Insights into procurement: The

TSR-2 and CVA-01 programmes

 Background: The 1960s
environment
•  What can historical analysis yield to us ?
•  Before the Central Organisation for Defence:
The War Office, Admiralty, Air Ministry
•  Ministry of Defence as bit-player
•  Efforts of ‘Zuk-Batten’ axis to integrate
•  Underwritten however by Prime Minister
 The stakes for the services

•  Air Ministry had lost control of the strategic

deterrent mission to the Admiralty. Economic -
political - defence reasoning. End result the same
•  Admiralty needed to replace aircraft carrier force
•  Concept of the ‘decisive weapon’ and influence
on culture of the organisation
 The strategies
•  Island Basing. Island stockpiles, containing
runways from which force could be projected.
Threat to aircraft carriers. Plus ca change ?
•  Naval Task Forces. Aircraft carrier groups
capable of support amphibious warfare
operations. Validated following Kuwait
intervention of 1961
•  For RAF who controls air support mission ?
 Budgetary issues
•  The Defence budget on the whole is spilt fairly
evenly between the services
•  manoevering over strategy influences the order in
which equipment is procured
•  Therefore the successful service lays an advance
claim at the next generation stage of procurement
 The tactics - 1963.
•  Chief of the Air Staff sought to make direct
comparison between Island Basing and carrier
strategies
•  The Admiralty arguably abetted by the Chief of
Defence Staff seek to push forward Buccaneer as
joint-service replacement for TSR-2
•  Chief Scientific Officer as Arbiter: Visibility,
flexibility, cost. Issue of quantitative versus
qualitative methods
 The tactics - 1964
•  Turnover in ministers and lack of co-ordination
allows projects to retain momentum
•  April fools day 1964, new MoD created
•  October - Labour government elected with small
majority in House of Commons
•  ‘Weekend of the Crunch’ briefing on defence at
Chequers to establish policy
 1965 - Defence Review in
progress.
•  Cabinet Defence and Oversea Policy
Committee as pivotal. personalities count.
•  Healey on TSR-2 ‘we could not afford the
successor... the problem would be postponed’.
Ability of new government to make difficult
decisions. F-111A as concession.
•  Air Force hit back ‘the case for dropping
carriers’.
 The Defence Review 1966
•  Mountbatten (Navy) had been replaced by Hull
(Army) as Chief of the Defence Staff
•  RN rejected offer of two US aircraft carriers for
$30m each in favour of CVA-01
•  Bargaining issue. RN only requested one carrier in
order to get ‘toe in the door’
•  RAF’s creative use of geography to show veracity
of Island Basing strategy
 The aftermath.
•  9 days before the 1966 General election the
Minister for Defence (RN) and 1st Sea Lord resign
•  Currency crises cause not only loss of TSR-2 and
CVA-01 but cancellation of F-111A
•  Relations soured for sometime between RN and
RAF
 Conclusions
•  What role does strategy serve in peacetime ?
•  Are force structures victim to service cultural
‘myths’ ?
•  Procurement is as much a political process as a
technical, military, or scientific one