U.K. Defense Procurement Under The Microscope
LONDON — Britain’s new chief of defense materiel, Bernard Gray, has embarked on a major review of program costs.
Gray, who took the role in January after heading an independent panel highly critical of defense procurement, is “doing an in-depth study” of the cost of the acquisition program the Defense Ministry has on the books, the ministry’s permanent undersecretary, Ursula Brennan, tells Parliament’s defense committee. The review should help the ministry enter future spending planning rounds with greater certainty, she says.
Brennan sidestepped questions about the size of the budget gap that the ministry is still looking to plug as it completes the current spending planning, noting only that PR11 is “in the final stages.” The ministry faces a gap between its budget and spending plans of around £4 billion ($6.4 billion) over the next four years.
Brennan also tells legislators that the cost to cancel contracts as a result of last year’s Strategic Defense and Security Review is still not established. Commercial negotiations with contractors are under way. However, Jon Thompson, the ministry’s director general of finance, notes the Nimrod MRA4 cancellation will add £3.53 billion to the write-off that the government will have to take.
Brennan says the decision to scrap Nimrod was made because it would generate £2 billion in savings over the next decade. And, she says, it was cheaper to dismantle the aircraft than to try to sell or store them.
But the decision to cancel the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) program remains controversial. In a new report on the decision, Lee Willett, head of maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, argues that “the Nimrod decision has raised some significant questions about the U.K.’s ASW capability.” Removing the Nimrod has a “disproportionate” effect on the layered ASW capabilities. A maritime patrol aircraft “is the glue that binds the layers together into a cohesive ASW cover,” he argues.
Photo: BAE Systems
Recent Entries
- Free WordPress Themes for Penguin algorithm 2012
- Mazda CX9 Solar using SkyActiv technology
- How to make Browse Facebook like Pinterest using Pinview
- 2012 The Sound of Music as Woburn High’s Drama Club prepares for its annual musical production
- PlayStation 3 320GB System review
- Review Sony Vaio VCC111 Chromebook gets FCC support
- HTC Golf support by Android 4.0 operating system Ice Cream Sandwich
- New Google Play Domain-googleplayapps.com, googleplaydownloads.com and googleplaymagazines.com
- Archos ChildPad using Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and procesor 1GHz with RAM 1 GB
- Nokia 808 PureView based Symbian Nokia Belle with Carl Zeiss camera 41 megapixel.