Page 56 - Five Forces of Americanisation Richard Hooke 04072025 final post SDR1

The UK Defence Industry in the 21 Century
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The Five Forces of Americanisation

July 2018: Growing the contribution of defence to UK prosperity by Philip Dunne MP (former Minister for
Defence Procurement)
March 2021: Global Britain in a Competitive Age, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence,
Development and Foreign Policy;
March 2021: Defence and Security Industrial Strategy
March 2023: Integrated Review Refresh 2023: Responding to a more contested and volatile world
(House of Commons Library; Research Briefing 24 July 2024 Louisa Brooke-Holland, Claire Mills, Nigel
Walker)
2. Al Yamamah: “… in September 1985, the UK and Saudi defence ministers signed a memorandum of
understanding in London for 72 Tornados, 30 Hawk training aircraft and a whole range of weapons, radar,
and spares as well as a pilot-training programme”
(James Robbins, BBC Diplomatic Correspondent, August, 2016)
3. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher supported the notion that significant defence export initiatives were a
national effort, engaging several government agencies, notably the Foreign Office and the then Department
Trade & Industry as well as the MoD, supported by the UK’s Armed Forces and by Her Majesty the Queen,
HRH the Duke of Edinburgh and, of course, the Prime Minister. Even the Football Association’s international
coaching and development programme was a helpful tool in international trade and diplomacy, especially
in Saudi Arabia.
The critical relevance to its businesses (civil aviation, defence & security, space and communications) of the
British constitution, government policy, trade and diplomacy was reflected in the personal development of
BAE’s senior executives, informed by courses at St George’s House, Windsor Castle, the English Speaking
Union at Oxford University and at the Royal College of Defence Studies.
(Author’s notes)
4. In the early 1980s, introducing a computerised production planning (or ERP) system in BAe’s military aircraft
division revealed widespread inaccuracy of drawings, process layouts and part numbers. The solution
favoured by a succession of experienced production directors (veterans of Hunter and Harrier full-scale
production) was a combination of repeated manual interventions by hundreds of inspectors, skilled manual
workers, ratefixers, production engineers, “progress chasers” and storekeepers, together with the
marshalling of kits of parts required at least 12 months in the future, identifying the missing
components/parts and authorising them to be provisioned straight away. The end product was a relatively
bespoke series of remarkably advanced, effective and highly successful (both financially and operationally)
Harrier and Hawk aircraft.
Over 1,000 Hawks have been manufactured to date. A series of lightweight, multirole aircraft in four
configurations, it has been exported to 12 countries, including the USA.
There is a strong sense here that the UK MoD funded both its development and the modernisation of the
production process over several years, subsidising the wasteful inefficiencies of the early years. The truth,
however, is that BAE funded the Hawk development programme. It also took the decision to refinance the
derivative single-seat programme even when the first test article Hawk tragically crashed, killing its
distinguished test pilot. The decision to refinance was all the more remarkable because the Group Chief
Executive and his board hadn’t approved the project: they did not even know about the single-seat version
until it took off in front of them from the Dunsfold runway at a demonstration celebrating the Group’s
privatisation.
With a supportive ratefixer, a Hawk fitter or machinist could have three, four or more job cards “open –
work in progress” at the same time, accumulating time spent on a number of details or sub-assemblies until
it was appropriate to record completion. This is how the premium bonus system worked and how industrial
unrest was largely avoided.
That the original inefficiencies were tolerated for so long owed much to a single-minded and proud
(hubristic?) BAe leadership team, an undemanding customer, content to support “cost plus” contracting,
and, increasingly, an untapped and unsophisticated export market with deep pockets. Former BAe leaders
and Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO) counterparts later admitted to seizing what turned out to
be a unique opportunity to price export Hawks at a level that generated exceptional profits. This did not last
indefinitely.
As then BAE Systems CEO Mike Turner reported (to the Commons Defence Committee) in 2006, “BAE
Systems, British Aerospace, did not need a competition policy to say it needed to be competitive globally.
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