The translation of KMW's notification that it was ditching this project went something along these lines I believe:

 

We are sick and tired of mucking around on this schittful project for a rubbish order of no more than 12x operational guns. We are NOT spending our millions on integrating a foreign FCS for a project that will barely provide as much profit, if even that. It is not worth our time and effort to be involved any further in something that has dragged on for such a ridiculously long period of time, despite DMO's protestations that it is in fact an "off the shelf" gun acquisition...

 

Our gun with OUR FCS is considered good enough to support Australian troops on operations in Afghanistan, thus allowing the Australian Government to refuse to maintain any sort of backbone and actually deploy a conventional combat capability  overseas, but despite this, we now find that our gun somehow doesn't meet Australian requirements. Bearing this in mind, as an interim measure, in order to shore up our potential legal liability given our gun doesn't meet Australian requirements, no calls for fire support will be answered and no direct support provided to Australian forces overseas by KMW contractors or equipment, including the PZH-2000 155mm self-propelled gun, currently deployed to Afghanistan.

 

We wish the Australian Government and Department of Defence all the best in attempting to find a competent defence contractor who is prepared to invest millions of their own capital, in a project that will not generate as much in profit.

Sincerely

KM-W

 

 

 

Thats pretty much how I interpret it also.  Basically "Stop mucking us around, our offer is on the table, call us when you are serious!!!!"

So what exactly is the issue thats causing all the hate and discontent? 

the usual sins:

scope creep

stakeholders shifting the goal posts

stakeholders  modifying the requirement to buggery

too many parties with veto control (see above 3)

and everything gf just said too....

 

Everyone knows about the big ticket projects that are behind schedule and over budget but there are also many tenders where the contractor, acting in good faith, gets shafted by the CoA's behaviour. They invest time and money into providing exactly what the ADF says they need only to be told that the item or service is no longer required.

 

Often, unfortunately, the CoA don't seem to comprehend what they are asking for, how much it will cost, or the consequences of not actually following the professional advice of the contractor.

 

Basically, the way the CoA often behaves is not dissimilar to what you see in disaster documentaries about building, or bridge collapses etc. were the root cause is established to be the owner bullying, harassing or simply replacing contractors who refuse to do the wrong thing.

As a Design Engineer/Test Engineer who took the M777 all the way from Prototype through EMD phase to Pilot Production to Low Rate Initial Production to Full Rate Production I am intimately aware of "Specification Creep" and the issues this can lead to with continuos need for Contract Ammendments and request for supplemental funding etc.  However as a completely developmental program where we were on the hairy edge of material science and manufacturing capabilities for practicvally the whole development cycle I can understand why at least for us thing were teh way we were. 

 

WIth regards to teh PzH 2000 I cant quite get my head round the specifics of the issue?  Im going to hazard a guess that whatever specification is creeping in cannot be a performance characteristic of the howitzer.  Similarily I dont see it as being a Fire Control Integrating issue between the PzH and the Raytheon AFATDS.  That type of message traffic is standardised or so I thought?  I can only image that the issues are primarlily arising from whatever Contractor Support aspect is also forming part of the total procurement deal.

 

If anyone knows specific issues and is at liberty to divulge I would be very interested to know.

 

Regards

 

Arty

...Kind of makes those of us in the States not feel so bad anymore.

Obviously, ours isn't the only government full of incompetent, ineffective (barely effective?), and inept bureaucracy.

 

Maybe it's just because we do all that too, but just on a grander scale, that makes us look so bad?

(Or could it that the rest of the world just considers it business as usual in the USA?)

So what exactly is the issue thats causing all the hate and discontent? 

I have regular contact with some very good and also some very ordinary individuals in defence. One common factor I have noticed between the uniforms and the suits is that the higher up the ladder they go the less they care about doing the job right and the more concerned they become with the politics of empire building and defending.

 

This a cultural issue that wastes resources at a greater rate than probably anything else. A common example is tribalism, with the head of one group or division targeting and attempting to bring down the head of another area in the same organisation. The worst I have, seen is one guy professionally assassinating and forcing out the bloke who replaced him after he had moved on into a better job. The ammunition he used to take out the new bloke being the fact that some of the legacy initiatives the old guy / assassin implemented during his tenure had been proven to be inefficient or dysfunctional. i.e. the bloke trying to fix the stuff ups of his predecessor, earns his predecessors ire for doing so and is persecuted for how things were before he fixed them.

 

This also happens in private enterprise, becoming more common as the company increases in size, but is also far more likely to backfire as private owners / investors are far less tolerant of having their money wasted than politicians are of seeing tax payers money go down the drain.

and push back with multiple hoops for them to jump through when making purchases.

the problem is that DMO are bound by Govt process - they don't make the rules, they have to work within the ones defined by the Minister, and in some instances in the recent past - the Ministers whim, the "pretend" Defence Ministers whim, or Cabinets decision, or even an NSC restriction.

All of these projects that go into delay require Ministerial imprimatur, all of them are subject to veto by various stakeholders (some who have a latent distrust of uniforms)

It's a complex beast, but blaming any one Division in Defence for a procurement delay is palpably wrong.

We work under whats referred to as the Kinnaird Process - thats a Govt mandated process, its got nothing to do with DMO, CDG, ADF, CIOG etc etc....  When we do a rapid acquisition to bypass and accelerate procurement then we get variations of the same problem.  eg everyone is "happy happy joy joy" about the C-17s, but they've caused their own headaches because they weren't done appropriately either.  Ditto for the fat ships. 

I can see it as a problem, I can also understand the PzH2000 design authority being completely unwilling to pay.  

 

You thought wrong, standardisation (eg STANAG 5620) deals with messages going into the BCP/FDC from observers, etc.  STANAG 5620 was a subset of some 52 TACFIRE messages (out of 250 odd I believe).  I assume AFATDS uses Variable Message Format which is bit orented not TACFIRE character oriented (COM) (like ADFORMS), but that its message set is generally the same content wise as TACFIRE for lots of obvious reasons.

 

The problem here is messages between guns and BCP, this is a national matter.  MLRS SPLL provides an example.  Its computer has an external message set using a COM type syntax, but its actual message set is unique.  I think the Germans built a special battery level C2 system for MLRS but UK built a electronic box which sits between the radio and computer in each SPLL and converts between MLRS format and whatever they us in the BCP (originally BATES, but presumabkle now upgrading to FC-BISA).  It's possible that PzH2000 works directly to ADLER (that would be an obvious approach, but Dutch use is a complicator), and my understanding is that ADLER started with a clean sheet of paper and did not even try to use 5620 messages internally. 

 

So what sort of messages are we talking about? Firing data (ammo type, charge, fuze type & option, bearing, elevation, fuze setting) are an obvious start.   Then there's set-up info from the gun such as coords, charge temp, regular data transfers from the MV radar.  That's all fairly straightforward and contentwise flows from the NABK i/o requirements in AFATDS, so building a conversion engine should be fairly easy but there's still the question of where it sits, in the gun or in the BCP, and do you modify AFATDS or the gun computer software or build a new box?  Not forgetting we're probably talking safety critical here ($$).  But you might also want non gunnery data messages sent to the gun (eg movement orders, sitreps and other network centric stuff) and the gun may report other stuff (eg ammo load, fuel state) which gets you into issues about what do you change/add to present/store what info where.

 

Ah the joys of interoperability of mil computer systems!  Notably difficult to retrofit if you were unable to specify detailed requirements in the RFTs and end up with two systems and no design control over either.  There's only one solution to this taxpayer $$$$$ and time.

 

Ministerial responsibility is important but you can't deny that Defence (civilian and the ADF) has some unique cultural issues that make it a particular challenge for Ministers to deal with. They have gone through Defence Minister every two years for over a decade largely for that reason. The Ministers have to be able to rely on their Department for advice to make those rules and if the Ministers are looking outside for advice that reflects poorly on Defence. At the end of the day people in the Department are paid pretty good taxpayer funded incomes to conduct themselves professionally in the interests of those taxpayers. If the Departments activities remain problematic just blaming the Minister isn't on as far as this taxpayer is concerned.

I have regular contact with some very good and also some very ordinary individuals in defence. One common factor I have noticed between the uniforms and the suits is that the higher up the ladder they go the less they care about doing the job right and the more concerned they become with the politics of empire building and defending.

Sad but true throughout the Government. Unfortunately "playing the game" is a fact of life for senior personel but there are too many that manage to sell themselves out  completely, if they ever gave a damn.  

This a cultural issue that wastes resources at a greater rate than probably anything else. A common example is tribalism, with the head of one group or division targeting and attempting to bring down the head of another area in the same organisation. The worst I have, seen is one guy professionally assassinating and forcing out the bloke who replaced him after he had moved on into a better job. The ammunition he used to take out the new bloke being the fact that some of the legacy initiatives the old guy / assassin implemented during his tenure had been proven to be inefficient or dysfunctional. i.e. the bloke trying to fix the stuff ups of his predecessor, earns his predecessors ire for doing so and is persecuted for how things were before he fixed them.

This also happens in private enterprise, becoming more common as the company increases in size, but is also far more likely to backfire as private owners / investors are far less tolerant of having their money wasted than politicians are of seeing tax payers money go down the drain.