Citadel of Waste by David Hill

[Chugalug2]

David Hill has just published his latest book, Citadel of Waste, in Kindle form for a mere £2.99. The proceeds as ever go to charity, including Help for Heroes. A paperback edition should follow in the first week of January. It is very much a culmination of his previous works; Their Greatest Disgrace, The Inconvenient Truth, Breaking the Military Covenant, A Noble Anger, and Red 5, by revealing the machinations of their common denominator, The Ministry of Defence. Being a knowledgeable and experienced retired senior civil servant aviation engineer, he oversaw and led many military aviation projects and shines a light into those murky corridors of power where success and failure alike abounded. Many of the failures led to the numerous airworthiness fatal air accidents that feature in too many threads on this forum. Now we find out what they had in common, particularly that the same people were involved in many of them. If you wondered how the MOD works (or doesn't!) you will learn much here :-

Citadel of Waste eBook : Hill, David: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

[tucumseh]

Thank you Chug. Could I just add that the basic idea for the book came from a Defence Committee report in July alleging 'procurement cock-ups' which, upon closer study, were unmitigated disasters before any procurer got involved.

It offers, I think, a balanced view. For every Requirements cock-up, there's a Procurement one, and a success story. It shows what can be done and how, and discusses why many disasters are repeated time and again.

Most case studies are aviation-related but, for example, AJAX gets a chapter; revealing that the mitigation for excessive noise dose was implemented over two decades ago but ceased. And then 12 years ago MoD rejected the approaches of the same leading expert (an MoD scientist), who recommended again that extant mandates be implemented. Nearly ten years went by, and trials crews were deafened.

Chinook Mk3? MoD denied knowing who was responsible for the decision to waive software procurement and verification regulations. (A distinctly uncivil servant). And lots more, including the background to the RAF approving the buy of kit to be used by Hercules while dipping its active sonar. (A Group Captain). It's an often irreverent look at how servicemen get the kit they use, from the viewpoint of someone who was taught from day 1 that the UOR process is the last resort - it takes far too long and is too wasteful.

[dervish]

I read it in one go. I never thought the subject could be such a rollercoaster. A tragedy, comedy and farce all in one.
The middle section is a breakdown of MoD’s procedures on how to avoid waste. The presentation is genius, and you’re left wondering at so much waste when there’s easily followed procedures to prevent it. The numbers are eye-watering.
The last section looks at what the author calls “big-ticket” failures. I didn’t know that one of the senior officers praised by Hadden-Cave had been in charge of MR4 and then airworthiness. Chinook Mk3 is a revelation. Little details that make you think WTF? Gliders is an excellent section, co-written with a retired engineering officer. MFTS is topical. I was left in no doubt all these could have been avoided as examples are given of other projects avoiding the same pitfalls at the same time. And some of the anecdotes are hilarious and outrageous. As a pongo I especially remember the rectal thermometer event, but had no idea it was a young civvy who asked a Brigadier if he wanted a selection of sizes according to personal taste. Classic. The book’s worth it for that one paragraph.
Finally, the suggestion he makes for an exam question to be given to all DEC and project staff. Intriguing, and it would be interesting to hear peoples answers. I wouldn’t know where to begin, and I doubt few would. I’ll read it again as the clues are probably in the book.

This should open a few eyes. £2.99 to charity. Bloody well done.

[Thud_and_Blunder]

Looking forward to reading my copy :ok:.

I hope some of the good stories come out one day, too - in the First Gulf Unpleasantness our Chinook det received Engine Air Particle Separators just before the start of hostilities. We were told later that a Sqn Ldr in MoD had put in a timely phone call to the manufacturer, who set aside a number of sets as the original customer (who had a MUCH larger requirement) hadn't yet passed the appropriate paperwork to them. Other items also appeared with amazing speed - M134 minigun kits (plus GE expert armourer to supervise fitting on-site) spring to mind, There was a minor distraction with the then-not-fit-for-purpose digital-display RWR, but that was quickly forgiven.

[tucumseh]

T&B

There's a few similar examples - at that time (GW1) mainly on Nimrod R. And an RWR one from a few years later. Not the same one. I think you had Sky Guardian in Chinook under a Special Trials Fit, which was quite an old kit even then, and which the RN only used in fixed wing. You maybe got the old kit pulled out of Buccaneers? But if there's a will, there's a way.

[Gne]

Amazon told me "not yet available", presumably because I logged in from Australia.

Any hints?

Gne

[tucumseh]

Amazon told me "not yet available", presumably because I logged in from Australia.

Any hints?

Gne

Paperback to be published on 5th January. Human error caused by pressing 'publish' instead of 'save as draft' on the Kindle!

[DogTailRed2]

Is this a series of books best read in sequence? Are they available on Audible?

[tucumseh]

Is this a series of books best read in sequence? Are they available on Audible?

Good question.

A Noble Anger is in many ways a sequel to Red 5. They stand alone, but having read Red 5 you'll then appreciate the scale of recurrence.

Their Greatest Disgrace is about the campaign to clear the ZD576 pilots, An Inconvenient Truth about the cause of the accident. There's obviously a little overlap, but while the former discusses evidence that was well-known but ignored, the latter discusses evidence that was concealed, and its existence even denied by MoD. The main submission to the Mull of Kintyre Review is available as a free pdf download.

Breaking the Military Covenant stands alone, and takes the Sea King ASaC mid-air of 2003 as its main case study; plus a range of shorter studies illustrating common failures. (Nimrod XV230, Hercules XV179, Chinook ZA721, etc).

Sorry, not available in audio versions. You may be interested though in Dr Susan Phoenix's best-seller 'Policing the Shadows', just re-published as an audio book and narrated by herself and her son Niven, a former RAF C-17 pilot. She lost her husband Det Supt Ian Phoenix, RUC Special Branch (LATE Parachute Regt), in the ZD576 accident. I know it took her the best part of 2 years to plan and execute the audio version, and it's time consuming and expensive if you have to engage an audio engineer. Especially relevant when all royalties go to charity. Writing a book is just time. An audio version needs a Service pension, not a civil service one!

PM if you want Kindle or pdf e-mailed to you. It's then up to you to donate online to the charity. My choice is a hospice, but some here prefer (e.g.) Help for Heroes or an Air Ambulance, which is fine by me.

Edit... I think most of the books would be impossible to transfer to audio because they frequently refer to images. Red 5 would be utterly impossible, even if the listener were intimately familiar with ejection seat design. (You need to SEE the scale of the over-tightening of the drogue nut, and SEE the video evidence that MoD had been provided with the information it denied having. Only then can you appreciate the perjury). Citadel of Waste is the only one that doesn't have, or need, images. I was reminded that Dr Phoenix had this problem and had to re-write sections.

[jimjim1]

Are they available on Audible?

I have occasionally used automated book readers. It's not quite like a person reading and most definitely not like a talented person reading. However it does a job.

I am sure there are many options, the two I have tried were both Microsoft. The first needed some weird windows incantations to get to work and I forget everything about it, but with windows 10 (presumably onwards and maybe backwards) there is a Microsoft App. ReadAloud

As it happens it has just told me it works with epub, pdf, doc, docx, txt files. If you had amazon books that were not locked you could try converting to epub with Calibre (free).

If you are prepared to get over it not being perfect it might be worth a go.

[Gne]

I look forward to reading the book as soon as I can get a copy.

In my military life I was involved in "requirements" and for the past three decades I've had similar roles in the civil aviation and airports spheres. The continuing lesson senior management fail to understand is the need to start with a CONOPS and then derive functional requirements leading to an operational requirements list AND THEN TO STOP DEFINING and let the technical folk decide the colour of wires and impedances and so on. The second greatest mistake made, in my experience, is people without extensive AND CURRENT domain knowledge sitting down with glossy brochures gathered on a trip to a trade show in an exotic location and cherry picking "features". [Go back a sentence and reread the "continuing lesson".]

I've written several papers on the subject and delivered a number of presentations where I produce my fountain pen and say, "If you give me a requirement for a blue fountain pen because you've seen me use this one I have little choice but to offer you products that cost a hundred dollars or more and may leak blue ink in your white business shirt pocket; however, if you ask me to provide "an instrument which can be held in the hand and makes marks on paper, cardboard, matt painted walls" I can offer you a range of items including pencils, ball point pens and fountain pens, several of which may meet you operational and financial needs much better."

Many years ago I took a 55 page ASMGCS requirement and reduced it to 211 words (33 lines) as a generic surveillance functional requirement. Several folk have used this over the ensuing years as the basis for a functional requirement, including a prison governor!

On two occasions I've had to tell my client after an extensive period of "acceptance" testing that they had to accept the "system" contractually because it met (and in one case, exceeded) the very detailed "requirements" in the contract even though it was not able to be put into operation without extensive modification. The value of putting operational and functional requirements in performance based SORs and leaving the technical details to the OEM/tenderer is that the failure of delivered systems to meet the stated requirements is the problem for the OEM/tenderer and not the result of poorly or ill defined technical requirements. Before you jump down my throat about ICAO/EASA etc. requirements: these form part of the requirements to be met by the OEM/tenderer - " demonstrate conformance with relevant ICAO/EASA requirements".
Classic Example: A seven page RFQ for an airport lighting system for a remote island which required the tenderer to show in their tender the proposed layout, provide a safety case and a compliance matrix. This delivered a fully operationally and regulatory compliant system which is still functioning 8 years later and has in that time required less than 2K costs in maintenance. BTW that system was nearly USD1M less in cost than one delivered to a nearly 300 page World Bank requirement which, to my knowledge, has never been commissioned and if/when commissioned will have annual maintenance costs 200 times greater. [One is individually solar powered lights and wifi controlled and the other conventional wire in the ground.]

If you are continuing the series, drop me a note and I'll supply plenty of examples of good and bad (mainly bad, unfortunately) aviation projects both military and civil from around the world.

Gne

[tucumseh]

Gne, I think you'll recognise much of the book's content. Half-day seminars instead of trade shows! AJAX - 1,200 requirements added to a 'COTS' job? And you expect time, cost and performance?

[2port]

Amazon told me "not yet available", presumably because I logged in from Australia.

Any hints?

Gne

No issues in Oz for me gne, just bought it for $5.99, received in under a minute.
2P

[Gne]

Thanks. Got it now - reading starts as soon as I finish this report. Worked when I searched for it by author and not title.

Gne

[Fitter2]

I have had described to me (in an unguarded moment) the process by which a bidder to MOD ensures that the contract deliverables cannot possibly meet the operational needs, requiring expensive post contract modifications. The prosess is connived at within MOD as it allows the contractor to bid low and meet Treasury forward budget restraints, but win an X billion £ contract, and make an overall profit. I gather MOD learned this from the Pentagon.

[tucumseh]

I have had described to me (in an unguarded moment) the process by which a bidder to MOD ensures that the contract deliverables cannot possibly meet the operational needs, requiring expensive post contract modifications. The prosess is connived at within MOD as it allows the contractor to bid low and meet Treasury forward budget restraints, but win an X billion £ contract, and make an overall profit. I gather MOD learned this from the Pentagon.

To be honest, very often they don't have to try hard or actually deceive, they just have to answer the exam questions, which usually aren't very good. One of the case studies in the book describes how a bidder, who pointed out the deliverable could never be put to use without buying technical pre-requisites costing much more, was blacklisted because of their 'attitude'. The Nimrod office didn't want to know.

[Cannylad]

Pentagon Wars film highlights the fractured process of procurement.

Whilst instructing at a BFTS we were asked to complete a questionnaire about instructor/student interaction. I was less than impressed by the situation and stated that there was a major problem. All the information went to individual Squadron bosses who reworked and sent to the CFI. He wrote his report and the Station Commander then wrote his. The result was that there were no problems with student morale and all instructors were angels.

[SLXOwft]

A sobering read, I have now started reading Breaking the Military Covenant - which Chug. and others consider to be David's greatest book.

[oldmansquipper]

SLX - Red 5 is perhaps the most ‘uncomfortable’ one to read…🫢

[[email protected]]

David's books are excellent but very sobering reading when you have spent your life strapped to some of MoDs 'airworthy' acquisitions........and being required to take every senior officers word as truth and gospel.

[Chugalug2]

David's books are excellent but very sobering reading when you have spent your life strapped to some of MoDs 'airworthy' acquisitions........and being required to take every senior officers word as truth and gospel.

That's the nub of it! He has somehow performed the impossible and informed us not only of the arcane world of airworthiness, of how it should be and unfortunately isn't, but of how the MOD deliberately lies and obfuscates to cover up past and present actions.

I set out on this road as an ex-driver airframe knowing nothing of all this and bridled at the suggestion that RAF VSOs were anything other than competent and honourable. I/we now know different and that places an obligation on us all, aircrew or groundcrew alike, to spread the word and demand a reform of the corrupt system that knowingly puts and keeps unairworthy aircraft into UK military service. That reform must start with the regulator, which is presently beholden to the operator, the MOD. It must be completely independent of it, as must accident investigation. Only then can we hope for objective and effective investigation and regulation. That process can only begin if the RAF bites the bullet and abandons the cover up of the illegal acts of past RAF VSOs. An unairworthy air force is a liability, not an asset, to national security.

Of course, the MOD will go on being the MOD with all the baleful implications that involves for UK security, but that is a battle for yet another day. PPRuNe is for Aviation Professionals, the pilots bit has long been superseded to include all who serve, have served, or are concerned with aviation. We've read David's books, we now know the problem, and it beholds us all to spread the word and seek an end to the cover up in order that necessary reform can begin. Until then avoidable airworthiness related UK military air accidents will continue and needless deaths keep happening.

[Martin the Martian]

And as such, it could be likened to preaching to the converted. The problem is not only how do you reach those not in the circles you described, Chug, but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

700 postmasters wrongly convicted due to a computer is rightly a national scandal, and people are angry about it because the post office is something we all use, the victims are at the heart of their communities, and it has been brought to the public's attention. NHS waiting lists make people angry because the NHS is something we all use and, generally, we can never be objective about our own health.

The MoD being creative about incident reporting? Aircraft procurement totally bu66ered up? Haddon-Cave? Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.

Unless something truly happens to make it something they will get angry about, and sustain that anger beyond the normal media news cycle, and prompt a million people to sign a petition within a few days, David's excellently researched and written books will go no further than those of us who are involved in or have an interest in the subject, who will nod knowingly because, let's face it, we knew it all along.

[dervish]

Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.


In this newest book he tells how it was very senior MoD officials and officers who replied with blank looks when it was suggested money should not be wasted. So that's below average people as well! Names provided!

[Chugalug2]

And as such, it could be likened to preaching to the converted. The problem is not only how do you reach those not in the circles you described, Chug, but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

700 postmasters wrongly convicted due to a computer is rightly a national scandal, and people are angry about it because the post office is something we all use, the victims are at the heart of their communities, and it has been brought to the public's attention. NHS waiting lists make people angry because the NHS is something we all use and, generally, we can never be objective about our own health.

The MoD being creative about incident reporting? Aircraft procurement totally bu66ered up? Haddon-Cave? Mention them to the average person, who will reply with a blank look and then ask if you watched last night's 'I'm a Celebrity...'.

Unless something truly happens to make it something they will get angry about, and sustain that anger beyond the normal media news cycle, and prompt a million people to sign a petition within a few days, David's excellently researched and written books will go no further than those of us who are involved in or have an interest in the subject, who will nod knowingly because, let's face it, we knew it all along.
True enough, MTM, so what to do? I would first challenge the presumption that the only thing that stirred people over the Horizon Scandal is that we all use the PO. Rather it was the needless cost in lives, livelihoods, marriages, and homes, that the judicial system has wrecked. That all this was made possible by a dysfunctional and poorly led public body is perhaps the first connection of the PO Scandal to the Citadel of Waste. The RAF rightly realised the hue and cry that would have erupted if a schoolchild had been killed flying in an unairworthy glider known to be so, and 'paused' its ACO gliders into near extinction. Serving personnel are seen as fair game it would seem, yet the entirely avoidable death of Cpl Jon Baylis in an unairworthy aircraft (and seat!) underlines the 'special' carte blanche that still pertains to RAFAT. Sky News has already pushed out an excoriating hour long expose of the Reds' institutional culture, and with perhaps yet more to come. The organisational hubris of the MOD/RAF will be its undoing, just as it is going to be with Fujitsu and the Post Office. The British tolerate a lot of shortcomings in their national institutions, too much indeed, but eventually snap and take their vengeance. The Argentinian Junta made that mistake and paid for it dearly.

The problem isn't that there is an even greater scandal here than portrayed in Mr Bates v The Post Office, but the reluctance of the media, broadcasters and newspapers alike, to take on the MOD. That is more a comment on the supine attitudes of the media rather than the supposed might of the Ministry of Defence. Sooner or later someone will take it on, and the issue of UK Military Airworthiness (or rather gross lack thereof) will be exposed. The reason why the Max 8 is basically unairworthy unless resolved by an electro mechanical gizmo is arcane and beyond Clapham man, but he knows when what was once reliable and safe is no longer so, as Boeing are about to discover. The PO Scandal has now erupted over a misdirected CBE. It can be such a seemingly insignificant detail that will yet stir Clapham man to demand total reform of UK Military Air Regulation and Air Accident Investigation. Those who think they are beyond his wrath will be seen as being greatly in error.

[Flipster130]

The MoD hierarchy has, over time, made the Post Office management look like angels!

[Percy Cute]

The MoD hierarchy has, over time, made the Post Office management look like angels!
Indeed. And those that gave birth to MAA received Ks, not CBEs. As did those that signed off non-airworthy front-line aircraft.

[Thrust Augmentation]

but how do you get them to be bothered about it?

Sad as it is a prime time drama seems to do the trick.

[Flipster130]

My copy is sitting on the coffee table, waiting for me to finish a pile of other books......that said, Citadel is actually, now, on top of that pile waiting for me to finish my current tome (which I am skip reading)!
David's books should be required reading for all military personnel of all branches......including the set with all recruits' first issue of uniform would help!
Also, the set should be on the foyer table of all Military Libraries and Colleges. It would be nice to know that they are in the library in the first place.....will check Cranwell and Shrivenham next time i visit :)

[pulse1]

David's books should be required reading for all military personnel of all branches.

I loaned Their Greatest Disgrace to two friends of mine at the time. They were both retired RAF engineers, one a Group Captain and the other a Squadron Leader. I am pretty sure that the former didn't read it, the other went and bought his own copy. A member of my family is a military helicopter pilot and he shows little interest in reading, or even talking about any of David's books. A decision to make them compulsory reading would require such a transformation within MoD it would make the current Post Office events look trivial.