Originally Posted by
WB627
The only problem as I see it, would be the MOD procurement process, which no doubt would turn it into a multi £billion project for someone like BAE, which would never get off the ground.
Slightly unfair given the raft of posts naming and blaming RAF officers for this debacle, who had no part whatsoever in the 'procurement process'. The process is robust. If the Services do the preliminary work correctly, delivery to time, cost and performance (and better) is for the most part a walk in the park. The trouble is, they seldom do.
It is the implementation that is lacking. If the Services don't/can't/won't do the preliminary legwork, the backstop was traditionally the project manager, who was required to know how to do this work and could correct matters very quickly. (As he'd learned and practiced it in his previous 5 or more grades). Implementation becomes very difficult if you haven't worked at those 5 grades, which are all below today's entry minima. No-one learns what is NOT being done.
That's the basic problem both the Services and DE&S face. The current 'solution' seems to be to employ an army of highly paid 'consultants', because MoD's own natural recruitment grounds were decimated long ago. Many of these consultants are doing work I'd have gladly entrusted, with minimal supervision, to 3rd year apprentices. And I mean proper apprentices, who use tools; not those who are.
One has to appreciate that if you substitute 'Nimrod' with' 'Gliders' in the 2009 Nimrod Review, it still makes perfect sense, as the systemic failings are the same. Read the Hawk XX177 Board of Inquiry report. Same Type Airworthiness Authority as Gliders, and infinitely worse failings.