Posted Thursday 15th November 2007 12:52 GMT
Apparently the new Minister For Wednesday Afternoons Between 16:22PM and 16:51PM During Periods of Good Weather is playing Middle Manager Babble Bingo.
She's only missing Paradigm and Synergy now
Years of constructive, lean government to look forward to in that department then ?
Posted Thursday 15th November 2007 15:18 GMT
So,
the research plan is on the basis of upgrading existing equipment?
Where is the plan that says "we'll go after totally new ideas and fund them well"? There's a real risk we do another Eurofighter - tarting up an old design with new bells and whistles. We need the research to create a break with the past and leave the go faster stripe upgrades to slow old BAE.
Posted Thursday 15th November 2007 16:12 GMT
... will we be getting sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads? Enquiring taxpayers wish to know.
Posted Thursday 15th November 2007 16:38 GMT
I hear the whale song calling...
...but she loses marks for failing to mention 'sustainability' or indeed 'public/private partnership end-to-end conflict resolution scenarios'.
Very disappointing, and from a New Labour minister at that.
Posted Thursday 15th November 2007 17:40 GMT
"Where is the plan that says "we'll go after totally new ideas and fund them well"?"
That the third party proposes, spells out and outlines funding management, for the new Minister to say ...We've got a new plan which we'd rather keep under wraps for now although all the best plans will be the ones under wraps that you might never get to hear about ....except all the glory pieces/flag waving stuff.
And everyone knows that as soon as you start sharing anything over the net, any spooky Tom, Dick, Vladamir, Ming or Hajime deserves his share.
Posted Friday 16th November 2007 14:00 GMT
"There's a real risk we do another Eurofighter - tarting up an old design with new bells and whistles. "
If only the Eurofighter was just a tarted-up old design. The French Rafale was based on existing technology and hence was relatively cheap and put into production in a few years. In contrast, Eurofighter is technologically very ambitious, and as a result, twenty years have passed since its prototype first flew (the "EAP": I forget what that was an acronym for). During this time, the enemy has changed, and technology has moved on anyway, and this multi-billion pound project has drained resources from more sensible procurement programmes. Being a four-nation procurement programme didn't help. Meanwhile, the RAF has lacked a credible fighter since at least the 1970s.
Pushing barriers in defence technology is very expensive and can just trigger an arms race with your enemy. We should only do so where there is a credible threat and a shortcoming in our capability. In the Eurofighter case, a bread-and-butter fighter would have met our needs.
Back to the article
