Procurement sucesses
 

Hello and thought I'd ask a lighter question - obviously within sensible security boundaries - have there been any procurement success where a project has come in on time and or under budget?

Just gets a touch miserable reading about some of the waste like Nimrod - twice.

S

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Hoover Dam.

Airseeker (UK Rivet Joint)

Swedish Black Hawk buy - 2 years from idea to operational in Afghanistan.

C-17. Off the shelf proven product.

Sentinel also springs to mind.

apart from rts issues!?

Apart from not working properly for the first few years.

S-D

F-35 - it's on budget and on track ;)


https://www.f35.com/about/fast-facts

HS1182 - Hawk T1

Apache AH Mk.1 - although the planning for crew training let it down, the equipment procurement and other DLODs were pretty good.

UK Polaris

I'm struggling on this.
C17 I guess, seemed to work pretty much straight out of the box. E3 seemed to- but then I've never been on the fleet so may be wrong.
Hawk I guess as well.
ISTR the changeover from metal to woven airmans SD Hat badges went pretty well.

This question is incomplete!

"Have there been any procurement success where a project has come in on time and or under budget?" ... And delivered with the required capability...DE&S and their predecessors can no doubt quote successes within timeframes or even budget (I struggle to think of the latter), but more often by 'adjusting' capability from the original design to fit the other 2 criteria. :ok:

In my humble opinion, Defence Procurement should be Operator led to maintain the primary purpose of delivering capability, not just in budget and time. Take some of the US procurement organisations as an example...
:oh:

F-4JUK? :E

MRAF, maybe so, but as frontline operators we sometimes will have to accept the 80% option is the most suitable. We can't insist on bespoke kit for every role, we just aren't rsourced for that.

"required capability" Surely that phrase cuts to the heart of the problem as half the time it's not clear exactly what it is...so a super gold-plated spec is written which sends the cost and timescale into orbit.

My vote for the success story would have been the Buccaneer. And that only worked so well because Blackburn were able to convince the Navy (with extreme difficulty) to remove supersonic capability as an essential requirement.

I suppose we can add the T63 'smooth blue' to the list.

Can't have been over budget as we each bought our own. As for on time, we bought them when we were told to, usually for the next AOC's Parade, Coningsby 1957 in my case :sad:

They cost about £8 when a years clothing allowance was about £5.

P8I

Boeing Delivers First P8I To Indian Navy

and before any one points out -

"The P8Is are being delivered to India by US without its key original equipment as India has not signed the Communication Inter-operability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), as mandated by American laws.


Instead of those gadgets, India has integrated its indigenous equipment from government-owned Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Avantel."

So what if they didnt get it with the Legacy P3 mission suite, they got it on time , under budget and with kit they wanted.

Does it work? If it works, does it do the job?

Nearly 30 years ago when the RAF were developing an aerial farm on the disused RAF Chelverston airfield they were aproached by the contractor doubling the width of the A1 who wanted to buy the runways as hardcore. Due to the length of the runway and its unexpected depth of concrete (6 foot or so) the project was heading for a healthy PROFIT until it it was discovered that the removal of the runway had affected the water table and the transmitter hall was flooding. The cost of the resulting anti-flood measures meant that the end cost of the aerial farm was only a few thousand pounds.

"Does it work? If it works, does it do the job?"

Yes and Yes.

How good India does it? I don't know, but one thing is certain. They do it a lot better than us.