In my opinion the real point here is not whether one particular project is “doomed” but rather the wider fundamentals that underpin the procurement process and specifically the complex relationship and interdependencies that exist between government and industry – in this case the defence manufacturing sector.
1. Procurement
I’d assume that a basic military need must exist in all cases to allow the procurement process to commence, and I’d then imagine that an initial spec would get ‘pulled around’ by a whole host of people (hopefully SMEs) in the MoD with input from the relevant armed service(s), all of which should take place prior to any submissions to industry (RFI, RFP/ITT, etc).
What we know from past experience is that those competing interests rarely settle their differences at this stage and that these arguments and subsequent spec revisions continue long after any submissions to industry, and we also know this “disagreement process” is lengthened inexorably in the case of multi-nation projects, in part due to politics (more of which later). In other words I think it’s quite normal for that basic military need to have taken so long to become a firm design spec, and to have changed so much, that it becomes almost unrecognizable from that initial spec, with the result being that the end product suits no-one and costs many, many times as much as first envisaged (remember change = money).
2. Relationships and Interdependencies with Defence Manufacturing Sector
In the most extreme case we’ve now gone from a basic military need that has morphed into some kind of multi-national “white elephant” which no-one really knows what to with but, upon which, many thousands of jobs in a number of countries now depend. And that is the key dilemma for Government, to determine whether the most important factor is actually defence need or plain economics. All too often I believe Government prioritizes economics (in the widest possible sense!) against actual defence need, which means that any sensible defence based argument or viewpoint is automatically overridden by the threat to employment in Scottish shipyards or Hull or wherever.
A further complicating factor is the sheer size and scale of these contracts awarded, meaning that when things go wrong the government really has no recourse against those companies involved; witness the Nimrod MRA4 fiasco where the government has continued pumping money into a project that was grossly mismanaged, for fear of effectively bankrupting its major defence systems supplier!
Not sure if the above points make any sense, just my own thoughts in my capacity as both a taxpayer and firm believer in maintaining credible armed forces.
Regards, Nick.