White Rhino’s are protected for a reason. White Elephants?

Per the WWF as of March 2018, there are only two northern white rhino left, both of which are female. They are protected round-the-clock by armed guards. 

The case for their protection is clear - if lost.

My question is "can case be made for the continued status and funding of the UK Governments own protected species – the White Elephant?"

Clearly, I am not referencing the scared white elephants of South East Asia, rather the hugely expensive and ill conceived and directed menagerie of never ending projects beloved of our political and military classes. To reference only three of this far from endangered species I offer the HS2 Project, the Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers and, the Army Ajax AFV programme; all three have already consumed, and continue to eat, vast sums of money with little rationale in evidence for their existence, support or of financial governance being displayed by their originators, supporters, and delivery agents.

HS2 – Sold to us as an ambitious project to add modernity and capacity to the UK’s rail network that as originally specified had the objective of providing state of art high speed connectivity between London and Birmingham, with Y shaped onward links to Manchester and Leeds for a total projected cost (at 2011 values) of £36 billion. As conceived and priced this may have had arguable merit. But today, despite having been salami sliced back to a single connector between London and Birmingham, its costs stands at an estimated £83 billion, possibly rising to £98 billion  a figure that is still not held as robust. The delivered result will never be economic and will deliver little of value; seemingly a projected 29 minute gain in travel times for those who wish to pay the price and have the need to travel between Birmingham and London. But, no enhancement to the needs of the wider rail network and certainly none to the long suffering commuter passengers of the Northern Cities who toil daily from East to West and back between Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester & Liverpool.

Mismanaged, over specified and redundant in terms of passenger outcomes the only winners are the executives and management of the single purpose management company of the project, HS2 Ltd, the contracted construction companies and their supporting consultancies who have pocketed the billions of public money this seemingly bottomless pit has absorbed.

Next; the QE class aircraft carriers – the Scottish job creation scheme folly of Gordon Brown. Whilst two undoubtable world class war ships the simple truth is that the Royal Navy lacks and has lacked from their conception the resource to support and deploy them. For 3 years they were little more than floating symbols of passed glory, useless without fixed wing aircraft to fly from their decks. Now one can sail with its design airwing of 36 F35 fighters  – provided the USMC make up the numbers given the UK only has a total of 36 of these aircraft in service split between naval and RAF deployment .

In a war scenario an aircraft carrier requires the support of a battle group if it is to sail into harms way and fight. In the only navy who has maintained the aircraft carrier as a true weapon and projection of the ability to dominate, the USN, Each US carrier sails with a strike force of two cruisers, three destroyers / frigates, a fleet axillary replenishment ship and an SSN nuclear attack submarine.

At this time the Royal Navy has a grand total of 19 additional major combat vessels ;

• 6 Guided Missile Destroyers

• 8 Frigates

• 5 SSNs

Currently, just over 19 percent of the above Royal Navy major combatants are active or immediately deployable. Of these one is a Guided Missile Destroyer, three Frigates, none are SSNs. However this matters little at the moment as both aircraft carriers are also in dock under maintenance.

Even at full deployment of the Uk fleet and charitably with the actual completion and addition and deployment of all the Type 26 & 31 Frigates currently in build and proposed for order the QE carriers will still only be able to sail into harm’s way with multinational support.

In counter part whilst the Royal Navy has an acknowledged man power shortage of sufficient dimension to prevent it manning all its ships it does have 41 active service admirals - better than 10 per active combat ship. Value?

Finally, The contribution of the Army to the menagerie of horrors, The Ajax AFV. Commenced in 2010 with an intended in service date of 2017 the current best estimate date is 2028/9 and the programme is officially listed as “troubled”. The  Programme cost to date? £5.5 billion.

A text book example of stupidity on stilts in procurement and delivery Ajax is based on a design that already existed a decade before the order was first placed; the Spanish/ Austrian ASCOD IFV which entered service in the early 2,000s. Ajax is a perfect gold plated example of how not to proceed with a procurement. Now 10 years late with umpteen changes to its specification that have left it both a decade late, hugely over weight (fully armoured weighing in at 42 tons, much the same as a Russian T72 main battle tank) and consequently not air portable other than stripped, with the less than desirable ability to incapacitate its own crew with excessive noise and vibration, it is a text book case of structural, cultural and leadership failure at both the military and governmental levels.

These are but three examples, regardless of party in government, of our executives long term love of endangered commercial species. A love that the advent of our current Labour Government means we can surely add Net Zero and a myriad smaller projects many likely nodded through unchallenged or without any cost benefit analysis as money is funneled and shovelled into the public sector without thought, or control, or demand for productivity gain in pursuit of ideological aims joined by further billions expended on ill considered over seas hair shirt projects as witnessed by the farce of the rush to disgorge the Chagos Islands to Mauritius with no plausible reason to do so and at vast expense and clear risk to national security,

We face an ever growing raft of ill-conceived and ill-considered policies that will cost the tax payer untold billions for no material gain or improvement in their lives or futures. In short our White Elephants are safe and multiplying, they are in no danger of the extinction faced by the White Rhino.