'Management Consultants' being sent in to sort out FRESCO, Foot&Mouth, the Floods et al. Why doesn't the MOD try without these parasites for FY 08/09 and plough the savings into accommodation.

Any one from MOD can PM me to discuss my fee...

[tacr2man]

If they need all these ''Advisers/consultants'' I would think that would tend to show they dont have the ability to do the job they were employed for, mind you it would appear that even with them they are not really doing that well. I rest my case:{

[An Teallach]

There is a culture in the MoD (Service & Civilian) where the potential personal consequences of failure are far greater than the potential personal rewards of success. Therefore the natural consequence is excessive employment of consultants, so no-one makes a decision: They merely follow the consultant's advice. The more expensive the advice, the better it is (stands to reason, dunnit?)!

God forbid the high-paid help should actually make their own decisions and stand or fall by them!

[tucumseh]

An Teallach, you are absolutely spot on. A few years ago our IPT was “breaking through” (don’t ask!). Consultants were employed to tell us how to conduct our business – which we’d been doing pretty well for years. That is, delivering capability to time, cost and performance. Their benchmark for our performance, which they would monitor, was set way below what we already achieved on a bad day.

After the first night in a hotel (can’t “break through” at place of duty apparently) we were told the next day’s itinerary was – team games. The consultants also asked a question – why do some of you keep disappearing for a while?

Technical Project Managers - “Because there’s a ******* war on and we have UORs to deliver to troops who are dug in a ******* ditch waiting for kit”.

Consultants, Finance, Commercial, ILS etc (i.e. Authority but no responsibility) – “Chill out, they can wait”.

We left them to it.


8-15 to odium – Many IPTs happily pay recruitment agencies up to £2000 a day for consultants, who I believe get considerably less than this. Many of them are employed to advise on basic stuff a 3rd year apprentice can do in his sleep. Which tells you a lot about the standards and experience required of new recruits. This has been going on since 1996 when CDP informed his civilian staffs he did not want engineering project managers and announced 600 job losses (a huge % of PE engineering staff at the time). The new breed of PMs, who wouldn’t know a transistor from a transvestite (Is that allowed? Anyway, it’s easy, they both have skirts), were afforded huge “extramural” budgets for consultants. I actually got a number of bollockings for NOT spending my consultancy budget and was routinely castigated for having the competence to simply get on with it and do “their” job myself.

Consultants, like most people, have their place. Short term, highly specialised advice. NOT full-time employment, for years on end, getting paid 10 times more than a highly trained civvy or Serviceman who has already proven he can do the job.

[Wader2]

happily pay . . . for consultants

Many of them are employed to advise on basic stuff

Consultants, like most people, have their place. Short term, highly specialised advice.

Even that is dubious. The organisation said we needed a system. They employed a consultancy who just happened to be headed by a rtd Lt Col, terribly nice chap.

[On my scale niceness equates to ineffectiveness. Anyone accuse Tim Collins of being nice?]

A draft was then produced and sent to us to give it a tick. We finished re-drafting it. Then we had to fill in the tables - tables lifted sraight from the JSP but re-arranged somewhat confusingly. We re-wrote their skeleton table example and then populated the rest.

Our complete ssystem will then be signed off and put on a shelf to gather dust as there is no money to actually implement anything.

Oh yes, I said 'our system' that is because the consultants have not provided the final version although we returned our draft 3 months ago. They have got their stage payment, 90% or so, so they are happy.

[Not_a_boffin]

Not to mention the vast resources expended in compliance with all sorts of legislation or government policies that have little or nothing to do with delivering the right kit at the right time (the right price is a slightly different question). IiP, Diversity training, anti-bullying this, behaviours the other......

All a vast crock of unnecessary effort that results in the full employment of people who should have been on the Golgafrichian Ark B and a total lack of resource to recruit / pay people to do the work that matters.

Rewarding people for doing their jobs well and making sure they are properly looked after in terms of career progression is essential, but if you have to build a system that requires huge funding levels to do it then you've failed.

[greycoat]

So we agree that consultants appear to be a waste of time and money in the public sector, particularly the MOD, although not forgetting the regular inability of Govt computer systems to deliver capability to budget or timescale, but is anyone able to justify their use in the private sector?