Quietly, the Eurofighter project seems to be running into trouble. First of all, Dassault got the Indian contract and the Indians claim that Rafale is dramatically cheaper. Further, they weren’t impressed by the amount of stuff that is planned to come in future upgrades, whose delivery is still not certain. These upgrades are becoming a…
Read More slow-motion procurement failureThis LA Times story about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (so called because it’s still a dream – let’s get the last drop from that joke before it goes into service) and the role of outsourcing is fascinating. It is partly built on a paper by a senior Boeing engineer which makes among other things, this…
Read More 787: the plane Milton Friedman built, and about as well as you’d expectThis LA Times story about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (so called because it’s still a dream – let’s get the last drop from that joke before it goes into service) and the role of outsourcing is fascinating. It is partly built on a paper by a senior Boeing engineer which makes among other things, this…
Read More 787: the plane Milton Friedman built, and about as well as you’d expectOK, so yer lie detector. It’s been something of a blogosphere hit. And in the comments, we have Nigel, who appears to know something about acoustic signal processing – in the sense of “makes speech recognition systems for Eurofighters”. It seems that rather than being a signal at a frequency between 8 and 12Hz, the…
Read More voice stress claritySo Mike Turner, CEO of BAE SYSTEMS, and friends are moaning about being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office over the Al-Yamamah kickbacks. They are claiming that thousands of jobs are at stake if the Saudis pull out of their order for Eurofighters, and therefore the government ought to quietly call off the SFO and…
Read More Don’t throw me into that…Well, those of you who are taking part in today’s protest against the Serious and Organised Crime & Police Act, aka the Brian Haw Act, may get to meet…me, as I’m quite likely to come over to the camp at Runnymede from the TYR operations centre in fabulous Egham. Beware.
Read More Demon Strate!200 years ago this week, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born. This week, this blog’s favourite pig-incompetent, corrupt arms manufacturer BAE Systems decided to sell its 20% share of Airbus Industrie, including the Filton plant and design centre just three miles or so from Brunel’s Clifton suspension bridge. BAE is apparently trying to make “bolt-on acquisitions”…
Read More Brunel Memorial Sale