Not surprised at all. The mismanagement of the Defence Estate for one.
First of my allegations would be the Annington Homes debacle where we practically gave away our quarters and then they sold off the profitable ones where we needed them most - the end result is Defence paying for more families and single personnel living rented accommodation at taxpayers' cost plus the rest living in squalid and mouldy accommodation that is so poorly looked after (nothing wrong with the buildings they're just poorly maintained).
Second would be the sale of the MOD's "family jewells" where we sell up and move out into infrastucture that is more expensive than the sale price of what they have moved out of and it would have been cheaper to fix and maintain the old buildings than build new. The St Athan, Arborfield, Cosford, Sultan debacle coupled to the Brize debacle springs to mind - the receipts for the sale have been outstripped by nearly a factor of 100 compared to the builds. These are often VSO's vanity projects or 'legacies' that cost us dearly. The next looming on the horizon will be the sale of Henlow and Halton to save Cranwell - the buildings required for this are likely to cost over 1/2 a BILLION Pounds when the receipts for the sale of the other 2 stations will be less than a 1/10 of a BILLION. The numbers just do not add up and when the NAO look at this afterwards they will say "naughty MOD you did not get value for money" but it will be too late by then and no one will be held to account.
Other things wrong are Pay As You Dine where we pay small amounts for a 'core meal' and get what we pay for - awful food. Then where the profit is made from the a la carte stuff we end up making huge profits that are then shared with Stations as 'gainshare' - that's because we charge £1.05 for a can of Coke and then half of that profit goes back to the Station. We are ripping off our people to raise funds to be squandered by the Station on stuff.
Then there are the costs of staying in the Mess. When I stayed at Cranwell recently it cost me ~£2 a night. No wonder the Mess was falling apart and my bathroom mouldy. If I was charged a fiver or even a tenner I wouldn't grumble, but 2 quid is a joke.
Let's look at flying. The MAA has added huge expense to all areas pf flying aircraft. However, it has been applied disproportionately in my view. Trying to run a fleet of gliders (Vikings) or light aircraft (Tutors) under the same regime as a Typhoon or Chinook is just plain daft. I can fly a perfectly safe glider for £20 an hour and a light aircraft for £100 an hour under a perfectly safe civil airworthiness system - however you can multiply these figures by 10 for the glider and 5 for the light aircraft when operated by the military. Why do we insist on this worthless waste of cash by applying MAA rules to things so simple?
Then there are the regs surrounding things we do. Some military regs are not required by UK Law or to mirror civilian regs - so WTF are we doing them? Because some trumped up Staff Officer thought it would be a good idea, probably. The amount of time I hear 'the Boss will go to jail/court over this' - I usually reply 'on what basis...where is it written down that we can't do this in UK/Intl Law?'. Normally all I get is stunned silence.
Then there are the endless paperwork trails. You can be trusted with a £50M aircraft but not to claim 25p a mile motor mileage allowance without a certificate from the MT manager, your line manager and then an audit of your car insurance by accounts flight.
Why are the Scribblies still wearing uniform when some of our engineers, suppliers, air traffic controllers, pilots, MT personnel, chefs, cooks and bottlewashers are wearing Serco, Sodexho, Babcock, Cobham, VTAerospace or BAE polo shirts. I would have thought that civilianising scribblies and educators would have been the easiest to achieve. Also, the you only have to see them in their number ones to see how often they have deployed to sit in a nice comfy air conditioned portacabin dishing out dollars, laundry chits and pay statements!
Finally, PFIs and procurement. They are wide open to abuse. Either as a 'vanity project' for VSOs or aligning people for a nice cushy job in civvy street. Further political interference on what they want and what will 'be alright' for the military means that we get the equipment we don't really want for too much money. I did hear that we are all to get the L3 version of the SA-80 (L-85) soon - it is being refurbed by I believe Hechler & Kock at £2.7M for 5,000 weapons that will last until 2025. That's £540 each - we could buy new H&K weapons for about £200 more and they would last 20-25 years instead of 7!!
So to quote the next US President (whom I'm not a great fan of) that it's "time to drain the swamp". The answer will probably be to reduce manpower and lose more capability through so called 'holidays'.
So, no, it doesn't surprise me at all.
LJ