Australia rejects Ukraine helicopter request

[SLFMS]

I know it’s a pipe dream but I would like to see some accountability in the decision makers that went with the MRH 90.
We have Tiger = flop Seasprite = flop. It’s literally half the helicopters procured. Billions and billions of tax payers money just wasted and yet again no one is held to account. There should be a public investigation and people named and shamed to incentivise future success.
I don’t think it bodes well that this isn’t publicly demanded. The mind boggles at the waste which is probably prevalent across all the government departments not just defence.

[ericferret]

Originally Posted by SLFMS

I know it’s a pipe dream but I would like to see some accountability in the decision makers that went with the MRH 90.
We have Tiger = flop Seasprite = flop. It’s literally half the helicopters procured. Billions and billions of tax payers money just wasted and yet again no one is held to account. There should be a public investigation and people named and shamed to incentivise future success.
I don’t think it bodes well that this isn’t publicly demanded. The mind boggles at the waste which is probably prevalent across all the government departments not just defence.

Welcome to the U.K experience, billions wasted and no one accountable.

[helispotter]

Originally Posted by SLFMS

I know it’s a pipe dream but I would like to see some accountability in the decision makers that went with the MRH 90.
We have Tiger = flop Seasprite = flop. It’s literally half the helicopters procured. Billions and billions of tax payers money just wasted and yet again no one is held to account. There should be a public investigation and people named and shamed to incentivise future success.
I don’t think it bodes well that this isn’t publicly demanded. The mind boggles at the waste which is probably prevalent across all the government departments not just defence.

SLFMS: Depends on whether you seek accountability of individuals in project management team leadership, or accountability of government departments more broadly? Also depends on what sort of 'accountability' you are seeking:

At least in the Australian Department of Defence, there has been an internal 'whistleblower' system in place to report on suspected cases of fraud, favouritism, conflict of interest etc. But this didn't really address cases of poor or badly informed decision making. It probably didn't even address cases where there was possible bias towards one bid or another for projects if that was difficult to clearly demonstrate.

For 'accountability' of Australian Federal departments as a whole, there is of course the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). In my opinion, from ANAO reports I have browsed, they do a reasonable job of pointing out departmental shortcomings. But as far as I know, ANAO isn't responsible for taking matters they report on any further. The reports are for Government to act upon, and for the public to have visibility of departmental performance (whether good or bad) in things like project management.

The MRH90 acquisition is an interesting case. Initial recommendation to government seems to have been to acquire Blackhawks (to replace Blackhawks, or perhaps to replace Seakings initially) but at some point, decision was made to acquire MRH90 instead, initially this was for one phase but then with follow-on orders for more. I have never really understood what went on behind the scenes for this apparent change of acquisition plan. Was it political influence? Was it an internal tussle within the Department that changed the outcome signed off by the then government? I have previously posted a link to the relevant ANAO report in another thread (perhaps the "NH90 Problems" thread?), but even the ANAO can't see into all the internal manoeuvrings of Defence or Federal politicians, which I suspect is often not documented so their is no trail left behind.

For the Tiger acquisition, is this a case of "benefit of hindsight"? The key issue seems to be logistics / parts supply. How can it be established at the start of a project that this will become a problem for one option or another? Or is the Department forces to only ever select 'vintage' equipment where there is already a well proven supply chain, but not so old that the supply chain is about to come to an end? This same issue seems to also apply to the MRH90 / NH90. Yes, there also seem to have been some technical issues to deal with on MRH90 such as machine gun mount arrangement, but this should have been addressed up front with comprehensive requirements definition followed up with evaluation of prototypes (configured as MRH90 in this case). Actual comparative evaluations seem(ed) to be the norm for the US military before an acquisition decision is made.

For the Seasprite acquisition, was it a case of excessive optimism on the part of both the Defence project team and Kaman that a helicopter originally intended for three crew could be 'upgraded' with 'tech' to be able to operate with only two crew? Or is this a massive over-simplification of the issues that project faced?

Lets also not forget that when responsibility for managing army support helicopters was shifted from RAAF to Army, the Army took over the Blackhawks but initially thought that the remaining RAAF Chinooks were no longer required. So those went back to the USA. Later, Army realised that Blackhawk simply wasn't a suitable substitute for Chinook, so ADF has in the meantime had two further generations of Chinook (including, in part, some of the former RAAF Chinooks once they were upgraded). This is my summary interpretation, but I have always wondered about what seemed like a lack of understanding of what the Chinook and Blackhawks were respectively capable of when the original decision to retire the Chinook was made.

Addition: Years back, it was also typical practice for Project Directors within the Department to write a "lessons learned" document towards the end of a project to share what they learned with future Project Directors / Managers such that hopefully same mistakes were not repeated while positives were carried over. Some of those reports seemed to be fairly open and honest appraisals of how a project had faired. But I am not sure if this is still common practice within the Department? Certainly, when I looked at one for a more 'recent' major project a decade or more back, it seemed aimed more at self-promotion of the author or the project team, but didn't necessarily reflect the reality of the project.