Perhaps someone needs to have a word with the secretariat of the Government Major Projects Portfolio, which I gather is concerned that too few 1*s have been loaded up with 'Senior Responsible Owner' duties for too many very large acquisition programmes (list
here). Is the answer to have more 1*s, or to push SRO duties down the rank scale, or to civilianise the sponsor/SRO function for military equipment programmes? Before answering that you might want to consider what civvy street pays those responsible for delivering just *one* hundred-million pound programme, never mind multiple billion-pound programmes, and compare to the military pay scales.