UK awards £4m contract for AS50 sniper rifle parts

1. Graham Moore/Supportive Bloke How does this contract work, Sirs?

   Heavens, why the intermediary?

   • Most DE&S contracts have to be put out to tender. Where normally you require 3 bids from different manufacturers. However as Accuracy International (AI) owns the rights the weapon, whose information has not been shared. DE&S are allowed to go with the source OEM. Why they have an intermediary I am not sure, as in the past DE&S have contract straight to AI?

     • It was my point DaveyB.

   • Wow! Great contribution.

     • He is called Trev

   • Superb question DB!

     Over the years Babcock has been getting ever more closely involved in Equipment Support for Land systems and now leads with provision of Level 3-4 maint and also arranging contracts in support by other contractors.

     Back story. Back in the day my old Corps, REME, ran a number of static workshops (largely civilian manned) and also ran Contract Repair Branch – they were all subordinated to an in-house organisation (later designated an agency) in April 1993 – the Army Base Repair Organisation (ABRO) which had 11 sites throughout UK.
     Then on 1 Apr 2008, the ABRO agency merged with DARA, the Defence Aviation Repair Agency, to become the Defence Support Group (DSG). Then Babcock bought the land repair/maint side of DSG from MoD for £140m in Apr 2015.
     I have no idea how much MoD spends every year with Babcock for their services.

     Back in the day a civil servant on a modest salary in Contract Repair Branch REME would have placed a spare parts supply contract with a company such as Accuracy International. Now MoD pays Babcock to do this (to be a middle man) as part of Babcock’s remit to arrange support from contractors other than themselves, [as well as to deliver Level 3-4 static repair/maint for Land equipments].

     How does the contract with Accuracy International work? Without seeing the contract it would be hard to tell, but it is a non-competitive tender ie single source procurement – that is OK as no other company could make such parts. It is for the supply of components (ie spare parts), presumably a heck of a lot of them for £4m – it is not clear who is conducting the repairs of this sniper rifle.

     I stand to be corrected by Dern who has current experience but Sniper rifles are held in relatively small numbers (I think MoD bought about 450 or so) and do not often get a huge amount of hard use ‘in peacetime’. It is a surprise to me that spares for 3 years comes to £4m (the whole weapon costs £23k in 2008) plus of course whatever it costs the MoD for Babcock to have been the middleman.

     Others have commented here on the shortcomings of Babcock.

     • Sir. I suggested that Jonathan be present at at a UKDJ top table of posters, and in truth, he posted a fantastic posit on the NHS.

       However, I think now we are going Patreon and somewhat private member, UKDF should have a poll of members for the best posts.

       I hope I get several choices because there are several of you who need recognition for bringing so much knowledge to the site with Daniele being an OCD nerd on Organisation, Gunbuster, Airborne and Farouk being exceptionally excellent in operational detail and then people like yourself, Rodders, SB and Jonathan adding so much detail.

       What a great site

       • Hi DB, glad you liked my post about Babcock.

         What does it actually mean to be ‘present at a top table of posters’?

         I think a poll of members is a great idea. I don’t recall having experienced a poll on UKDJ ever. Do we have to have paid our Patreon sub get polled?

         I personally really appreciate your contributions – and fully agree that those you mention in the last sentence bring a lot of knowledge to the site.

         I like learning about the army since I left in 2009 from Dern particularly and learning about the other services also.

       • Seconded. Jonathan especially.
         Sadly we don’t see A posting much anymore due to his job, but he’s lurking.
         I’d add Dern to that group, and Jon. Probably others.

     • I was surprised by the contract cost especially when you quoted the unit cost of the original rifles. One would assume the unit cost had an amount of spares and maintenance factored into it, so where have all those parts gone in 15 years?

       But at £23k a pop for 450 units, that’s a contract cost of £10m in 2008. In straight inflationary terms, that’s around £16m today, which would make this spares contract around 25% of the original purchase price.

       If you consider the inflation of steel (the assumed primary material cost), according to US data, steel today is anywhere between 2x to 3x what it was in 2008, peaking at nearly 4x in 2022.

       Taking these factors into account, that headline figure does sound much more reasonable, but it would be interesting to see Babcock’s markup on that. Strikes me as incredibly odd to have outsourced things like deep maintenance and catering when we have entire organisations for cooks and REME who were supposed to and used to do this anyway (and presumably, on deployment, still do).

       • What you call deep maintenance (or Third Line repair) was always done by REME static (non-deployable) workshops which were civilian manned but commanded by a REME officer. Then this organisation became ABRO, then DSG and then was contracted out to Babcocks.

         Of course there was never any change to REME tradesmen in the Field Force be they attached at First Line (Att Tdsm REME, LADs or Regt Wksp REME) to an equipment-holding unit (Inf Bn, armoured regt etc etc) or at Second Line (in REME battalions).

         REME trademen do not just do their job on deployment (be it operations or exercises) – they do it all the time (ie in-barracks as well). They work at First Line or Second Line, which is Field Force. Just they don’t work at Third Line.

         • Hi Graham, I didn’t know that Third Line had never been done by REME “troops” before and that it had been civilian before being outsourced. Thanks for that insight.

         • Thanks James.

     • You are correct that Sniper Rifles are held in small numbers, typically a handful per battalion to equip the Sniper Platoon (remembering that each Sniper Pair has 1x Sniper Rifle and 1x Sharpshooter). However this isn’t the .338 Bolt Action L115 that the Infantry Battalions come equipped with, it’s a .50 semi automatic rifle and I’m not entirely sure who uses it.

       At £4m I’d GUESS the contract probably includes refurbishment and contractors to fix the rifles, rather than training REME armorers to fix a relatively niche weapon? Your field more than mine that though.

       • Thanks. I have visited REME armourers at 22SAS before, and they fixed a huge variety of specialist weapons.
         But in the mainstream army and for AS50, I’m not sure. They would be able to do simple repairs of course, but any repair or calibration task which needed expensive, large and non-mobile STTE (Special Tools and Test Equipment), might be backloaded to AI.

     • Moral low at Bovington and people are still leaving , less productive than ABRO days, it was a mistake merging with DARA , their management reduced productivity with their just in time parts system not working and other so called trendy modernization.

       • Thanks for the post Pete. As ex-REME I have an interest in what was formerly 18 Base Workshop REME!..and in all the other REME static workshops across the UK that are now contractor-operated.

         A mistake to merge ABRO with DARA and an even bigger one to sell the Land equipment support component of that merged organisation to private Industry who exist to make profits not to delier the best service.

         What does Babcocks do now by way of Base Overhaul of AFVs?

         • They do EBR T2 , CRARRV and hulls for CR3 .

         • Thanks Pete. You might have to explain the abbreviation EBR (I left the army in 2009) – don’t say it is Enhanced Base Repair!
           Have they been doing EBR on CR2 over the last decade?

   • So you got your comment deleted and decided to make a longer version?

2. A £4m contract for sniper rifle parts???? This is totally outrageous! Considering the weapon itself cost £8,000, what’s the rest for?

   Government leaving party handouts?

3. At AI prices u won’t get many for 4 million

4. I’m confused. Is this what I know as the .50 Barret anti material weapon that Pathfinders first got their hands on in the mid 90s?
   Or a similar looking weapon.
   Dern?

   • They are a long term sniper rifle manufacturer, must admit I didn’t realise we produced sniper rifles in this Country till last year but in an article I read at that time we indeed do and they are highly rated.

     • Accuracy International, yes. I know the army have used their sniper rifles for years. This one looked like a Barrett to my laymans eyes, so thought maybe they’d taken them over or something.

       • They look nothing alike to me, aside from the fact that they’re both chambered for the .50BMG cartridge and serve similar roles.

         The AS50 is gas-operated and the M82/M107 is recoil-operated. They also look very different cosmetically. No relation between the two and as far as I know there’s no relation between Barrett and Accuracy International

         • If you’re used to recognising and handling them, then, they won’t.
           To me, clueless with guns.

   • Accuracy International believed they could build a better “anti-material” weapon than the Barrett. This led to the AW50, which was a scaling up of the “Green Meanie” L96. The AS50 is a further development of the AW50, though is semi-automatic rather than bolt action. It is just as accurate as the bolt action version, even though it has rapid fire. It weighs about the same as the M82 Barrett, but by all accounts is more accurate. Which was demonstrated in a shoot-off competition.

     • Thanks Davey. I have only now received a notification of this post, weeks late.
       Thus late reply.

   • Different weapon. The M82 (.50 Barrett) is a short recoil system, the AS50 is a direct impingement gas system.

     • Ok, thanks mate.

5. Why go through Babcock , this will only add to costs , wonder who has the shares?

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