More here
Next meeting Mon 20th July 6.00pm Temple of Peace, Cathays Park, Cardiff
News St Athan PFI Military College
1. locals unhappy with plans..more here... noise from arms testing, ambush training,military jet training
2. The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have agreed to fund clearance
of the site.. £12.5M. I hope this means some AMs will ask questions
3. Qinetiq consortium denies £1.3bn hole
1. locals unhappy with plans..more here
The Vale Council is currently considering the extensive planning application for the Defence Training College (DTC), and the public are being invited to express their views.
Coun Roger Eustace told The GEM: “There has been much local support for the DTC, but the previous public consultations and exhibitions made little mention of the type of military training – which was always presented as low level. “The goalposts have now changed.” ..
up to three military jet aircraft training on northern cross runway for up to four hours per day...
“The range will also be used for armament testing, including 5.56mm minigun and the larger calibre general purpose machine gun. .....The area will mainly be used for ambush training comprising noisy initial demonstrations followed by a few hours of dry drills. Typically, there will be eight demonstrations per day consisting of two Land Rovers being ambushed by one or two thunder flashes, with possibly blank small arms fire from SA80 rifles up to 30 rounds ..
..............................................
2.The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have agreed to fund clearance
of the site
Rosalind Britton-Elliott Press Officer - Policy Desk Ministry of Defence : 020 7218 5903
DEPARTMENTAL MINUTE DATED 26 JUNE 2009 CONCERNING THE REPORTING
OF A CONTINGENT LIABILITY FOR THE COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE
DEFENCE TRAINING REVIEW
There is also a requirement for MOD to deliver a clear site at St Athan
before construction work can begin.
The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have agreed to fund clearance of the site,
with a pre-Financial Close maximum expenditure of £12.5M. WAG is, however, unwilling to
start work prior to Financial Close unless this work is underwritten by
MOD lest the Defence TrainingCollege fails to reach Financial Close.
MORE here http://www.antimetrix.org/
3. Qinetiq consortium denies £1.3bn hole
Government has offered Metrix an additional £44m of state guarantees – in effect promising to pay for preparatory work even if it scraps the deal.
Metrix has called its “fallback” plan “part of good project governance”.
So far the MoD has offered almost £100m of guarantees to Metrix.
more here http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c38a0078-6990-11de-bc9f-00144feabdc0.html
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Saturday, 20 December 2008
DTR should be declared dead
Qinetiq falls on concerns about defence outlook
guardian.co.uk - UK
We believe the risk relating to the DTR contract is now too high to warrant a more positive stance." The fall in Qinetiq has contributed to a 101.1 point ...
I guess they will sell this to anyone? Crazy!
Selling off the defence of UK to USA?
guardian.co.uk - UK
We believe the risk relating to the DTR contract is now too high to warrant a more positive stance." The fall in Qinetiq has contributed to a 101.1 point ...
I guess they will sell this to anyone? Crazy!
Selling off the defence of UK to USA?
Guardian 20th Dec 2008
Independent 20th Dec 2008
Telegraph 20th Dec 2008
Friday, 10 October 2008
PCS on non announcement!
DTR - Non Announcement
Yesterday the Shropshire Star had the following to say about the defence debate in the house of commons:
Thursday the 9th of October was another “non announcement” on the future of Package 1 DTR from the Minister for the Armed Forces Bob Ainsworth. Local MP’s Mark Pritchard both asked questions during the debate, an ad hoc version is below. Of interest was the fact that none of the Welsh MP’s made any comment.”PCS Branch Official H O’Harney at Cosford said “The news that further delays in the programme did not come as a shock to the staff at Cosford, they have been waiting for years to have clarification on their futures .The MoD seem hell bent on moving to Wales at all cost and the sooner the National Audit Office or Publics Account Committee review this programme the better since PCS are still skeptical that DTR is affordable. A £12 billion PFI carrying on in this current finacial crisis seems ridiculous given the risks and affordability issues. Our members at Cosford have made it clear that they have no intention to move Wales and the risk to the training of the Armed Forces is still real. It would appear that the MoD want to privatise at all cost despite the huge risks”
The response to a question, by the astute MP Mark Pritchard, Mr. Ainsworth: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has a national interest too, but he has a particular interest in this matter and, obviously, he pursues it. I am not saying that the costs have not changed. I am saying that we still have an affordable package that is far cheaper than the alternatives, and that has been worked on over the summer. We will be able to go ahead with defence package 1 and get value for money out of those proposals…..
This is another first for the DTR programme in suggesting that the “fallback posistion” is more expensive than the proposed move to St Athan !! No wonder the Department needs to give Metrix another six months grace to rearrange costings to fit. It is also of note that in the preamble issued to staff that the MoD have stated that the sale of additional sites plays no part in enabling the move to ahead. Strangely in their own Risk Assessment which was featured in the Private Eye magazine, this was one the MoD’s identified risks. The fact that the DTR IPT can try to spin another 6 month delay is a positive message to all the staff is ludicrous !! PCS will continue to campaign against this looming financial disaster.
EDS latest cockup
A computer hard drive with the private details of armed forces personnel is missing, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.
The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, along with details of their next of kin.
It also contains data on 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.
The drive could not be accounted for during an audit conducted by MoD contractor EDS as part of the ongoing Cabinet Office review of data security being conducted by Sir Edmund Burton.
Officials said they were "not ruling out" the risk that bank account details of personnel were held on the drive, which belonged to its IT contractor EDS.
..EDS are a key partner in the Metrix consortium to deliver training in the biggest PFI ever at St Athan.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Hutton & New defence team
New Defence Ministerial team announced
A Defence Policy and Business news article 6 Oct 08
Following the appointment on Friday, 3 October 2008, of the Rt Hon John Hutton MP as Secretary of State for Defence, further changes to the Defence Ministerial team have been confirmed.
L-R: Quentin Davies MP, the new Minister for Defence Equipment and Support and Kevan Jones MP, the new Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Minister for Veterans
[Picture: Allan House]
Quentin Davies MP will become Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, with the Rt Hon Baroness Taylor of Bolton PC moving to the newly-established appointment of Minister for International Defence and Security, supporting the Defence Secretary on NATO, ESDP and international issues; she will continue to lead on defence matters in the House of Lords.
Kevan Jones MP will become Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Minister for Veterans. Bob Ainsworth will remain Minister for the Armed Force
Saturday, 4 October 2008
The St Athan Defence Training Academy: the future of British education?
latest SGR Newsletter : Autumn *2008*
The St Athan Defence Training Academy:
the future of British education?
Stuart Tannock discusses the disturbing implications of the Ministry of
Defence's new multi-billion pound training academy.
Britain's largest education and technology investment project in recent
memory has been developing quietly under the public's radar. It is time we
paid attention. In January 2007, the Ministry of Defence awarded an £11
billion contract to the private Metrix Consortium (see Box) to build a
massive new training centre for the British armed forces at the village of
St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales.
St Athan, which is expected to become one of the world's biggest military
training establishments when it opens in 2013, will provide specialist
training in engineering, communications and information systems technology
to all three services of the British military. For the first time, it will
centralise in one location military training that is currently done in sites
across the country.
Supporters of St Athan emphasise that the Academy will use state-of-the-art
technology and training methods such as neurolinguistic programming,
e-learning technologies, computer-based training, computer-aided
instruction, emulation, simulation and Web-based systems. St Athan, they
claim, "breathes life into the classroom of the future model which for many
years now has been anticipated by futurologists and thought leaders in the
education community." St Athan represents a "model for training in this
country" that will enable Britain to realise Lord Leitch's vision of gaining
"world leadership in skills."
Why should any of this worry us? There is the fundamental question of why we
should support such a massive outlay of taxpayer money on a military that is
still involved in fighting an illegal war in Iraq – and in a country,
Britain, that already boasts the world's second-largest military budget.
Beyond this, St Athan represents three developments which should be
attracting extended public and political debate, but which instead have
received little attention, beyond a small, local campaign against the
Academy that sprung up in Wales after the project was first announced.
First, St Athan is part of a political project of privatising the British
armed forces, and turns over responsibility for military training to a
private, for-profit consortium. At a time when, across the Atlantic, US
Congress is holding investigations into abuses perpetrated by private
military companies such as Blackwater in Iraq, Britain is rushing headlong
down the same path of military privatisation that the USA has gone down
before. This privatisation, moreover, makes the British government a direct
partner of one of the world's largest and most controversial arms dealers,
Raytheon, which is a core member of the St Athan Metrix Consortium.
Second, St Athan represents a major leap forward in Britain's participation
in the global arms trade. The Metrix business model for maximising profits
at St Athan is to maximise the amount of training it provides, through
serving not just the British military but militaries from around the world.
Between 2002 and 2005, the Ministry of Defence provided military training to
more than 12,000 personnel from 137 countries, many with poor human rights
records. With St Athan, this trade promises only to increase.
Third, St Athan represents another step up in the ongoing militarisation of
British education. The Open University – whose Vice-Chancellor, Brenda
Gourley, claims that universities should be "beacons that reflect the very
best of which the human spirit is capable" – is a direct partner in the
Metrix Consortium. Schools around the Vale of Glamorgan are making plans to
train local youth for jobs at the St Athan Academy, while colleges and
universities across South Wales, which have already been extensively
militarised over the past decade, are exploring new Academy contract
tie-ins. Indeed, one reason why we shouldn't expect Cardiff University, the
premier institution of research and learning in the region, to lead any
critical investigation into the St Athan project is that, in 2005, it signed
a long-term strategic research partnership with QinetiQ, another core member
of the Metrix Consortium.
Promoters of the St Athan Defence Training Academy claim that it
represents the future of education in Britain. Without public
investigation, debate and critique of St Athan and other military
research and education projects across the country, there is a
strong possibility that this will come true.
If it does, it will not be for the better of Britain or anywhere
else in the world.
Action
• To find out more about the issue or to join the Stop the St Athan
Academy campaign, see http://www.cynefinywerin.org.uk or
http://www.no2militaryacademy.com
http://www.antimetrix.org
Monday, 29 September 2008
EDS MOD project costs treble!
New Labour's unlucky 13 IT projects here
Now the Labour Party's conference, which was held in Manchester, is finished, I've looked at the lessons and what went wrong on 13 large, government IT-based projects and programmes:
- Magistrates' courts
- Schools
- Intelligence Services
- GCHQ
- Passport Service
- National Health Service
- Rural Payments Agency
- Criminal Records Bureau
- HM Revenue and Customs
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Department of Health
- Department for Innovation Universities Skills
- Ministry of Defence
The analysis is tied in with an analysis and comment, to be published in Computer Weekly this week, on Labour's track record on managing big IT-based projects and programmes.
Ministry of Defence (EDS are one the METRIX consortium - why would you hire these people?)
The expected costs of the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) are £7bn - when Parliament was told the costs would be £2.3bn. The National Audit Office in July 2008 found there had been "major delays to the roll out of the first stage of the DII programme. The Department contracted to have 62,800 DII terminals in place at permanent defence sites by the end of July 2007. At the end of April 2008, only 29,000 had been delivered
"Currently the end date for installation of increment one is running 18 months late against the estimated latest completion date at contract signature".
The cost of the project was announced originally at about £2.3bn, but the latest cost estimate is £7bn, though not because of any fault of the main contractor EDS. The National Audit Office found the costs of the DII contracts with the Atlas consortium, led by EDS, are under firm control. The MoD paid EDS less than the supplier had originally expected because of an 18-month delay in the roll-out. The difference in costs is because the MoD was not open and candid when announcing the costs originally. The DII programme "assumed that the roll-out of infrastructure and terminals would be more straightforward than transpired," said the National Audit Office.
Allied article: Why can't new Labour get IT right?
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