So so article, useful only for pointing towards the report which might be worth reading.
More interesting is one of the first comments below. It is of interest because, as those who have read the reports from the USA, it is the ever spiralling long term support costs for the F-35 - into the trillions, which is giving the DoD kittens. I wonder at the author’s background and wonder if Tecumseh has any comment? Comment appended below article text.
Defence chiefs told to sort out F-35 jet costs
Defence chiefs must “urgently resolve” talks with the Treasury over who picks up the bill for a fall in the pound when buying US-made F-35 jets, MPs said. The public accounts committee said other military purchases would be put at risk if the multibillion-pound cost of the 138 stealth aircraft and two new aircraft carriers went over budget.
The comments came in a report on the delivery of carrier strike — the ability to launch fast jets from aircraft carriers at sea. The Ministry of Defence has budgeted to spend more than £14 billion on the programme by 2021. “The defence budget is very strained in the light of commitments made in the last strategic defence and security review,” the report said, in reference to plans set out in 2015 to purchase new warships, nuclear-armed submarines, armoured vehicles and aircraft.
The MoD based its budget for the programme on an assumption that £1 was worth $1.55 but sterling has fallen significantly since the vote for Brexit. The MPs said that the MoD “should urgently resolve ongoing discussions with the Treasury regarding current forward [hedging] contracts. Given the department’s tight financial position, the department should establish with Treasury if relief can be provided, and write to the committee with an update”.
Comment below article
Jag Patel
The ongoing problems associated with procuring the QE class aircraft carriers and its embarked F-35 jets are not only limited to the usual delays and cost overruns – they go beyond, to the contractual support arrangements put in place to acquire, and re-provision additional Support Assets to sustain the equipment in-service, for the full period of its service life. If past record is anything to go by, this aspect of defence procurement will only deliver further spiralling costs – and a headache for the Treasury.
This is because the sustained spinning campaign mounted by the communications people at MoD HQ over the last 25 years or so has succeeded in making everyone believe that, it is acquiring Support Assets for its military equipment upfront, on a whole-life sustainment basis when in fact, it has been quietly buying them
separately from the prime equipment, on a piece-meal basis via a steady stream of short-term, renewable Post Design Services contracts let during the in-service phase – thereby, fooling not only its own people at Abbey Wood Bristol and the wider MoD, but also the whole of industry and in so doing, diverting attention away from the Treasury’s exposure to whole-life sustainment costs, which remain unquantified for lack of a
firm selling price from the main Contractor.
What’s more, it is increasingly clear that the unrelenting spending cuts are putting such a strain on MoD’s equipment budget that, for some recently commissioned equipment into service, the military User can only afford to buy Support Assets for a very
short period of the in-service phase, like one or two years at a time and on others, the User has no choice but to take drastic action like,
deactivating equipment for those periods when there is no available funding for the acquisition of Support Assets – periods which are only likely to get longer and longer, thereby inadvertently creating
capability gaps.
There have also been instances where the User has refused flatly to accept new equipment into service, because he is unwilling to pay for the prohibitively high cost of sustainment, foisted on him by MoD Abbey Wood.
@JagPatel3