Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
MR QUENTIN
DAVIES MP, GENERAL
SIR KEVIN
O'DONOGHUE KCB CBE, LIEUTENANT
GENERAL ANDREW
FIGGURES CBE AND
MR AMYAS
MORSE
16 DECEMBER 2008
Q360 Mr Havard: I am aware of all
of that but that brings with it a logistics burden as well, does
it not, because you have got to supply a lot of parts and different
people and different training and different ways of operating.
Where has that gone because I thought this was going to be a system
of systems that integrated with Network-Enabled Capability? The
strategic view seems to have gone in the bin because of expediency.
Mr Davies: If expediency means
rapid reaction to immediate, pragmatic requirements, then expediency
is a good and necessary thing and something which I regard as
a virtue in this matter. If you like to use the word expediency
in the way that I have defined it, we have expediently and pragmatically,
and I think very sensibly and effectively, procured off-the-shelf
and very rapidly precisely the vehicles—
Q361 Mr Havard: I am not contesting
the fact that we have got operational requirements and we bought
these vehicles; that is not my point. You are setting out your
view of what the strategy should be and what the procurement policy
is going forward for enabling people in the Army to have these
types of vehicles.
Mr Davies: Yes.
Q362 Mr Havard: It seems to me that
for whatever reason you have not got a plan to actually get back
on track with that because all the time all I hear is we are going
to patch up what we have got, we are going to buy more operational
requirement vehicles and so on; if that is the case then let us
do that in a consistent way and let us forget about building a
utility vehicle, let us buy somebody else's and let us amend them
then, because that is what you are doing day to day.
Mr Davies: Mr Havard, I hope that
you are not suggesting, because obviously I would not go along
with you if you were suggesting, that when we have an urgent operational
requirement in theatre instead of buying the capability which
we need—
Q363 Mr Havard: No, that is not what
I am saying at all. You are avoiding the question.
Mr Davies:—as urgently and
as rapidly as possible we should go back—
Q364 Mr Havard: There is no coherent
plan it seems to me and I have not heard you come out with one
yet. You tell me that the specialist vehicles thing is going swimmingly
well, I have absolutely no idea what that means because I was
told something similar about the utility vehicle in the very recent
past. Is there going to be an engineering variant, when is the
Scout vehicle coming along, how is it going to work and when is
it going to work?
Mr Davies: Mr Havard, so far I
have not been able to finish a single sentence, but if you—
Q365 Mr Havard: You make them so
long you see and you divert first of all—I do not want completeness,
I want an answer.
Mr Davies: I am going to try and
give you an answer but the main obstacle so far to my giving you
an answer if I may say so has been the fact that you prevented
me from completing my sentences. But there is an engineering vehicle,
which is Terrier; there is a reconnaissance vehicle which is one
of the really urgent requirements that we are going forward with
as rapidly as possible. From the political and financial points
of view we are going to produce this reconnaissance vehicle with
the maximum despatch. There are only, therefore, technical issues
about the speed with which this can come into theatre and I will
ask General Kevin to say a word or two about that in a second,
it is enormously important. We have to strike a balance here;
I go back to my business of balances. We have to do what we can
for the theatre, for the operational requirements, as rapidly
as we can. We have been fortunate enough to find off the shelf,
with some modification in some cases, but a very rapid modification,
a series of armoured vehicles and protected personnel vehicles
which really do correspond extraordinarily well to the specific
requirements of this insurgency in Afghanistan. We have purchased
them and you know about that.
Q366 Mr Havard: I do.
Mr Davies: That does not mean
to say we are neglecting the long term major structural requirements
of the British Army and that is why we continue to be committed
to the FRES programme as well, so there is no inconsistency between
the two, there is a large element of pragmatism and expediency
and I think those things are very desirable in the circumstances.
Would you like me to add anything on that?
Q367 Mr Havard: Before you start,
are you going to give us a date for when it will be happening?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
We are almost ready to go out to industry to seek bids for the
Scout vehicle. I cannot give you a date because until you go out
and ask industry what sort of timescale they will require to deliver
something I cannot give you a timescale.
Q368 Mr Havard: But you are about
to offer it out soon.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
Soon.
Q369 Chairman: Minister, can I read out
a sentence that you have just said to us because it struck me
as so extraordinary that I want to pursue it. You said, in answer
to Dai Havard's point, "The coherence lies in having the
widest possible range of weapons that commanders in the field
can rely on." Surely that wide range of weapons is precisely
the thing that destroys the coherence.
Mr Davies: Coherence is not something
we pursue for its own sake, just for the sake of neatness and
having a nice inventory that looks good on paper, coherence is
what we want to have where the capabilities of the various vehicles
are complementary so that you can move across a spectrum, going
from heavier to lighter, going from greater firepower to less
firepower, going from faster to not so fast, for difficult terrain,
less difficult terrain, so that you have the widest possible scope
for choosing the vehicle that you really need for that particular
operation. That is what we are trying to give commanders in the
field and that is what I mean by coherent so that each particular
platform relates to the others in the sense that it is complementary,
it is not if you like duplicating the capability of the other
one, it is expanding the full range of capability available to
us. I would like if I might, Mr Arbuthnot, just to ask General
Figgures to say a word about this whole issue—because he
is responsible after all for equipment capability—and how
we see our future requirements in the armoured vehicle and protected
vehicle area.
Q370 Chairman: General Figgures.
Lieutenant General Figgures: Thank
you, Chairman. If I could perhaps address my remarks to this question
of the family of vehicles; yes, Mr Havard is quite right that
when we set out on the concept phase of this we anticipated that
we would have one common chassis on which we would build our various
subsystems to reflect the requirements for each function. Further
work suggested that this perhaps was not going to be the solution,
but we would perhaps have to run with two chassis types, we would
achieve our commonality and the logistic coherence that he describes
through having common subsystems and this would be part of a network-enabled
capability. Whilst it is treacherous sometimes to use analogies,
effectively the network-enabled capability is rather like the
nervous system in the body, so if we were thinking about teeth,
it would be the nerve in the tooth, so we would have the common
network which would be implemented right across these "FRES"
vehicles although they would have different chassis systems. We
would attempt to have common generators where appropriate, we
would have common radios, we would have common electronic counter-measures,
we would have where appropriate to reflect the function of the
vehicles common subsystems in terms of sighting and so on. So
that is how we were going to achieve it, although because the
chassis did not look precisely the same did not mean that we were
going to give up this original idea but we were going to optimise
it, there were trades and balances in this. Coming on to Mr Havard's
point about the functions that each of these parts of the family
were going to deliver, yes, the utility vehicle would carry an
infantry section but there would be a command vehicle, there would
be a vehicle in which we would put our communications, there would
be a vehicle perhaps in which we would put our electronic support
measures, there would be an ambulance vehicle, there would be
a vehicle in which we mounted the anti-tank guided weapons and
fire support weapons. The question we then had to ask was how
much variation was tolerable, indeed affordable, in doing that.
Equally, on the specialist vehicles from which we were going to
get the reconnaissance vehicles, yes, we would have a close reconnaissance
vehicle, we would need a formation reconnaissance vehicle—they
may look very similar but their internal sensor fit and so on
might be different, there would be a command variant, there would
have to be an ambulance variant to support it. That is how we
propose to do it, so whilst it may appear without the necessary
supporting detail that we have thrown all our good ideas out of
the window, we have not and of course it is not without some difficulty
that you can get people to supply all this. I hope that clarifies
it.
Mr Havard: They have not got a clue what
they want.
Q371 Chairman: This difficulty has
been going on for decades now. One of the main issues is getting
the Ministry of Defence to decide what it actually wants.
Lieutenant General Figgures: If
I may, Mr Arbuthnot, capability (which I plan) is a relative notion;
you cannot stand still in time because the enemy has a vote in
this and I think in a previous session with this Committee we
have addressed this issue of how capability has to change, the
fact that our original view with respect to FRES was that perhaps
it had to be proof against kinetic energy rounds in preference
to chemical and improvised explosive devices. Our experience in
Iraq and Afghanistan has demonstrated that we have got to shift
that balance. That is an increasingly complex requirement to meet,
and we have found—our allies have found—that you cannot
necessarily buy these things straight off the shelf and, indeed,
these urgent operational requirements to which the Minister refers
have had to have some considerable modification to what comes
out of the factory gate.
Q372 Chairman: Okay. We ought to
move on from FRES because we have probably spent quite enough
time on it. Vector: is Vector unable to take the weight? Is it
unable to operate on rough terrain? Does it keep breaking its
axle?
Lieutenant General Figgures: I
will pick that up if I may. Vector was introduced as you know,
as an urgent operational requirement. Yes, we have had some problems
with it, yes it is a combination of all up weight, cross-country
performance and, like many of these things, you do not get a perfect
solution, and so that is why we are constantly looking ahead in
terms of protected patrol mobility and the utility vehicles necessary
to support it to see what other options there are. Some of these
solutions have not been perfect.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
You produce a solution for the requirement of the time; the requirement
changes as the threat changes, as the security architecture changes
and you need to produce something else. Quite rightly, Chairman,
there is only so much weight you can put on a particular chassis
and when you reach that weight limit you either have to have something
bigger and more powerful or you have to have a different form
of protection, which it would be inappropriate to go into, but
things change.
Chairman: Moving on to the Future Lynx
programme, Adam Holloway.
Q373 Mr Holloway: Minister, with
reference to the capability that is being filled by Future Lynx
you referred earlier today to "simple-minded protectionist
approaches" and also to the "full benefits of competition".
Do you think that you are getting the full benefits of competition
in this particular programme?
Mr Davies: This is a partnership
programme, Mr Holloway, as you know. These are two broad categories
and there are hybrids between them.
Q374 Mr Holloway: I can understand
that.
Mr Davies: It is reasonable to
distinguish between classic competitive contracts—where
we simply go to the market and say this is our requirement, we
get in bids and we negotiate the price and sign a contract—and
partnership arrangements where we actually agree with a particular
group of manufacturers, or perhaps one manufacturer in certain
cases—and probably this is appropriate in areas where there
is quite a high technical risk—that they will work on reducing
the risk, they will take some of the risk, we will take some of
the risk, we will typically have a target price with incentives
for doing better than that, penalties for doing worse than that,
so that we share the risks right the way through. This falls into
the partnership area. I did actually look at competitive solutions
and you might be interested in this since you raise this matter.
Maybe I horrified certain people when I asked for a study on this
subject, but I did say do we really need Future Lynx, is there
perhaps an off-the-shelf solution here. I asked for a small study
to be done looking at Black Hawk—Black Hawk of course is
a workhorse for the US Army that has been around for a long time—because
I wanted to have a check as it were against the other proposal
that we should go ahead with Future Lynx. I was persuaded, Mr
Holloway, that actually Future Lynx was the right solution. First
of all I was persuaded that we needed the same helicopter, the
same basic structure of helicopter for the naval and battlefield
roles and, secondly, I was persuaded that actually we did have
a good deal. I was actually quite surprised at how expensive the
Black Hawk solution would actually have been. Like other people
coming fresh to this particular field one tends to think that
as the Americans have these very long production runs automatically
their prices are going to be cheaper, but I am not sure that actually
American defence procurement is always quite as efficient as it
is sometimes made out to be and sometimes what you might think
plausibly would be the position does not turn out to be. I am
therefore very confident that we have gone down the right road
here and that we are going to get the right capability, and it
is one that of course is directly engineered, really specified
for the particular requirements of the Royal Navy and the British
army.
Q375 Mr Holloway: Your written Ministerial
Statement referred to the even greater operational capability;
how many of these aircraft are you settling on, what will they
cost and when will they be ready?
Mr Davies: Let me take those questions
in order. The answer to your first question is about 60, the answer
to the second question is that we do not know, we have not decided,
we are discussing this matter with the company. We do not produce
in service dates until we have actually got through Main Gate
and we are some way away from doing that, so I cannot answer that.
Q376 Mr Holloway: Roughly.
Mr Davies: We do not want to lose
any time on this but there are some technical issues to be resolved.
I do not know, Kevin, whether we could have a stab at that. As
a matter of principle, Mr Holloway, we either have in service
dates or we do not; we do not have in service dates until we have
been through Main Gate and I am always very reluctant to give
my personal estimate as to what an in service date might be before
we have even looked at Main Gate because we do not necessarily
know all the variables which are going to determine the answer
to that question. I am cautious about it, but if General Kevin
wants to make a stab at something I am very happy for him to do
so.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
We are through Main Gate, Minister, on Future Lynx.
Mr Davies: We have not placed
the amended contract yet.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
We need to now discuss with the company exactly when these aircraft
will come in.
Q377 Mr Holloway: Roughly.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
I need to come back to you on this.
Q378 Chairman: Could you explain
this principle of not giving in service dates until you have gone
through Main Gate?
Mr Davies: The point is that until
we have gone through Main Gate we have not had the negotiations
with the company, we have not fixed on the price, we have not
fixed on the terms of the contract so we are in a very bad position
in order to be able to say what it is. We are hoping it is 2014,
January 2014.
Q379 Chairman: The principle of not
announcing in service dates until you have gone through Main Gate
obviously does not apply in this case where you have gone through
Main Gate, but if it is to reduce the uncertainty—which
we saw remained even though you did go through Main Gate with
the aircraft carriers—what is the point in preserving this
principle that you do not give industry an idea of when they need
equipment to be in service by?
Mr Davies: We may well give industry
that idea; when we are having discussions with industry about
almost any project the timing comes into that because we need
to take into account the technical risk, we need to get their
assessment of what the technical risk is, of how long it will
take to resolve it. We obviously tend to have a requirement that
means we want the capability available as soon as possible but
there is a dialogue on that matter, Mr Arbuthnot. It is not always
very sensible, while we are having that dialogue with industry,
to make a public statement about these things because it pre-empts
some of the discussion with industry. There may also be cases
where there is a trade-off between price and delivery time and
we do not want to lose the flexibility of our commercial negotiations.
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