St Crispin’s Day

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD accused of Chinook ‘cock-up’

Anti- free market as it sounds, this little debacle is good evidence of why we need to have an independant arms industry in this country.

Listen here to Edward Leigh’s soundbite on the subject

 You can just imagine the Boeing sales reps reply to the MOD when they visited the chinook showroom to get some replacements for the 9 that weren’t working.

“Yes, Mr Limey, I know you want 4 more, but, you see, that the US DoD will be buying 50 a year for the next 30 years.  Which kinda makes your offer to buy 4 a little lame!”

“I can find a gap in the production schedule for you in 2020.  Would you like the satnav option with that?”

Un-economic as it sounds, if we are going to run with the big dogs (in a military sense) we’ve got to spend a higher percentage of our GDP on defence than they do, not less!

In addition, the original “cock-up” was caused partly by the fact that the procurement team would have been completly made up of RAF staff officers, who we all know are “Utterly utterly useless!”

About time to cancel the experiment of having three forces, and revert back to the much more pragmatic one of having the fly-boys subsumed back within the Navy & Army!!

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD insists Nimrod ’safe to fly’

HHmmm,, now the concerned, but un-biased corroner says that the nimrod is unsafe (and must be grounded immediatly) and the governemt (tight with money ‘cos they’ve spent ten years wasting it on the national health service &  youth offending programmes) says that it’s safe.

Whow do we all believe?  

If it’s safe why are we buying a new version?

Since when did any government replace something expensive before it was needed?  They always wait until it’s too late.

I may have said it before, but some who know me know I spent some hours in Nimrods, and I always had a vague nervous feeling that I was being flown in something older that me!

UK helicopter industry ‘will die in MoD cuts’  
A £1 billion helicopter project has been “offered up as a sacrifice” for defence cuts as the Ministry of Defence struggles to manage its funding crisis, it was claimed yesterday. 
The termination of the Future Lynx deal would herald the end of major helicopter manufacturing in Britain if Gordon Brown decides to go ahead with the reductions.  But defence sources said it was now “highly likely” that the order for 70 Future Lynx utility helicopters, which were to be bought for the Army and the Royal Navy, will be axed. The decision could lead to the closure of the Westland helicopter plant in Yeovil, Somerset, with the loss of 800 jobs. Douglas Carswell, a Tory MP who has written a paper on scrapping the Lynx deal with the Italian firm Finmeccanica, said: “This is a bad deal and the sooner we get out of it the better. “We could announce, for example, that we would buy the same amount of helicopters from Sikorsky - and still have £580 million to spend addressing funding shortages elsewhere in the Armed Forces.” He added that the Sikorsky Seahawk helicopters would be available within 12 months. The Lynx is not expected in service until 2013. But one programme that defence sources have confirmed is certain to go ahead will be the two aircraft carriers being built for £4 billion in Scottish constituencies with strong Labour Party ties. The issues are expected to come up on Thursday when industry chiefs meet Baroness Taylor, the defence procurement minister.
 

 I must comment that this is an ongoing issue with  military procurement.  We could always buy cheaper from other countries.  Everything from artillery ammunition to helicopters is better purchased from other countries such as the USA due to economies of scale. The problem is that when you need the spares, and the country who manufactures them is at war with you, then, the cupboard is usually bare! Hellfire missiles & Chinook spares were cases in point when the current conflagration blew up.

We need our own arms industry no matter the cost.  What we do need to do is sell our product to lots of others so that our economies of scale can work for us!

New Stryker Faring Poorly in Field

 So it’s not just us then!!

The Air Force doesn’t need any more F-22s. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

The US have seen sense. An aircraft designed to cope with the cold war threat!  Who needs it?  Typhoon anyone?

The death of Sergeant Steven Roberts is a tragedy on many levels.  The lack of an apology from the government is truly staggering and must add to the pain his family is feeling.

Although I hate the current “blame culture” with a vengeance, I feel that in this case there really is someone to blame.

At some point, two options would have been put to Geoff Hoon.  These were;-

1. To put in the purchase requisitions we needed, and therefore telegraph our intentions to go to a war readiness
2. To delay until the final moment in order to keep our intentions secret.

The consideration in taking option 2 should be that some capabilities will be lost due to lack of equipment available “on the day”, and even that some lives may be lost.  This is a valid option if the decision will save MORE lives through the element of surprise gained.  THIS WAS CLEARLY NOT THE REASON THAT OPTION 2 WAS TAKEN!  Geoff Hoon (and presumably the inner circle in government) wanted to keep the information, not from the enemy, but from their own backbenchers!

Staggering!  The result was the death of a soldier, whose life, in their eyes was worth less than the government’s image.

A lot more have died since that date, some of them personal friends of mine.  I miss them all, and am sad for their loss.  I truly think that the government could not care less.  At least that’s how it looks

Soldiers let down by equipment shortages.
In the Multinational military camp in Basrah (the old and future international airport), there is a stores department where serving troops go for replacement equipment.  There is a running joke about the camp that the window through which one requests equipment is called the “Window of No”. Well that is probably because, when you follow the chain of  supply far enough you always get back to the civil servants at the MOD, and ultimately the government.This government has never been keen on the military, and they have an expectation that they’ll keep doing the job regardless.  It’s going to come off the rails eventually, I just hope we keep the loss of life to a minimum.  Preferably just one Defence Secretary!

 British Army unveils newest armoured vehicle.Take a look at the latest bit of kit the army have got to play with.  Cool, no?
Well it may be cool, but the problem that I’ve got with it is that it’s an upgrade of a vehicle that’s been in service of over 40 years!  Not only an upgrade, but the chassis is original.  They’ve taken sme old wrecks, put a new engine & gearbox in them, and painted them.  How proud I am of our procurement abilities!
We all know that the warrior AFV is a mighty piece of battlefield technology, and I’ve not met a soldier yet who has a bad word to say about them.  This on the other hand has me on the horns of a dilemma.  If it gets more soldiers out of Snatch landrovers and out of harms way then good.  But I can’t put the word cheapskate out of my mind when it comes to the people who made the decision to produce this vehicle.Oh, and it’s still got to prove itself against a genuine improvised explosive device!