Pious Pilot

You are absolutely right.

But neither Treasury nor MoD has the slightest interest in joining the dots.

Their only interest is to prevent the scale of the waste being exposed, because that would raise the bar and lead to higher expectations of their staffs. Their attitude, as long as I have been in MoD, is to dumb down to the lowest common denominator. The MoD actively commits huge resources to defending any accusation they waste money. To commit such monies requires top level approval and proven linkage to formal policy.

A simple example I've offered before. In October 2007 the Nimrod IPT issued an Invitation to Tender to conduct a 3 year R&D programme for a "new" safety related requirement. All bidders duly replied, but one had the temerity to point out that the "R&D" phase wasn't necessary, because the specification could be met by resurrecting kit that had been declared obsolescent in 1999. In fact, here's the replacement kit for half the price and 100 times (really!) the performance. All you need is to develop a minor aircraft mod - and here are the drawings for the aircraft that already has the kit.

Instead of even investigating this offer (which would have taken one phone call to the IPT next door who developed the newer kit) MoD's reaction was to berate the MD of the company, instruct him to wind it in and don't contact MoD except to reply properly to the ITT. They didn't get the contract. (The MD of the company? A retired RAF engineer, who had spent a full career on Nimrod. The IPT knew him well).