arty
nice contunation of the sea slug/dart and sea/cat line of missiles and a cool name. accomadion look like a vast improvement over the 42 they remide me a little of youth hostal rooms rather than cramped navy accomodation.Interesting to see her arrive at Prompey with a Merlin on the back. As I understood it, she was to be Lynx-equipped initially.
In many ways the Lynx made more sense, given the lack of installed anti-ship missiles, on both the Merlins and 45's.
I definitely agree with the above, sea viper has a very nice ring to it!
All in all, superb news
Im thinking how many other contries have more than warship builder the USA has to big one force to work together on contracts to sevive which arn't to disimerler to CVF joint vencher. It unecomomic to have many builders. I
Germany is probably the worst example. There's TKMS, Lürssen Group, FSG and about half a dozen smaller yards (such as Abeking & Rasmussen) which all form project-specific groups competing with each other - plus there's almost another half a dozen yards which interact with the Navy when it comes to refits and maintenance. And all have both past contracts and future chances for more contracts, while also selling internationally.
I doubt it is bad news for the UK taxpayer as RN orders are so small now the cost-savings are long gone. [Type-45 unit-costs for example.]
The only EU countries which have felt the necessity to be so protectionist regarding 'golden shares' are France and Germany. Although as far as any new legislature goes I believe it was purely rhetoric at the time.
Britain does have golden shares in certain key companies. BAE is almost certainly one of them, as are the AWE and Qinetiq.
... except the Golden Share concept does not exist in Germany, and never has.
Unsure of the legal ownership of AWE, but BAE & Qinetiq are both publicly listed companies, and as such a legal framework already exists as to ownership rights. As Kato points out excessive government intervention inside existing EU laws is a complicated issue and by no means certain to be successful.
I'll happily accept your point, I withdraw Germany from my previous post.
BAE has already taken over a US defence company (United Defense), don't think there was issues with that. They also took over Australia's largest defence company. Furthermore, if they did takeover/merge with General Dynamics they would be the senior partner and therefore be a majority listed UK company, though dual listed. Besides, isn't it so that British defence companies can't be foreign controlled? I know they're not allowed to have foreign CEOs or a foreign chairman.I doubt it is bad news for the UK taxpayer as RN orders are so small now the cost-savings are long gone. [Type-45 unit-costs for example.]
However it may be bad news for the UK government. It has long been rumoured that BAe and General Dynamics are to couple. US legislation being what it is, this could lead to the UK having no national defence company.
To be fair I think the situation is different for BAE as the amount of UK jobs at stake if they are sold could be horrific. It would take a serious amount of money and cast iron guarantees that all work that would have been ordered from UK parts of the company will still be in the future and I seriously doubt any overseas company would want to tie themselves to that.
