Watchkeeper drones cost taxpayers £1bn The British Army's notorious Thales Watchkeeper drones have cost the taxpayer a billion pounds over the past 12 years. The unmanned surveillance aircraft, operated by 47 Regiment, Royal Artillery, from West Wales Airport in Aberporth, have been struck by a series of faults, flaws and crew cockups resulting in a number of …
"The ministry "refuses to reveal the breakdown of fleet usage"; that is, how many Watchkeepers are available to fly and how many are stored in long-term reserve, something it does reveal for manned Royal Air Force aircraft."
you do realise "long-term reserve" is another euphemism for "hanger queen" or "christmas tree"?
Never mind long term reserve, if MoD ordered 54, now have 45, and have been very reluctantly forced to admit they've broken four, what of the 5 unaccounted for?
Possibly these hadn't yet been delivered, but on the basis of progress so far, it seems rather more likely that those five have also been destroyed, and MoD won't admit that.
Good ROI, that. If you're the enemy.
The Ministry of Defence ARE the enemy.
And their Death's Head elite brigade are Defence Equipment & Support, based at Abbey Wood near Bristol. They're so proud of their many achievements there's even a Public Hall of Shame.
The small number of combat hours for £1G of "toys" is only because we aren't currently bombing the crap out of any third-world countries. Personally, I would say that the number of hours NOT flown is a mark of a successful defence strategy and not something that should be criticised.
But it does also raise a question about the need or wisdom in buying F35s. Given that (at the current rate) the cost of just 1 F35 could keep all the remaining Watchkeepers flying for the next next half-century.
And if there aren't any combat missions for them, maybe Amazon would be interested in using them for deliveries?
"we aren't currently bombing the crap out of any third-world countries"
Does Syria not count as third-world? Because the RAF say that last year was their most intense in terms of combat missions in 25 years.
Of course, that's only busy for the manned aircraft. By the looks of it there's no useful role for the Watchkeeper, which begs the question, what's the bloody point of them?
@Zog,
I did in fact pause before posting it, I was going to Google it to make sure I'd quoted it correctly, but thought that might be a bad idea.
It's a sad state of affairs when you have to wonder whether looking up a bit of poetry on the Internet might mark you as a terrorist.
Two of these just flopped into the sea? Makes one wonder what hardware is built into them. Do they have a management engine built in, as has been reported as an issue on both Intel and AMD platforms? If so, is that an unexpected attack surface that could have been used by foreign intelligence? Of course, we can rule out neither software issues nor human error. I know human error is always a possibility but the Military usually has several safe guards in place to try a minimize this; especially, when testing equipment or using new equipment. TBH, I'm not a member of military so this is all speculation on my part.
They have a fancy laser sensor to detect if there's a runway or fog just below them, and stop flying in that case. Turns out that stopping flying when you're at altitude in a bit of fog is bad.
(The sensor was SUPPOSED to only be triggered by the runway, they only discovered the hard way about fog triggering it)
They are looking for some airships too.
Government are in luck, Airlander currently looks as though it's been given the MoD Midas touch without needing to waste billions.
Sure.
But (quoted from the linked article): "The aircraft, which suffered a similar mishap last August, had completed a series of test flights on Friday and was moored near its hanger when it broke free."
You'd think they would have asked a boy scout how to make proper knots or something like that after the first mishap.
I am having difficulty in finding the difference between what MOD Procurement is doing and grand treason. Are they doing it on someone's payroll or it is just incompetence is not relevant. What is relevant is the result which will make Vladimir's, Kim's and Xi's black ops planners green with envy. They could not have imagined what MOD procurement is doing in their wettest dream.
Am I the only one to find these two statements, applied to the same aircraft, mildly troubling?
" ... two drones were written off after they mysteriously flopped into the sea ..."
"... have successfully conducted a test flight in civilian-controlled non-segregated UK airspace ..."
Compared to the US, the British military has a relatively relaxed tempo of killing civilians by colliding with civil aircraft, and I do hope this isn't about to change just because some nitwits at Defence are hypnotised by new technology (which is sexy and *must* be deployed—rather like the Internet of Shit—because it's new and shiny, even if fundamentally useless).
hypnotised by new technology.....which is sexy and *must* be deployed
Drones are actually hugely useful to the military - quieter, less obtrusive, often much longer patrol and loiter times than manned aircraft, simpler, more reliable, lower capital and operating cost and essentially disposable. The Elbit Hermes 450 that the Watchkeeper is based on could be bought off the shelf for $2m a pop.
Unfortunately, that $2m is before MoD worked their magic, which means NONE of the attributes above attributes apply to Watchkeeper. Luckily this incompetence won't affect the fat salaries and gold plated pensions being earned every day by the dedicated, hard working and skilled people at Abbey Wood.
Good to see our cash going to French and Israeli firms.
Overpriced, underworked and not fit for purpose, but can't be scrapped as it would look bad for MOD/Gov muppets that signed off. Just more proof that those at top don't know their ass-from-elbows, probably too busy enjoying the free hospitality !!
Fortunately, this sort of thing is rare. Defence procurement is normally very efficient, and the taxpayer normally gets fantastic value for money. And, high ranking military officers and civil servants, very rarely take jobs with defence companies, and that never ever causes a conflict of interest.
If the 450 $2m a pop 64 of them would be $128m. Call that $64m over 2 years to buy them all.
What exactly does such a thing need in the way of specialized ground support equipment?
It's a subsonic propeller driven light aircraft, not an SR71.
Say $10m a year for all support costs. That's $120m over 12 years since 2005.
What exactly does such a thing need in the way of specialized ground support equipment?
Watchkeeper needs a whole battalion of experts and professionals. Here's just some of the exciting career opportunities open:
Official Excusers and Liars: "The programme is successful, and will soon be operational"
Cash-handlers: A billion quid in cash is very heavy, somebody has to move it.
Offical Losers: As in losing those additonal 5 Watchkeepers. Now, where did they go?
Trainers: To show the RAF and Army exactly how to fly a Watchkeeper into the sea.
Official Askers: "Excuse me, I'm from MoD. We've lost a small aircraft and I wondered if you'd seen it?"
Scraper-uppers: The equivalent of the clean up team in the Men In Black films.
Nope. The "as tendered" contract is usually let to a company bidding at or below cost price, and all the money is made in the endless changes and variations.
Even if the MoD specified an aircraft and forgot the engine, all the usual suspects would bid for it below cost, saying nothing about the obvious flaw, knowing that the contract would be revised. The lowest (ie most mendacious) bidder would then be awarded the contract, and then they just reel in the catch, doing the minimum the MoD ask for in the hope of securing multiple variation orders around the same basic problems. And because MoD insist of specifying kit down to the last washer, there's no point in contractors saying "That won't work! But here, we can offer you this fully working, warrantied solution, off the shelf, and we're going to make a decent profit on our price". In that case, MoD would haggle at the asking price, award the contract to somebody else anyway, start adding back in all the stupid ideas that meant the original tender wouldn't have worked, and probably blacklist the supplier for pointing out the faults.
really disappointing to see this silly comparison, no different to the BBC-que fashion of measuring everything in olympic-sized swimming pools stuck on top of 20 London double-deckers submerged nose to tail (beak to beacon) in the abovementioned pools. Why not compare it to the cost of bullets fired from personal assault rifles over (estimated) 2646 years of ongoing counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan, or something even more spectacular and irrelevant? :/
Hardly a silly comparison when the Navy can't afford to keep its ships seaworthy and at sea. All of the comparisons would seem to me to be entirely appropriate, and usefully representative of the gross incompetence and waste by the MoD.
Part of the problem is taking the lowest bid regardless of how realistic is was. Although the company I was working for bid on the Watchkeeper contract at "US" levels which probably didn't help. (Interesting maths though...)
To be fair, the MOD (and UKGOV) are pretty terrible at managing techy contracts -- trying to be very specific and lock down requirements to "keep control" without fully understanding the scope of the problem or issues at hand. Requirements inevitably change mid-project, which is always going to be expensive. (On one MOD contract in the last couple of years we worked for six months against a specification that we later discovered had been changed four times during that period - nullifying any effort upto that point...)
...would ever state in public that a 12 year old project would meet it's initial readiness requirements in another year with a straight face. This has less to due with the bidding process than the lack of competence and oversight in the worlds militaries. Since there are rewards for delaying projects and forcing cost overruns and rarely any penalties, everyone is gaming the system.
Say it with me! Transparency!, Oversight!, Penalties!.
Sadly, a billion and 12 years is now routine. If you want to see REAL graft look at the F-35 Flying Turkey. 22 years in development and I suspect left to there own devices, I will see a working fusion reactor before an F-35 meets it's full initial requirements. It's looking like at least a decade before it's integrated mission maps are working as paid for, and they have been fighting hard to avoid even starting testing on it's full weapons suite, so I expect that is going to hit some "bumps" as well.
The capabilities of these aircraft were designed to defeat threats from the '90s, and my cellphone is probably a more capable computer. We need to be funding competitive UAV designs with development cycles measures in years, not decades. Otherwise we will be humiliated by an opponent who bought their gear off Alibaba.
...but not too surprised at the price.
Given the requirements to operate in EU/UK civil airspace, this system is man-rated in a sense and definitely has to hit EU airworthiness certificate standards. That makes for a very expensive development and cert. IIRC the first aircraft development to break a billion was the DC-10 airliner and that was back in the 70s. Modern airliner development makes that look very cheap, by up to an order of magnitude. Yes civil aircraft are larger but the marginal increase in material is not the issue here. A bog standard B737 will set you back 25-50mil. I'm intentionally using civil numbers here because at least in the commercial sector you need to make a profit at some point so you get a better feel for real costs than if you are working with a Lockheed or BAE who is just out to screw you.
Bottom line- aviation is extremely expensive. Sucks to be a taxpayer. Can we try peace?
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