Lord Drayson says defence sector "shake-up" needed

Industry suffers from delays and incorrect estimates of costs

Lord Drayson has announced plans to give the defence sector a major shake-up in a bid to find a better way to manage projects and build up skills across the industry.

The MoD minister for strategic defence acquisition reform said the sector required a shake-up to provide the right equipment for the armed forces while remaining affordable.

Drayson made the speech to the industry on behalf of the Defence Industries Council in London earlier this month. He criticised the defence system, saying that technology is scaled back to cut costs, while projects are often delayed and cost estimates incorrect.

He said that skills needed to be improved in the defence sector, and announced a £45 million investment for training over the next four years. He also said no further cuts would be made to the defence budget in this planning round.

Drayson said: “Every major defence nation contends with both immediate issues and more distant risks – a temptation to sacrifice science, innovation and technology spending when cuts are required. And an incentive to make initial cost estimates which are unrealistically low – creating a false sense of affordability and storing up problems for the future.”

He used the building of the four Bay class landing ships, operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, as an example of a project that contended with these issues. He said that the Bays “cost twice as much to build” as originally predicted and “took far too long to complete”.

“The purpose is to control more closely what projects go in and out of the programme, and to be more active in identifying and dealing with projects at risk of 

cost growth or delay,” he added.