General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank former UK Chief of Defence Staff speaks up about the Mod in todays Times:
"Britain is at war, but one would never know it walking around Whitehall. For too many politicians it is merely another day of awkward things happening in far away places. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan appear no more than inconvenient blips — something to be muddled through until things return to normal.
And muddle is the word, as was manifest in a scathing report into defence procurement leaked this week. Its author, the former Labour adviser Bernard Gray, an experienced observer of the defence scene, blamed incompetence and “political fudge” for £35 billion of defence project overspending.
Moreover, The Times revealed that poor decisions about software have kept eight Chinook helicopters, costing a total of £259 million, in climate-controlled hangars during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. Such an error would never happen in the private sector without dismissals and a plain identification of where the buck stopped."
Read the article here
