Recommendation 12

The Department admitted that the programme’s reset in 2018 had been disappointing, and it recognised that the revised programme schedule had been unrealistic.24 It said it had attempted to meet the planned in-service date by accepting an incremental build-up of capability, using a series of ‘capability drops’. By this arrangement, the Department agreed that General Dynamics would deliver vehicles in four phases, with each drop adding capabilities. However, the introduction of four capability drops across six variants introduced more complexity into the programme whereas, with hindsight, the Department said that it was greater simplicity that the programme had needed.25