Good luck with that one if the grunts I see wandering around the little town I live in are anything to go by*

Ever been to whitehall? 😉

Freeagent – we all know about those bloody things!
Don’t recall any of them actually making it out of the Solent 😯
Had a right royal barny with one of the “project managers” during some of our works as we were supposedly “unsafe” “maverick” “breaching protocol” and more.
Funny how he disappeared when something was pointed out to him that he had authorised that broke a number of H&S Regs and several laws!
They do look good though 8)

Ever been to whitehall?

They make them dress up in silly costumes for the tourists 😉

Client = Navy
Navy tell procurement what they want, procurement puts out tender, tender is evaluated, winning bid is awarded to builder, builder builds ship and delivers it to Navy.

Massively simplified of course but of course lets blame the civil servants for getting the design wrong, for changing their minds on how much can be spent political purse holders and a hundred other things.

I am sure Joe Bloggs who works in the MOD procurement who has 2 kids and drives a 5 year old Astra and has a secret crush on Julie in Facilities one day decided to change the spec on a whim and cuase the engines to be rubbish or decide not to put a catapult on a carrier because ha ha that will really screw things up.

It is always easy to blame the civil servants

Whilst its true that it’s easy to blame Civil Servants, in this respect, there most certainly is a problem with how the MOD operates. The situation described above is quite niave.

Whilst the eventual customer is indeed the Navy, the customer to whom BAE report directly is the MOD. The MOD sit in the middle of every procurement practice like a big dry sponge, draining the Navy, the Contractor and the Government of time/money resources and most of all respect.

The MOD take the desires of the Navy and construct a set of requirements for which contractors can then bid. Generally, these requirements are a pale shadow of the desires of the eventual customer, the Navy. The contractor, in this case BAE, then sets out to meet those requirements. At some point (many points) the Navy (who’re directly present during design and manufacture) may notice that the requirements do not meet their expectations, usually by this point the requirements are no-longer a paper thing, but reality, staring them in the face. The MOD then ummm and ahh and change the contract to suit the F**king requirements of the Navy which they ignored in the bloody first place. Whilst annoying and (to the public) costly, this is what the Navy actually asked for at the beginning, but was deemed to be unimportant to the requirements team from the MOD. the remedial work and subsequent inspection often requires a TEAM of people from the MOD to assure and assess, usually on a Sunday, at double or even triple pay, but there’s less of them now, so this is acceptable…

What’s worse than the above is when the reduced requirements are performance related and not so obvious until the whole thing is built and tested…then it gets really, really messy.

This isn’t speculation, this is first hand experience on a raft of different projects.

They make them dress up in silly costumes for the tourists

They would fight to the death over one! They try soooo hard.

The specs for the Type 45 would have been in a defence requirement some time in the 1990s which would have been war-gamed with computers.

This would have then been screwed around with to bring down the cost, then somebody would have made a massive breakthrough in something or other which has to be bolted on to the actual spec which is given to BAE about 10 years later.

The situation described above is quite niave.

really it condensed the whole procurement process for a multi million pound build to about 3 lines 😆

Paah

Come back to me when the Mod can piss things up as bad as the NHS

Abandoned NHS IT system has cost £10bn so far

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn

Plenty of opinions here and Rolls-Royce don’t appear to be getting much of a look-in!
16 years in the defence industry and been quite close to some of the programme lots have opinions on. T45 suffered some fairly dramatic design changes, mainly because the Navy had a long wish-list and short pockets – they simply couldn’t afford what they wanted and the result were some pretty dramatic design changes. The turbines were developed for the Horizon project in the 90s but most of the partner nations decided to do their own thing leaving the turbines under-developed.
Much of the problems with Astute were due to the contract awarded to GEC Marconi and the forced ‘marriage’ with British Aerospace. Throw in monopolies and mergers and it was a SNAFU waiting to happen.
Thinking you can simply bolt steam catapults on a ship that’s been build all electric is a bit of a laugh right? Government trying to save money by buying non-STOVL F35s and not realising the impact..
FWIW the ‘golden’ share of BAE Systems is UK Government and it’s still domiciled and pays taxes in the UK.
If you know the Levene reforms, you’d know the guys in uniform now hold the purse strings, trouble is few have little concept of how to buy things and are hamstrung by Treasury spending rules which gives little incentive to spend to save.

An interesting read

I rather get the impression that MOD procurement is a just a monumental world of pain for all concerned. The Services put together a wish list which they couldn’t ever realistically afford and no one will tell them this, the MOD civil servants attempt to procure it but are hamstrung by being out-gunned by the contractor’s specialist bid and legal teams, the contractors know that whatever they bid for will only have the vaguest connection with what finally gets built, and all at political whim which may sweep years of work aside for short term interests.
A few years ago Peter Twiss lent me a copy of a book (published in the 70s) which detailed every post 1945 military and civilian airplane commissioned within the UK. there’s an enormous list of wastage, lost skills, decisions made in spite and sheer short termism displayed in post-war aviation industries in the UK.

Millions of GBP? Is that all? Amateurs… 😆

http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/new-gerald-r-ford-carrier-class-as-predicted-called-13-billion-debacle-1.371389

but are hamstrung by being out-gunned by the contractor’s specialist bid and legal team

It doesn’t help when some contractors systematically bribe ministries of defence and their political overlords.

Paah

Come back to me when the Mod can piss things up as bad as the NHS

Abandoned NHS IT system has cost £10bn so far

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn

Although a nice big headline grabbing figure, that isn’t true. The NHS was quite savvy at setting up the contract and payments were phased and aligned to outcome measures. Only a fraction of the £10bn was paid and almost all of it paid for hardware and records management software that’s still in use in some trusts

So if the design is contracted out why the pop at “civil servants”

because they then change it or amend it because of spurious commercial reasons with letting the contract.

They don’t understand the technical detail of the solution that’s delivered or the project theory and practice. Most have zero industry experience or in anything else. Often straight from classroom to work.

They are under paid and under qualified.

From my experience –

Me ‘ok your a project manager, what qualification do you have, APMP or Prince2 etc?’

Civil servant ‘I don’t have a qualification, I have competencies’

I could go on. They should be paid better BUT be qualified.

The NHS was quite savvy … Only a fraction of the £10bn was paid

Really ? What fraction ?

I’m genuinely interested – always seemed to me that a lot of cash has been spent, a lot more is potentially going to be lost as legal disputes resolve and to show for it we have choose and book (I don’t know anyone who’s used it), NHSmail (I don’t know anyone who likes it) and electronic records services that almost universally miss out the actual clinical notes.

… actually, I think PACS is probably a result of the project too, and that seems decent

I really don’t think it is incompetence.

Go back 100 to 80 years, when we built the fleet that saw service in the two world wars. These were extremely basic, uncomplicated ships with low performance systems. Back then, if you got attacked it probably was from a large caliber gun from a battleship (which was mechanically aimed, from a moving vessel in a rough sea (hence the hit to miss ratio was something like 100:1) or maybe a small bomb or torpedo launched from a slow moving low altitude propellor driven aircraft. Despite the fact it was harder to hit the target than impress Shania Twain, losses were massive. As soon as Submarines appeared, with a degree of stealth and longer range torpedoes, ships became sitting ducks a lot of the time.

Fast Forward to the present and the threat to a large naval asset has become oppressive. Missiles, guided munitions, ultra long range torpedos and a host of other weapons can reduce your billion dollar ship to fish food in about 10 secs.

As a result, the complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.
And at the same time, defense budgets have been cut and are in a constant state of turmoil. Look at the situation with trying to develop an new fighter aircraft, in fact, any new defense system! It takes 20years now to go from idea to realtity, during which time the political landscape will have changed dramatically, and the budget likewise.

So, are the T45’s perfect, no, of course not. Could they be made better, yes, of course they could. But was it “incompetence”, sorry, but no, i don’t think it was……….

complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.

this is very true. Remember much of what they do is innovative and cutting edge.

Buying off the shelf isn’t as easy or straight forward as it seems.

I think I heard that as the RN has accepted them after commissioning the cost was down to them in sorting this.

Its also a worry that the RN has to rely on the US Coastguard for its engineers!

I’m sure I remember reading on an US website that the expected lifespan of a Type 45 in combat was about 20 minutes.

aP – Member
I’m sure I remember reading on an US website that the expected lifespan of a Type 45 in combat was about 20 minutes.

That statement is nonsense without at least some context attached to it. It would last at least 22mins against folk throwing sticks at it

As a result, the complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.
And at the same time, defense budgets have been cut and are in a constant state of turmoil. Look at the situation with trying to develop an new fighter aircraft, in fact, any new defense system! It takes 20years now to go from idea to realtity, during which time the political landscape will have changed dramatically, and the budget likewise.

But incompetence adds considerably to it!
To be fair I think you’re at least half right, most of what we’d deem “incompetence” is actually political point-scoring, where an incoming Government keen to stamp their authority on things changes half the requirements, moves the ministers around and looks to the next 4 years rather than the next 15.
That sort of change is ripe for allowing incompetence to go unchecked, not found out until 2 Governments down the line where someone finally looks at the accounts…

I remember sitting in an RAF crewroom listening to the announcements on the radio of a big round of defence cuts (this was about 20 years ago) with all the engineers slagging off the various Governments for procurement cock-ups and excessive red tape. Dispiriting time for them, mixture of anger and frustration.

I seem to remember that because it doesn’t have very many launch tubes for missiles it would run out very quickly with no opportunity to re arm?

Ah, there’s lots of internet top trumps crap where people go “what’d win in a square go, a T45 or a FREMM” or whatever. But it’s really not how they’re used so it’s a pointless comparison.

(tbf, realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats)

Northwind

realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats

tbh, i think we probably use them just to hang a flag on most of the time……

Here’s the new latest tech defense situation monitoring systems they are installing:

😆

I seem to remember that because it doesn’t have very many launch tubes for missiles it would run out very quickly with no opportunity to re arm?

It’s the PAAMS system.

Apparently very capable but it only has something like 40 or 50 missiles onboard and needs to return to base to re-arm.

What’s really worrying is that it runs on Windows 2000……

What’s really worrying is that it runs on Windows 2000……

Which is why they keep having to turn the ship off and on again.

realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats

This. It’s about willy-waving, it’d be much more sensible to buy and crew a bunch of smaller, simpler ships which would be perfectly suitable for the things they’d actually be needed for, but they wouldn’t be “world class, cutting edge, 21st century” and whatever other stuff politicians like to buy to show off.

All fur coat and no knickers, really. Like much else the UK spends money on.

Apparently very capable but it only has something like 40 or 50 missiles onboard and needs to return to base to re-arm

yes perhaps we also do RAS, resupply at sea. Just guessing of course …. Id suggest 40 – 50 missiles is pretty good given its capabilities but the well informed armchair admirals might know something else? ha ha

can launch 8 missiles in under 10 seconds while simultaneously guiding up to 16 missiles to designated targets at any one time.[4] The British PAAMS(S) variant consists of both the SAMPSON and S1850M long range radars and is capable of tracking in excess of 1,000 targets at ranges of up-to 400 km. BAE Systems also claims that its SAMPSON radar has “excellent detection of stealth aircraft and missiles”.[5]

I don’t understand the design of modern warships.

They are extremely fast, some can do about 45 knots, however, 45 knots is basically stationary compared to the speed of a jet or an anti-ship missile.

They can’t use that speed to re-deploy quickly as they need support from the Auxiliaries that can only do about 12 – 15 kts.

So why bother going so fast? The speed is no defence from modern antiship weapons.

yes perhaps we also do RAS, resupply at sea. Just guessing of course

I don’t think it’s just a matter of reloading a magazine, as I understand it the “reloading” operation has to be done in port.

The timelines for MOD projects are the issue. The last one I worked on had been running for 25 years… So the initial requirements were revised to meet current needs. Not unreasonable as you don’t want your equipment to be 10 years out of date when it is launched..
Trouble is this screws up the designs and adds extra development time… The system seems to still be based on the mentality that ships/planes/tanks are being churned out at the same rate as the 1940s so continuous incremental updates can be made…
Mind you every country seems to have the exact same issues and budget scandals