DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL BASEThe Lamentable State of British Defense Acquisition
Britain needs to move towards the French or Swedish model. Each nation has a defense acquisition agency with real authority, as well as a working deal with industry and the services on one side and the government moneybags on the other.
The expertise of the South Asian sub-region is robust, so the title of Worst Defense Acquisition System is in safe hands. But Britain’s allies in a post-American world should worry that Blighty is as far up the list as it is.
Recent headlines underscore the problems. The British Army’s premier project, the Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle, subjects its occupants to levels of noise and vibration that leave them disoriented and nauseated. The Royal Air Force’s acquisition of Wedgetail air-surveillance aircraft was cut down to three aircraft but left Britain on the hook for costly radars for five of them. To save money, Britain used pre-owned 737 Boeing Business Jets for two systems. But one, previously in Chinese hands, is mired in cybersecurity issues, there being many ways to place a bug in an innocent avionics module.
For a nation with Britain’s naval tradition, the inability in March to quickly deploy ships to support operations in the Middle East or to augment the defenses of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is red meat to a tabloid headline writer.
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Tolstoy wrote, but there are lessons to be drawn from Britain’s lamentable acquisition system that apply to many countries – particularly parliamentary democracies that, unlike the United States, can’t write half-trillion-dollar cheques for their defense forces and industries.
Three services (and intelligence and cyber) fighting over one budget is a common problem. When the object of the game is to get your branch’s major project under contract while the other two are in the study stage, the pressure to be optimistic about cost and schedule is extreme, leaving the overruns and delays for later.
Britain adds a couple of extra turns of the screw. Its nuclear deterrent is expensive and ring-fenced – untouchable. Also, the British Ministry of Defense has to get its budget past a tight-fisted Treasury that is to some degree a legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policy. Thus the ministry, which should be pushing back against service and industry optimism, is tempted to lean into it.
The Treasury will clamp down on spending if doing so will favor the economy as a whole or avoid a tax increase. The outcome violates a basic principle of defense acquisition, which is that almost nothing costs more than funding instability.
Another bad way to get major projects through approval gates is to prioritize flashy big items over support or follow-on capabilities.
