Here's a different take.
Will a mere 8% cut provide any incentive for DE&S to stop knowingly wasting money?
The headline Defence Budget is nearly £40Bn, but not all is equipment costs. An 8% cut applied to the equipment budget is about a Billion a year, perhaps less. Savings of that order, without affecting Operational Effectiveness, are relatively easy. In fact, 30% savings have been described as a "routine expectation of any project manager". I wonder how many project managers / project teams in DE&S have this expectation imposed upon them?
Only a couple of years ago, an unsolicited proposal to save over £100M on the support of one project alone, per year, was met with disdain and rejected as not worth the effort by MoD's Commercial Director. In fact, the contractor was shown the door and warned as to their future conduct. (How dare they identify efficiencies. That merely raises the bar for other teams. We can't have that).
It's about people. Ditch those who don't do their job properly. A root and branch review of DE&S and the wider Acquisition structure is required. For a start, there are Treasury agreed Grade Descriptions for every Civil Service grade in MoD. Not job descriptons, but the grade as a whole. How many typical project managers in DE&S meet the minima? Perhaps a dozen or so I reckon and all, by definition, will be retiring soon. Most don't meet the minima for 2 or 3 (or even 5) grades below them. No more promotions or pay rises until you retrospectively attain these core competencies and applied experience. And don't get me started on the number of grades and ranks above project managers who have no responsibiity or accountability, make no decisions, yet are paid more to, for all practical purposes, report to the project manager. As Shell Management has said elsewhere, I know of very few commercial entities who would dream of such a structure. There is much to admire about Bernard Gray's report.