Defence Minister Payne trying to keep the submarine Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) on track. (Photo:
Andrew Meares via Canberra Times)
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Rarely are there
behind the scenes newspaper articles concerning:
- arms company marketing tactics,
- the thin
technical knowledge of defence bureaucracies, and
- the consequent Government
reliance on arms companies to explain the technical intricacies of the
company's submarine products.
Maybe
Governments also rely on arms companies to do much of the marketing (eg. on subs and "Joint Strike Fighters") to
ordinary citizens (whose tax money ultimately pays for these weapons)?
Fortunatly Phillip Thomson
for The Canberra Times,
November 26, 2015 has reported on the above issues. Here are some excerpts from his article. I've bolded and redded some parts for
emphasis :
"Defence
has handed redundancy payments to people they have re-employed as contractors
…The Australian
government was warned during the inquiry that its purchase of Joint Strike Fighters could be risky if it continued to cut expert public servants from the
Defence Department [DoD].
Defence would find it harder to tell the
difference between facts and ambitious marketing claims, said Mr Bussell, a Defence scientist of
more than 30 years.
"Industry
do a wonderful job at developing technologies but they also do a wonderful job at marketing those technologies,"
Mr Bussell said.
The committee
inquiry has been investigating the capability of Defence's physical science and
engineering workforce.
"Unless you have the in-depth detailed
expertise to question those marketing claims you're putting yourself at risk of
buying a product that doesn't perform to a specification you thought it
might," he said.
"It takes a long time for defence scientists
and engineers to develop a degree of expertise that allows them to look through
the cracks of those marketing brochures."
Professionals
Australia ACT director David Smith said "we don't have the expertise to be a smart buyer" in procurement
and sustainment because in too many areas the in-house technical experience was
one deep or at most three deep.
Mr Smith said the risks of being an ignorant buyer
existed in Defence's naval activities as well with two key senior naval
engineers working on submarines possibly accepting voluntary redundancies.
"[Defence] will have no
internal expertise [in submarine naval architecture] if that happens," he said.
Alan Gray, a
public servant specialising in technology for 25 years, said Australia's
technological advancement behind the scenes was lagging behind neighbours in
the Asia-Pacific.
"Too little attention is being paid to
recruiting [physical science and engineering] workers," he said.
A range of fields Defence would need people
to work in included satellite and communications technology, sensing,
propulsion, mechanical engineering, modelling and simulation and next generation batteries.
He co-authored a
report with Dr Martin Callinan which called for Defence to have a plan for how
it would deal with its technical workforce in the future in the face of
disruptive technologies and to better scrutinise in which cases it was best to
use contractors compared to in-house staff." See WHOLE
ARTICLE
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PETE'S COMMENT
So the Defence Science and Technology Group within Australia’s DoD appears to be suffering experience and technical knowledge problems. This is in addition to that other technical knowledge base, the Defence Materiel Organisation ('DMO'), being disbanded and absorbed, on 1 July 2015, into the DoD's Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group. Also a new Prime Minister and new Defence Minister, with new political advisers/offices may lead to a lack of continuity and depth in handling complex technical matters.
Presumably this is not adversly impacting the future submarine CEP process? Of course the 3 CEP contenders would be reluctant to talk about this publicly!
Pete
2 comments:
hi Pete,
This is an interesting issue you have highlighted, however the case being don't modern weapon systems have a some form of tendering process associated with the product i.e does the user of these system create the specifications. A manufacturer can make many a claim right and usually weapon or user trials bring forth the weaknesses
-harish
Hi Harish
So do you think Australia should be running a tender process instead of the CEP?
Regards
Pete
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