14.1 |
Military equipment (post-conflict)
947.
The
recommended savings measures included further reductions in rotary
wing
activity
that would “restrict the support to Land collective training to 60
percent of the
requirement,
impacting directly on operations and tour intervals for pilots”.
Mr Woolley
added:
“This
conflicts with an increased
rotary wing requirement to support the likely uplift
in operations
in the Balkans and Afghanistan over the next two
years.”
948.
The MOD told
the Inquiry that, until 2004, it had been planning to replace its
Puma
and Sea
King fleets through the Support Amphibious Battlefield Helicopter
(SABR)
programme.500
The Initial
Gate business case in late 2003 had suggested that “the
most
likely
solution” was the procurement of 50 to 60 additional Chinook
aircraft with the first
six
expected in 2012/13 and the full order by 2025.
949.
The MOD told
the Inquiry that, during the planning round in 2004, as part of
a
broad
departmental affordability exercise, a £1.4bn saving was taken from
the total
helicopter
programme.
950.
The MOD
abandoned the SABR programme and, following a revision of
the
wider
helicopter procurement strategy, created the Future Rotorcraft
Capability (FRC)
programme.
951.
The Inquiry
asked the MOD whether the £1.4bn referred to in its statement
was
the result
of the savings measures proposed in Mr Woolley’s paper. It
replied:
“Not quite.
The paper presented by [Mr] Trevor Woolley … explored ways
of
removing
costs from the first two years of the Defence Programme. Among
the
proposals
it recommended were measures intended to save some £420m
from
helicopter
acquisition and support. These savings were spread across the ten
year
equipment
programme and the four year equipment support programme but …
were
heavily
weighted towards the years 2004/05 and 2005/06. Separate work,
known as
the Medium
Term Workstrands, looked at ways to balance the defence
programme
against
available resources in the years beyond 2005/06. The outcome of
this work
was
presented to the Defence Board in April 2004. It included
recommendations
to reduce
spending on helicopter acquisition and support by a further £1bn.
The
£1.4bn
saving mentioned in our statement of 1 March 2011 therefore arose
from two
separate
but closely related exercises.”501
952.
On 26 January
2005, the DMB discussed proposals on the ‘Future
Defence
Programme’
in a paper by Mr Woolley.502
The
background to that paper is addressed
earlier in
this Section, including that no specific provision had been made
for the “extra
equipment
costs required to support the possible deployment of a UK brigade
to
Afghanistan
alongside the ARRC HQ”.
500
Paper
[MOD], 1 March 2011, ‘Request for Evidence, Support
Helicopters’.
501
Letter
Duke‑Evans to Hammond, 2 February 2016, [untitled].
502
Paper
Finance Director [MOD], [undated], ‘Future Defence Programme
05’.
161