Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
SIR PETER
SPENCER KCB, DR
IAIN WATSON
AND LIEUTENANT
GENERAL ANDREW
FIGGURES CBE
12 DECEMBER 2006
Q60 Mr Jones: We could if you answered
the questions but you do not.
Sir Peter Spencer: It is the way
they are framed, I am afraid, which is extremely provocative.
Q61 Mr Jones: I am sorry, but you
cannot come to this Committee if I ask you a question and say
to me firstly it did not exist and then in the next breath, when
you start trying to wriggle out of it, try to say to me that you
were completely aware of this.
Sir Peter Spencer: I am not trying
to wriggle out of anything.
Q62 Chairman: Sir Peter, you are
drawing a distinction between—
Sir Peter Spencer: I answered
a question which was given to me which was an assessment phase
contract and plainly because it predated initial gate it was not
an assessment phase contract.
Q63 Chairman: What about the work
that was done before you came into office? What about the TRACER
programme, for example?
Sir Peter Spencer: The TRACER
programme work has fed into this work. The Americans pulled out
of TRACER and there was no international programme for us to be
a part of, so that work was picked up and fed into the pre initial
gate.
Q64 Chairman: In what respect was
it fed into this programme?
Sir Peter Spencer: Because the
project teams that were available at Abbey Wood would have drawn
on the documents and the information which was learned from that
work and used it as part of the foundation evidence as they built
up their fund of knowledge as to what the requirement was and
what sort of technologies were going to be needed to meet it.
Q65 Chairman: We seem to be in a
programme of constantly shifting sands with the requirement being
a series of ideas which are being traded off against each other
with nothing actually descending into a vehicle at all. It seems
to have been going on for many, many years.
Dr Watson: Can I—
Q66 Chairman: Is this not the way
it seems to you?
Sir Peter Spencer: No, it is not.
What seems to me is that this is a perfectly typical piece of
procurement where we do some pre initial gate work and we then
decide what the parameters are going to be for the assessment
phase. It is no use you shaking your head, Mr Jones. Perhaps if
you came down to Abbey Wood we could explain to you again what
the process is. This is a perfectly legitimate way of putting
in place the understanding of the technology which is required
to deliver a solution. Previously this Committee has been critical
that we have not done enough work in establishing our understanding
of the technology. This is precisely what we have been doing—
Q67 Chairman: This Committee has
also been critical of programmes being started like TRACER, MRAV
and Boxer and being abandoned halfway through.
Sir Peter Spencer: Neither was
abandoned halfway through. Both were abandoned because the end
user decided, in the case of the Americans TRACER was not what
they wanted and we were left stranded, and in the case of Boxer
the British Army decided that against the evolving threat this
was going in the wrong direction and was not the right vehicle
for the medium weight force, so from a procurement point of view
we responded to that and we exited from that programme and then
we ramped up the work on FRES.
Q68 Mr Jones: How much money was
actually expended on TRACER and MRAV?
Sir Peter Spencer: I will send
you a note because I do not have it.
Chairman: Could you send us a note. [3]
Q69 Mr Jones: Could we also have
the figures of how much was spent with Alvis Vickers, I would
appreciate that as well. You say, Sir Peter, this is the way we
do things. Does it not seem remarkable to you that we are now
eight years into this and we have not even got a final concept
of what we want? How much longer do we have to wait? Can you really
sit there—and I know you are retiring next year—and
assure us that FRES will not go the same way as both TRACER and
MRAV have gone?
Sir Peter Spencer: I cannot give
you an assurance as to whether or not the operational circumstances
will change in the next 12 months but it is highly unlikely, and
it seems to me that we now know much more about the technical
options available to us, and you will have seen from the acquisition
strategy that we have launched we are now ready to accelerate
the whole process. We have been putting into place in the two
and a half years that the assessment phase has been running—
Q70 Mr Jones: It is eight years.
Sir Peter Spencer: You can be
in the concept phase for quite a long time before you go ahead
and that is where we are. In the two and a half years of the assessment
phase we have now established much greater clarity than we thought
possible. We have got a project which draws upon the attributes
that we discussed quite recently about what makes the project
more agile—which is an incremental approach, which is to
go for something which is either on-the-shelf or is being developed
on-the-shelf so you reduce the amount of innovation, and we will
very definitely be involving the front-line particularly in the
"trials of truth". All of those areas are building on
best practice. We have also spent a substantial amount of money
on technology demonstrator programmes during the assessment phase,
all of which you have commented on favourably in the past.
Q71 Mr Holloway: I just do not understand
defence procurement generally. Why is it that consistently we
have these projects that take a very, very long time? We design
things absolutely from scratch to an unknown party 15 years hence
and you end up with things like Typhoon and Bowman; late and inappropriate
and not the best thing available in the end. Are we not doing
the same thing here and compromising between manoeuvres stuff
for armoured divisions and peace-keeping roles? Why not just buy
the best available at the time, which is three years late rather
than 15 years late, which is what you are in danger of being?
Sir Peter Spencer: This is not
late because we have not set the parameters yet. We are producing
a procurement strategy which will go faster and incrementally
and manage the risk. It is not true to say that Typhoon and Bowman
have no operational utility; quite the opposite.
Q72 Mr Hancock: I just want you to
confirm that there is currently no vehicle off-the-shelf readily
available that the British MoD can buy, from whatever source,
which will fill 80% of the capability of what is required because
your vehicle will only deliver in the first phase 80% of the capability.
I want you to confirm that and I would like to know what the world
will say when you give your answer, Sir Peter. You said that the
Army rejected all of the off-the-shelf proposals and that nothing
could deliver 80% of the product. If that is true, why would you
use these vehicles in the trials of truth?
Sir Peter Spencer: Because the
vehicles we are using are those which are still in development
and therefore have the opportunity to be further developed to
put in place the stretch potential we need to deliver the long-term
capability.
Q73 Mr Hancock: I would like you
to answer the question about there not being a single vehicle
available today that you could buy because while troops are being
bombed and blown up in Afghanistan and Iraq they will be heartened
by the fact that we are eight years down the road and we are still
at a stage of refreshing the look at what the requirement is and
they are still maybe 10 years away from having a vehicle delivered
to them. You are going to answer that question, are you not, that
there is no single vehicle available anywhere in the world that
we could buy that would give you 80% of the potential that you
require?
Sir Peter Spencer: And be able
to then be delivered to meet the longer term requirement.
Mr Hancock: You are saying that as a
categorical no; there is not a single vehicle anywhere available?
Q74 Chairman: So the issue is about
upgrade-ability.
Sir Peter Spencer: The issue is
about upgrade-ability because what the Army did not want to have
is something which was of no use to them within a few years of
having purchased it.
Q75 Mr Hancock: So can you explain
to us what is the 20% you cannot deliver in the first phase?
Sir Peter Spencer: The long-term
protection against an increasingly demanding threat.
Q76 Mr Hancock: That would be the
same with any vehicle, would it not? How can you say that these
vehicles are not capable of the same sort of development?
Sir Peter Spencer: Because if
you are thinking in terms of the ways in which you protect, a
great deal of it comes down to armour and weight, the question
of the strength of the chassis, the engine, the drive shaft, braking
systems and all the fundamentals which establish the ability of
that vehicle to grow in weight over time.
Q77 Chairman: General Figgures, do
you have a view on that?
Lieutenant General Figgures: If
I may amplify Sir Peter's remarks and really try to simplify it.
If one looks at CVRT, the armoured reconnaissance vehicle with
the 30 mm gun, that came into service at about seven tonnes; it
is now 11 tonnes. We should be thankful to our predecessors that
they introduced a vehicle which we have re-engined, we have put
new sensors on, we have up-armoured and so on and so forth, which
was capable of development and is capable of being of some operational
use today. If you take Warrior, it came into service at 25 tonnes;
it is now 32 tonnes, and we have improved the sensors on it, we
have introduced thermal imagers on it, we have improved the armour
and so on. So in the light of what we want to use these vehicles
for, the Army is very firm that they need to have growth potential
because we cannot foretell the future. So we are looking for something
in the order of between 10 and 15% that we can increase the weight.
Q78 Mr Hancock: So none of the vehicles
that you have so far looked at is capable of what you want to
do? It is a very important question to soldiers on the front-line.
Sir Peter Spencer: As far as I
am aware—and a tremendous amount of work is being done on
this—if you say off-the-shelf, that means in service today,
they are not capable of sustaining that type of weight increase
and they do not have the necessary electronic architecture to
enable us to upgrade them as we anticipate we will have to in
what we see as a very different battlefield in the next 20 years.
Q79 Chairman: General Figgures, Sir
Peter said that the Army changed its requirement in 2003 when
it withdrew from the MRAV programme. Do you think that that is
a correct assessment of what happened?
Lieutenant General Figgures: Yes
because I was present and party to that decision and I can tell
you from my personal experience in Iraq that I would thoroughly
underwrite that decision.
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