Yep.
Politicians waste money with penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions such as stringing out projects to push spending into the future, forcing painful decisions when that money finally has to be spent, & stop-start funding which starves industry of money thus forcing capacity cuts (e.g. layoffs of skilled workers) & thus start-up costs when the money finally arrives & work resumes. Even politicians sometimes recognise the problems, but they don't seem to be able to help themselves when it comes to short-term decisions (or lack of decisions) overriding long-term policy, e.g. the BAE shipbuilding deal, where to stop the waste of stop-start funding the government agreed (& made it legally enforceable by BAE) to spend a minimum sum per year, to ensure the retention of skills & facilities - & then failed to order ships to be built by those workers in those facilities! So we ended up with River Batch 2 OPVs, just to get something useful for the money the politicians had promised BAE & to keep those skilled workers going.
Building the QEs at Rosyth was another one. It was denied that it was chosen because of proximity to Gordon Brown's constituency, but that denial is scoffed at. We now have a yard which is set up for maintenance of the carriers which they can only get into or out of when the tide is just right & the weather's good. In the month when Queen Elizabeth first left the basin, there was a six day window when the tides would allow her out, & bad weather could have closed that window. The minimal clearances & sharp angles mean that a lot of tugs are needed & risk damage to the ships. A lot of money was spent to make the yard capable of building the carriers, & now there's a yard which for the moment is the only one fitted out to dock them, but is difficult to use & struggling to get other work for that big dock. It's a bit of a white elephant.
The armed forces are also guilty of short-term thinking, as well as wanting everything bespoke & then complaining they don't get enough money.
And so on . . . Nimrod MRA4, the sorry saga of AFV procurement . . . .
www.nato.int
en.wikipedia.org
