The expertise of the South Asian sub-region is robust, so the title of Worst Defence Acquisition System is in safe hands. But Britain’s allies in a post-American world should worry that Blighty is as far up the list as it is.
Recent headlines underscore the problems. The British Army’s premier project, the Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle, subjects its occupants to levels of noise and vibration that leave them disoriented and nauseated. The Royal Air Force’s acquisition of Wedgetail air-surveillance aircraft was cut down to three aircraft but left Britain on the hook for costly radars for five of them. To save money, Britain used pre-owned 737 Boeing Business Jets for two systems. But one, previously in Chinese hands, is mired in cybersecurity issues, there being many ways to place a bug in an innocent avionics module.
For a nation with Britain’s naval tradition, the inability in March to quickly deploy ships to support operations in the Middle East or to augment the defences of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is red meat to a tabloid headline writer.
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Tolstoy wrote, but there are lessons to be drawn from Britain’s lamentable acquisition system that apply to many countries – particularly parliamentary democracies that, unlike the United States, can’t write half-trillion-dollar cheques for their defence forces and industries.
Three services (and intelligence and cyber) fighting over one budget is a common problem. When the object of the game is to get your branch’s major project under contract while the other two are in the study stage, the pressure to be optimistic about cost and schedule is extreme, leaving the overruns and delays for later.
Britain adds a couple of extra turns of the screw. Its nuclear deterrent is expensive and ring-fenced – untouchable. Also, the British Ministry of Defence has to get its budget past a tight-fisted Treasury that is to some degree a legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policy. Thus the ministry, which should be pushing back against service and industry optimism, is tempted to lean into it.
The Treasury will clamp down on spending if doing so will favour the economy as a whole or avoid a tax increase. The outcome violates a basic principle of defence acquisition, which is that almost nothing costs more than funding instability.
Another bad way to get major projects through approval gates is to prioritise flashy big items over support or follow-on capabilities.
The Royal Navy is proud of its aircraft carriers and attack submarines. The carriers lack effective airborne air-surveillance because the navy tried to get it on the cheap, adding an old radar on a new helicopter. The carriers will lack a stand-off missile for their F-35 Lightnings until the US finds time to do the integration work. The formidable Astute-class submarines spend too much time at dockside for lack of maintenance capacity.
The navy kept these high-end warship classes going at the expense of life extensions for the Type 23 frigates – which do much of the navy’s day-to-day work – but this gamble has not paid off. The Dukes are (to use a British technical term) knackered, before their promising replacements are ready.
The Ministry of Defence thus shares with industry the blame for overruns and delays, but service distrust also manifests itself in a tendency to default to US prime contractors. Part of this is a belief that, in the event of a sneeze in economic growth or pressure on the pound, the Treasury is less likely to stretch or delay a signed contract with a US supplier than to give a British or joint program an expensive trim.
Britain has by choice incurred more strategic whiplash than other European nations. It was heavily committed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding for the RAF fighter force suffered particularly.
But as that period ended, Britain went for Brexit and 10 years later sees its US relationship weakening alarmingly. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government now has to re-plan in the face of robust denial in much of the national security establishment: too many people assume that Trumpism is a passing phase, simply one that 70 million Americans voted for three times and got twice.
But Britain remains entangled with the US through Trident missiles – the warheads are British, but the missiles require US maintenance – and programs such as the Wedgetail and F-35B. Now the US Air Force doesn’t want the E-7, while the US Navy’s decision to truncate the Marines’ plans for F-35Bs has launched future unit costs towards US$200 million (A$279 million) and cast doubt on future upgrades for the version. Britain has no effective vote on how the US deals with either program.
Britain has substantial strengths in engineering. Among other things, the Team Complex Weapons venture launched about 20 years ago has yielded an impressive all-domain air-defence missile family. The Type 26 and 31 frigate designs are world-class. The Edgewing fighter venture is bold. But there’s no excuse for persisting in bad habits.
Britain needs to move towards the French or Swedish model. Each nation has a defence acquisition agency with real authority, as well as a working deal with industry and the services on one side and the government moneybags on the other. The deal: the agency forces realism on the services and contractors from the egg, the tentative operational requirement. Once the contract is closed, the government is committed to fund it.
Pain? Some people giving up power? Sure, but wait for the next wave of bad news from the status quo.
