The UK Defense Journal published a blog dedicated to problems regarding implementation of some defense projects in Great Britain. But at the same time, it can give еру answer to one important question: why the West for almost a year of russia’s full-scale invasion wasn’t be able to launch large-scale production of weapons, particularly to strengthen Ukraine.
In general, the problem is explained the following way: in the British Ministry of Defense the specifications of one or another project were changed too often, and simply took the word of the contractors about handling the work without a significant increase in costs. As a result, there were actually massive cost overruns, and no modern weapons available.
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As one of the illustrations, the failure with the project to produce a family of the Ajax tracked armored vehicles is mentioned. In theory, as many as 589 such armored vehicles should have been delivered by 2017, the delivery should have been worth 3.5 billion pounds. But as of early 2023, the British army has only 26 such vehicles, and they still need to be improved, due to numerous technical problems. The example with the Ajax tracked armored vehicles is important, as it explains why the British have not yet transferred the Warrior infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine.
Also, the project for the production and maintenance of Eurofighter Typhoon fighters. It is said that international cooperation is necessary to minimize problems with the purchase of components, if it is not possible to completely eliminate them.
Also, there were and still are problems with the construction of large ships for the Royal Navy. For example, the construction of seven nuclear project Astute vessels will end up costing twice more than planned, the construction of five destroyers of project Type 45 is 30% more expensive than planned with 2 years delay from the schedule.
A similar situation, was in Great Britain on the eve of World War II. But it had structural reasons: as now, the defense industry was concentrated in the hands of mainly private contractors who sought to integrate the maximum possible technological innovations into own products, instead of unification and standardization.
At the same time, the contractors promised to cope in the shortest possible time without cost overruns, and the British government believed. Eventually, several years of painstaking work had to be taken to transform the Spitfire from a sports plane into a mass fighter.
An attempt to solve problems with weapons production projects only by mechanically increasing the defense budget will not give results, as the UK Defense Journal reports. Instead, other things need to be done: minimally change the specifications for the development while working on it, sensibly limit the budget, and do not plan the delivery of weapons based only on the optimistic statements of contractors.
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