Q91 Chair: Are you on target with the Foxhound time frame?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Yes, Chair.
Q92 Chair: The Department intends to have the Foxhound available for training for 2011. Is it available?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Yes. They will be off the production line-I hope to be there with our Minister to see them-at the end of the month, and training should start in November7
Q93 Mrs McGuire: You mentioned ministerial involvement that rushed something through. What was the level of ministerial involvement? I mean, they didn't take out screwdrivers and things like that. What did they do that made a difference?
Lieutenant-General Coward: I was not involved at the time, but anecdotally-
Mrs McGuire: Collective memory is, I think, a better phrase.
Lieutenant-General Coward: Lord Drayson applied energy and focus, and tried to force through decisions that were perhaps having difficulty getting through at the time.
Mrs McGuire: He is a loss to the diplomatic corps.
Q94 Chair: He is a loss. Can I take you to paragraph 4.5 on page 28, where there is a discussion about Mastiff? The end of that paragraph states: "The Department has stated that '...a vehicle such as Mastiff, does not come close to meeting the Future Rapid Effect System requirement,' which is designed to operate across all" Is that true?
Lieutenant-General Coward: Yes, I agree.
Q95 Chair: If that is true, is there money in the budget to ensure that you would do the necessary changes? Is the money there?
Lieutenant-General Coward: I do not think you could convert Mastiff sufficiently to make it deliver to within about 80% or 85% of the utility vehicle requirement.
Q96 Chair: So we are going to dump it, are we?
Lieutenant-General Coward: No. My own view is that we should retain, pro tem, the Mastiffs, and adapt them to a small extent. We don't have very much money. There is a limit to what you can use them for, but they will provide protected mobility-not manoeuvre, which is what the Army desperately wishes to have, but we will make do with them.
Q97 Chair: What won't it do? Just explain to a little layperson like me, who doesn't really get these things, what it won't do.
Lieutenant-General Coward: With the utility vehicle or with MRAV, we were seeking to be able to manoeuvre across country and in all terrains with a full vehicle load. Mastiff, even in version 3, doesn't have that level of mobility. It is also not a properly integrated platform.
Q98 Chair: Is there money in the budget to do the repairs and changes required at least to keep it going? Is the money there, yes or no? Yes or no?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: We have a budget, which I've asked-
Q99 Chair: Is the money there?
Vice-Admiral Lambert: I have a budget and I've asked the Army to give me its priorities as to which equipments it wants to move forward.
Q100 Chair: Mrs Brennan, is the money there?
Ursula Brennan: We don't allocate the money in that way. We've allocated the budget to the Army-
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7 Foxhound will be off the production line in November, and training is due to start in December