Why can’t I have it all? Do I want it all?
Or…why is Defence getting more and more expensive, slower to deliver on-the-shelf kit, and more difficult to accurately forecast? And what happens when it goes wrong?
In 1916, the Mark 1 Tank made its first appearance and changed warfare. All nations saw it and wanted one. Many followed, all shapes and sizes depending on the Firepower/Agility/Protection requirements of the Army in question. If you wanted to direct it, crude radios were installed, or fixed line plugged in directly for when static. It had a driver, gunner, probably a commander (I’m not completely up to date on my WW1 armour knowledge). It being a new capability, vehicle mechanics had to be trained, repair areas changed to fit them in, fuel costed, doctrine changed, etc. Let’s say that is cost £10,000. Who knows, it might have been more, or less, but let’s work with that.
The Mark 1 was extremely unreliable but remained popular and new tanks were rapidly built and delivered. For many generations of tanks, the doctrine was refined and tweaked but it built on previous doctrine — still three people, trained in armoured warfare as part of a larger armoured formation. There was already a line in training personnel (drivers, mechanics, commanders, etc) and so those courses could be amended. The radios would have upgraded and the tank designers would have had a better idea of where to put them, how to power them…still lots of refinement. With increased technology, slightly more complex, add a little inflation and perhaps the cost is now £12,000.
Over time, tank commanders might have thought, “you know what I need? To be able to see a bit further…further than the enemy can see me” and so basic magnified sighting systems would have been. “And maybe at night!”, and infra-red sensors would have been included. Well, of course, training people in how to use IR requires a little something extra in the course — more time, definitely, and almost certainly a little extra cost. Maintaining those sights would taken a bit of time and cost too…so now..£20,000?
Getting back in for debriefs after roaming around the plains, Commanders are getting a bit sick of seeing terrible drawings of elephants and not enough armament factories and so suggest installing photographic equipment..top idea! So cameras get installed — the beginnings of an ISTAR platform — top stuff. Of course, now you need to train your commander in to a photographer too because you can’t fit more people in the tank. More training, more cost. More equipment, more maintenance, more cost. Maybe £40,000
Leaping ahead in to the 21st Century. Not just the tank but the ship, the plane, the individual soldier is an ISTAR platform. Enabled by digital information capabilities, we are collecting data across the entirety of the spectrum and seeking to be able “effect" immediately. The technology enabling that is state-of-the-art (stop laughing in the cheap seats) and requires specialists to procure, deliver, train and support it. The tech may not be made in the UK and may be subject to trading arrangements and restrictions, increasing the cost and complexity of its procurement and use. The training is increasingly complicated, proprietary, and the maintenance necessitates lengthy supply chain contracts about who can touch what and when.
Yet we demand it all, we “need" the best. We claim that partnerships will support the procurement process yet the widget 5 layers in the sub-contracted process is suddenly delayed due to a bout of flu in a far off land.
Planning for such a procurement process, where the end product is the very best tech on the planet, is therefore not only complicated but complex, with so much depending on each other in a fine balance of costs, policies, partnerships, just-in-time supply chain processes, etc. No amount of programme management specialists, civilian or otherwise, is going to overcome this.
UK 2021 Integrated Review-related Addendum:
So every platform becomes an information goldmine, capable of finding, fixing, tracking ,engaging and “effecting” across multiple domains simultaneously…inhibitively expensive but you only need 1 to do the job of the 10 that might have just been axed. Efficient.
And then that singular platform, the one you’ve traded the slightly cheaper, slightly less capable ones (but which you had a lot more of) just stops working because it’s so technically complex, with so many contributing partners, contracts and agreements that it can’t be easily resolved. Or the networking that we’ve come to wholly rely on, with no fallback (because we traded it out), glitches…or, because we’re a war-fighting organisation after all, the enemy actually stops that 1 thing working at all.
And suddenly, what you’ve commited to partners and allies isn’t available…and we don’t have something slightly less exquisite to send in its place to mitigate the loss of that singular advanced, AI-powered, Gary Kasparov-beating supercomputer on wheels/skids/jetpacks.
I guess what I’m saying is that we should be careful what we wish for in our capabilities. Should every ship/truck/tank/service person be a fully-equipped, networked super sensor/effector when it means you have just 1 of each, risking everything when that 1 think doesn’t work? There’s a lot to be said for the slightly less shiny, the robust, the fix-it-in-place, wholely-owned bit of kit that you can guarantee will be available.
