Key upgrades to armoured vehicles and equipment not coming until 2025 at the earliest, says National Audit Office report
More than a decade of expensive delays and cancellations have deprived Britain's armed forces of the armoured vehicles and equipment they need. And they will not get them until 2025 at the earliest, according to a withering report released by parliament's independent watchdog.
More than £1bn has been spent since 1998 on different armoured vehicle projects, but to date none has been delivered, the National Audit Office says.
At the same time, the Ministry of Defence has had to go to cap in hand to the Treasury for urgent operational requirements (UORs) to get vehicles to protect British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan against mines and explosive devices.
Some £2.8bn has been spent on UORs since 2003, the year of the invasion of Iraq, the report says. Most of that has been spent on vehicles specifically designed for counter-insurgency operations and conditions in those two countries, and will not necessarily be suitable for military conflicts elsewhere, it adds.
Cumbersome decision-making in the MoD meant that thinly armoured Snatch Land Rovers, designed for Northern Ireland, were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for years even though they were clearly inadequate, according to army commanders and soldiers.
The report says the response to appeals for help in Afghanistan has left British troops with 22 different kinds of "protected patrol vehicles".
A new family of armoured vehicles for the infantry, called the Future Rapid Effects System (Fres), was supposed to have entered service in 2008 but will not be ready until 2022 at the earliest.
Abandoning, deferring and rejigging projects because of perennial crises facing the defence budget "creates incoherence, uncertainty and delays", adding to long-term costs, says the report. One of the problems is that military officials have tended to wait for "tomorrow's jam", according to Ross Campbell, director of the NAO study.
Amyas Morse, NAO head, said: "While some of the lessons learned from the successful use of the urgent operational requirements process can be applied to core projects in the future, a long-term solution is likely to need significant further investment, realistic plans and stable budgets sustained over time."
Richard Bacon, a member of the Commons public accounts committee, said it was "an eloquent comment on the poor state of MoD procurement that the most coherent acquisition process is the emergency one. When the right equipment …can only been obtained in a crisis, something has gone badly wrong."
Peter Luff, the defence minister, said the report recognised that the UOR process had delivered "world-class equipment to the battlefield". He added: "However, the NAO once again highlights serious flaws in the wider procurement process under the previous government based on chronic over-optimism by both ministers and industry, and a fundamentally unaffordable defence programme."