[Closed] More MOD mismanagement

My dad very briefly worked in the defence industry. Amongst other things, his company was selling radar sets to the middle east. They had signed up to penalty clauses they weren't used to with the British govenrnment, and as I understand it his company were giving the first few radar sets away for free.
It was by all accounts a bit of a culture shock.

As I understand it the costs of this are way higher than admitted in the BBC article

Does the article even mention the costs of the replacement programme? Sounds like Rolls-Royce haven't delivered the goods tbh.If it was an STWer it would be a SOGA issue rather than mis-management.

These are the guys building the Trident replacement, !?!!!?

They (BAE but not the same division as the surface ships) also built Astute, Vanguard, Trafalgar, Swiftsure, etc not really sure I get the point

philjunior - Member

My dad very briefly worked in the defence industry. Amongst other things, his company was selling radar sets to the middle east. They had signed up to penalty clauses they weren't used to with the British govenrnment, and as I understand it his company were giving the first few radar sets away for free.
It was by all accounts a bit of a culture shock.

LDs are common throughout defence contracts

When I got a tour of a sub in the 1990s - the crew told us they used the domestic off the shelf "pretending to be a fishing boat" radar most if they were ever surfaced as the fancy one was always broken.

I did a couple of projects at MOD Whitehall. Their arrogance belies their incompetence.

I knew someone whose dad stole £18 million from the MOD got banged up for a few years but his son started dealing in some very nice cars.

can they not just get some oars?

Legend - it's mismanagement if you repeatedly buy from the same supplier who keeps getting it wrong and over-budget.

And I wouldn't use Astute as an example of good practice.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/15/hms-astute-submarine-slow-leaky-rusty

Probs Thatchers fault then, there isn't another supplier available (keep Sovereign technology in the UK, etc)

Surely it'd be better to just sell them for scrap, then we don't have to pay to keep them up, run them or anything else?

BAE are the worst kind of aresholes to have ever existed!
You wouldn't believe their working practises even if you were involved personally - it beggars belief 😯

Surely it'd be better to just sell them for scrap, then we don't have to pay to keep them up, run them or anything else?

If you're happy with us playing as much a part in shaping the world stage as (say) Burkina Faso, then that sounds like a great idea.

Most of the budget for the subs goes on the materials for the welders/fabricators sidelines. My cousing danbob had a good one in barbeques but there were also gun/security cabinets, fencing, roofing for sheds etc, whole sheds, boats.....

My first instinct when reading that article this morning was "surely this is BAE's problem to fix and not the MoD's", I know ships are different to cars but if my new cars engine kept breaking down it would be up to Ford to fix it and not me.

Yep, but as they're a a monopoly they can turn round and tell the tax payer to go **** himself

My uncle was a senior engineer on foxhunter/project blue circle and my mum's first job was looking at paperwork for buccaneers and going "wtf", nothing new here tbh and it's not limited to bae. Expensive and not fit for purpose because we have delusions of grandeur and need to do everything our way, which in turn cripples exports because nobody but us would buy 'em

If you knew the real reason Ark was scrapped you'd cry.
As the the new QE carriers.... lets just say BAE have better lawyers and contract writers than the MoD do.

hammyuk - Member

If you knew the real reason Ark was scrapped you'd cry.
As the the new QE carriers.... lets just say BAE have better lawyers and contract writers than the MoD do.

oh you tease.

Well yeah, given that they had to form the Aircraft Carrier Alliance just to get the things built the MOD was always going to be over a barrel, and that was before they started changing the requirements again and again

I understand that BAe got very sniffy about the prospects of catapults being fitted to the two new carriers, as this would present two cheaper alternatives to the MoD than the F35C (of which BAe have a large stake), namely the F-18E and Dassault Rafale.

The cost of converting the carriers suddenly escalated and deadlines slipped, so the government had little choice but to leave the carriers as built and order the uber-expensive but not terribly good F-35B STOVL variant.

As much as I'd advocate a "buy British" approach, the government should have awarded the conversion contract to General Dynamics and snubbed BAe until they get their act together.

On the subject of the Ark, please do tell...

Pretty close PJM!
Ark was two finger to BAE after getting stiffed over the carriers. She was due in for a massive refit to see out her last years but after finding out they had to have the second carrier (or pay for it anyway) the MoD went on a cull, cutting out 10's millions of service stock from BAE.
BAE kept putting up the costs - nothing to do with the MoD for once and their contracts were so clever that the MoD had no choice but to order the second one as they would have to pay for it regardless due to contract clauses put in by BAE.
The catapult fiasco was known about several years ago - the first bow section hadn't left Portsmouth when it was being discussed here. Everyone knew about it - BAE knew but kept quiet as their contracts had the MoD over a barrel.
Stupid thing is they could've had two President Class carriers for less ready to go in the time its taken for one QE to be in the water - let alone handed over!
Muppets want it to be "UK built" - which is fine assuming you can keep control of an entity like BAE who pull the strings how they like to serve themselves.
The "closure of shipbuilding" in Portsmouth was something they did to get back at the MoD after Ark was canned.
They binned over 300 contractors who all mysteriously failed surprise audits.
Some with scores that were impossible to have got.(i.e to have been let in the gate you would've needed to score more, let alone work for 9+yrs there)
Strange that they now all of a sudden have new maintenance contracts opening up building there again.....
Although they are now getting flack because many of the specialist contractors they binned are needed to maintain certain equipment in the base but because they failed audits their own system won't allow them to undertake the work!!
You couldn't make it up 😯

Stupid thing is they could've had two President Class carriers for less ready to go in the time its taken for one QE to be in the water - let alone handed over!

You mean a Gerald R Ford class? Of which there are currently none in service? Never heard of a President class, and the Fords cost a lot more than what we're building

While I suspect BAE aren't great, complex engineering projects when new usually find problems it is part of the learning, and is typically described by the bathtub curve.

BAE called them the President Class internally - couldn't say the official name.
It was well known in the base how much of a piss take the QE build was/is.
They're really good at pushing contracts between internal companies too to stop any comeback.
The amount of times our CC had a different title or the invoices needed to be sent with a different company name on top was a total PITA.
Hive down's on a massive scale.

One of the problems with the turbines is that the are only 12 of them in the world. Two on each T45!

I can't quite remember the specifics but back at the design phase, The UK, France and the US decided to design and build a new gas turbine to be used in Naval ships. They were a very clever design and much better than current offerings. Then the US pulled out and then France. The UK was left carrying the can with a ship designed to use a particular engine that no one wanted. If all had gone to plan there would have been hundreds of these engines in use and any flaws would have been ironed out quickly and much cheaper.

Due to the small installed base, maintenance and spares are expensive and if one goes totally POP, we're doomed!

The only sensible thing for the RN to do is rip them all out and replace them with something more supportable and off the shelf.

much as I'd advocate a "buy British" approach, the government should have awarded the conversion contract to General Dynamics and snubbed BAe until they get their act together

#itmakesyouthink

In defence of BAE systems and other subcontractors to the prime, this often isnt a case of shoddy engineering and design, but shoddy requirements capture at the start of the program.

Astute's costly mid-build redesign for exmaple was caused by changing political circumstances. The rusting on the boat is caused by cost cutting and the assumption that paint can be used as an alternative to corrosion resistant materials.

The failure of Astute gearbox isn't BAE's fault, that would be DB and Alstom.

In the same way that the electrical faults could either be caused by a poorly designed and built system, or one that is (now) being asked to do more than was originally specified. It's unclear.

I suspect, don't know, that BAE built it to the spec that was in the contract. MoD is staffed by civil servants. Although the expertise on design is contracted out.

) being asked to do more than was originally specified. It's unclear

is often the case for failure and delay. Services are often the problem in changing their minds and in some cases gold platting the solution.

However if yo want the best at the edge of what's possible technology wise these things happen, its not a perfect world.

My experience on large contracts with people like BAE is very good, they often do more than asked and provide very good solutions which often founder on the rocks of the civil service.

See what I did there, nautical pun......

My first ship was a steam turbine Leander, never broke down and was the finest grey painted Mediterranean/Baltic booze cruising jolly boat you could clap your salt stung eyes on 😉

I suspect, don't know, that BAE built it to the spec that was in the contract. MoD is staffed by civil servants. Although the expertise on design is contracted out.

So if the design is contracted out why the pop at "civil servants"

Remind me how many people that 2,500t Leander needed to keep it not breaking down 😉

My understanding is that BAE? forgot to add the capliaries that allow oil to lubricate the drive shafts on the Dauntless, so they had to take the engine out and drill them in but it never quite worked right after

I wonder if the MOD need a hire boat at the moment.
Get our bigger canoe going with four of you in, and the speed is impressive. 8)

My three 'engines' run on hot choccy and bacon butties.

[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/628/21185526822_5fcb0f3321_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/628/21185526822_5fcb0f3321_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/yh6n2Q ]Loch Achray[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/matt_outandabout/ ]Matt Robinson[/url], on Flickr

I think the BBC article is a bit misleading (not surprising for the BBC) and certainly makes a lot of assumptions out of not very much knowledge.

I've been working with T45 for the last 9 years, my company supplied quite a lot of kit to each ship, and we're still heavily involved.

T45 is powered by 2 x Rolls Royce WR21 Gas turbines - which are close coupled to huge alternators and 2 x Wartsila diesel generators.
In order to go to sea, the ship must have 3 'Prime movers' available.

As far as i'm aware the RR WR21's are not being replaced (they are horrendously unreliable though) however they are being modified in order to try and improve reliability.

I 'think' a 5th 'prime mover' is being fitted to each vessel - this will allow more redundancy, and theoretically enable them to sail with two dead gas turbines.

This is a huge job, as quite a few other pieces of kit need to be moved in order to fit it in (including some of ours)

It is also worth noting that while the WR21s are fragile and probably not entirely suitable for the task, the standard of operator/maintainers on board varies wildly, and from what I've seen, I wouldn't trust some of them to service my bike.

The Navy have been directly responsible for trashing a few of those Engines, purely through incompetence.

My understanding is that BAE? forgot to add the capliaries that allow oil to lubricate the drive shafts on the Dauntless, so they had to take the engine out and drill them in but it never quite worked right after

The "closure of shipbuilding" in Portsmouth was something they did to get back at the MoD after Ark was canned.

Remind me how many people that 2,500t Leander needed to keep it not breaking down

About fifty lower deck stokers if I recall, everyone one of them was a piss can 😉

So if the design is contracted out why the pop at "civil servants"

The client needs to communicate exactly what it is they want designed. Then it needs not to forget important parts or change it's mind half way through. It also needs to ensure it's not signing up to a heavily slanted contract.

BAE Systems are the vessel design authority for T45.
However the whole thing is a communal effort from start to finish with the end user (Royal Navy) the customer (DE&S/MOD) and the shipbuilder working together to agree everything.
Every aspect of the design process with be overseen by a JPT with embedded MOD/RN people.

Client = Navy
Navy tell procurement what they want, procurement puts out tender, tender is evaluated, winning bid is awarded to builder, builder builds ship and delivers it to Navy.

Massively simplified of course but of course lets blame the civil servants for getting the design wrong, for changing their minds on how much can be spent political purse holders and a hundred other things.

I am sure Joe Bloggs who works in the MOD procurement who has 2 kids and drives a 5 year old Astra and has a secret crush on Julie in Facilities one day decided to change the spec on a whim and cuase the engines to be rubbish or decide not to put a catapult on a carrier because ha ha that will really screw things up.

It is always easy to blame the civil servants

It is always easy to blame the civil servants

Client = Navy
Navy tell procurement what they want, procurement puts out tender, procurement start joint work with France and Italy, procurement cant agree on joint spec with other partner nations, procurement cant agree workshare, procurement decide to go solo, tender is evaluated, winning bid is awarded to builder, builder starts cutting steel, customer changes spec, builder builds a bit, customer wants a newly developed technology, builder builds more, customer adds new requirement, builder builds, new Def-Stan introduced, requirement removed, new requirement added, etc, etc, etc, builder finishes ship, ship passes sea trials, builder delivers it to Navy.

Still not as faffy as the truth.

I am sure Joe Bloggs who works in the MOD procurement who has 2 kids and drives a 5 year old Astra and has a secret crush on Julie in Facilities one day decided to change the spec on a whim and cuase the engines to be rubbish or decide not to put a catapult on a carrier because ha ha that will really screw things up.

A Navy officer shrunk the Faslane shiplift to save money, now some jobs need doing when back in the water as it's too small to allow all tasks to be carried out

Each service could have a procurement department made up of military personnel.

Good luck with that one 😆 if the grunts I see wandering around the little town I live in are anything to go by*

* a massive generalisation just you like saying all civil servants are useless

Good luck with that one if the grunts I see wandering around the little town I live in are anything to go by*

Freeagent - we all know about those bloody things!
Don't recall any of them actually making it out of the Solent 😯
Had a right royal barny with one of the "project managers" during some of our works as we were supposedly "unsafe" "maverick" "breaching protocol" and more.
Funny how he disappeared when something was pointed out to him that he had authorised that broke a number of H&S Regs and several laws!
They do look good though 8)

Ever been to whitehall?

They make them dress up in silly costumes for the tourists 😉

Client = Navy
Navy tell procurement what they want, procurement puts out tender, tender is evaluated, winning bid is awarded to builder, builder builds ship and delivers it to Navy.

Massively simplified of course but of course lets blame the civil servants for getting the design wrong, for changing their minds on how much can be spent political purse holders and a hundred other things.

I am sure Joe Bloggs who works in the MOD procurement who has 2 kids and drives a 5 year old Astra and has a secret crush on Julie in Facilities one day decided to change the spec on a whim and cuase the engines to be rubbish or decide not to put a catapult on a carrier because ha ha that will really screw things up.

It is always easy to blame the civil servants

Whilst its true that it's easy to blame Civil Servants, in this respect, there most certainly is a problem with how the MOD operates. The situation described above is quite niave.

Whilst the eventual customer is indeed the Navy, the customer to whom BAE report directly is the MOD. The MOD sit in the middle of every procurement practice like a big dry sponge, draining the Navy, the Contractor and the Government of time/money resources and most of all respect.

The MOD take the desires of the Navy and construct a set of requirements for which contractors can then bid. Generally, these requirements are a pale shadow of the desires of the eventual customer, the Navy. The contractor, in this case BAE, then sets out to meet those requirements. At some point (many points) the Navy (who're directly present during design and manufacture) [i]may[/i] notice that the requirements do not meet their expectations, usually by this point the requirements are no-longer a paper thing, but reality, staring them in the face. The MOD then [i]ummm[/i] and [i]ahh[/i] and change the contract to suit the ****ing requirements of the Navy which they ignored in the bloody first place. Whilst annoying and (to the public) costly, this is what the Navy actually asked for at the beginning, but was deemed to be unimportant to the requirements team from the MOD. the remedial work and subsequent inspection often requires a TEAM of people from the MOD to assure and assess, usually on a Sunday, at double or even triple pay, but there's less of them now, so this is acceptable...

What's worse than the above is when the reduced requirements are performance related and not so obvious until the whole thing is built and tested...then it gets really, really messy.

This isn't speculation, this is first hand experience on a raft of different projects.

They make them dress up in silly costumes for the tourists

The specs for the Type 45 would have been in a defence requirement some time in the 1990s which would have been war-gamed with computers.

This would have then been screwed around with to bring down the cost, then somebody would have made a massive breakthrough in something or other which has to be bolted on to the actual spec which is given to BAE about 10 years later.

The situation described above is quite niave.

Paah

Come back to me when the Mod can piss things up as bad as the NHS

Abandoned NHS IT system has cost £10bn so far

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn

Plenty of opinions here and Rolls-Royce don't appear to be getting much of a look-in!
16 years in the defence industry and been quite close to some of the programme lots have opinions on. T45 suffered some fairly dramatic design changes, mainly because the Navy had a long wish-list and short pockets - they simply couldn't afford what they wanted and the result were some pretty dramatic design changes. The turbines were developed for the Horizon project in the 90s but most of the partner nations decided to do their own thing leaving the turbines under-developed.
Much of the problems with Astute were due to the contract awarded to GEC Marconi and the forced 'marriage' with British Aerospace. Throw in monopolies and mergers and it was a SNAFU waiting to happen.
Thinking you can simply bolt steam catapults on a ship that's been build all electric is a bit of a laugh right? Government trying to save money by buying non-STOVL F35s and not realising the impact..
FWIW the 'golden' share of BAE Systems is UK Government and it's still domiciled and pays taxes in the UK.
If you know the Levene reforms, you'd know the guys in uniform now hold the purse strings, trouble is few have little concept of how to buy things and are hamstrung by Treasury spending rules which gives little incentive to spend to save.

[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dinosaurs-Blundering-Military-Sep-30-2006-Paperback/dp/B009XMZQCI/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454087811&sr=1-2&keywords=lions+donkeys+and+dinosaurs ]An interesting read[/url]

I rather get the impression that MOD procurement is a just a monumental world of pain for all concerned. The Services put together a wish list which they couldn't ever realistically afford and no one will tell them this, the MOD civil servants attempt to procure it but are hamstrung by being out-gunned by the contractor's specialist bid and legal teams, the contractors know that whatever they bid for will only have the vaguest connection with what finally gets built, and all at political whim which may sweep years of work aside for short term interests.
A few years ago Peter Twiss lent me a copy of a book (published in the 70s) which detailed every post 1945 military and civilian airplane commissioned within the UK. there's an enormous list of wastage, lost skills, decisions made in spite and sheer short termism displayed in post-war aviation industries in the UK.

Millions of GBP? Is that all? Amateurs... 😆

[url= http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/new-gerald-r-ford-carrier-class-as-predicted-called-13-billion-debacle-1.371389 ]http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/new-gerald-r-ford-carrier-class-as-predicted-called-13-billion-debacle-1.371389[/url]

but are hamstrung by being out-gunned by the contractor's specialist bid and legal team

Paah

Come back to me when the Mod can piss things up as bad as the NHS

Abandoned NHS IT system has cost £10bn so far

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn

Although a nice big headline grabbing figure, that isn't true. The NHS was quite savvy at setting up the contract and payments were phased and aligned to outcome measures. Only a fraction of the £10bn was paid and almost all of it paid for hardware and records management software that's still in use in some trusts

So if the design is contracted out why the pop at "civil servants"

because they then change it or amend it because of spurious commercial reasons with letting the contract.

They don't understand the technical detail of the solution that's delivered or the project theory and practice. Most have zero industry experience or in anything else. Often straight from classroom to work.

They are under paid and under qualified.

From my experience -

Me 'ok your a project manager, what qualification do you have, APMP or Prince2 etc?'

Civil servant 'I don't have a qualification, I have competencies'

I could go on. They should be paid better BUT be qualified.

The NHS was quite savvy ... Only a fraction of the £10bn was paid

I'm genuinely interested - always seemed to me that a lot of cash has been spent, a lot more is potentially going to be lost as legal disputes resolve and to show for it we have choose and book (I don't know anyone who's used it), NHSmail (I don't know anyone who likes it) and electronic records services that almost universally miss out the actual clinical notes.

... actually, I think PACS is probably a result of the project too, and that seems decent

I really don't think it is incompetence.

Go back 100 to 80 years, when we built the fleet that saw service in the two world wars. These were extremely basic, uncomplicated ships with low performance systems. Back then, if you got attacked it probably was from a large caliber gun from a battleship (which was mechanically aimed, from a moving vessel in a rough sea (hence the hit to miss ratio was something like 100:1) or maybe a small bomb or torpedo launched from a slow moving low altitude propellor driven aircraft. Despite the fact it was harder to hit the target than impress Shania Twain, losses were massive. As soon as Submarines appeared, with a degree of stealth and longer range torpedoes, ships became sitting ducks a lot of the time.

Fast Forward to the present and the threat to a large naval asset has become oppressive. Missiles, guided munitions, ultra long range torpedos and a host of other weapons can reduce your billion dollar ship to fish food in about 10 secs.

As a result, the complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.
And at the same time, defense budgets have been cut and are in a constant state of turmoil. Look at the situation with trying to develop an new fighter aircraft, in fact, any new defense system! It takes 20years now to go from idea to realtity, during which time the political landscape will have changed dramatically, and the budget likewise.

So, are the T45's perfect, no, of course not. Could they be made better, yes, of course they could. But was it "incompetence", sorry, but no, i don't think it was..........

complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.

this is very true. Remember much of what they do is innovative and cutting edge.

Buying off the shelf isn't as easy or straight forward as it seems.

I think I heard that as the RN has accepted them after commissioning the cost was down to them in sorting this.

Its also a worry that the RN has to rely on the US Coastguard for its engineers!

I'm sure I remember reading on an US website that the expected lifespan of a Type 45 in combat was about 20 minutes.

aP - Member
I'm sure I remember reading on an US website that the expected lifespan of a Type 45 in combat was about 20 minutes.

That statement is nonsense without at least some context attached to it. It would last at least 22mins against folk throwing sticks at it

As a result, the complexity of the systems needed on modern ships, from power plant to weaponary, via radar and battle field info systems has sky rocketed.
And at the same time, defense budgets have been cut and are in a constant state of turmoil. Look at the situation with trying to develop an new fighter aircraft, in fact, any new defense system! It takes 20years now to go from idea to realtity, during which time the political landscape will have changed dramatically, and the budget likewise.

But incompetence adds considerably to it!
To be fair I think you're at least half right, most of what we'd deem "incompetence" is actually political point-scoring, where an incoming Government keen to stamp their authority on things changes half the requirements, moves the ministers around and looks to the next 4 years rather than the next 15.
That sort of change is ripe for allowing incompetence to go unchecked, not found out until 2 Governments down the line where someone finally looks at the accounts...

I remember sitting in an RAF crewroom listening to the announcements on the radio of a big round of defence cuts (this was about 20 years ago) with all the engineers slagging off the various Governments for procurement cock-ups and excessive red tape. Dispiriting time for them, mixture of anger and frustration.

I seem to remember that because it doesn't have very many launch tubes for missiles it would run out very quickly with no opportunity to re arm?

Ah, there's lots of internet top trumps crap where people go "what'd win in a square go, a T45 or a FREMM" or whatever. But it's really not how they're used so it's a pointless comparison.

(tbf, realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats)

Northwind

realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats

tbh, i think we probably use them just to hang a flag on most of the time......

Here's the new latest tech defense situation monitoring systems they are installing:

[img] http://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/233862525?$prod_main$ [/img]

😆

I seem to remember that because it doesn't have very many launch tubes for missiles it would run out very quickly with no opportunity to re arm?

It's the PAAMS system.

Apparently very capable but it only has something like 40 or 50 missiles onboard and needs to return to base to re-arm.

What's really worrying is that it runs on Windows 2000......

What's really worrying is that it runs on Windows 2000......

Which is why they keep having to turn the ship off and on again.

realistically we use our billion pound boats to chase somalis in fishing boats

This. It's about willy-waving, it'd be much more sensible to buy and crew a bunch of smaller, simpler ships which would be perfectly suitable for the things they'd actually be needed for, but they wouldn't be "world class, cutting edge, 21st century" and whatever other stuff politicians like to buy to show off.

All fur coat and no knickers, really. Like much else the UK spends money on.

Apparently very capable but it only has something like 40 or 50 missiles onboard and needs to return to base to re-arm

yes perhaps we also do RAS, resupply at sea. Just guessing of course .... Id suggest 40 - 50 missiles is pretty good given its capabilities but the well informed armchair admirals might know something else? ha ha

can launch 8 missiles in under 10 seconds while simultaneously guiding up to 16 missiles to designated targets at any one time.[4] The British PAAMS(S) variant consists of both the SAMPSON and S1850M long range radars and is capable of tracking in excess of 1,000 targets at ranges of up-to 400 km. BAE Systems also claims that its SAMPSON radar has "excellent detection of stealth aircraft and missiles".[5]

I don't understand the design of modern warships.

They are extremely fast, some can do about 45 knots, however, 45 knots is basically stationary compared to the speed of a jet or an anti-ship missile.

They can't use that speed to re-deploy quickly as they need support from the Auxiliaries that can only do about 12 - 15 kts.

So why bother going so fast? The speed is no defence from modern antiship weapons.

yes perhaps we also do RAS, resupply at sea. Just guessing of course

I don't think it's just a matter of reloading a magazine, as I understand it the "reloading" operation has to be done in port.

The timelines for MOD projects are the issue. The last one I worked on had been running for 25 years... So the initial requirements were revised to meet current needs. Not unreasonable as you don't want your equipment to be 10 years out of date when it is launched..
Trouble is this screws up the designs and adds extra development time... The system seems to still be based on the mentality that ships/planes/tanks are being churned out at the same rate as the 1940s so continuous incremental updates can be made...
Mind you every country seems to have the exact same issues and budget scandals