By Richard Johnstone
20 May 2011
The Ministry of Defence will be without the armoured vehicles it needs until at least 2025 after spending more than £300m on procurement projects that have been cancelled.
A report by the National Audit Office found that, since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the MoD has cancelled or suspended plans to purchase more than 4,000 tanks and other armoured cars.
Orders for some £2.8bn worth of tanks to be used in Iraq and Afghanistan are still going ahead as Urgent Operational Requirements. However, the overall shortage of vehicles means that the new forces structure planned from 2020 – as outlined in last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review – will not now to be possible for at least five years.
The NAO report, The cost-effective delivery of an armoured vehicle capability, said that three cancelled or delayed procurement programmes were undermined by a combination of over-ambitious requirements and unstable financial planning. Contracts to purchase armoured vehicles fell victim to the need for savings after other defence projects went over budget.
Overall, the MoD’s approach to renewing its core vehicle fleet did not represent value for money, the NAO said.
The report found that the ministry had placed greater reliance on the reactive Urgent Operational Requirementsprocurement since 2003. This had been more successful and had significantly improved the protection of UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The NAO found that through this process the MoD had shown that it could make effective compromises to rapidly buy equipment specifically for operations but saidthis would have been less necessary if the standard procurement had been better. The UOR process is not a sustainable substitute for standard acquisition, the auditors said, and the MoD does not expect these vehicles to offer a long-term solution.
NAO head Amyas Morse 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.’
