The UK government has revealed plans to reorganise the Ministry of Defence.
The armed forces will also be reformed, with a view to ensuring "more efficient provision of defence capability and generation and sustainment of operations".
In an address to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors today, Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox said that there would be "a full review" of how the MoD is run, leading to structural reform and "a cultural shift".
The department is to be "reorganised into three pillars", namely: policy and strategy; the armed forces; and procurement and estates. The new three pillar structure is designed to "stop the constant over-specification and then respecification of programmes which has led to so many cost overruns and programme delays", says Fox.
The envisaged cultural shift would render the department "leaner and less centralised".
A new defence reform unit is to be established to oversee and implement the programme, and Lloyd's of London chairman Lord Peter Levene will chair a steering group of internal and external experts, to include Baroness Sheila Noakes, George Iacobescu, David Allen, Björn Conway and Raymond McKeeve. A blueprint for reform is due be completed by September 2011.
The armed forces review, meanwhile, is intended to "challenge some of the fundamental assumptions which drive force generation, such as tour lengths and intervals", says Fox, noting that it takes armed forces of over 180,000 to sustain a combat force of under 10,000 in Afghanistan.
First Sea Lord Sir Mark Stanhope, chief of the general staff Sir Peter Wall and chief of the air staff Sir Stephen Dalton will begin the forces review following delivery of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), due in October. Their work is to be completed "by the spring of 2011".
The defence reform unit will liaise with senior personnel to "find ways of devolving greater responsibility for the running of the services", says Fox, adding: "We must get away from the over centralising tendency that has become the hallmark of the MoD in recent years."
He anticipates changes to the services' senior rank structure, commenting: "We cannot demand efficiency from the lower ranks while exempting those at the top."
Estimating the unfunded liability in defence at £37 billion ($57.6 billion) over the next 10 years - £20 billion of it attributable to the equipment and support programme - Fox said that "short-term reductions" were required to "return defence to a sound footing" and that the SDSR was being faced with "unavoidably constrained finances".
Reacting to Fox's speech, the UK's Aerospace, Defence, Security and Space (ADS) trade association suggested that he should "challenge other departments to match the contribution to budget savings that defence has already made over the last two decades".
ADS chief executive Rees Ward asserts that defence spending amounts to "half the percentage of government spending and of GDP that it was 20 years ago", citing UK Treasury data. He adds that "the demands on our armed forces exceed what was originally planned within the current budget".
Source: Flight International
