The British are about to jump the shark.

• Author: Sapolsky, Harvey M.
• Position: Viewpoint

* The British government is considering privatizing the Department of Equipment and Support, which is the Ministry of Defence's procurement arm.

Tentative plans call for the use of a government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) arrangement, and come after a series of British weapon acquisition disappointments that include the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, the Chinook helicopter and the Astute class submarine.

The British justify the need for a GOCO arrangement on the grounds that the department cannot attract experts with the right technical and management skills.

Those of us fond of "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" know that Sir Humphrey, the permanent secretary-level British civil servant who starred in these BBC TV series, didn't need anything more than his arts degree from Oxford (or was it Cambridge?) to run everything.

Here in the former American colonies, which supposedly suffer from the lack of a British style, elite corps civil service, we use GOCOs extensively, but not as extensively as the British are now contemplating. We use them to run laboratories like Los Alamos in New Mexico and to manage production facilities like the Lima, Ohio, tank plant. These are places that are too science-oriented or too businesslike for government to handle.

The British, however, want not only to outsource bomb design or tank building, but are outsourcing government oversight. Handed over to contractors would be the British equivalents of the Defense Nuclear Agency and the Army Materiel Command, the agencies which hire the contractors to manage laboratories or plants that make things.

Here is where the British seem ready to jump the shark. There are five potential managers of the weapon acquisitions process: politicians, military officers, technical experts, contractors and civil servants. Politicians are involved because they represent the political will of the citizens but cannot be expected to have more than general knowledge of what they supervise. They come and go with the change in administrations.

Military officers represent the interests of the combat users, but generally have limited technical knowledge. They, too, rotate in and out of programs. Technical expertise is needed, but belongs on tap in laboratories or universities where the ability to manage anything is a rare skill. Contractors can bring the needed technical...