Alan Nafzger on the Ministry of Defence, QinetiQ, the Hebrides range, a 298 billion pound plan and the old problem of getting clever ideas past the gate
Saturday 10 October, 6.50pm, the editor’s desk, a glass of something amber and a stack of procurement documents that I am reading for pleasure, which tells you what sort of man I am.
Dear Diary. Today’s government news included a modest announcement that will matter more than most. The Ministry of Defence and QinetiQ launched Project Safari on 10 October, described on the government site as a new Testing and Evaluation programme for faster front-line delivery. I came to it expecting an acronym and found a policy.
What Safari Is
According to the release, Project Safari aims to give small and medium-sized enterprises easier access to the UK’s sovereign test and evaluation facilities, so that new technologies can reach service faster. It offers a single entry point for small firms to reach the facilities, and it aims to streamline approvals for trial activity. The release says technologies such as hypersonic missiles, directed energy weapons and autonomous systems will be assessed and refined under the programme.
It links to the Strategic Defence Review commitment to raise defence spending with small firms by 2.5 billion pounds a year by summer 2028. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, signed an agreement with QinetiQ for the first design stage of a multimillion-pound investment in MOD Hebrides, the country’s largest weapons test range, to support hypersonic missile testing. He and QinetiQ’s chief executive Steve Wadey also hosted a roundtable with small-firm representatives, including Greenjets and Cambridge Aerospace. Pollard is quoted as saying that limited access to test and evaluation facilities had been holding back smaller businesses, and Wadey that Project Safari will transform how the UK approves new technologies. The release says the announcement builds on the Defence Investment Plan, backed by 298 billion pounds of defence funding over the next four years.
Why a Test Range Matters
Forgive the pedant. The glamour in defence is the machine, but the bottleneck is the range. A start-up with a clever idea for a cheap drone or a better sensor cannot prove it without a place to test it, and the places that exist are held by a handful of large organisations with their own timetables. The release is an admission, of a polite kind, that the gate was too narrow. A single entry point is the sort of reform that does not make a headline, and the sort that changes what is possible.
The release also mentions Project Brakestop, in which Pollard met an Oxfordshire firm, MGI Engineering, competing to develop low-cost, long-range weapons for Ukraine. I note it because it ties the procurement story to the war that dominates the week’s other business, though I cannot say more than the release says.
The War in the Background
On 9 October the United Kingdom delivered a statement at the Security Council titled Russia’s intensifying attacks on Ukraine speak louder than its claims to want peace. I have read the headline only, and I do not claim to describe the text. But the juxtaposition is instructive: in one place the government speaks to the world about the war, and in another it talks to engineers about how to get a prototype tested by Thursday.
The government also published a response to an agreement between the United States and Russia on 9 October. I have not read it and so I will say nothing about it, except that an editor who comments on documents he has not read is a columnist.
The Commentary From the Shelves
Our archive has been watching defence spending with a sceptical eye, and the satire is worth a visit if you need to be reminded that procurement is never as elegant as its press releases. See the piece on UK defence exports rising by 4,000 percent, mostly peacekeeper tea kettles for NATO, a comedy that works because everyone has seen a contract in which the small items were large. See also NATO’s new defence doctrine, and the more pointed piece on billionaires reinventing missile defence, which asks the question that follows every defence boom: who is selling, and to whom.
These are comic pieces, not reporting, and they should be read as such. They are useful because the best comedy about government is built on the real shape of the thing, and the real shape of defence procurement is a long corridor with a lot of doors.
Three Things to Watch
One. Whether the single entry point is real. A website is not a reform.
Two. Whether the approvals are actually faster, which is measurable, and ought to be measured and published.
Three. Whether the small firms get the contracts after the trials. A test without a purchase is a hobby.
For the broader political comedy around Westminster, see our Westminster satire guide, and for the American cousin of the arms trade, Bohiney Magazine. If you require a headline for the occasion, Newsthump has several, and all of them are quicker than a tender.
11.30pm. The amber is gone, the documents are in a pile and I have written a single sentence in my notebook: the gate is the policy.
Good night, Diary. Test before you buy.
SOURCE: bohiney.com