Long term equipment acquisition planning

adroth

New Member
Can you guys point me to online references that publish long term equipment acquisitions plans of various armed forces?

US sources are easy enough to find, such as the following:

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/...ement_2007.pdf

The document above essentially shows how a superpower does it (man . . . 30-year shipbuilding plans )

How about nations with relatively smaller defense budgets?
 

kato

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Usually classified in most nations for various reasons.

Germany works with long-lead plans per project, which is then assembled and jointly broken down into 10-year analysis figures for detailed information. Which always find their way on the internet, but are of course still classified officially.

France has 5-year-plans, pretty public as these are approved by parliament. Google for the current "2003-2008" military program.
 

adroth

New Member
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Thanks Kato. Will Google for that.

One of the reasons I'm studying this is to find out which nations classify their plans, and which publicize theirs. Furthermore, amongst those who publicize, I'm trying to learn what details they publicize.

In a recent review of the performance of the Philippine Department of National Defense (DND), one of the criticisms leveled on them was the way they handled multi-year plans -- which the current and previous defense secretary said they had already started to work to address.

The problem is, there is very little available in the public space about how the DND does things. We get tid bits every now and then, but there is very little to go on. For example, we know that we have a National Military Strategy that include equipment acquisitions, but few things about it are revealed beyond the annual or bi-annual capability upgrade program reports.

Even then, all too often we get surprised by out-of-the-blue equipment acquisitions that are not part of the plan. The dearth of information often breeds allegations of corruption and what-not.

Given this backdrop, we're looking for examples of transparency. The US is already an overused example, so we're looking for others.

Thanks for the French lead. :)
 
A

Aussie Digger

Guest
Thanks Kato. Will Google for that.

One of the reasons I'm studying this is to find out which nations classify their plans, and which publicize theirs. Furthermore, amongst those who publicize, I'm trying to learn what details they publicize.

In a recent review of the performance of the Philippine Department of National Defense (DND), one of the criticisms leveled on them was the way they handled multi-year plans -- which the current and previous defense secretary said they had already started to work to address.

The problem is, there is very little available in the public space about how the DND does things. We get tid bits every now and then, but there is very little to go on. For example, we know that we have a National Military Strategy that include equipment acquisitions, but few things about it are revealed beyond the annual or bi-annual capability upgrade program reports.

Even then, all too often we get surprised by out-of-the-blue equipment acquisitions that are not part of the plan. The dearth of information often breeds allegations of corruption and what-not.

Given this backdrop, we're looking for examples of transparency. The US is already an overused example, so we're looking for others.

Thanks for the French lead. :)
The Australian Department of Defence releases strategic updates and defence capability plan updates every 2-5 years.

Here is the current defence capability plan for Australia.

http://www.defence.gov.au/dmo/id/dcp/DCP_2006_16.pdf

You can tell the general layout and "publicly available" information from this.

Regards

AD
 

Uche Africanus

New Member
adroth,

It is my contention that countries that hide their weapons acquisition plans are often countries where corruption is rampant. The argument these countries use to justify the secrecy of their defense purchases is that they do not want their potential adversaries to know their capability but this not totally true. The enemy can always find out what they buy. Instead, the real reason is that a small elite in the military-security establishment believes that only them are capable of identying their country's security needs and do not want competition in this process by persons they identify as mere civilians or who will raise questions about the inflated money spent on particular arms purchases.

It is interesting to know that the more developed and transparent countries are, the more they are open about their security and weapons plans. And the less developed countries with muddled management processes and often concentrated decision making in the hands of one or a few are those who argue for secrecy. This way, the kickbacks and attached percentages from which they benefit are not known.
 

adroth

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Thanks for your thoughts Uche. A lot of us think as you do.

The reason behind this thread is actually to collect facts that can be used to drive this particular point home.

I will however share a dissenting opinion regarding about the overall value of civilian criticism. While there are armchair generals whose ideas benefit the service . . . there are also the mike sparks of the world. We civies will always be taken with a grain of salt, because a lot of our assumptions and suggestions come from a position of ignorance.
 
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Sea Toby

New Member
Plus the usual delays tend to over time cut the spending and building numbers some. Very often the long term plans are cut.
 
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