It was not just the fact that this massively expensive piece of kit did not work when it was needed. This was only the latest episode in a lengthy saga that illustrates many of the things that can go wrong when a country spends billions on defence.
HMS Prince of Wales was forced back to port for repairs after breaking down at sea (Photo: BAE Systems/PA Wire)
There was also the huge lead time involved – the decision to build the two new carriers was taken in the 1998 defence review with the first ship supposed to be ready by 2012.
Now, with the Government committed to spending an extra £6bn on defence a year – increasing the budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 – it will need to ready itself for more delays, overspends, obsolescence and embarrassment.
A Nimrod at RAF Kinloss, Scotland, the class of aircraft that was scrapped after a botched refurbishment programme (Photo: Riccardo Niccoli/Stocktrek Image)
Officials and experts are already warning there is a high chance of more good money being thrown away, at a time when ministers need every penny they can find.
“Say you reach the end of the year and you’re under budget. Then the incentive is to spend that money so you don’t lose it the following year,” says Savill. “Arguably worse, if you are over budget, you might delay a programme driving up costs with a contractor and keeping old equipment in use for longer, driving up maintenance costs in the long-run.”
“That means people who work for these companies are the best of the best who know how industry, government and the forces work. Ministers, who might have only been in defence for a matter of months, are supposed to negotiate with these people who can run rings around them.”
‘When big stuff goes wrong, it really goes off the rails’
The job is made even harder because defence procurement is extremely complicated.
Equipment becomes obsolete for a variety of reasons. It could be that newer, better technology has been invented, that adversaries have found ways to render it obsolete or that the real-life situation for which the equipment was initially procured has changed.
£1.3bn Watchkeeper drones arrived 8 years late and are being retired 17 years early
The government announced last year that it will be retiring its fleet of Watchkeeper drones in March of this year, as they have been overtaken by more modern technology.
A Watchkeeper drone (Photo: Peter Russell LBIPP/PA Wire)The drones had initially been planned to remain in service until 2042. The project has cost considerably more than the initial £800m, with most recent estimates saying the Watchkeeper programme has cost £1.3bn. The ballooning price has been attributed to difficulties integrating more modern technology and development delays.
The drone was supposed to be in full service by 2010, but was not full operational until late 2018. MoD insiders say that the delays were in part due to an inability to test the large drones due to limited airspace in Britain. A number were also crashed in training raising questions about their efficacy in real-world situations. And there were internal disputes about who exactly should operate them, once they were in full service.
Stories of military spending gone wrong are hardly new. Another famous recent example is the ongoing saga of the Ajax – which was supposed to deliver hundreds of armoured vehicles to the army. The first deliveries only came this year, eight years later than had been originally planned. One of the many reasons the project has been delayed was because “excessive noise and vibration leading to concerns for the health of personnel operating the vehicles”.
An Ajax armoured vehicle takes part in trials and development tests at Bovington Camp, near Wool, in February 2023 (Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters)Such incidents are far from isolated. In 2010, the RAF retired its fleet of Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft – better known for a fatal crash after an in-flight fire in 2006 – after a botched attempt to upgrade the aircraft for modern use. The programmed was scrapped, despite costing the taxpayer £3.6bn.
The wings that did not fit
Britain’s fleet of Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft was retired as part of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. The government had spent more than £3bn attempting to refurbish older Nimrod airframes – effectively the skeleton of the aircraft – with more modern components, including wings.
This was done as an attempt to save money, however the project quickly became problematic. The airframes that were to be refurbished, it turned out, had not been built to single specification, meaning a one-size-fits-all approach could not be used in refurbishment. The weight distribution of each plane was different, and wings had to be modified on a case-by-case basis.
An RAF Nimrod MR2 on its base at RAF Kinloss, Scotland (Photo: Riccardo Niccoli/Stocktrek Image)The project was delayed a number of times, driving up the cost and making it one of the more controversial procurement projects in recent years.
Scrapping the programme left Britain without maritime patrol aircraft, meaning short-term arrangements needed to be made with allies until the American-made Poseidon replacements were delivered between 2019 and 2022.
The Skybolt crisis is still referred to in procurement circles when conversations take place about how best to procure equipment and, if the taxpayer is footing huge bills, where that money should be spent.
Former Conservative defence secretary Sir Liam Fox (Photo: Getty Images)
“The danger with this is if they change their priorities, so you have to weigh that up.”
But for diplomatic reasons, there could be advantages to spending money in other allied countries.
“Clearly sharing the financial burden helps us all but inevitably reduces sovereign or even operational independence,” says Fox.
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Ultimately it will be a political decision for the Government, informed by the upcoming Strategic Defence Review, to pick and choose what it thinks is most urgent.
But when ministers do decide what purchases to make it may only be the start of their problems.
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