What's Gordon going to do?

So, Gordy's been across to Afghanistan to visit the troops in Camp Helmand. [I'm sorry but can they not call it something other than "Camp" - Base for example - Camp Bastion just puts bad thoughts in my mind]

He's promised new kit to help them deal with Improvised Explosive Devices. Hope it's a touch more successful than the Chinooks that are still sitting in an air conditioned hanger in Wiltshire.

In the mid 90's the MoD (Civil Servants who "manage" the UK military - all 100,000 of them [that's civil servants not army - there's about 109,000 in the army]) ordered 8 Chinook Mk3s from Boeing. They were for deployment with the Special Forces [SAS etc]

Anyway, to save costs the MoD decided that it could install it's own avionics software. This software from Boeing would have boosted the cost from £259m to a tad over £300m [remember these figures, I'll be testing you later]

However, we could not write software that worked, which meant the choppers could not be certified as airworthy -they could fly but only when there was not a cloud in the sky and definitely not at low level.

In 2004, as the demand for choppers in Afghanistan rose, the MoD admitted their failure and went back to Boeing to ask them to fix the problem. There were 30 months of negotiations and a final estimate of £215m was reached an in-service date of 2012 was agreed

However, as time passed, the pressure to get them in to service increased significantly and in March 2007 the MoD cancelled the previous project and asked that the Chinooks be "reverted" back from the sophisticated model originally required to the standard "Utility" model. This had a "ready for service" date of 2010 and an estimated cost of £53m. By November 2007 the estimated cost had risen to more than £90m.

All this time, (2001 - 2007) the Chinooks languished in their climate controlled hanger in Wiltshire, needing weekly inspections and a more detailed check every 2 years - costing £560,000

What an almighty cock-up - and still the Civil Servants took their salary and gold plated pension contributions, no one was fired and no one resigned. They did not even get a telling off and a slap on the wrist as far as I am aware.

Where do I apply?

So when Gordy says he's going to improve things, I tend to wonder how he's going to do this - suggestions on the back of a postcard