Overstretch & Budgets

[blanketstacker]

Correction-Defence Procurement %

My apologies and you are quite right tucumseh I should have said about a third 32-34% based on last years figures. It has declined from a peak of 46%.

[Bladdered]

Stacker

Just over 12 months ago the NAO were reporting following a study that they had undertaken over a 12 month period on overstretch across the 3 services. Frankly, I lost a degree of interest after leaving the service late last year; however, I am sure that their report has been published, or other posters may be able to lead you to where their report is published (if it ever got into the public domain).

Ed

[Chugalug2]

blanketstacker, thank you for your contribution and for going along with the trend of this thread albeit it is not yet addressing the issues that you hoped for. Dare I say it is a case of woods and trees? You are obviously knowledgeable and speak with authority on these matters, whereas I can only speak from the outside, and very much through a glass darkly! So forgive me if I do not indulge in the usual wallow in acronyms etc, for I have little idea of their meaning. In the generality though it would seem that you and UKNDA call for more Defence spending as a sine qua non whereas I see priorities differently. It appears to me that in the three decades since I left the RAF, and especially after the fall of communism, power has moved inexorably to the centre, ie to the MOD, as the forces contracted and functions became 'purpleised' and centralised. Unless this trend, which I feel is conducive to poor morale and fighting efficiency is tackled, pouring more money back into the existing system will reinforce it rather than reform it. Other threads (Parliamentary Questions, Chinook- Still Hitting Back, Nimrod Information) all give testimony to the bureaucratic waste of precious resource when in the maw of the apparatchiks that inhabit its corridors. Reputations count for more than efficiency and must be protected at ever greater cost! Sort it out or more money means yet more waste. That may be a price that UKNDA is prepared to pay. I am not.

[dallas]

Once again Chug, you're bang on target. Defence has grown primarily into an industry and that is the fatal qualifier. In the last 20ish years we've had the luxury of chosing our opponents, so the majority of our operations have been on our terms. This has made us - the UK - complacent and more reliant on our superpower ally than we perhaps should be. We're holding our own for the most part, but the investment in Defence is not reflected in expenditure on the best kit by any means. Additionally, people are getting more and more fed-up with plugging the gaps in the UK defences (or VC10 fuselage) with their fingers and are leaving, irrespective of market opportunities. So on top of having mediocre, unsuitable or simply late arriving kit, we are in the early stages of suffering dramatic skills and experience fade, which will be great for the high-flyers, but ultimately costly and perhaps dangerous as we re-learn lessons that needn't have been forgotten if we had more vision (an expression hijacked by senior officers that has come to mean little, save the expense of printing it on leaflets, signs and other oddments.)

[Chugalug2]

Thanks again dallas. Your mention of a skills and experience crisis points up the usual beancounter's dilemma. They may well save money by centralising supplies and issuing them only Just in Time, try inflicting that treatment on people and morale collapses and they walk. As I understand it the walking is increasing in tempo and has all the hallmarks of fast becoming a stampede. The cycle of self inflicted destruction of the UK's Armed Forces will then be complete, with scarcely any input from our enemies needed. Pumping more money in will not, per se, change matters IMHO. Morale and esprit de corps take decades (centuries for those who move at a slower pace ) to build, but mere months to destroy at the stroke of the pen. Politicians with no experience or understanding of the military might be forgiven for thinking that what works in industry should work in the military. Those senior commanders who have connived with them in this process cannot be forgiven. Perhaps some of them are in UKNDA, blanketstacker? The system has to be redesigned to support the military ethos and not as now, vice versa. Someone should have insisted that if it ain't bust don't fix it. Too late now, for it's well and truly broken. Time to fix it then and quick before it disappears up its proverbial.