[A-List] UK military: equipment failure

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

£6bn forces surplus irks MPs

David Hencke
Friday April 11, 2003
The Guardian

The RAF and the army are sitting on nearly £6bn of obsolete and surplus
stock while Britain's forces in the Gulf face equipment shortages, a report
by MPs warns today.

The report by the Commons public accounts committee says the RAF has £1bn of
obsolete stock and £4.4bn of stock which is not needed. The army holds £217m
of stock which is either obsolete or has no forecast demand.

The Royal Navy has not even been able to quantify what percentage of its
stock is obsolete. The total amount of equipment held by the armed forces is
worth £19bn.

The forces have over two million square metres of warehouse space to store
all these items which could be substantially reduced with better control of
stock management, enabling the Ministry of Defence to sell surplus stores.

Among the obsolete stock are more than 100,000 rifles and 4,000 radiation
detection meters which are 40 years old and relics of the Cold War.

The RAF has in store 1,775 long-distance refueling tanks - enough to supply
the service for the next 440 years at present rate of use - and 59 Tornado
anti-missile containers worth £22m which are past their fly-by date.

The report suggests the ministry should look at practice by private industry
to manage stores - or even bring in businesses such as car manufacturers to
organise some of the storage and supply of equipment.