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Meeting the challenges posed by the current defence environmentA paper presented at 27th ISMOR

Judith Rawle and John Mountain

September 2010

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Introduction

• Affordability

• Outsourcing of military support

• Public and legal constraints

• Challenges for the Analytical Community

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The Challenge of Affordability

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"The defence program is entirely unaffordable -- especially if we try to do what we need to do in the future while simultaneously doing everything that

we've done in the past.“

Dr Liam Fox UK Secretary of State for Defence at the Farnborough Air Show 20 July 2010

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EP05

The UK Equipment Procurement Plan is Unaffordable

£10Bn

£2Bn

£4Bn

£6Bn

£8Bn

Total Costs

06/07 11/12 16/17 21/22 26/27 31/32 36/37

Financial Years

Best Case (+1.5% p.a.)

Worst Case(-2% p.a.)

EP09

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Some underlying reasons

Just to sustain the existing equipment capability requires a real terms increase in procurement expenditure

Behaviours of the military, officials, and industry• Conspiracy of Optimism• If you are honest you lose

“the system is failing to produce the equipment we don’t need.” – humorous quote by senior MOD official in the Bernard Gray report

• Delay and slippage• Changing the Force Structure

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Can we achieve savings?

• Countries that share more functions across the armed forces tend to derive greater efficiencies.

• Administrative costs can be reduced without sacrificing fighting power.

• There is dramatic variability in the cost of maintaining a fleet.

“Lessons from around the world: Benchmarking Performance in Defense” McKinsey on Government Spring 2010

From discussions across the Department and in industry it is clear that savings to date due to support process reform and improvement may have only “scratched the surface”.

“Review of Acquisition for the Secretary of State for Defence” October 2009 Bernard Gray

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Transferring Support Activities to Industry

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Consequences of increasing the reliance on contractors in support of operations

“Increasingly, we will find ourselves reliant on industry for support, both in the home base and in theatre, if we are to be adaptive.”

Future Character of Conflict

“The great thing about a soldier is if he doesn't show up, you can shoot him. You can't shoot contractors. You can sue them, but you can't shoot them.”

Jayson Spiegel

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Our Duty of Care to the Armed Forces

Danger: Soldiers at Work

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Increasing Media Pressure

• “a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty he had in adjusting to the climate”

• “To send soldiers into a combat zone without basic equipment is unforgivable, inexcusable and a breach of trust between the soldiers and those who govern them.”

• “This court has heard evidence of the failure to provide basic equipment for the maintenance of vehicles, which has been described by one witness as amounting to a gross or serious failure”

• “The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other aircraft within the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy. What is more, the aircraft was, in my judgment, never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969 to the point where the Nimrod XV 230 was lost” “This cavalier approach to safety must come to an end”

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Increasing Media Pressure

• “a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty he had in adjusting to the climate”

• “To send soldiers into a combat zone without basic equipment is unforgivable, inexcusable and a breach of trust between the soldiers and those who govern them.”

• “This court has heard evidence of the failure to provide basic equipment for the maintenance of vehicles, which has been described by one witness as amounting to a gross or serious failure”

• “The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other aircraft within the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy. What is more, the aircraft was, in my judgment, never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969 to the point where the Nimrod XV 230 was lost” “This cavalier approach to safety must come to an end”

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Increasing Public Pressure

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Constraints on weapon use

• Environmental constraints• Carbon footprint of armed forces• The effect of Sonar on Whales

• Banning of weapon types• Anti-personnel mines• Cluster Bombs • Laser Blinding weapons

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The Legal Framework for Operations

“One thing we are worried about is the legal framework that currently applies to war. If you want to use armed forces legitimately, in the way we have in the past, we must look again at the law underpinning its use”

General Sir David Richards UK Chief of the Defence Staff (designate)

Interview with Prospect magazine July 2010

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Challenges for the Analytical Community

• Current evidence-based decision making hasn’t stopped the defence programme becoming unaffordable• Do we need to move more towards a risk and portfolio management

approach?

• Should we be looking at methods and techniques to address:• Assessing implications of increased “duty of care”• Assessing the likely consequences of use of weapons• Quantifying operational risks from out-sourcing support• Driving out costs in the support area

• Including contractors in deployment and sustainment plans

• Taking on the role of integrators of all analysis

• Using a balance of “hard” and “soft” methods

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