‘It’s time for everyone to be put out of their misery, time to take [Ajax] or abandon it,’ says Taylor. The programme’s critics suggest it has become too big to fail. ‘It has now become a £5.5 billion game of pass the parcel,’ says Francois. ‘All those in authority know it will never work but no one has the balls to cancel it.’
But some sources at Westminster suggest that Ajax is now doomed. ‘It’s now immensely political,’ says one. ‘People are diving under their desks. All sorts of shit is going on.’
Humiliating and expensive
If and when the Government is forced into a humiliating and expensive U-turn on Ajax, it will serve them right, suggest some, for taking their eye off land warfare. In the past decade, says Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the MoD ‘has protected ship building and aerospace. It never decided to put so much money and effort in land warfare. There’s a possible lack of attention there.’
‘Once we committed to the [aircraft] carriers, they needed subs and a support fleet –then you had to invest in the F35s which helped the RAF,’ says Ellwood. ‘The Army was the last in the queue.’
Even so, the Navy and RAF have hardly been immune to procurement disasters. Both new aircraft carriers have suffered teething problems. At the end of August the newest, the £3 billion HMS Prince of Wales, broke down less than 24 hours after setting sail for a landmark visit to America. ‘There have been some major fiascos,’ says Barry. He points to the MRA4 Nimrod maritime reconnaissance and attack aircraft, which was cancelled in 2010 at a cost of £4 billion, and nuclear-powered Astute submarines – delayed, and over a billion pounds more expensive than forecast.
The procurement problem starts, say experts, at the outset of commissioning a new system. The process goes like this, they say: a requirement is written in the MoD for a new helicopter. But the Treasury replies that the MoD already has helicopters. So the MoD responds that the new helicopter is not going to be just a little better, but a vast improvement, on the old one. Then, at around Lt-Col level, a requirement brief is drawn up to put to tender. ‘You want to do the best by your mates, so the pressure is on to write a really demanding requirement so they’ll have really good kit,’ says a source.
Wide range of bidders
Meanwhile, manufacturers know that there’ll be one contract in the area in the next 15-20 years, minimum. If they don’t get it, they may have to leave the business. ‘The UK is littered with [arms] companies not winning contracts, giving up and pulling out,’ says the source. Of the nation’s 25 top arms suppliers in 1988, only three survive. There is hardly a wide range of bidders for the MoD to choose from. Those that do bid ‘are tempted to say: “We can do this, it will be wonderful and very cheap.”’ It is the ‘conspiracy of optimism’ at work.
And it is misguided optimism that a cynic might suggest is fuelled by the revolving door that seems to operate between manufacturers and the top ranks of the armed forces, up to and including General Sir Peter Wall, who finished as Chief of the General Staff in 2014 and joined the board of GD in 2016, where he is paid more than $300,000. Major General Carew Wilks, having spent part of his career in procurement, rising to Director Land Equipment in 2011 – just as the Ajax programme was getting underway – joined GD in 2018. ‘It is an ethics risk,’ says Taylor. (General Dynamics, Sir Peter Wall and Carew Wilks were approached for comment but declined.)
Are other countries any better? Experts suggest South Korea and Israel, both frontline nations where strong links exist between the military and industry, have a greater technical understanding among those in uniform, helping to set realistic targets and get projects over the line. In Britain, by contrast, says Barry, we have had ‘skills fade’.
‘The Army has lost technical expertise,’ says Taylor. ‘We haven’t given people the chance to study tech and rewarded them. The [Army] say, “We’re users, we don’t have to understand how it works.”’
