Hardware Audit Anyone?

[Madbob]

In these days of Freedom of Information I thought that it might be worth trying to find out if anyone had done an "audit" as to the state of the major aircraft fleets in the UK armed services.....

I'm not just thinking about numbers of airframes and classifying them as either servicable / un-servicable but more a summary of each type under various headings eg.

Type Hercules C130J
No. in use 24
Date of entry to service 1995
Average fleet age 13 years
% fatigue life remaining 40%
Current fatigue consumpation 7% per annum
Projected out of service date 2014
Planned replacement A400M
Entry to service date ??

What I am getting to is trying to highlight is what I see is the dire need to line up future aircraft orders in time so as to avoid expensive maintenance of old ac and "capability holidays".....

Gone are the days when we had multiple types fulfilling the same role. eg. the V Force for instance, so that when the Valiants had to be withdrawn suddenly due to fatigue cracks the Vulcans and Victors could maintain the role. Equally, the loss of the Argosy didn't mean the end of AT as the Hercs, Andovers, VC10's were able to carry on and when the Buccs had a major fatigue issue in 1979 we still had other fast jet assets (admittedly not so good in the role) to cover the gap.

I see a major crisis looming, not just to the RAF but to the RN and Army too. Must we always bury our head in the sand?:ugh:

The USAF also is suffering from an aging fleet - 39 P3C's were withdrawn recently - if we keep this up we won't have anything left to fly.....

Just had to get this off my chest - sorry if it sounds like a rant at our political over lords.

MB

[tucumseh]

MadBob

It is a fundamental requirement of the EP process that the USER maintains cumulative records of such information, primarily for the purposes of making materiel and financial provision and, ultimately, justifying expenditure.

The fact they no longer did was the subject of a very critical (unclassified) audit report way back in 1996 - for some extraordinary reason Tornado engines was the only section to withstand this audit, submitted direct to PUS (as the Chief Accounting Officer). Of course the data exists; the point the report was making was that it wasn't accurate, available in the correct format or used properly, causing large scale waste. (For example, by making duplicate buys of kit or services, something which is still prevalent today).

If you go back further in time, when we had such things as 2nd and 3rd Order Assumptions (under the Long Term Costings process) all this data was routinely provided each February to the office responsible for compiling 3rd Order Assumptions. Each Service had a small, centralised office responsible for ALL aircraft and their equipment. They were seen to be the OWNERS of the kit, ensured that the provisioning parameters were maintained, and were wholly responsible for maintain Reliability, Availability and Maintainability - or to be more precise, managing the trade-offs between RA&M. What little of this (important) process remains is stovepiped and fragmented across DE&S.

The above explains, in part, why we don't get the right kit at the right time. If you don't ask, you don't get. To ask, and withstand scrutiny, you must be able to substantiate. Bottom line - you ask a very good question.

[pr00ne]

Madbob,

A case of rose tinted glasses there with your historical 'for instances' I am afraid.

When the Valiant fleet went very suddenly there were no other aircraft capable of performing the roles allocated to those Valiant squadrons. By 1965 the Valiant was a tactical nuke strike asset only, 100% committed to SACEUR and a vastly different role from the Vulcan and Victor B2 squadrons of the deterrent. The other Valiant role was that of AAR and it's loss left the RAF totally denuded of AAR capability.

Their eventual replacements in the AAR role were surplus Victor B1's from the bomber squadrons disbanded the year before and the tactical nuclear SACEUR role was NEVER replaced, as there were no squadrons capable of it. SACEUR lost that capability for good.

The Argosy was withdrawn as a part of the draw down in the size of the RAF following withdrawal from East of Suez. Once we were out of these areas there was no need for such a large AT fleet with such a multiplicity of types.

Good point about the Buccaneer though.