I look at this another way. Rest assured, if the MoD/Government are announcing £2Bn cuts/savings, then this is the GOOD news. Delve a little deeper and you expose the REAL problems that beset MoD.
Take BOWMAN and FIST as a simple example. What does BOWMAN deliver? (Or rather, what was it meant to deliver?). Personal Role Radio (the immensely bulky thing that dangles from soldiers), VHF radio (another immensely bulky thingy that the Army’s Director Infantry said he didn’t want in 1999, 5 years before the contract was let, because it was, well, crap. He was right). Personal User Data Terminals (PDAs to you and me, only in technology terms stuck in the mid-90s with no upgrade path). Situational Awareness software run on the PUDT, along with other applications. Oh, and you have to integrate the lot but, as their IPTL once said, we don’t do integration.
So why then is the FIST contractor blowing his trumpet about the latest trials kit which contains, PRR replacement, VHF radio replacement, PUDT replacement and, er, SA replacement.
The only conclusion is that the political imperative has drifted down that “BOWMAN is a success” and, not so quietly in the background, other major programmes are being schemed to replace this successful kit (before its all delivered). The problem is, I guess, that the FIST people may have been doing a wonderful job for some years, but now they’re told “Forget 2009 ISD, you’ve got to stop, regress 10 years and bale out BOWMAN”.
I won’t go on about the links to FRES. Having spent zillions modifying fleets of land vehicles to take BOWMAN (still ongoing probably), another programme to remove it and refit to FRES would make the system topple. That’s what I call lack of programmatic integration.
A bit of simple science. “Live video feeds”. Video consumes bandwidth. We don’t have any to spare. If we free it up for a few video stars, wide bandwidth consumes power. As we’re talking about foot soldiers, and the weight of batteries will slow them down, making them more vulnerable, perhaps the idea is to use FRES as a mobile stores depot dedicated to batteries?
You really don't like Bowman do you ????? It's pity you can't call a PUDT by its correct name... i.e. a Portable User Data Terminal. As for mid 90's technology, name one piece of kit that had its design specs frozen in 2002 that isn't. Come to think of it, most of the new kit I got in 2002, runs at about the same speed as its Bowman equivalent.