I promised more serious content; here goes. Right, everyone is vexed about the RUSI report (PDF download) that was recently published under the names of Gwyn Prins (a minor hero of this blog’s, for his The Heart of War: Power, Conflict, and Obligation in the 21st Century) and the Marquess of Salisbury (no less, who…
Read More Rosyth RUSI RantIt appears that the defence procurement stories we’ve been tracking are coming to a head. Recently, it emerged that the Astute SSN, Nimrod MRA4, and T-45 destroyer projects are going significantly overbudget again; the first two of these are, of course, the ones that were already £800 million over budget and several years later. The…
Read More The Defence Crisis; BAE Are Still HopelessFT: the AirTanker bond issue has, not surprisingly, gone pear-shaped as the monoline insurers fall apart. The story includes some vital detail on precisely what the Defence Procurement PFI team and the consortium have been doing all this time; essentially, trying to finance the deal at an acceptable rate of interest in the middle of…
Read More Can haz air-to-air refuelling? Oh noes…This just keeps getting worse: The Times reports that the Government has rejected 300 out of 700 Iraqi employees who applied for resettlement, mostly under the 12 month rule. That’s a rejection rate of just under half. Curiously, the Foreign Office’s own scheme has turned down 38 out of 180; this seems to suggest that…
Read More Iraqi Employees: It Gets WorseThis PPRuNE thread reminds me of something from the archives. During a meeting we had not long ago, the increasing sophistication and cost of the Unpersonned Aircraft was raised – because by becoming too sophisticated and HVAA in nature, they were in some danger of becoming too valuable to risk in certain scenarios. Rather defeating…
Read More Some are expendable; others are just expensiveIt hasn’t been in the papers much since the summer, but did you know that the Russian air force has been around the North Sea a hell of a lot lately? Between October and December, I’m aware of at least five visits to the UK or Norwegian ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone). Not just that,…
Read More We get it almost every nightI’ve been reading old House of Commons Defence Committee reports – I was ill, forgive me. This one, from February, is likely to spin up to relevance any time now. It covers the Army’s FRES (Future Rapid Effects System) project, which was intended to provide a new armoured vehicle that would be light and handy…
Read More Unclear on the ConceptThe good, good people responsible for the Iraqi employees’ resettlement scheme have hit upon a brilliant idea. It turns out that if you have completed the canonical 12 months, you are liable to be refused assistance if you stopped working for the British because you were being threatened; this is called “absenteeism”. Even if, as…
Read More Our Charming GovernmentHere’s Simon Jenkins’ latest piece of work. For the Tories it is sex, for Labour it is money. Financial scandal sticks to the latter like political napalm. From formula one to ministerial mortgages, privatisation contracts and cash-for-honours, the sign of a £50 note waving in the wind sends Labour politicians weak at the knees. Their…
Read More Simon Jenkins: Double StandardsSo what’s in the server log? Shall we look? 82.205.254.45 [entrypoint #437] 2007/10/october-08-and-out.html Oct 22, 12:07:51 [0:00:00] views: 1 Yahoo ! (where to apply for the assistance to iraqi locally engaged staff) Yes; you read it all right. That’s someone searching Yahoo! for instructions on what to do if you worked for the British Army…
Read More This Should Not Happen