According to the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) Annual Report 2022-23, the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) Clyde Infrastructure Programme remains on track, despite increases in its overall expected cost.
Due to its sensitive nature, the project’s Delivery Confidence Assessment rating is exempt under Section 26 of Freedom of Information Act 2000 (Defence).
The Clyde Infrastructure Programme is an extensive plan to manage the design, delivery, and transition into operational use of new and updated infrastructure facilities at HMNB Clyde.
The project aims to ensure the safe and secure operation of submarines, facilitate the arrival of the next-generation ‘Successor’ Ballistic Missile Submarines, and establish a single submarine centre of specialisation.
The project’s end date remains scheduled for 1st April 2032. While the financial forecast for the year is £111.2 million, marking a budget variance of less than 2% against the initial budget of £113.48 million, there has been a significant increase in the departmentally agreed Whole Life Cost.
The cost rose from £1.585 billion to £1.869 billion, primarily due to challenges encountered in a nuclear and operational environment, according to the report.
The GMPP report notes that the Clyde Infrastructure Programme has undergone a Reference Class Forecasting analysis focused on the Faslane and Coulport Portfolios. The increased Whole Life Cost takes into account operational constraints, resource availability, extraordinary inflation, and material availability.
The UK keeps spending big money on an establishment the Scottish Government intend to shut down once independent. Maybe the money would be better spent on an alternative study for a new site in England?
The problem is where would you put it, there aren’t that many places with such easy access to deep water. When they looked at this pre 2014 it pretty well came down to Milford Haven and that up isn’t exactly with all the Tankers around.
East coast is a no no due to shallow waters and increased transit time, South coast at Portsmouth and Plymouth are too shallow and already busy. The North west coast is to shallow do that leaves Milford Haven or possibly Falmouth.
The Clyde is at present the optimum solution and building from scratch would be hugely expensive.
In seem to remember 2 of the options were to to move the SSBN to Kings Bay and the SSN to Gibralter.
As for the independence movement well let’s just see what the next General Election brings. Also whatever the SNP says they want to do, they may find reality involves compromises due to the massive impact doing that would have on the Scottish economy. The Clyde facility is the 2nd largest single employer in Scotland and then there is Lossiemouth, Kinloss, Babcock, BAe, Thales and Weirs to be lost.
I don’t see the US, EU or NATO being happy with them booting the CASD out of Scotland, after all it is primarily declared to NATO.
Exactly.
For now, the SNP is in a doom dive, so imo it’s better to invest in present resources, rather than for something that may never happen.
Lucky it’s not up to the Scottish government to decide. People in Scotland voted to stay in the UK and we should respect that, the Scottish government has as much power to leave the UK as a county council in England does or the local council of some island much like Orkney and the Isle of White which have both “threatened” independence.
The Scottish government actually no longer even has a position on Scotland leaving after failure in the courts and sturgeon leaving. SNP policy (which is not the same as the Scottish government) is not even set.
The SNP is the Scottish Government in all but name as their vote share is huge. At the next election, the Scottish people will be asked to vote SNP to demonstrate the intent of the people on this issue. However, other parties have seen some resurgence, which may redirect the independence question? As long as the debate rumbles on the doubts over the future of the Clyde bases will persist.
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Wow Jack, that’s the most intelligent post you made here. Keep up the good work.
Heh, heh. 👍
😀
First correct post you have submitted, good lad keep that standard up!
Putin just added this site to the banned list
If there is one element of defence spending where cost is no object, it is infrastructure. Build build build!
(Well, getting a large educated manpower pool is also up there in importance as well)
All necessary I presume. Nuclear seems to be something where risk is managed regardless of cost.
Bloody expensive though having SSBNs.
With the Ayatollahs about to test their first nuclear bomb and Kim il Fat-boy perfecting N Korean MIRV technology with frequent long range ballistic missile tests, I’m jolly pleased that we do have a CASD!
The world is getting a lot more dangerous that us for sure.
In an odd way Mad Vlad has done the West a favour by waking everybody up to the emerging threats.
Yup CASD is good insurance ATM.
SB wrote:
The problem as I see it for the Uk, is our Political elites have yet to wake up and smell the coffee. For a start I feel that the Conservatives subscribe to the view that the writing is on the wall for Putin , resulting in a new regime which will cut back Military spending and align itself with the west and thus any extra spending on the Military is unnecessary and better off spent elsewhere like on India, China or Pakistan.
Labour have stated (like the conservatives did in 1980) that the Uk should only look at the European theatre and whilst they claim they would increase spending, they fail to mention that would entail sweeping cuts in anything that isn’t needed in the European theatre in their ‘East of Suez’ part 2
Libs, Greens have stated they would declaw the military, (even to the extent of getting rid of the military altogether
SNP. Well are the SNP.
Hi Farouk, If you had posted this early last year I would have agreed with you 100%. Unfortunately something else is presently tying the U.K. governments hands. It’s not political wishes but both Labour and the Conservatives know that right now and for at least another year we cannot do anything more to boost defense expenditure.
A few years ago we could just borrow money as required by issuing Government bonds, which is what all countries do. The U.K. was able to issue these at @2 – 3% interest and we had inflation at 1.5 -1.75%. So each year we spent £30/35 billion on interest to service that debt.
As our inflation rate was really low we issued about a 1/3 of the bonds to pay interest tied to our inflation rate plus a little bit more. Which may seem odd but at the time it was the much cheaper option.
Unfortunately that has backfired massively as we are now paying very high rates of interest on those loans because we have high inflation (much worse than most other countries).
That sounds really boring so to put in context, this year HMG will raise about £1000 billion in revenue and £110 billion of that will be spent on interest on our debts.
Thats twice the U.K. Defence budget at present, hence no money available and probably why BH is going.
He has managed to get some extra money but until late next year there is nothing in the pot.
David wrote:
North Korea held a very interesting miltary parade the other day. where they displayed (to be taken with a pinch of salt)
2 new UAVs based on the Global Hawk and the Reaper as well as the Hwasong-18 solid-fuel ICBM which is a step up from the liquid fulled ones which came before.
Iranian style 5th Gen aircraft with a BL/Lucas HUD?
There isn’t the manufacturing tech for something like global hawk or reaper.
Most reports that I’ve seen say the Hwasong-18 could travel 15,000 km on an operational trajectory, enough to reach anywhere in the continental United States from N Korea. Indeed, being able to design, build and launch an independently developed ICBM is an impressive feat.
But to threaten the continental US they need minaturised warheads matched to the all-important re-entry vehicle – plus convincing decoys. And a nonGPS navigation in flight system, the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, with each warhead capable of being aimed to hit a different target. Which can achieve a CEP of <100m, say
So far, the N Koreans seem to be only testing their missiles. But I would not underestimate the N Korean boffins, undoubtedly they will be working on the delivery system – which will have to be tested at some point
The money ney spent on the Clyde might have been better used on baling out a yard that was lost. There’s no doubt that another available shipyard would have helped with the production rate of the current programmes.
Andy The money being spent on the Clyde is absolutely essential and simply cannot be skimped on, it is just not negotiable. The biggest reason why we do not have larger conventional forces is that the 1st primary aim of U.K. defence strategy is to maintain our CASD. That sucks the life out of the budget for anything else and is presently at a high point on its cost curve.
We are renewing our SSBN fleet at the same time as expanding and modernising our Warhead stockpile. To do so both involve massive investment in modernised industrial facilities at Barrow and here at RR in Derby. And it’s all well and good building them but you also need to upgrade and modernise the maintenance and storage facilities so they can enter service..
In addition to that these boats require crews of very highly trained, technical people, who are all very easily poached away from the RN. Recruitment and retention is becoming a problem and providing them and their families with 1st class accommodation and facilities is also part of the improvements.
As for better spent on saving another yard, it may sound daft but U.K. naval shipbuilding is doing pretty well at the moment. BAe on the Clyde and Barrow, Babcock at Rosyth are all building at capacity the additional investment and orders are bring H&W back into shipbuilding.
So quite simply we have what we need and can afford to build the ships we need and according to the National build strategy. Previously we had a horrid tendency to build a lot of ships in 1 decade, nothing in the next and then find the yards needed to replace them have gone bust due to no orders.
In addition to the build yards, Rosyth, CL, AP, Plymouth and Portsmouth are all busy refitting, modernising and upgrading our existing RN and RFA ships.