Please visit the real world!
 

Guys, no wonder the informed tax payer considers a great deal of defence expenditure as a waste when MoD suggests scrapping 3BN of very specialised equipment! 'Should have spent that money on schools, hospitals, welfare, overseas aid, etc'!!!

What is wrong with sea transportation? Why opt for very expensive AT?

What happens if in 2016 we either have to go back into Afghanistan or another similar theatre? Will we again buy the same type of vehicles to protect our troops?

PPruners should be leading the way on this and highlight yet another terrible and short-sighted decision by MoD!

Biggus

My apologies - too many Rupert's conducting too many disasters; it was of course Dr Brydon.

I thought, however, that the Surgeon at Rorkes Drift was a Dr Reynolds.

caz

Typo on my part.

However, to balance it up, having left the "n" out of Reynolds I introduced a non-existent "u" into Rorke's Drift..... ;)

Brize's fuel pipeline
 

Pontius Navigator wrote: I don't think the leaks were down to the cousins. One was down to the MPBW/DoE/PSA/what ever their name was at the time, taking a blanking cap off the end of a branch pipe and not telling POL about it before a cross-base fuel transfer. The affected area was near to the big circular pan the Britannias were parked on.

An even bigger leak occurred over at Fairford not long afterwards when the cross-base pipeline burst during a fuel transfer. Many leaks were discovered along the pipe's length during the investigation. Lack of proper maintenance by Works & Bricks was, I believe , a contributory factor.

Sigh, I remember working on UOR policy a couple of years ago and writing the DIN on it. I and my colleauges were shouting from the rooftops then that we'd need to consider UORs into core.

Sadly this didnt survive contact with any planning round, nor, I suspect, the FRES agenda. Now, some vehicles are not suitable for wider use - one in service now has no wider requirement in HM Forces, and was never intended for use elsewhere, so I expect that to be scrapped. The rest, well I suspect as we're now into PR12, this is probably the first opening salvos of the army demanding a large cash injection to pay for its toys in addition to the extant budget.

Expect to see more stories like this in an effort to force the treasury to give up the cash, or the defence board to force pain on other TLBS. Its about to get messy...

Certainly when we pulled out of Sharjah we oggin tipped a lot of the vehicles. Loaded onto mexeflotes and dropped about a mile out.

On a more positive note, we did salvage about a dozen cage pallets of SWOs Camay, the old yellow bar soap, and sent it down to Masirah.

As the Warrant down there said in his signal to NEAF "Have enough 33D 1234567 to solve Americas colour problem. Request advise disposal instructions."

I think it equated to about fifteen years supply for them.

ISTR one needed special soap in Sharjah, to produce a lather in the de-salinated water supply.

Jim - I sympathise.

Aah yes, the FRES agenda. You're right, it is indeed about to get messy again........

Given the specialised role for most of these vehicles it's hard to see what would be served by going to the cost of repatriating them (other than not losing the good will of voters or Daily Mail readers) - probably not much use for them shuffling troops between Colchester and Salisbury plain I would think. Spending all the money on such a highly specialised vehicle was the first mistake, paying to ship them back and then languish on a UK airfield will be the next.

I am sure there are plenty of scenarios where this kit can be used, outside of the stan. We just need extra capability from platforms that we have to utilise it in different AORs, its not hard to think up a few realistic scenarios, is it really?

There seems to be several conflicting aspects to this story:

• No need for the vehicles after the pull out from Afghan(istan)
• MOD will be caned for the cost of these, as they were purchased via the UOR route.
• Difficult to bring back
• But we might need them in the future.

Let’s consider the wider issues of force protection – because that is why most of these vehicles were purchased.

Unless someone is a tree-dweller in an Amazonian forest, it cannot have escaped their notice that IEDs are the best thing to slow down an otherwise mobile enemy since, well, probably the battlefield use of barbed wire. Whilst technology is being used to defeat these devices, it is hard to imagine any future conflict when IEDs won’t be used by some, or all, belligerents (Ottawa Convention notwithstanding). They are effective, simple to construct, day/night all-weather compatible, oh, and very cheap to construct. And they scare the sh!t out of troops and politicians alike. A real force multiplier.

There are many practical problems of maintaining a diverse fleet of vehicles - WFM costs would be considerable, as would the effort to bring these vehicles out of storage and update comms/ECM/adaptive armour/weapons systems etc. However, I suspect that this would be cheaper and considerably quicker than the 6 years it took the MOD to eventually start to deliver these vehicles into Theatre.

Giving them to the locals. Hmmm. Not sure. They have been provided with squillions of HMMVES which they can’t maintain without massive (and expensive) contractor support. And the locals are crap at driving.

Establish a NATO-wide reserve? Although some of these vehicles will employ sovereign technologies, how about we make them available as an Alliance-wide reserve? We could find some new member of NATO just gagging to be taken seriously and park these vehicles there and share the cost of WFM, allowing Alliance members to draw on them with MC approval..

Use DSO (successor to DESO) to sell these to the usual suspect countries (Bahrain and Saudi would cheerfully take many of them; the US might not be happy with the UK exporting US-sourced technology, Defence Trade Treaty 2007 notwithstanding!).

Goudie wrote.

ISTR one needed special soap in Sharjah, to produce a lather in the de-salinated water supply.

That was Vel soap. The SWOs Camay was used for scrubbing of floors etc, and had a rather distinctive and unattractive aroma. Think institution.

As a comparison Stagecoach has 8,400 buses in the UK alone. It ditches those every few years or so.

How much do you think a bus costs compared to a Mastiff etc?

And more importantly, how long to get hold of one from when you need it?

I am sure that the so called 'fools' in the MOD would love to keep all the vehicles and bring them back. Unfortunately, as already mentioned they were purchased under 'Urgent Operational Requirement' which means the money comes from HMT and not the Defence budget. To keep these vehicles, the MOD would have to 'buy them back' or ' bring them into core'. It is not just the vehicles that have been purchased under UOR but a whole lot else including, as already mentioned, Reaper.

The MOD is broke. It has no money. It has been told by the government to cut its spending on top of paying back its debts. It is engaged in a war and a small scale intervention. It is struggling to afford some of the equipment it needs for the future (post 2020). Amongst all of this, it needs to decide what equipment it needs to 'buy back'. It cannot afford any, to be honest but some items will have an overwhelming case for retention and this will be the subject of upcoming planning rounds like PR12 and PR11 before it.

These 'fools' in the MOD therefore have the very difficult issue of meeting their standing commitments whilst trying to scrape together enough money for the future in order to defend Britain's interests worldwide, whilst having the budget cut and dealing with the legacy of past ministers who would not make difficult political decisions lest they lost votes and now we have the Pprune armchair specialists up in arms because equipment (which does not belong to the MOD) will have to be left in theatre/disposed off.

Simple household economics really. If you have a company car unless you can afford to buy it off your employer, it will go to the big auction in the sky when you no longer need it!

"As a comparison Stagecoach has 8,400 buses in the UK alone. It ditches those every few years or so"

More like 18-20 years. For instance here locally they sold off the bulk of their J - reg double deckers (1991) last year, with a couple still in service awaiting a buyer. And a good proportion go on to second users

They should repatriate the vehicles and hand them over to the Met police. They're probably going to need them again soon. :ok:

They don't belong to the HMT or the MOD, they belong to us. They should all be brought back in expectation of the next and inevitable threat you brave folks have to face.

I don't understand why we have such a lax attitude to preparing , when history tells us that to do so is so costly in people and money.

Enemy at the gates, fix bayonets would be my defence policy. No levels of preparedness other than it's about to happen or probably already has:ouch:

tonker

If they belong to you I suggest you go out and collect them.....

What condition do you think many of them are in? They haven't been driven over nice tarmac roads to Tesco's and back, rather they have been used aggressively for years in a harsh environment. If you are about to suggest that they be refurbished, as we have already have an investment in them, then you are suggesting spending yet more money on them.

Once we have pulled out of Afghanistan the Army will be reduced in size with a lot of serviceable kit being disposed of.

If your basic objection is the money wasted in disposing of serviceable equipment, which might possibly be of use in a future conflict, then I take it you are also upset at the disposal of the GR9 fleet, various warships, tanks/artillery etc all disposed of under the SDSR, all of which was bought and paid for, and didn't require shipping back to the UK, refurbishing and storing until the next war might come along.......


Have you any idea of what the bill has been for fuel, ordnance, spares, various expendables in Afghanistan since we have been there - one could argue that all of that was a waste of taxpayers - "your" - money, to say nothing of the most important cost - LIVES!