Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
25 MAY 2004
LORD BACH,
SIR PETER
SPENCER AND
LIEUTENANT GENERAL
ROB FULTON
Q280 Mr Hancock: I hope that is borne
out by your optimism for getting this sorted fairly quickly, Sir
Peter. If I can then go on to what we are going to put on the
aircraft carriers and the recent suggestions that the UK and US
Marine Corps STOVL variant of the Joint Striker Fighter is going
to be difficult for us to manage on the carriers and what we are
intending to do with it. The suggestion is that the Marine Corp
are expecting now to see their in-service date for these aircraft
is going to drop by some two years or more so it will be further
and further back. Where are we?
Sir Peter Spencer: I think it
would be appropriate for General Fulton to lead on the requirement
on this both in terms of the performance and the in-service date.
Lt General Fulton: In terms of
the performance, we remain where we have been all along, we have
selected the STOVL variant as that which best suits our requirement,
and that remains the case. Clearly, if you are referring to the
newspaper articles about weight, we are keenly interested in that.
I was over with the company hearing what they had to say about
it last week. They are optimistic, as one would expect them to
be, about their ability at this stage of the programme to make
sure that the aircraft will perform to its specification. Clearly
if it does not then we have a series of decisions that we will
have to take but those are decisions to be taken when we get to
the point at which this aircraft will not do it but at the moment
with the effort that is being expended, and the company are in
no doubt as to the importance of getting the weight right, for
their own sake, as much as for ours or the United States Marine
Corp, then we will continue down the path we are on.
Q281 Mr Hancock: Were you surprised by
the situation that arose?
Lt General Fulton: On weight?
Q282 Mr Hancock: Yes?
Lt General Fulton: I am not an
engineer, I am told by those people closest to the problem, the
IPT leader, that he has been closely monitoring this all the way
through and for this type of aircraft weight is a perennial problem.
It is a balance between the weight of the aircraft, the thrust
of the engine and the aerodynamic drag of the aircraft so this
is not a simple engineering problem. The IPT leader is very closely
involved, as you would expect, from our level one participation
in the programme as the only level one participants.
Q283 Mr Hancock: If that was the case
and we were on top of it all along, one would assume the US Marine
Corps were on top of it all the way along but they are now envisaging
the problem they are experiencing over the weight is going to
delay the in-service date of their aircraft by at least three
years. That does not lead me to believe that they were on top
of the problem from day one because otherwise they would not have
started with a date two years prior to where they now envisage
it to be. Are you saying, General, that we were so on top of the
in-service date for our variant of this plane it will still be
on time, we will not slip?
Lt General Fulton: I am not saying
that, I am saying at the moment we do not know until the programme
formally tells us whether they are able to solve the problem and
by when—and this is part of the de-risking that goes on
at this stage of the programme as we have just discussed—and
we will sign the manufacturing contract at the time at which we
know what the proposition is, ie what the cost, what the time
and what the performance is. The United States Marine Corps have
been very closely involved in the programme, just as close if
not more closely involved in the programme as we have because
clearly it is their national programme.
Q284 Mr Hancock: It would be right to
assume that if they are now realistically accepting that the delays
will account for probably two years, we would have to make the
same assumption?
Sir Peter Spencer: Not necessarily.
Q285 Mr Hancock: Not necessarily. Okay.
Sir Peter Spencer: Because we
will ideally slipstream them by two to three years. As the General
said, we have to make a judgment because if the programme base
line for STOVL is reset then we may choose to bring our aircraft
with the same variant into service at around the same timescale.
Previously it was considered to be good risk mitigation not to
be amongst the early users, let somebody else sort out the problems.
There is then a judgment to be made, when we have got the facts,
as to what the trade-offs are going to be. Another thing, which
we will clearly want to look at, is that depending upon which
production batch you take your aircraft from, how early on in
the production lifecycle it is and how many of them are in the
batch, it will impact on the price. We will then go back to the
person who has the budget and say "Do you want them early
at this price, on time at this price or slightly later at this
price?" We are at the stage where we can only speculate at
the moment. Meanwhile, as General Rob has said, there is an enormous
concentration of technological expertise tackling this problem.
6.30 tomorrow morning I set off for Heathrow to fly to the States
for the routine meeting of chief executive officers where all
of this problem will be laid out in front of me and my American
and other international counterparts, and including the chief
executive officers from the major companies such as BAE Systems
as well as Lockheed who are involved. We will then have some better
understanding of what progress has been made.
Q286 Mr Hancock: If the weight problem
cannot be resolved, what does that then do for the design and
construction of the carriers?
Lord Bach: I think we hope and
expect that it will be solved.
Q287 Mr Hancock: This is not a very good
example, is it, Minister, of smart procurement?
Sir Peter Spencer: On the contrary,
it is a fairly good example of smart procurement.
Q288 Mr Hancock: To buy a plane where
you are not sure about the weight.
Sir Peter Spencer: We have not
yet bought the plane. We have bought into a programme which has
high risks and uncertainties, has benefited from a huge amount
of de-risking in the earlier phases including the manufacture
and competitive comparison of prototypes. Although it is easy
for us to get concerned about the remaining risk, we should not
just ignore the huge amount which has been de-risked in advance,
part of which we helped to fund when we first joined the programme
when it was in its technology demonstration phase. What we are
doing is Smart, it is Smart procurement not to commit yourself
to a production buy before you know what the prices are going
to be.
Q289 Mr Hancock: Sir Peter, I have read
up a lot about the aircraft and its potential, we were given a
lot of information when we were in the United States the time
before last. The weight issue was not an issue, it was never raised
by us and certainly it has not been raised in any of the things
I have read until fairly recently about this aircraft. We accepted
that this was the variant we wanted, it does the job, but if you
are going to reduce it by the sort of weight that is now being
suggested, the 3,300 pounds of weight, that has to be got rid
of somewhere, what does that do to degrade the product that we
wanted? Is the product then the same one? Does it have the same
capabilities? Does it have the same air frame capability to take
the weight of weaponry we would expect it to have?
Lord Bach: Could I say, as the
General just said, it is not a question of peeling off the weight.
There will be a need to tackle the weight problem in some key
areas and there are some good solutions to that but we have to
make sure we understand the problem. Secondly there are options,
also, to up the power of the engine and there are options also
to improve the aerodynamics. As General Rob said, it is not just
a question of you take all that weight away but you are right
to have a concern as to what impact it has had on the performance
and we are watching that very closely. The way in which that performance
will reflect back into us will not really be properly understood
until we have a better understanding of to what extent these three
prongs of attack on the problem are going to deliver a solution.
Q290 Mr Hancock: That solution will have
an impact surely on design and construction of the carriers.
Lord Bach: Not necessarily.
Q291 Mr Hancock: We were led to believe
that there was a link between the way in which the carrier would
be designed and its capability for the sort of aircraft that were
going to operate on it.
Lord Bach: Yes.
Q292 Mr Hancock: If you are saying you
get the aircraft down to what we originally specified it would
have to be then the carrier design is as it is. I am suggesting
if the variant changes does that change the design and, if so,
does that alter the date and the time of the carriers to be in-service
or indeed for the contracts to be let?
Lord Bach: If I can just step
back one. Originally the concept was this would be a STOVL carrier
only. There was then a more fundamental appraisal taken of the
proposition that said the life of the ship is likely to be considerably
longer than the life of the aircraft and it would be imprudent
right from the outset not to future proof-it. The fundamental
design concept of the carrier makes it capable of being adapted
midlife if circumstances occur which make that a sensible proposal,
relatively economically. As it happens it means that we can do
that at any stage if there is a completely dramatic problem which
does not get resolved but we are a very, very long way away from
that. At the moment we are looking in the context of the expectation
being STOVL but to manage the risks as best we can. We will do
that better when we have some understanding of the actual numbers
which will come out later this month.
Q293 Chairman: What would be really helpful,
Minister, would be if every now and again you confided in us and
said "There may be problem popping up here" rather than
us having to read a newspaper and get very exercised by the information
we see. If you are trying to repair relations with British Aerospace
maybe you could include us in that process.
Lord Bach: Can I just say on that,
if we have been remiss, of course we apologise. What I think might
be helpful is if we send you a note on the CVF/JCA issue going
into slightly more detail than we have been able to here today.
We will do that as a matter of some urgency.
Q294 Chairman: We accept your invitation
and Sir Peter, tell us what is going on here.
Lord Bach: Can I make just one
point. It went back to Mr Hancock's original question about the
CVF and what I said earlier on, others have said too, about the
crucial part the assessment phase can play in a project and how
it can save time and cost later on. It may be that CVF is a good
example of that. If we were to allow the assessment phase to run
on for some time further in order to de-risk the project more
and to form a sensible alliance, if we were to do that I can,
I am afraid, see the headlines now which suggest that would mean
that we were going back on our word as far as the in-service date
is concerned. That is not the position. We were doing that in
order to try to protect the in-service date, and that is really
the point I am trying to get across.
Q295 Mr Hancock: I regard that as genuine
commonsense. I do not that see you would get anything other than
support from any of us on that.
Lord Bach: Getting support from
you is very important but I am afraid the outside world and politicians,
for example, who do not have the advantage of sitting on this
Committee might take some advantage of that.
Chairman: There are occasions when we
get told things in confidence and if that confidence is broken
then that privilege should not be extended further. We could focus
on procurement issues particularly at this time of the year and
maybe we should have a half session around Christmas perhaps to
be alerted to any problems that might come so that we are not
as shocked when bad information, or not good information, comes
forward.
Q296 Mr Hancock: If I could speedily
move on to—probably "speedily" is the wrong word
to use in relation to Typhoon—if I could move quickly on
to Typhoon.
Sir Peter Spencer: It is very
fast.
Q297 Mr Hancock: The question I think
you should answer first of all is on the latest report that there
is a suggestion that the Eurofighter is not a very safe aircraft.
It would be helpful for the record if that was dealt with first-off.
Lord Bach: Let me just start with
that and then I will pass on. I notice that is not a story that
was run on the BBC this morning at all. I listen to the Today
programme always to find out what is going on in the world and
I noticed that it was not even mentioned.
Q298 Chairman: In the MoD too probably.
Lord Bach: No, the MoD have been
discussing it, but not the Today programme. I cannot think
what the reason is for that.
Q299 Mr Hancock: Minister, were you discussing
it before or after the report appeared in the paper?
Lord Bach: I really do not think
it is an issue that deserves the kind of seriousness with which
the article that appeared in the Evening Standard last
night pretended. The fact is that ACAS, the Assistant Chief of
the Air Staff, on behalf of the Secretary of State, decides the
terms of release to service, standard introduction of a new aircraft
type, and he looks at the safety case. One of the elements that
feeds into a safety case is the independent study that is made,
in this case by QinetiQ. All new military aircraft undergo a rigorous
incremental series of testing and evaluations to gradually expand
the flight parameters and increase the aircraft's operational
capability. This is absolutely standard procedure. Operational
effectiveness is important but, to us, safety is paramount. No
country in the world, and I think I can say this absolutely clearly,
is more concerned about safety and safety procedures than the
United Kingdom. As a result of the report that was quoted in the
Evening Standard last night, the Typhoon was modified,
the procedures were reviewed and limitations applied to ensure
that the aircraft was ready to enter RAF service and, indeed,
it now has as a consequence of ACAS's decision on 13 March. Sir
Peter?
Mr Hancock: I am satisfied with that
answer.
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