Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)

SIR PETER SPENCER KCB, DR IAIN WATSON AND LIEUTENANT GENERAL ANDREW FIGGURES CBE

12 DECEMBER 2006

  Q120  Mr Hancock: Simultaneous?

  Sir Peter Spencer: which means that everything which is needed to operate those vehicles will be in place, including the logistic support.

  Mr Jones: Once you have got the in-service date how long will it be after that that the vehicle will become fully operational?

  Q121  Chairman: Would there be a gap between the in-service date and the operational availability of the vehicle?

  Sir Peter Spencer: No. The in-service date will be defined to be operational capability.

  Q122  Mr Jones: Fully?

  Sir Peter Spencer: Fully. It depends what you mean by "fully". If you are going to have a programme which is incremental both in quantity and quality then the procurement activity will continue for many years as we roll out. We will not build more than 3,000 vehicles all in one year.

  Q123  Mr Jones: There are a number of different vehicles. For the light and the heavy vehicles, what is the operational capability, is it going to be in different phases?

  Sir Peter Spencer: We will roll out the utility vehicle first. The expectation is that the reconnaissance variants will come next and the heavy variants will come after that in a phased programme.

  Q124  Mr Jones: What timescales are we talking about?

  Sir Peter Spencer: That is work which is still being done in the assessment phase.

  Q125  Mr Jones: Can I make one point to you, Sir Peter. Can I ask you a question: how should we, as parliamentarians, scrutinising your Department be able to see whether or not you have been successful in delivering this programme to the date which you have not yet come up with, which you are quite prepared to share with industry but not with us, if we are not going to get this information? Do you think it is very difficult for us to try to get the bottom of this if you are being as evasive as you are?

  Sir Peter Spencer: I am not being evasive on anything other than the date, which I am not empowered to give. I am very happy to take that message back and I am very happy, through ministers, to provide you with the information that you are asking for if they agree. In terms of where we are going on the assessment phase then you have got ample information in terms of what we have given you to demonstrate the progress which has been made in the assessment phase against the key dates which were set out.

  Q126  Mr Jones: The key date is the in-service date, surely.

  Sir Peter Spencer: Not during the assessment phase. The assessment phase is the gradual understanding and agreement of what the capability requirement is. We have had Fleet Reviews of the Army which has been an incremental process. We have now informed you as to what the Acquisition Strategy is going to be and that there will be a great deal of activity over the next 12 months which will then lead up to the first decision which will be to go into the demonstration phase for the utility variant in timescales which in armoured fighting vehicles compare pretty favourably with anywhere else that you could find. Certainly they compare favourably with our history in this nation where the average time has been longer. I do not think the pre-initial gate phase counts towards the programme timescales because we are not committing to any dates at that stage, we are just looking at technology. We have concept phase work going on in all sorts of areas.

  Q127  John Smith: I just wondered what the military consequences of a considerable slip to the in-service date of this vehicle are. The General tells us that there is a clear military requirement for this concept vehicle but if it slips into 2018-20, are there going to be any capability gaps and what are the general consequences?

  Lieutenant General Figgures: Yes, there are going to be gaps and it then becomes my responsibility to manage them as best we can. I think I have given an illustration of where we dealt with the short-term operational requirement in terms of the protected patrol vehicle and Mastiff. We would have to run on the 430 series up-armoured and spend more money on that. It would mean that we would not realise our investment in our command and control and information systems network enabling capability that we would propose and that goes back to my point about we would not fight as we would wish to fight. I go back to the point that the Army, my organisation and the DPA are very closely engaged in this. It is a judgment in which the Army, the Chief of the General Staff and those responsible for delivering the capability of the Army are heavily involved in making that assessment, so a year, two years, are we capable of managing the gap, that we will get something which we can bring into service and which will enable our soldiers to execute their duty in the manner in which they have been trained to do and would wish to do, it is worthwhile.

  Q128  Mr Holloway: General, would there be any gaps between yourself and the Admiral's department? Within your organisation is there a more immediate requirement, a greater hunger for this, than perhaps there is with the DPA?

  Lieutenant General Figgures: No, because there are people like me in this uniform in the DPA.

  Q129  Mr Holloway: Can you answer my question?

  Sir Peter Spencer: We follow the requirements which are set by the military. We do not have a view on pace and priority, we resource our drive to the expectations of the military, so why you would imagine that there is a difference between us. I find incomprehensible.

  Q130  Mr Holloway: I will tell you why. Having served in the Army, often finding oneself with the wrong equipment, and speaking to soldiers now who find themselves with the wrong equipment, I think it is an entirely reasonable question.

  Sir Peter Spencer: So much of the DPA has military people, all I can say is that people are doing their best at the time.

  Lieutenant General Figgures: I do not think there is any lack of a sense of urgency. There have been many occasions when in order to provide what is required, urgent operational requirements, integrated projected teams, both in the DPA and the DLO, have worked seven days as many hours as they can, you just eat, drink and get a bit of sleep. There is no lack of will to get what we want. After all, we are all human, we cannot magic these things.

  Q131  Chairman: You said there is no lack of a sense of urgency. The talk of the 2017 in-service date will make the soldiers who are serving currently feel that is exactly what is going on there, will it not?

  Sir Peter Spencer: The whole purpose of next year will be to see to what extent we can improve on that and we expect to improve on it substantially, but I am not in a position to tell you by how much.

  Q132  Chairman: To what extent, General, would you say that the Army will need these vehicles for the idea of 2017 or earlier, if it can be brought back?

  Lieutenant General Figgures: I think I have explained—at the risk of repetition—we need them in order that we can fight as we would wish to fight. I believe it was on 19 January that the Army Board, the Chief of Defence Procurement and my predecessor spent the best part of a day scrubbing through all this so we all understood the requirements, the means of satisfying the requirements, the trades we might have to make. Of course, military men are impatient to get things done. Yes, we want it tomorrow but we do recognise we are dealing with a very complex area and it is the art of the possible. I am in no doubt that the Defence Procurement Agency is under no illusion about the need to bring it into service as quickly as is possible, but which satisfies our requirement. There is nothing worse than having a piece of equipment to which one has looked forward for some time, in which one has invested time and money, and it does not meet the threshold requirement.

  Q133  Chairman: Is there not a risk that over the years we will need so many urgent operational requirements and things will be needed so much now that we will end up with a fleet of completely disparate vehicles that are there to solve the immediate problem and all the money will have been spent on Cougars and Mastiffs and we will not have the FRES at all because the best has been the enemy of the good.

  Lieutenant General Figgures: I share your concern. The logistic support of the vehicles that we procure to fill gaps complicates the business of the Defence Logistics Organisation and the field army deployed in support of those vehicles, hence I think our sense of urgency and the sense of urgency of the DPA to bring this in as soon as is possible. There is no point in promising us something unless there is a high confidence of it being delivered and, therefore, I respect Sir Peter's reluctance to commit to something that he cannot sign up to in blood.

  Q134  Mr Hancock: I do not have a problem with Sir Peter's point of view, I think it is a legitimate one and is based on his integrity, is it not, to not give us information that he does not believe at this stage he can accurately predict, and I think it is right for us to challenge ministers. But we were sent a memorandum by General Dynamics and they raised the issue of the Piranha vehicles and it states quite clearly here that it has an outstanding survivability, considerable growth potential, it is 26 tonnes, it is capable of doing nearly everything you have asked of it, and we have properly evaluated the suitability of this vehicle and we have turned it down as saying that it will not meet our requirements, just the 80% of the requirements we have at the present time. Reading this memorandum, it seems to me that it is clear that this vehicle has everything that we require plus the potential for future development and I am at a loss to understand how you dismissed it from your thinking.

  Sir Peter Spencer: They are in the business of wanting to sell us equipment.

  Q135  Mr Hancock: Of course they are.

  Sir Peter Spencer: They will be judged alongside everybody else. All I can tell you is in terms of their current products they do not have the available potential. They will have the opportunity to compete in the trials of truth and demonstrate that they can produce something which has potential.

  Q136  Mr Hancock: No. You told us you had dismissed these vehicles and that is why you were going for this refined vehicle that we were going to design and build ourselves. We were going for a completely new vehicle. You told us you had already done this evaluation and this vehicle was ruled out. It would be interesting from this Committee's point of view if you would supply us with the evaluation that you did of this vehicle which allowed you to discard it.

  Sir Peter Spencer: We can do that. That would be very sensible because it would clarify your own understanding.

  Q137  Chairman: That would be extremely helpful. [5]

  Dr Watson: May I interject on Piranha. It is the case that in early January we went to the executive committee of the Army Board with the outcome of the Fleet Review. That Fleet Review covered a large number of different ways of trying to meet the FRES requirement. Included in those different ways were a selection of vehicles starting from military off-the-shelf, that is to say vehicles which are in operation today, vehicles which were in current development, that is to say they are not in operation but we are part of a committed programme, and new design and build vehicles. The conclusion of that review was the area we should be operating in is current development vehicles. These are vehicles which are in various stages of maturity which have the opportunity for enhancement to meet the specific needs of FRES but which require additional investment and, critically, proof of their current capability. Piranha 4 falls into that category. We expect to see General Dynamics as one of the bidders offering us a Piranha variant into these trials that we intend to conduct next year. That will provide us with material proof as to whether or not the vehicle is as capable as suggested and, incidentally, the design background to tell us whether we can stretch that vehicle and in what ways, and a proposition for that stretching. We intend to go down exactly this path but we do not know the outcome until we have measured the results. When we have measured the results we will then know what the level of investment needs to be and the timescale. We may then be able to reach an ISD.

  Q138  Mr Hancock: Many of the countries who have bought these vehicles are in NATO, allies of the United Kingdom. The latest Piranha that is actually in-service could deliver most of the capability that we have been told the Army require.

  Dr Watson: That is not so. The latest variant in-service is the Piranha 3 and it does not meet the protection, mobility or capacity needs that we require.

  Q139  Mr Hancock: So their statement that the survivability rate is very high and it has growth potential is not correct?

  Dr Watson: You can see this clearly in operations in Iraq where Stryker, which is a variant of Piranha and derived via a complex development route, is heavily enhanced in a very ad hoc kind of way in order to meet the current threat.


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