The 1st Sea lord has produced a paper highlighting the current state of the RN and making a case for proper investment in the service.Whether the money is available is another matter.He can at least be seen to have warned the government of the state of the RN and provided them with a solution for its rescue.
Under the present government it seems unlikely that the budget will increase and even with a change to the Conservatives I cannot see it increasing much.As to defence contracts dealings between government and Bae are well covered in Lewis Page's book,and he explains more eloquently than I how this company robs the British taxpayer and delivers projects years late.
:daz
fftopic
I've gotta butt in here to help put some things into a bit of perspective.
#1 "
Yes Astute is late, & yes it's probably down to the contractor..."
Well that's wot the media(
especially the Guardian Newspaper!!) wants Everyone to believe. I'm not saying that BAE shouldn't shoulder a share of the blame, but a mix of political floundering by successive govt's, lack of investment by said govt's, added to a lack of agreement at an early stage by the end user, who then changes the staff responsible for these decisions every 3 years, help to compound issues that the contractor had with his CAD software, vis-a-vis, Astute is now X-amount of years late & X-amount of cash over budget.
#2
"BAE is out to rob the taxpayer blind..."
For years this comment has been thrown at just about every defence contractor whose ever done work for the MoD. Contracts nowadays have to be water tight, gone are the days of "cost-plus", (where the govt paid for the equipment & then paid for any repairs that happened during build, as well as ANYTHING that the contractor needed to get the job done).
The upshot of this is that any high priced defence contract now has to jump thru a pile of hoops before it's even got ink on it, it then has to be able to stand up in court to be examined with a magnifying glass, by European Union, the U.S. & ANYONE who believes they have been hard done by, by not winning the contract in the 1st place.
Contractors are getting to the stage where they have a team of lawyers on retainer, to write up & manage these contracts. The hard part of the process now is for the end user to draw a line under a design once the contract is signed, instead of chopping & changing their minds about layout, operational requirements, etc. once the product takes shape in manufacture.
Modern contracts are now being called "partnerships", as they are becoming more logical, integrating members of the RN into some of the decision making process at an early stage, thus helping them take some of the responsibility for choices that are made & retaining these same staff for each vessel, until it's delivered.
Astute is the latest project that springs to mind. She was recently damaged during testing of machinery and the hull may have to be opened to replace the broken equipment.She is already 4 years late.
I take it from damage, you mean this newspaper report...
CHRISTMAS BONUS FEARS AFTER DAMAGE TO ASTUTE
Published on 27/08/2007
(
www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=536100)
In fairness, I think you may be reading a whole lot into this, after all incidents like this are quite common during engineering tests while commissioning new equipment.
1st of type, 1st of class is effectively part of a "prototype" process. I know that the article goes onto mention that the boat was programmed to go back under cover later this year, "for finishing off".
Your thoughts...
Systems Adict
