RAF Test jet mishap

[Jeff]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/10/raf-lost-600000-missile-system-jet-test-blunder/

[graham]

This is quite alarming, as extracted from Jeff's link above

The disclosures came after it was revealed that the MoD wrote off £450 million in the 2019/2020 financial year in contract wrangles, lost equipment and ditched projects.

[keefyboy]

A good point Graham but I'm afraid the MoD write off of taxpayers money for that year is not uncommon. There have been many spectacular losses over the years - eg Nimrod AEW and more recently the Nimrod MRA4. You have to add to that, write off of MoD equipment in the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan - some of it might be donated to the host nation and some may be deliberately destroyed - in the late 90's - it cost £300K per day to hire an AN125 to bring kit home. It was often more cost effective to just leave it in situ. Yes the MoD waste huge amounts of taxpayers money on conflict but that's the price we pay for getting involved.

The problem I have is with the MoD procurement organisation who, in my view, are very unprofessional and suffer from a complete lack of expert legal opinion when dealing with the likes of BAE who throw shedloads of legal experts at all their contract negotiations. BAE basically have us over a barrel - I'm sure I've said this before. 30 years ago, there was a serious amount of competition with Tier 2 sub-contractors (BAE being Tier 1) - ie those that build the avionics and sub systems - remember the likes of Thorn-EMI, Marconi, Ferranti, MEL, Plessey etc - the list was endless. BAE have absorbed most of these companies so there is, in effect, very little scope for competition for - eg tanks, ships, submarines and aircraft.

The term BAE no longer stands for British Aerospace - BAE is just a company name and it's a global defence company that I believe is in the top 6 suppliers of defence equipment worldwide but please don't think it remains a wholly British company. Such is the way of business economics.

Anyhow, here are a few anecdotes that might be relevant to the thread:

- my mate was a Flight Line Mechanic on Phantoms when a missile dropped off on the pan - I can't remember where - I'm thinking Leuchars but it may have been Coningsby or Wildenrath. Anyhow the missile went live and shot across the airfield!

- the first MRA4. A bright accountant in MoD thought we could save megabucks by retaining the original Nimrod fuselage by just putting new wings on it. The problem was that the fuselage was made in the 60's by basically panel beaters (sorry can't think of a better term) and the wings were made using state of the art computer technology. When BAE married up the wings on the first aircraft they were out of line by 14 inches. Every old frame was different and it was no surprise the programme was cancelled. I've no doubt the accountant got a gong for his sterling efforts on MoD procurement!!

- MoD has a habit of ordering spare parts for equipment that will never be needed because the Spec has changed during development. Heyho

Cheers
Keith

[graham]

Thanks for the insight Keith, very interesting

[Jeff]

My Mrs works for BAe and she's still British 😂😂