The last decade and a half has seen a string of procurement disasters at the Ministry of Defence, where schemes have had to be scrapped, costs overrun or plans deemed vital to national security delayed.
Warrior armoured vehicle – £430m wasted
A long planned upgrade to the Warrior armoured vehicle was scrapped in March, after £430m had been spent on an attempt to upgrade the weapon and turret of the vehicle. Lacking a stabilised gun, the Warrior could not fire while moving, identified as a major problem as long ago as during the first Gulf war.
The procurement programme began in 2009 and a contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2011. But despite spending over half of the allocated budget of £800m, no manufacturing contract was ever awarded. When scrapped the upgrade had a planned in-service date of 2024 – seven years late. The programme was described as an “abject failure” by the Commons defence select committee in March – which was “symptomatic of the extremely weak management of army equipment programmes … in recent years”.
HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carriers – £2.5bn overspend
The cost of building two largest ships in the history of the Royal Navy soared from an initial estimate of £3.9bn – when the project was commissioned under Labour in 2007 – to £6.4bn. A “pain sharing” agreement had to be signed by the MoD in 2013 with contractors – BAE Systems, Babcock and Thales – in which the total budget was first increased to £6bn, before ending up at £6.4bn.
But in procuring the carriers – both of which have now been accepted into service – the MoD had to make cuts. The original plan was to equip both vessels with catapult launchers for aircraft, but they were abandoned on grounds of cost, leaving the new UK ships lagging behind capabilities boasted by the US and China.
A further £10.5bn has been set aside to equip the carriers with F35 Lightning II jets from Lockheed Martin, although approved budget has increased four times since 2017, by a total of £1.4bn.
Meanwhile, a related Crowsnest radar system for the carriers and allied ships is 29 months late because, the National Audit Office said, “neither the department nor industry understood the complexities of delivering the capability”.
Dreadnought nuclear submarines – seven years delay
Britain’s £31bn replacement for its ageing Vanguard class Trident nuclear submarines has been plagued by delay since first approved in 2007. The first submarine was initially due to come into service in 2024, then 2028, and now the “early 2030s” according to the MoD.
The four existing Vanguard submarines, each carrying Britain’s independent nuclear submarines, were originally built to last 25 years, meaning they would have been out of service between 2017 and 2024. Their life has been guaranteed by a series of extensions, but they will have to last well over 30 years.
Poor management of other aspects of the nuclear weapons programme led to a £1.35bn in costs, the National Audit Office found last year, when it looked at the upgrade programme for three key weapons sites in Burghfield, Berkshire, Raynesway, Derbyshire and Barrow-in-Furness
The MoD was continuing to repeat mistakes made in the last cycle of investment in the nuclear enterprise in the 1980s and 1990s, the auditors found.