Mission Incomplete: The UK Military’s Procurement Collapse - and the 5% Fix

The latest National Audit Office (NAO) report reads like a catalogue of dysfunction. The UK’s £88m F-35 jets—touted as the crown jewels of airpower—can only perform one-third of their missions due to corrosion at sea, spare part shortages, and a chronic lack of engineers. Pilots are flying just 8 hours a month, well below readiness thresholds. The programme’s cost? A staggering £71bn—up from an initial £11bn.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy’s warship fleet is hollowed out, with 15 main vessels available, and most stuck in refit. The Ajax armoured vehicle programme is years behind schedule, plagued by vibration issues and delivery delays. The Bowman radio system, once slated for retirement in 2026, has been extended to 2035 due to the collapse of the Morpheus upgrade. 

Even basic recruitment is lagging—8-month delays in onboarding and gaps in key roles. Aren't jobs given and training begun within 2 or 3 months? Manpower or Office Angels in charge rather than SERCO or Crapita?

And what of NATO? The UK’s promised warfighting of 1k-5k troops division is a paper tiger. Equipment shortfalls, outdated comms, and delays in standard kit integration mean the UK risks failing its core alliance obligations.

Few would question Putin's Russia as a threat to EU with UKR invasions, Chechnya and Transnistria troops, yet even fewer would argue for throwing a huge 5% increase at NATO as merely encouraging more incompetence and failure.

And even fewer would argue that an extra £80BN per year would be better spent on NHS queues/AI scanners or Edukashun PCs/asbestos or Disabled welfare/fuel? Or what is the Army actually defending? Why fight and die in a trench for a bigger Food Bank? Or a better NHS fax? Or mouldy houses and town centres?

Could the Belgians run the Army or UK better? Certainly Benelux and Scandinavia and Germany have higher living standards. And if the first aim of Government is to defend its people then that's not happening given falling Mortality rates and 12 year skews or even clean water - redolent of the WW1 scandal of civilians too ill and stunted to be called up to die in a trench?

While the Drone Era suggests gold-plated kit like F35s are irrelevant compared to cheap and cheerful unmanned drones. And NATO may have 1M men under arms - but most based far from the Russian front and in desk jobs. And UK shockingly incompetent on Reserves with the basics of an accurate alumni list (Russian cyber hacking gain?) or even a standard training course missing in action. Swedish or Finnish lessons needed for UK's generals?

The UK's 70K Army struggling to field 20k bayonets rather than brass bands or horses suggests, again with drones,  manpower for desk warriors needs revising down? Why join the Army to sit in Catterick or an Estonian trench? Why join the Navy to sail around the North Sea or Falklands? Why join the RAF to sit in a shipping container playing Call of Duty and not even getting a go on a British Airways 747?

Are we looking at a lean 21C UK/EU/NATO standing army of 50k and 10k each for RAF and Navy with drones/AI? 30k joint Reserves. And 10:1 ratios of clerks to troops ie nearer 10k MOD clerks than 100k? 

Surely better use than 35k RAF flying 33% of patrols and 30k Navy with a dozen warships in harbour for months and years? And 70k Army to have just 1k troops sat in Estonia or Falklands?

The 5% Fix: A Reform Blueprint

It’s time to stop patching holes and start rebuilding both the military and what an army is for in 21C UK and EU. Here’s a five-point plan—call it the 5% Fix—to restore credibility and capability:

1. 5% Procurement Audit Cap Mandate that no defence programme exceeds a 5% deviation from its original cost and timeline without parliamentary review.

2. 5% Readiness Threshold Require that at least(!) 5% of all major platforms (jets, ships, vehicles) be combat-ready at any given time—no more “zero availability” months.

3. 5% Civilian Oversight Allocate 5% of MoD leadership roles to independent civilian experts in logistics, engineering, and ethics. Surely Tesco or Walmart executives could run Khaki procurement of a few thousand beanz, boots and bullets in their sleep? Or BMW and Ford executives produce hundreds of a bog-standard NATO tank, lorry, ship and jet?

4. 5% Heritage Investment Dedicate 5% of defence R&D to dual-use tech—like LiDAR, digital mapping, and comms—that supports both military and cultural diplomacy. The harsh reality is that short of Russian troops heading for Warsaw again there is little war-fighting for NATO to do.

5. 5% Transparency Mandate Publish 5% of all MoD contracts, FOI-exempt or not, to rebuild public trust and expose waste.

And from the above there are other strategic reforms:

1. Trim the waste of bases/kit in the Falklands and 2 mega bases in EU Cyprus - and what are the Kenya and Oman training bases for? Or EU Gibraltar? Or EU Germany bases/clerks beyond Catterick, Clyde and Sandhurst?

2. Junk any RN ship that requires a 6 month refit - speed up nukes subs recycling (how toxic is the Clyde and Sellafield?) or ship sales too. Argentina to buy RN ships to defend the Falklands? Is the clock ticking on the 2nd carrier as too pricey and too big a target? Le Creuset saucepans must be relevant?

3. Take an axe to the MOD clerks (duplicated with regiment clerks?) that have failed the nation with a 2.3% overspend: 100k staff at almost 1:1 teeth to tail ratios is absurd - and NATO as a group or individual nations even higher?

4. Sack 40 admirals with a DOGE review: absurd bloat with deputies and budgets tripping over each other for a dozen warships. Do we need so many brass bands or even Blue Red Blue army pop bands(!) on the rates and in Soldier(!) magazine? To serenade Spetsnaz, Wagner and GRU from Estonia? Do we need Khaki tennis and cricket teams or golf courses on the rates? Do we need 500 prancing army horses and stables? Do we need Coronation fake medals? Many soldiers seem to be spending their days sewing pretty meaningless badges on their uniforms?  As with the Pentagon $1TN (the value of a Microsoft or Apple) little of the budget is on practical warfighting kit but Khaki bureaucracy justifying itself and calling for more as it fails.

5. Tighten the revolving door of generals into BAE etc: encouraging fancy-pants kit from tax on their watch and then on their pension. The Andorra Threat shockingly ignored at the expense of Russians invading Dover?

6. Publish all NATO warehouses and kit to encourage the right stocks and trim out Warsaw Pact era kit from Eastern Europe. Is there really an ammo or missile gap with Putin bogged down in Donbas?

7. Synergise UK and French nukes subs and bombs to avoid duplication and minimise waste with doctrinal flexibility after no first use red lines. Do we need 200 nukes warheads each as MAD overkill and a Nuclear Winter?

8. One NATO tank, warship and jet synergy rather than multiple prototypes and variants - UKR showing vast levels of artillery and lorries etc all rusting away: exacerbated with 5% more to waste?

9. A UK and NATO Peacekeeping force for Africa with UN (perhaps UK best-placed with Eire defence links?): the last few, mainly civil wars, in Sudans etc. A safer world dawns with peace in Congo, now PKK Kurds and Turkey, and Gaza when not if - if Donbas, Haiti, Mexico and Myanmar are the worst conflicts then unless it creates a new war/enemy, for a bottomless foxhole of money, what is NATO for? Donbas, Gaza and Afghanistan hardly inspire confidence in its security role? While broken F35 jets suggest not even the basics are covered? Daddy Rutte a quango cheerleader or a reformer must be the question on most European lips?

10. NATO breaches on Ottawa Landmines a concern with Russian chemical and nukes attacks and civilian attacks in UKR show a 21C need for updating the rules of war and ICC oversight as with Bibi: do we need 47 USA/NATO drone strikes on Ethiopia this year? Do we need 500(!) RAF spy flights with USA/Israel over Gaza from Cyprus? Should drone and missile attacks as say napalm in 20C now be considered war crimes? Which Russian and Israeli or Myanmar generals or squadron leaders are on the ICC Most Wanted lists?

11. Publish the details of Cyber and Dissident attacks by Russia, China and Iran - are they war functions or fluffed-up fripperies of domestic psyops for tax and bog-standard crimes? Again surely a Tesco or Barclays lead best than a dozy Colonel Blimp used to twirling rifles or pretty parades?

12. Parliament monthly reviews of key kit eg tank armour/guns, soldier body armour and boots, ammo levels, training deaths/injuries/sex scandals, export orders or lack of them for SA80 or Ajax rather than AK47 or Leopard, surely minimal but effective? HIMARS the UK bazooka tank-killer success story from UKR surely key for most nations?

And specifically on UKR, NATO has failed us for 3 years with Russian drone attacks not just on Kyiv and Kharkiv but far across the Dnieper to Lviv (and Belarus a transit route/aggressor to UKR). A NATO No Fly Zone west of the Dnieper realistic as a Poland realpolitik zone similar to West Berlin or USAF Poltava as was, and NATO reviews of Transnistria and Konigsberg.

Again 3 years of UKR war seems to have resulted in NATO providing random kit for soundbites and photo ops rather  than a whole force function for UKR. And no publicised Reconstruction Plan.

Nor a clear signal to Russians of life after Putin? Or Israelis and life after Bibi? Tony Blair's Trump Riviera and Elon Musk Manufacturing Zone for Gaza surely just foolish lines in the sand again?

The UK and EU/NATO doesn’t lack talent, tech, or allies. It lacks accountability. Until procurement is treated as a strategic capability—not a bureaucratic sinkhole— and much of it taken out of the hands of Ruperts for vanity exercises, coronation medals and inter-service rivalry (the disaster of the UK carriers a key klaxon) we’ll keep spending billions for jets that rust and radios that whisper.