Munitions
Regular readers of Commentary may recall an earlier reference to the unpreparedness of the British government, upon the outbreak of World War one, for a sustained conflict. The BEF found itself running short of ammunition. The outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022 has faced the UK and its allies with a similar situation. Recent discussions of a peace plan do not remove the need for the UK and its allies to be ready for another Russian adventure in the near future, however the final peace plan is arrived at.
The announcement on 19th November by the MOD of ‘at least 13 potential sites’ for munitions and energetics factories has to be welcomed. Although this announcement comes after 33 months of fighting in Ukraine. However – it is anticipated that the first energetics factory will break ground in the next year. How long will it take for that factory to be complete? How long will it take to train the personnel to operate the machinery and equipment?
To be clear, this announcement is very welcome and the jobs that will flow from it also. It must be remembered that what failed in February 2022 was a credible deterrence. Russia did not believe that the west would come to the aid of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. Putin also hoped that a bi-product of his invasion would be to cower the west, particularly European governments, into acquiescing in a fait accompli by Russia. Developments such as this announcement should ensure that the UK has the materials necessary to fight a war against Russia, always assuming that Vladimir Putin doesn’t start blowing up our munitions factories before they’re built.
HCDC report – the UK’s contribution to European security
The House of Commons Defence Committee has finally produced a report assessing the UK’s contribution to European security. This report is labelled as the ‘sixth report of session 2024 – 26’. Perhaps not surprisingly it has come to many of the same conclusions that will be recognised by readers of this Commentary. The protocol for these reports is that the government is required to furnish a response to it, so we will have to wait and see what the response will be.
Given that the new parliament was summoned it July 2024, the HCDC has been alarmingly dilatory in examining the most pressing military question of the modern era. The contents of this report are to be commended, particularly its comments about defence of the homeland and engaging the public more in an understanding of the need for defence. But surely this matter must rate more urgency, if the HCDC is to be taken seriously.
Offset
The UK government has repeatedly stated that it sees the defence sector as one area that will help to power economic growth. However, as has been reported in previous editions of Commentary, industry has yet to see the benefits of this. One possible route to achieving this could lie in the obscure policy of Offset.
If country A contracts with a manufacturer from country B to purchase some big and expensive kit – think jets or similar, then country A can require any foreign company to provide some input to the economy to ‘offset’ the cost of importing this equipment. This practice can mean that the foreign supplier provides up to 100 per cent of the contract value, or a smaller proportion. The offset can be direct investment into the sector concerned – maybe in the supply chain, or by locating some element of the production in the country concerned. Alternatively an ‘indirect offset’ can be applied whereby a certain amount of investment goes to areas of the economy unrelated to the defence sector.
The MOD published a written consultation on Offset policy on 23rd October and invites all those with an interest or an opinion on this matter to provide responses by the 23rd December this year. Many in the defence sector have been calling for such a policy for many years. UK manufacturers who compete for contracts in overseas markets will have had experience of this policy. Not unreasonably, many countries who buy expensive and technologically advanced equipment from the west wish to use the opportunity to develop their own defence industries, so that they can support the equipment locally, or offer their own exports. Moreover, since many of the top level contracts are G 2 G (Government to Government) deals, these exports are a way of deepening defence relationships. A notable example was the effort to secure the sale of Rafale aircraft to India, where the French government offered nuclear energy technology to support their offering.
It has to be hoped that before the MOD contracts for any more ‘foreign’ equipment, it considers the possibility that an Offset policy will represent. Much in the aerospace and defence sector is paid for in US dollars, if implemented an offset policy will help with the balance of payments (a phrase that was very common in the 1960s & 70s). Many UK based but foreign owned defence contractors will no doubt cite their presence in the UK as a form of offset – which the MOD and government more widely should acknowledge. However, there are some companies who receive a great deal of taxpayers’ money and who have not yet taken the opportunity to invest in the UK supply chain. Perhaps they will do so now.
Public Accounts Committee – F35
The PAC published its report on the F 35 programme on 31st October. It is damning by faint praise, of the MOD’s management of some of the wider elements of the F 35 acquisition. The F 35 remains one of the most advanced aircraft of its type. It should be remembered that the lift fan for the B variant is manufactured by Rolls-Royce at their Filton plant. The PAC draws attention to such aspects as the facilities at RAF Marham, and the likelihood of skills shortages reducing the capability of the aircraft.
Operationally, the PAC draws attention to the lack of a stand-off capability, and one naval aviator told the author that the B ‘has short legs’ implying a limitation on its military effectiveness. The MOD plans to provide a stand-off capability at a future date. This should be an Urgent Operational Requirement.
The MOD originally pledged to purchase 138 aircraft. 48 have been delivered and the MOD intends to acquire a further 15 B variants, plus an additional 12 A variants, which will form the nuclear strike force. A total of 75. The MOD has recently declared Full Operational Capacity for the F 35 – 2 squadrons, many of which were deployed during the recent CSG 25 on HMS Prince of Wales.
Readers of Commentary will be familiar with the gripes that surrounded the early days of the Eurofighter Typhoon. Arguments about workshare and costs. Some questioned the usefulness of such an aircraft in the post-Cold War era. Many of the same arguments are being rehearsed now by some about the F35. The recent sale of Typhoons to Turiye shows how useful that aircraft still is. The capability that the F35 represents should be seen as an asset to the UK’s armed forces.
It should be remembered that 15% by value of every F35 purchase worldwide derives to the UK defence sector. The UK was a Tier 1 partner in the development stage enabling significant input to the design of the aircraft and its systems. This should stand UK industry in good stead in the development of the next generation of fast jets, and into the future of uncrewed aircraft.
A comment by the PAC is worth highlighting: “A root cause of the problems is that over many years the Department has adversely affected capability and value for money through its narrow and short-term approach to management and cost involving imposing delays and cuts to save money in-year. It has also failed to realistically appraise the programme’s whole-life cost…..” Some of the blame for this may lie with the MOD, but does much of the blame lie in the way H M Treasury keeps the MOD on a short rein when it comes to major projects? In year savings are forced on the department that ultimately result in increased costs of a programme over its life time.
Ajax
On 6th November the MOD announced that the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) has entered service with the British Army. It rightly emphasised that this will support 230 companies and 4,100 jobs. Ajax, it goes on, is the first AFV to enter service in nearly 30 years. The saga that tells the story of how this programme came into being tells us a great deal about what is at fault with the existing procurement system. Hopefully the new National Armaments Director has had a chance to read through the Ajax Odyssey, to see how anything that can go wrong with such a project, duly went wrong.
Those with long enough memories may recall that Ajax began life as a replacement for the very successful Scorpion series of armoured vehicles known as Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) – CVRT. This family of vehicles, Scorpion, Scimitar etc were deemed to be obsolete, and a replacement needed. It is worth stating here that the author saw Stormer vehicles, together with their starstreak anti-air missiles, in a forward location in Ukraine, in the summer of 2023. Stormer is still serving.
There then followed a long process of defining what the Army wanted. The initial iteration had the vacuous name: Future Rapid Effects System (FRES). This was further complicated by the advent of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, which served to side-line the FRES project in favour of mine resistant vehicles. Alongside this was a theological dispute about wheeled vehicles versus tracked. Ultimately General Dynamics won the contract. A former CGS told the author that a FRES style vehicle could have been in service long ago, which may not be a surprise to Commentary readers.
The subsequent furore about the vibration and noise problems led to a stand-off between the MOD and GD, which could have been avoided if the initial contract negotiation had been well managed. The author served in an armoured infantry regiment with FV 432s, which subjected us to both noise and vibration, so this is a known characteristic of armoured vehicles. It must be hoped that the vehicles now entering service are fit for purpose, as the army needs them. The last thing the Army and the MOD need is another scandal relating to hearing loss due to service on the Ajax class of vehicles.
Industrial Resilience
On 4th November, the National Preparedness Commission published a report assessing the UK’s industrial resilience. This should be of significant interest to Commentary readers, given Russian and Chinese attempts to disrupt our way of life. The recent cyber-attack on the car manufacturing of JLR is a timely warning of what could happen if Russia or other states stepped up their Hybrid warfare campaign against the west. The report gives examples to illustrate the extent of the issues:
- Electronics production is limited to small-scale advanced sectors, while bulk electronics are all imported
- The UK has no end-to-end manufacturing capability for key products, such as batteries at scale
- In pharmaceuticals, the UK is heavily reliant on imports, with only 25% of generic drugs produced domestically
- Over 40% of food consumed in the UK is imported with the sector replying on just-in-time supply chains
- Some critical basic materials are no longer manufactured in the UK. An example is ammonia – little appreciated, but a key ingredient for a wide range of products including fertilisers, explosives, solvents and pharmaceuticals. The last manufacturing site in the UK closed in 2023. A further example of reduced capability is ethylene – the key building block to most materials today. SABIC closed one of the last ethylene manufacturing plants in 2024
- The UK is very exposed on energy, being reliant on intermittent renewables, which are not best suited to sustain shortage or crisis situations.
If the government really hopes that the defence sector and other manufacturing industries are going to drive the economic growth they seek, they would do well to read this report and reflect. It might also be worth CEOs of defence manufacturing companies to think about their supply chain and the need for buffer stocks.
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Nick Watts
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