§ The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram)On 19 July 2001, I informed the House that, after years of delay and forecast cost growth, we had selected a preferred supplier to take forward the BOWMAN programme. Although our approved in service date was December 2004, we set a demanding target to deliver by 30 March 2004. This target is just 30 months from the September 2001 contract awarded to General Dynamics United Kingdom Ltd, a challenge unprecedented on such a major and complex acquisition project. Our priority was to deliver a secure, reliable voice communications replacement for Clansman and I am pleased to report to the House that BOWMAN has achieved its in service date on this basis, ahead of the target. This achievement and the capability it provides will enable the programme to progress to its next key milestone, the delivery of war fighting capability in 2005.
76WS Once fully implemented, BOWMAN will provide a secure tactical + voice and data communications system for our land forces and selected elements of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, until at least 2025. As well as being man-portable, it will be an integral part of the communications fit of major equipments such as warships, main battle tanks and helicopters. The provision of secure voice communications down to section level represents a step-change in capability for the armed forces as they migrate from Clansman to BOWMAN. Other functions which BOWMAN is designed to deliver, such as automatic position reporting and an ability to pass digital data around the battlefield have been demonstrated in principle on field trials and their development is on course.
At the end of 2002, nearly a year and a half into the BOWMAN contract, we extended it to further develop the battle management system and to enhance integration with systems and sensors on board our key armoured platforms—a programme known as CIP. A key advantage of aligning both programmes is that time and cost are saved through converting vehicles only once. There has been positive progress on CIP but the performance of the battle management system in recent field trials leads us to conclude that a few more months of work will be required to develop and fully demonstrate its effectiveness.
BOWMAN will provide a marked increase in operational tempo, firepower lethality and survivability across all our armed services and will be a key enabler for the UK's network-enabled capability. There is a widespread commitment to BOWMAN across the services and industry stakeholder community and it has already demonstrated greater military capability overall than Clansman. The first brigade converted to BOWMAN will undertake a further 15 months of unit and collective performance training, and as with the programme hitherto, the brigade will be closely involved in the development and proving of BOWMAN.
Achieving the BOWMAN in service date is an important step on the road to the ultimate goal, delivering a robust war fighting capability that fully meets the requirements of the user in service. It is a key milestone on the path to achieving war fighting operational readiness in 2005 and represents a huge success for smart acquisition as well as a big step forward for the British armed forces.