Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
140-159)
GENERAL SIR
KEVIN O'DONOGHUE,
DR ANDREW
TYLER AND
MR GUY
LESTER
1 DECEMBER 2009
Q140 Chairman: You said "a system
of systems for the FRES programme". The Minister, when he
says, "I have now stopped the FRES programme", was wrong
about that.
Dr Tyler: No, he did not say,
"I have given up on a systems of systems approach to the
future Army vehicles." He said, whatever his wording was,
"I have dismantled the FRES programme as you would have conceived
it previously."
Q141 Chairman: He will confirm all
this when he comes before us, will he?
Dr Tyler: I expect so, yes.
Q142 Mr Jenkins: Dr Tyler, I have
not got the figures to hand, but some of the figures I have heard
in the past and seen in the past with regard to different elements
of this FRES programme—I am not saying what we have gained
an advantage of—up until now, with a vehicle turning off
the production line, we must have spent something like a billion
pounds on this programme?
Dr Tyler: I do not recognise the
number of a billion pounds.
Q143 Mr Jenkins: Could you come up
with a figure that you do recognise?
Dr Tyler: We can give you numbers.
We can give you a written number of what we have spent on the
programme previously known as FRES in the past.[5]
Q144 Mr Jenkins: Bearing in mind
the four-wheel drive, the electric motors, the whole lot.
Dr Tyler: Some of the underpinning
technology as well, which, of course, is extremely pertinent.
Q145 Mr Jenkins: Procedures, trials,
et cetera.
Dr Tyler: Yes.
Q146 Mr Jenkins: Can you give us
the complete package and we will see how much short of a billion
pounds it comes to?
Dr Tyler: We will provide you
with the numbers for that, but you should also recognise that
a huge amount of that has been building for the future, and the
fact that we have been able to get the Scout competition running
so quickly and specified and the requirement settled, and so on,
is a testament to how much investment we have made in the FRES
programme in the past.
Q147 Mr Jenkins: In the credit column
there will be other things.
Dr Tyler: Yes, we will present
it like that.
Q148 Mr Jenkins: If you would do
that please, I would be very grateful.
Dr Tyler: We will do that for
you.
Q149 Chairman: Is the LPPV programme
part of the Scout.
Dr Tyler: No, that is completely
separate.
Q150 Linda Gilroy: Understanding
FRES—what it was, what it is and what it will be—is
a bit like wrestling with jelly for somebody who is not an Army
vehicle anorak. I found your reference to the "S" bit
being the focal point, the system, helpful up to a point, but
I still do not understand what the difference is going to be in
the "S", the system bit of it, say, by 2015. What was
the original concept and how does the concept that you are now
bringing online look different from how it was originally?
Dr Tyler: The system philosophy
has not changed. The system philosophy is about, instead of us
having a whole bunch of individual vehicles which are bought completely
independently of each other and do not have commonality in terms
of the way they communicate, for example, in different communication
systems, in different vehicles, do not have commonality in the
way that key equipments on the vehicles are used, like sighting
systems and other sorts of electronic systems, which then reduces
things like the training burden for individual troops and allows
the vehicles to operate and transfer data between each other,
all of those sort of things are the things that sit under this
overall label of the system, the system of systems.
Q151 Linda Gilroy: How will it look
different with the present direction of travel in 2015 from how
it was originally envisaged to look? What is the capability that
we are now buying?
Dr Tyler: What we are buying is
a set of Army vehicles which, when you lay them out in the car
park in years to come, will be interoperable. They will be able
to talk each other, they will be able to work together on the
battlefield to deliver an overall capability rather than just
being a miscellaneous set of Army vehicles.
Q152 Linda Gilroy: But not as well
as they would have done, as originally envisaged, or in a different
way.
Dr Tyler: I think better. One
of the mistakes, perhaps, that I would point to with FRES is that
it sat in its own little bubble. It was thinking very much about
its interoperability within the vehicles that were going to come
out of the FRES programme itself, it was thinking less about how
are those vehicles going to then operate with the legacy vehicles,
some of which will be around for some time to come, how much are
they going to be able to operate with things like the ISTAR assets—unmanned
air systems, and so on, that at the time that FRES was originally
conceived was all relatively new stuff that has come on enormously
since we have been in Afghanistan—how much is it going to
be able to communicate with the dismounted soldiers? All of those
things are the things that, I think, we have added now into the
programme previously known as FRES to keep the systems principle
running very strongly in the programme, and within our organisational
construct we have set up the organisation so that that system
of systems activity is now running across the whole of land systems
and not just for a specific family of new vehicles.
Q153 Chairman: Dr Tyler, was not
the original concept of FRES, not a collection of vehicles, but
a system such as you describe? Is it not something that you are
now going back to as opposed to coming to for the first time?
Dr Tyler: I do not think we have
changed our philosophy at all.
Q154 Chairman: The point I am making
is that the reason it was not called a "family of vehicles"
but was called a Future Rapid Effect System was that right from
the beginning of the concept it involved, surely, all the ISTAR
assets and everything else that you are now talking about.
Dr Tyler: As I say, I am not trying
to suggest that we had not thought about any of this before, but
organisationally and in terms of the way the requirement had been
established and in terms of the way we are managing the budget
lines, FRES was largely being treated within a bubble, and now
it is not being treated within a bubble. It is very much an integral
part of the Land Systems programme overall.
Chairman: I was really making a different
point, but let us now turn to a different programme that is not
entirely your fault.
Q155 Mr Jenkin: Can we remember when
the A400M was first put into the programme? Was this mid 1990s,
early 1990s, late 1980s?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
The answer is we cannot, but some time ago.
Q156 Mr Jenkin: When is the first
flight going to take place?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
Chairman, I am going to Berlin tomorrow to talk with the Ministers
from the various countries. I wonder if I might talk about this
in confidence at the end?
Chairman: Yes, you may, because I think
that that is something on which we would welcome some private
briefing.
Mr Jenkin: Do you want me to leave this
then?
Chairman: Yes.
Q157 Mr Jenkin: Can I ask a general
question and we can come on to the first flight and the contract
conclusions later on. You described this programme as an example
of the worst slippage and "not my fault, gov", because
this is an international collaborative programme where the slippage
is out of your control, and I think we accept that, but what are
the lessons that we draw from this programme?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
The lesson I draw from it is collective projects are essential.
If you do not collaborate with partners, then you will not get
the kit you want because the production numbers are so small.
So that is one end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum,
if you have got seven or eight partners, they have all got a view,
and it was David Gould, I think, two years ago, if you remember,
said the programme slipped one year right at the beginning because
it took the German Government a year to sign the MoU. It is very
difficult to cope with that. My preference would be a bilateral
product which others could join. That would be my lesson.
Q158 Mr Jenkin: So a JCA model.
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
Yes, either JCA or various other projects that are in the pipeline.
I would like to go with one other nation and then invite others
to join in.
Q159 Mr Jenkin: Would you be able
to flesh out that conclusion with evidence to make a good recommendation
for our Report?
General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue:
In about six months probably. I am being a bit hesitant because
there are a number of things on the go at the moment where I think
we do need to move forward with other countries, but I am not
quite ready to go public on it yet because there are commercial
and political debates going ahead, but that would be my preference:
go with one country and let others join in, not on the same equal
basis of decision-making.
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