Bowman Fiasco

[Flying_Padre]

posted July 18 in the Guardian

The government is expected to cause a row tomorrow by awarding a long-delayed £1.7bn contract for new digital battlefield radios to a Canadian company.

Computing Devices Canada (CDC), a unit of US defence group General Dynamics, is believed to have fought off a last-ditch effort from Franco-British company Thales to win the Bowman contract from the ministry of defence.

The feared outcome will come as a bitter blow to Thales chief executive, Denis Ranque, who paid £1.3bn for Racal last year and has cited government approval for his efforts to build his UK operations into a genuine competitor to BAE Systems.

Thales had promised to create 3,000 jobs while TRW, a US bidder that was at one stage front-runner, and CDC are both planning to create more than 1,000 posts, the latter in south Wales. Thales is now likely to shed up to 500 jobs instead at Bracknell and Harrow.

The ministry of defence decision, according to industry sources, will effectively export British jobs to north America and deprive Britain and Europe of expertise in the field of military communications - which they have, until now, dominated.

But Roger Lyons, leader of the MSF union, said tomorrow's Commons statement would reaffirm the MoD's "commitment to the maximum amount of added value and technology jobs for the UK".

The Bowman contract to replace ageing battlefield radios that were so defective they could be overheard by the Serbs during the Kosovo war, became a byword for cost over-runs and delays, prompting the MoD to sack a BAE-led consortium chosen to supply it last year.

Racal was part of the consortium and that, sources said, was a factor in Thales's reported failure to win the contract. Both the US and Canadian groups offered systems that are proven in service - unlike Thales, which had hoped to win £800m in export orders over 10 years.

Mr Ranque said Thales was the only one of the three bidders to be totally UK-based and that Britain would lose an important military capability if its north American rivals won.

Along time in coming - perhaps this is the start of the government placing a contract in order to get the best product rather than going for the cheapest option and a jobs for votes winner........ May be it's time to look beyond British Waste of Space or Wastelands?????

[Ezekiel 25:17]

perhaps...perhaps not. Don't forget that the impending announcement will concern the selected prime contractor who will undoubtedly have a number of sub-contractors in this country.

Apparently the government has officially dropped the "buy British" approach since a recent report came out which was "highly critical" of defence procurement in this country. Proof, if any were needed, that the British are still the masters of understatement. However, Jobs are likely to still sway politicians' hands when companies such as Marconi are imploding so spectacularly.

But will it sway them in the case of BOWMAN? Unlikely, due to the fact that this system needs to come in on time or heads are gonna roll.

Will BOWMAN be any good? Almost certainly. It will blow the socks off anything that's come before it, although that clearly wouldn't be hard, and as it began its procurement life in 1986, it needs to. And naturally they'll solve all the problems of integrating BOWMAN data onto glass-cockpit aircraft won't they?

errr..

...looks like Wastelands might not be getting overlooked after all!

[ChristopherRobin]

looks like they won't!

Take a look at http://www.cdcsystemsuk.com/organisations/default.htm and just look at the sub-contractors' list.

does it not gladden your heart Padre? Can you not feel the spirit welling up inside you? (or something, anyway)

[FODA]

So........we'll just keep on using the mobile for the next however long then.
I only hope that changing contractor actually produces a working, secure system and isn't just the precursor for another 15 years of delays. :rolleyes:

[Ezekiel 25:17]

Well done Padre. CDC did win the contract. See http://www.cdcsystemsuk.com/news/press-releases/2001/NewsRelease71801.htm for details.

But this is going to cost a lot, lot more in the long run. It's supposed to last 30 years, when most IP based hardware these days is replaced every 3-5 years. Even with the requirements of the army, surely 30 years is over ambitious.

And this will cost a bomb in aircraft. Any aircraft that get it that is. Merlin and Chinook will, and AH will have them delivered to the QMs, but no money to pay for installation.

Maybe the radios are so good they'll walk off the shelves and integrate into the aircraft by magic.

Or perhaps not. Saturn radios are much less complex and they cost nearly a million quid per apache airframe to integrate.

Ouch.

But can we just hide our heads in the sand and hope it will go away?

No.

Because it will not. It isn't just about a voice radio. It's a method of data exchange, and that my friends is the key to a kick-ass army.

...That's the trouble with these new aircraft - they're great at doing what they were designed to do, but they are damn expensive. Still, one could always say that you buy cheap, you buy twice.

Same goes for the comms.