T'Internet. It lies sometimes.

It's a little known gotcha that the Treasury Solicitor must approve, for example, acceptance of equipment off contract when it cannot be certified correctly. That might include where the contractor turns out not to have the necessary approvals. A common and topical breach is when no MoD specialist signs-off on equipment with explosives or propellants, such as ejection seats.

Breaches are so common, they probably dream up some arbitrary sum once in a while to make a point. But they do tend to avoid cases where there has been a political overrule and MoD told to award contracts to unsuitable companies in favoured constituencies.

We have movement....!!



36 to 44 aircraft, for £1 billion over 5 years - 2023 to 2028.
melmothtw is online now Report Post

Australia needs new medium chopper to replace the POS that is MRH-90. If something not mrh-90 win maybe australia should consider jumping aboard to increase the commonality between AU and UK

Do Australia and the UK need helicopter commonality (genuine question)? Besides, it appears that the Australian Army at least is going all in with the MRH-90 as it phases out the UH-60.

I think commonality between the AUS and the UK should be encouraged if they genuinely trying to make AUKUS a real thing, if in combined operations being able to get parts from another country is a good thing. Its litterally the reason the RAN is trying to ditch their MRH-90, when out cruising the world the MRH-90 breaks down its hard to get part from other countries.

I been hearing the MRH -90 is on very soft sand, the RAN are wanting to give their 3 to the army. I dunno if the MRH-90 are still grounded in australia but I live very close to army base and only choppers I have heard since june are chinooks and the V-22's when the US were in town.

Both services have a level of commonality as it stands, apache, chinooks, boxers, wedgetails, type 29's and more commonality between the services should be encouraged

At a certain Mil station with a lot of specialist vehicles for different climates, they are happy to replace a driveshaft complete - at a cost of many thousands of pounds - when a £1 oil seal from Halfords would have cured the problem.

A friend of mine runs a company with skills in specialist materials but doesn't come from an aviation background - he was told he should increase his prices to MoD because they were too low.

The problems with waste in procurement are endemic and go from grass roots level to the top.

My understanding is that issues with some manufacturers support support contracts affect what/how defective components are replaced and where they can be sourced from.

There's a solution, once mandated, which you learned long before ever being in MoD(PE).

1. Call up DefCon 112(Repair) in the contract.
2. When such a issue arises, the MoD QAR, or repair manager at the company, or in extremis the MoD project manager, having satisfied themselves that the proposed part is suitable, convenes a LERC (Local Equipment Repair Committee), in accordance with DGDQA Standing Instruction 0136. ('Standing Instruction' is the giveaway).
3. He says 'Buy it from Halfords for a quid. Meeting closed'.
4. Minutes of meeting are immediately contractually binding, and constitute a contract amendment.

MoD commercial preach what they are taught - only commercial can let a contract. Wrong, and this is one of many examples, all designed to maintain front line capability and safety. No doubt why the procedure is no longer used.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...amme-th0llthwb

Officers to ‘carry the can’ for Ajax tank fiasco

A former High Court judge could be appointed to find out why the army did not act on warnings that soldiers were becoming deaf after working on the Ajax light tank programme.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said that people should “carry the can for some of their decisions” in a sign that officers could be sacked if they are found to have misled or covered up problems with the vehicle.

It is understood that one option being considered by Wallace is for a judge-led inquiry which would compel soldiers to give evidence about what they knew and when amid concerns that the army was dishonest about problems with Ajax prior to the integrated review of defence, so that the programme was not axed by the defence secretary.

It is extremely rare for senior officers and soldiers to be held to account for poor decision-making, with sources inside the army claiming that many of those who underperform are simply moved to other jobs.

A scathing health and safety report into Ajax is expected to be published in the first week of next month. Sources said that it would name those involved in the decision-making process and the failings that led to more than 300 people being exposed to noise and vibration problems.

A total of 34 troops are receiving specialist outpatient care and five soldiers have either been discharged from the army or medically downgraded, according to recent figures released by Jeremy Quin, the procurement minister.

Individuals criticised in the report are currently being asked for their comments before its publication. Senior government sources have said that it would “not be a whitewash”, paving the way for senior officers involved in the programme to be disciplined or thrown out as a result……

Thank you for the link ORAC.

I always found noise dose a strange omission from the old FRES requirement (2002, and I'm sure there were versions before that). Not one of the KURs or URs mentioned it, yet the clock had been running on litigation for some years. Especially in the Air domain since the introduction of fully integrated ANR to meet the 85dB(A) limit, and the successful development of Digital ANR in 2001 to meet the proposed future requirement of 75dB(A).

What, a programme to mitigate a critical H&S Constraint when the legal limit was only being proposed? Yes, that's how seriously parts of MoD procurement took the subject. Alas, there were those who called it a waste of money and fought hard for cancellation. That's far worse than this Ajax fiasco, and I wonder how many aircrew and groundcrew, past and present, have very poor hearing.

Typical political headline grabbing bluster and BS. Start chucking people out their jobs or holding them otherwise accountable for poor performance is absolutley super standard throughout the UK...BUT...if anybody does so without following due process, its a quick trip to the local employemnt legal eagles and kerching "we're in the money". The MOD has already been down this road plenty of times and so have many other parts of the public sector. The private sector is rarely this dumb anymore (plenty of cases still easily found tho) and any savvy firm will take specialist legal advice before acting in this way.

Due process in this case would mean the MOD proving that anybody "being held accountable" had been correctly selected and trained for the role (lmfao) and then subjected to a graduated/structured review process at the first sign their performance was not up to scratch. Assuming of course you could find anyone to do the job if it came with a *****ing huge red flag hanging over it.

Article and the politician's bombastic b******cks don't amount to a hill of beans. Thanks for posting though...always good to have a laugh at a politicians expense.

MOD SROs are in an invidious position, as the people they're accountable to aren't generally those responsible for their career progression. Trading away capability or schedule to meet cost goals or legislative requirements might meet with the approval of the IAC, MOD ministers, wider government and Parliament, but it isn't going to win the SRO any favour with the senior officers who write their appraisals and decide upon their assignments. And from 1* upwards, which is where most SROs sit, falling out of favour within one's own service leads to compulsory early retirement. Constructive dismissal, anyone? Hardly likely: it's a longstanding "feature" of the system to make room for promising new blood. I can think of several 1*s whose careers have stalled or ended following their (completely understandable) inability to reconcile impossibly-conflicting objectives placed upon them. It just doesn't make the news.

Pace #50, it seems ministers and senior officers will not carry the can.

Quelle Surprise……

NEW: A major review into the @BritishArmy’s troubled #Ajax programme makes “difficult reading”, a Defence Minister said.


James Cartlidge tells MPs the review highlights a “number of systemic cultural and institutional problems across several areas of the department”.

These problems include a “reticence to raise and occasionally by seniors to listen to genuine problems in a timely and evidenced manner”, the procurement minister says.

You can read the lessons learned review into #Ajax here:

https://t.co/BjrmAF5SSu

The defence minister says @DefenceHQ accepts the findings of the review & is implementing its recommendations but - despite the identification of behaviours that were “far from ideal” - he says no misconduct was identified. He also said no ministers misled parliament on #Ajax.

Here is a key passage from the #Ajax review by Clive Sheldon KC. He explains why his findings don’t attribute blame to individuals:

“This is because the Review has not seen any evidence of misconduct by any person involved in this programme, let alone gross misconduct, and nothing to justify any disciplinary action. At its highest, I consider that a number of errors of judgment were made at various points, and that ‘optimism bias’ infected some of the thinking of senior individuals working on the programme. The failures that I identified were systemic and institutional.”

Very carefully worded. 'Any person involved in this programme'. Those who were informed included senior staff, both Service and civilian, whose job it was to provide oversight, and ensure AJAX were handed the lessons learned from other programmes that had successfully mitigated the same risk. Signing to say they've done so, knowing they haven't, is more than gross misconduct.

The Defence Committee knew this. If the Review 'has not seen' this evidence, did it ask if there was any, who did it ask, and what was the reply?

How many monkeys ?
 

...
How many monkeys does it take to "Hear no evil" ... "See no evil" and "Speak no evil" ?

LFH ... :E

Ah, the report answers my question. The Review didn't look back further than 2018, so (correctly) didn't point fingers. But that scope is like writing a book about the Korean War and concentrating on the 1990s. And, as usual, most of the recommendations fall into the 'already mandated and reiterated many times before' category.

You do realise you are squandering the military budget, as an engineer you are entitled to a Halfords discount card ( I have one ) and you might have got the said seal for 97p

What gets me is they actually brag about the Ajax.

https://des.mod.uk/what-we-do/army-p...-support/ajax/

An Engineering Officer needs to hold a degree, normally in engineering one, so will have a better knowledge and basis to work from, I would imagine amongst pilots the engineering degree might be rarer, also as an engineer will have a far greater in depth knowledge of systems etc.

Take an aircraft, a Pilot will be taught what as an example a fuel control unit does, but he will not go into the detail of it, pressures, operation, component parts and how they work and inter-operate with each other. an engineer does, and that I would say gives him the advantage.

Having done the courses on various types, It is fascinating and satisfying to look at an engine or listen to a debrief and run through your head exactly what each item is doing and recognising what was at fault, that is the difference.

A pilot will debrief you with in the climb we got xyz, it tried abc and got ghq, he basically is telling you from what he saw and his "limited understanding of the systems and how they all interact.", (and I do not mean that to be rude) the engineers listening to the debrief then using their greater knowledge of those systems, diagnose and rectify the faults.

One problem is the trend towards replacement modules, covering Aircraft diesel engines which has a FADEC as a licenced engineer we had to know how the FADEC worked internally and what did what, even though the fact it was a simple line replacement unit. I found it rather amusing when the CAA bod I was talking to was telling me it required a separate licence approval because it was new technology... I pointed out Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin, might disagree on that point