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The Battle to Reform UK Defence Acquisition: By Bill Kincaid
Foreword by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
Cartoons by Jim Potts
£20.00 (plus £5.00 P&P), 404 pages
ISBN: 0855161388
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RUSI Defence Systems

Issue: Oct 2008, Vol. 11, No. 2

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Index

Editorial Notes Bill Kincaid introduces this issue of RUSI Defence Systems.
Bill Kincaid

The RDS Military Interview Graeme Lamb is the Commander of the Field Army at Headquarters Land Command, UK. In a distinguished career, he has commanded 5th Airborne Brigade and 3rd (UK) Division and was the Deputy Commanding General of the Multinational Force in Iraq.
Graeme Lamb

Contention: The Challenges of Technology Insertion To paraphrase George Orwell in his novel 1984, ‘New build bad, technology insertion good’ seems to be the mantra trotted out without much thought today. We know that platforms will have to have a much longer life and the only way to keep them both operationally effective and cost-efficient is to upgrade the technology of the combat and support systems within them. Problem solved. But it is not quite as simple as it sounds. Inserting technology creates issues not only of technology readiness, interface compatibility, programme scheduling and safety, but also of technology transfer and the various effects on other lines of development. It is not a simple panacea. Our experts examine the challenges.
Various

Debate: A Culture Gap In our last issue the ‘contention’ section examined the clash between operational analysis and military judgement. Professor David Kirkpatrick, an Associate Fellow of RUSI, drawing on his wealth of experience, adds a postscript about ‘blinkered egotists’.
David Kirkpatrick

Comment: The Defence Information Infrastructure The recent National Audit Office report (HC778 2007/08, 4 July 2008) says that, “The Defence Information Infrastructure Programme will, when delivered in full, incorporate 150,000 terminals for 300,000 users at over 2000 defence sites, including on ships and deployed operations. The parts of the programme which the department has on contract … are estimated to cost £4.9Bn. In addition to its scale, the DII programme is highly complex”. So we had better get it right. Bill Robins, an Associate Fellow of RUSI and intimately involved, offers some comment.
Bill Robins

SSGN: Supporting the Navy's Irregular Warfare Campaign The importance of submarines in the future has been questioned: too expensive, some say; irrelevant to today’s land-based operations, say others. How prescient are these opinions? Here we present answers from national navies both large and small – Australia, South Africa, UK and US – which show the wide range of operational uses for submarines today. Mark Kenny is Director of the US Navy Irregular Warfare Office, and James Belz is on his staff. Here they describe the role of the submarine in the conduct of Irregular Warfare, the payloads it will carry and experimentation that will be done to ensure that new equipment is operational as early as possible.
Mark Kenny and James Belz

Decision-Making in MoD and Industry The RUSI Acquisition Focus was formed in March 2006 to provide expert, objective views on aspects of defence equipment acquisition. The Focus, meeting only three times a year, cannot claim to provide detailed solutions to the issues discussed but, as a widely experienced group, it does pinpoint the essential arguments for a way forward. In its latest paper, the Focus examines the different ways in which decisions are made in MoD and industry and the factors which affect each. Can MoD learn lessons from industry in the way decisions are made?
Various

Strategic Ambitions: Australia's Future Submarine Andrew Davies is Director of Operations and Capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Here he considers the strategic need for Australia’s next submarine and the equipment requirements, likely costs and industrial issues surrounding the future programme.
Andrew Davies

Diving Down Below the Layer: Sinking UK Submarine Force Levels Lee Willett is the Head of the Maritime Studies Programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). In this article, he examines the value of submarines and concludes that UK budgetary pressures are undermining the force levels required to achieve that value.
Lee Willett

Delivering Effect in the Underwater Battlespace: South Africa's Submarine Force Andre de Wet is Senior Officer Submarines in the South African Navy. In this article, he describes the threats to South Africa’s maritime security and the technology that its navy is seeking to take on board its submarine force.
Andre de Wet

Evolutionary Trends in UK Sonar Paul Gosling is Technical Director of Thales UK Naval Division. Previously he was technical director of the UK Sonar 2087 surface ship sonar project and prior to that the systems architect on the Sonar 2076 submarine sonar project. Here he discusses the likely evolution of sonar for submarines and surface ships over the next two decades.
Paul Gosling

Submarine Support: Achieving Affordable Availability Roger Hardy is Managing Director Submarines for Babcock Marine, the through-life defence support specialist. Here he looks at what can be, needs to be, and is being done to ensure effective and cost-efficient in-service support for the Royal Navy’s submarine flotilla, today and tomorrow.
Roger Hardy

Crafting 21st Century Air Battle Management: A Crictical Deterrent in the Middle East Robbin Laird is Chief Partner of ICSA LLC, a Paris- and Washington-based aerospace and defence consulting company. Here he considers how an air battle management system shaped by the fifth-generation aircraft and their associated echnologies will introduce a whole new meaning to the CAOC as a weapon system, and provide new options for the US in the Middle East.
Robbin Laird

The One That Got Away Jon Schreyach had a distinguished career as an artilleryman in the US Army before joining Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. He retired earlier this year. He finds fault with the UK MoD’s decision to cancel the lightweight rocket launcher programme, LIMAWS(R), and examines the reasons behind it.
Jon C. Schreyach

Is Defence Inflation Really as High as Claimed? David Kirkpatrick is an Associate Fellow of RUSI. In this article he examines the facts behind the claims that defence inflation is higher than the national GDP deflator and provides illumination on the heat generated by others.
David Kirkpatrick

Where Next for UK Artillery? David Challes is Deputy Director, Joint Land Forces Engagement in the Directorate of Equipment Capability (Deep Target Attack), UK MoD. Here he describes the UK’s indirect fire equipment programme and concludes that the future of artillery is far from bleak.
David Challes

Predicting Acquisition Performance John Dowdy is a partner in the London office of McKinsey & Co. and leads McKinsey Global Defence & Security practice. He expands on the work he has done, reported in outline in a previous edition of RUSI Defence Systems, on the prediction of future acquisition performance, particularly in terms of cost overruns and delays.
John Dowdy

Operational Sovereignty and the Role of SMEs Chris Trout is the Business Development Director at BMT Defence Services. In this article, he looks at the importance of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises and discusses whether they need help from MoD and, if so, how that should be delivered.
Chris Trout

Contrasting Efforts: The British Stategic Defence Review and the United States Quadreenial Defense Review Processes Jeffrey Bradford is North American correspondent for Great North News, and Principal at Complexity Management International. Jeffrey was formerly a strategy consultant with Arthur D. Little and Group Business Development Manager at Babcock International Group PLC.
Jeffrey Bradford

The Fire Shadow Project: A Big Step Towards Rapid Acquisition Akram Ghulam is the Business Head of the Indirect Fire Precision Attack (IFPA) Programme at European Missile Systems Company MBDA, and Peter Tomlinson is the IFPA IPT Leader at MoD DE&S, UK. In this article, they describe the methods used by Team Loitering Munitions to develop and field the Fire Shadow loitering munition much more quickly than has been the norm, and the principles that they adopted.
Akram Ghulam and Peter Tomlinson

Safeguarding Information: Our Key Business Asset Roger Styles, after a full Army career, is Deputy Director Information Assurance in the Cabinet Office in UK. In this article, he describes the measures that are being taken to improve information assurance across government and how this is affecting working practices and staff.
Roger Styles

UCAVs or Cruise Missiles? Duncan Brewer has worked as a Systems Design Engineer at MBDA Missile Systems and during his time at MBDA he undertook a six-month placement at RUSI. He is currently a consultant in London. In this article, he compares unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV) and cruise missiles, and concludes that, while they will compete with each other in the future, both will be required.
Duncan Brewer

Grounds for Discrimination: Autonomous Robot Weapons Noel Sharkey is Professor of AI and Robotics and Professor of Public Engagement EPSRC Senior Media Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Here he examines various legal and humanitarian aspects of using autonomous weapons and the issues that these raise.
Noel Sharkey

Future Weapons for Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles Michael Franklin was until recently a researcher in the Military Sciences Department of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Services. In this article, he discusses the weapons that Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles are likely to be equipped with in the short, medium and long term.
Michael Franklin

Niteworks: Finding its Voice Simon Jewell is Managing Director of BAE Systems’ Strategic Capability Solutions and served as Managing Director of the Niteworks partnership from 2007 until early 2008. In this article he looks back on his tenure to reflect on some of the partnership’s successes and examine what more it can do to achieve its objective of becoming a strategic asset for the Ministry of Defence.
Simon Jewell

Niteworks: Establishing a UK Strategic Asset Dr Llyr Jones is the Managing Director of the MoD/industry partnership Niteworks. Having previously held a number of senior roles with an emphasis on business development and strategy in BAE Systems, MBDA, Thales and their predecessor companies, Llyr joined Niteworks in March 2008. In this article he considers the evolution of partnership and some of the strategic aspects associated with positioning Niteworks as a UK strategic asset.
Llyr Jones

The Evolving Challenges of UAV Training Trevor Nash is the Editor of Military Training and Simulation News. He discusses the increasing use of UAVs and the training that is required both now and in the future.
Trevor Nash

The Future of Collective Training: Mission Training through Distributed Simulation Jon Saltmarsh is Programme Director, DSALT & MTDS at QinetiQ. Sheena Mackenzie is the Technical Manager. Aircraft are becoming easier to fly but more difficult to operate effectively within today’s increasingly complex, Joint and multi-national environment. The UK Ministry of Defence’s Mission Training through Distributed Simulation (MTDS) programme is designed to address this change by providing aircrew and other warfighters with a synthetic training facility to train collectively within a realistic synthetic environment. This paper discusses how MTDS could be used to deliver collective training to front-line warfighters.
Jon Saltmarsh and Sheena MacKenzie