What's wrong with "Off The Shelf"?
Of course the reality was quite the opposite; both cost more money and took longer than designing from scratch and neither delivered because force-fitting the upgrades into the extant aircraft imposed so many constraints.
We have to remember that >95% of the things which "everybody knows because it's bleedin' obvious" are actually completely untrue.
"Common sense" is rarely either, in my experience.
PDR
PDR, 
Re MRA 4, off-the-shelf commercial EFIS were selected; well proven and a European supplier. The FMS was similar, UK manufacturer of a proven operating system and known aircraft interface.
However, it isn't easy to interface an Airbus tailored EFIS and a Boeing biased FMS, and expect a split dual system (flight deck and cabin) to work in the same way as an airliner. So then you need three CDUs and another EFIS display to handle the 'cobbled' aircraft systems and the additional tactical requirement ... ... then you are surprised that it doesn't fit within the older style of flight deck geometry.
Re MRA 4, off-the-shelf commercial EFIS were selected; well proven and a European supplier. The FMS was similar, UK manufacturer of a proven operating system and known aircraft interface.
However, it isn't easy to interface an Airbus tailored EFIS and a Boeing biased FMS, and expect a split dual system (flight deck and cabin) to work in the same way as an airliner. So then you need three CDUs and another EFIS display to handle the 'cobbled' aircraft systems and the additional tactical requirement ... ... then you are surprised that it doesn't fit within the older style of flight deck geometry.
The AEW case is slightly different - that was the MoD trying to play the role of Prime when they had neither the culture nor the competence to undertake it.
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MRA 4
They would have been better building new Nimrod fuselages, but computer designed, it would have probably worked out cheaper.
I remember reading an article that when building the Nimrod wings the first time around, you needed someone in the wing, in case f emergency there was a cupboard next to the aircraft with a stone cutter jobbie in to slice through the wing if you needed to get him out!
Nutloose
I was talking to a guy long before the MRA 4 was cancelled who was involved with the initial work on integrating the wings on to the hand built fuselages. That issue was known at the start and the contractors came up with a plan to overcome it. Of course this plan would only work if the MOD delivered the airframes which been selected and surveyed before the CAD work had been done, which of course they didn't.
I was talking to a guy long before the MRA 4 was cancelled who was involved with the initial work on integrating the wings on to the hand built fuselages. That issue was known at the start and the contractors came up with a plan to overcome it. Of course this plan would only work if the MOD delivered the airframes which been selected and surveyed before the CAD work had been done, which of course they didn't.
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I can't believe the Nimrod (AEW or MR4, take your pick)is being used as an example to oppose the argument for OTS! "Better to have designed a bespoke aircraft"...Really?? For a production run that was never going to be more than a few dozen at most that could easily have resulted in nearly as big a shambles as what actually happened.
MRA4 didn't have "computer designed wings" - it certainly had wings designed in CAD rather than by drawing with quill pens on stretched velum, but the outcomes would have been similar by either method. There were some problems with the wing design, but that wasn't one of them
As for the engines - it wasn't so much the long ducts as the close proximity of the engines that was the problem. No one had ever run turbofans with that high bypass ratio that close together, and so when the detailed design analysis was done they discovered that they "fought" each other for intake air, severely reducing thrust at higher power settings. This SHOULD have been discovered during the "Risk Reduction contract" phase of the procurement process - MoD's own written process said as much. The RR phase is an initial contract to explore any areas of high technical risk and mature them ahead of the main design process so that the overall risk exposure us smaller - it's a rational approach to managing technical risk, and it was legally mandated at the time.
But this contract was coming up towards the end of an increasingly unpopular conservative government which was desperate to place some government orders to buy a handful of votes. Two projects were purchased "prematurely" as a result - the order for Apache attack helicopters and the MRA4 contract. The then MinD (Micky Portaloo) didn't want to place a teensy-weensy £120m 18-month risk-reduction contract just so that his successor could get the credit for placing the £2.1bn main development contract, so he went hardball with a single "fixed price" development and production contract. BAES then compounded error by accepting the contract (rather than refusing to play ball as they subsequently did with the QEC contract), and so a fixed-price non-de-risked project was initiated which both sides knew full well would never be able to run to the defined schedule even if there were no snags. And of course there WERE snags - mistakes, requirements creep (well, "gallop" would be closer to the mark), political interference etc etc.
And the rest is history...
PDR
As for the engines - it wasn't so much the long ducts as the close proximity of the engines that was the problem. No one had ever run turbofans with that high bypass ratio that close together, and so when the detailed design analysis was done they discovered that they "fought" each other for intake air, severely reducing thrust at higher power settings. This SHOULD have been discovered during the "Risk Reduction contract" phase of the procurement process - MoD's own written process said as much. The RR phase is an initial contract to explore any areas of high technical risk and mature them ahead of the main design process so that the overall risk exposure us smaller - it's a rational approach to managing technical risk, and it was legally mandated at the time.
But this contract was coming up towards the end of an increasingly unpopular conservative government which was desperate to place some government orders to buy a handful of votes. Two projects were purchased "prematurely" as a result - the order for Apache attack helicopters and the MRA4 contract. The then MinD (Micky Portaloo) didn't want to place a teensy-weensy £120m 18-month risk-reduction contract just so that his successor could get the credit for placing the £2.1bn main development contract, so he went hardball with a single "fixed price" development and production contract. BAES then compounded error by accepting the contract (rather than refusing to play ball as they subsequently did with the QEC contract), and so a fixed-price non-de-risked project was initiated which both sides knew full well would never be able to run to the defined schedule even if there were no snags. And of course there WERE snags - mistakes, requirements creep (well, "gallop" would be closer to the mark), political interference etc etc.
And the rest is history...
PDR
PDR
This SHOULD have been discovered during the "Risk Reduction contract" phase of the procurement process - MoD's own written process said as much. The RR phase is an initial contract to explore any areas of high technical risk and mature them ahead of the main design process so that the overall risk exposure us smaller - it's a rational approach to managing technical risk, and it was legally mandated at the time.
While you may be correct about the inquiry, the matter is clearly in the public interest, because MoD/Government has now admitted the aircraft could never be made airworthy (and the evidence reveals this was known at the time). The airworthiness of aircraft is, by definition, in the public interest; so I maintain a public inquiry, or at least a review such as Haddon-Cave's or Lord Philip's, would be beneficial because the evidence submitted would immediately be in the public domain (as it was in 2010/11). The previous inquiries you mention had these facts concealed from them, so are contaminated. As a result of their reports, certain former Ministers wanted action taken against BAeS, but when presented with the evidence to Lord Philip in March 2011, took a step back as it became clear the greater culpability was within MoD.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
A crude example of refurb over new build is in the home maintenance area. A builder will always select new timber over old - known quantity and quality and no work involved in removing nails, screws etc etc. That was effectively a Nimrod fuselage.
tuc:-
and that's the point, isn't it? If you can get what is needed off the shelf, particularly for short term identifiable needs as has recently so often been the case, then get it! If you can't, then get something designed instead (but then do it properly as tuc suggests, rather than procuring massive numbers of left handed boots!). The problem seems to me not about COTS but about the MOD. It doesn't work for Air Safety, so why should it work for Army radios?
A good example of COTS, because the Mil Spec was the same as the Civ spec.
There was once a time when I was part of a team assessing tenders for "commercial" turbofan engines to be used in a British large military aircraft upgrade programme. Any similarity to projects discussed above are purely coincidental. My particular area on that programme was the through-life support aspects. Each of the tenderers were offering tweaked versions of the "guaranteed availability" support contracts which they had with their commercial customers. Under these contracts if an engine fault or failure caused a mission delay or cancellation the engine supplier would pay a financial penalty - quite a large one. This was an off-the-shelf engine with an off-the-shelf support package. But I had to explain that being paid money wouldn't fix it - the military mission was different. That was the event which I crystalised in a section of a dissertation I did many years later (which I'll post seperately) Two of the suppliers actually grasped the point, but each then said they would need an initial £5m(ish) for non-recurring engineering to explore and scope the development of a bespoke support package. They also pointed out that the *standard* support package was contingent on achieving the specified utilisation rates - bounded at between 25% and 60% of elapsed time. These are typical in the commercial world, but the military mission amounted to a few hundreds of hours per aircraft per year.
That's the problem with off-the-shelf procurements - they're developed to match SOMEONE ELSE'S requirement, and if your's is different it will cost you.
PDR
That's the problem with off-the-shelf procurements - they're developed to match SOMEONE ELSE'S requirement, and if your's is different it will cost you.
PDR
This is the excerpt I mentioned above - it comes from my dissertation after research into the engineering consequences of availability/capability contracting in the UK defence sector. This bit is from the introduction to my conclusions:
There is a fundamental difference between equipment acquisition and availability/capability contracting. In an equipment acquisition programme the user is paying the contractor to deliver something that is fit for purpose, but it largely can be tested prior to using it on the Mission to confirm that the contractor delivered what was required. In an availability/capability programme the contractor is being paid to be an active part of the Mission, or at the very least the ability to sustain Mission Capability. One of the stated objectives of moving to Availability/Capability contracting is to transfer risk to the contractor, and with that risk goes responsibility.
But in the military scenario the full risk can never be transferred to a contractor. There is a traditional proverb, usually assumed to relate to the fate of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth*:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the Kingdom was lost;
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Although this proverb is usually cited to emphasise the need to attend to details, to the ILS community it illustrates the chain of causation between component failure and mission loss. If there had been an effective LSA programme the end effects of the nail failure mode would have been analysed in a FMECA, together with a probability of occurrence predicted in reliability analysis and verified through analogy or demonstration. The RCM analysis would have determined whether preventive inspections or lifing of the horse-shoe subsystem components were warranted and the maintainability analysis would have established the required inspection and rectification procedures together with the skills, equipment, spares, consumables and facilities required to achieve them. The level of repair analysis would then have ensured that the appropriate support policies were implemented to reflect the tolerable resource burden for the mission criticality of the horse. In short; King Richard’s horse would have been returned to serviceability (or replaced) within the time required to prevent a Mission failure. Rather than cry: “A horse, a horse; my Kingdom for a horse!”, supportability engineers would point out that he should have cried:
“A capable system, a capable system, my Kingdom for an increased investment in early-phase LSA during the procurement process to assure the most cost-effectively sustainable through-life Capability at Readiness!!”
But admittedly this does not have the same ring to it and would be difficult to render into iambic pentameter.
All of these analyses are based on probabilities and trade-offs between the cost and consequence of Mission Failure, and only the Mission Owner (the one who has the original political or economic need for the Mission) can own this risk. If King Richard’s personal transport had been provided by way of a “Horse Availability Service” it is doubtful that the KPI penalties resulting from the first-line mission availability failure would be regarded as an adequate compensation for the Plantagenet dynasty’s permanent loss of the English throne. This could be seen as a general characteristic of military missions that is rarely (if ever) present in non-military missions, and it is the reason why the Author would suggest the “blind” application of commercial models to military systems is probably naïve.
So it is not sufficient to have penalty clauses defined in a contract; the owner of the Mission needs to have confidence in the viability of the proposed solution together with faith in abilities and trust in the diligence of the organisation that an availability/capability contract will be awarded to. Availability/capability contracts are partnerships based on mutual trust and shared, common objectives, and developing that trust requires extensive collaboration in the planning stages. The current contracting environment inhibits this collaboration until after a contract is awarded, and imposes an adversarial environment until that point. This can only be seen as less than ideal.
* Although this is unlikely since King Richard’s horse was actually stuck in deep mud rather than rendered unserviceable through the loss of a shoe, and some versions of the proverb are known to predate him
PDR
There is a fundamental difference between equipment acquisition and availability/capability contracting. In an equipment acquisition programme the user is paying the contractor to deliver something that is fit for purpose, but it largely can be tested prior to using it on the Mission to confirm that the contractor delivered what was required. In an availability/capability programme the contractor is being paid to be an active part of the Mission, or at the very least the ability to sustain Mission Capability. One of the stated objectives of moving to Availability/Capability contracting is to transfer risk to the contractor, and with that risk goes responsibility.
But in the military scenario the full risk can never be transferred to a contractor. There is a traditional proverb, usually assumed to relate to the fate of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth*:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the Kingdom was lost;
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Although this proverb is usually cited to emphasise the need to attend to details, to the ILS community it illustrates the chain of causation between component failure and mission loss. If there had been an effective LSA programme the end effects of the nail failure mode would have been analysed in a FMECA, together with a probability of occurrence predicted in reliability analysis and verified through analogy or demonstration. The RCM analysis would have determined whether preventive inspections or lifing of the horse-shoe subsystem components were warranted and the maintainability analysis would have established the required inspection and rectification procedures together with the skills, equipment, spares, consumables and facilities required to achieve them. The level of repair analysis would then have ensured that the appropriate support policies were implemented to reflect the tolerable resource burden for the mission criticality of the horse. In short; King Richard’s horse would have been returned to serviceability (or replaced) within the time required to prevent a Mission failure. Rather than cry: “A horse, a horse; my Kingdom for a horse!”, supportability engineers would point out that he should have cried:
“A capable system, a capable system, my Kingdom for an increased investment in early-phase LSA during the procurement process to assure the most cost-effectively sustainable through-life Capability at Readiness!!”
But admittedly this does not have the same ring to it and would be difficult to render into iambic pentameter.
All of these analyses are based on probabilities and trade-offs between the cost and consequence of Mission Failure, and only the Mission Owner (the one who has the original political or economic need for the Mission) can own this risk. If King Richard’s personal transport had been provided by way of a “Horse Availability Service” it is doubtful that the KPI penalties resulting from the first-line mission availability failure would be regarded as an adequate compensation for the Plantagenet dynasty’s permanent loss of the English throne. This could be seen as a general characteristic of military missions that is rarely (if ever) present in non-military missions, and it is the reason why the Author would suggest the “blind” application of commercial models to military systems is probably naïve.
So it is not sufficient to have penalty clauses defined in a contract; the owner of the Mission needs to have confidence in the viability of the proposed solution together with faith in abilities and trust in the diligence of the organisation that an availability/capability contract will be awarded to. Availability/capability contracts are partnerships based on mutual trust and shared, common objectives, and developing that trust requires extensive collaboration in the planning stages. The current contracting environment inhibits this collaboration until after a contract is awarded, and imposes an adversarial environment until that point. This can only be seen as less than ideal.
* Although this is unlikely since King Richard’s horse was actually stuck in deep mud rather than rendered unserviceable through the loss of a shoe, and some versions of the proverb are known to predate him
PDR
This chap will sort out all of MoD procurement problems:-
Defence equipment chief tells officials: You’re too old
Defence equipment chief tells officials: You’re too old
PDR
So that means Bernard Gray is gone? Seven years after his report for Labour, and being told to put his money where his mouth is by the Coalition. Now replaced by a complete ******** who, by his words, disagrees with Gray, Haddon-Cave and the reasons behind the formation of the MAA. Those in DE&S won't know if they're full-bored or countersunk (and most of Douglas's recruits won't know what that means).
Shot one:-
Well neither do I, it was merely a personal anecdote to confirm riff raff's point that commercial aircraft were bespoke then and that they are bespoke now.
As I've said above, COTS has its place just as bespoke design military equipment has. If both are done well then our Armed Forces can be as well equipped as they can reasonably expect within the financial constraints that the country is faced with. The operable word of course is "If". Such a small word, such a big ask...
PS, chugalug, I don't hold up the 50's/60's UK airlines as a model for optimal procurement.
As I've said above, COTS has its place just as bespoke design military equipment has. If both are done well then our Armed Forces can be as well equipped as they can reasonably expect within the financial constraints that the country is faced with. The operable word of course is "If". Such a small word, such a big ask...
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Let's be clear on terminology, chugalug. The aircraft you're describing as "bespoke" are of established and proven design, lots of them flying around, readily available spares and predictable purchase cost. On that basis I have no problem with "bespoke". But I just don't buy the line that we face a binary choice between a tortuous modification process and having something designed and built from scratch. To do so for 20 or so Nimrods would have been bonkers. Are some people still living in the days when we ordered aircraft by the thousand, and are our requirements really so unique?
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But there are a lot of jobs in specialising kit
and even more jobs in the manufacturer when you leave the Armed Forces or the MoD.......
as usual the last 20% of the spec costs 80% of the effort and the hassle - it's a judgement if that 20% is worth it
and even more jobs in the manufacturer when you leave the Armed Forces or the MoD.......
as usual the last 20% of the spec costs 80% of the effort and the hassle - it's a judgement if that 20% is worth it