> Why, it's almost as though the MoD procurement budget was more about

> industrial subsidy than about equipping troops and saving lives

As you well know Lewis, if it comes to a serious shooting war ramping up supplies in a great hurry is key, especially of "dispoasble" items, so it may not be a good idea to have to get them from a third party, especially should that third party not approve of your war... Get enough suppliers from enough different countries and it will be impossible to fight at all without some bit of kit or another being embargoed for spares or supplies...

If the US hadn't let us have their new type Sidewinder missiles we'd probably have lost the Falklands war, and if the French had let the Argentinians have a generous supply of air launched Exocets they'd probably have won it...

industrial subsidy DOES save lives, and we shouldn't be trading with Israel anyway until they clean up their act.

Lewis Page advocates the Military buying from other countries!

Although I'm surprised it's not America this time.

Surely the point of buying in-country is that we keep the expertise in-country rather than relying on other countrys? Especially if we're relying on a state like Israel- which is under near-constant attack and which is near-constantly attacking. Hardly a great marker of a stably, reliable supplier is it? Though I accept they'll keep having a decent sized military budget for a few years to come!

This ESPECIALLY works with relatively cheap tech like 360-degree cameras; limited R&D costs (I mean it's surely just some fancy optics, a camera & a wireless link?) and a low per-unit cost make this a fantastic item to build in-country.

...there are some racists working within the MoD. Nah, impossible.

"Why, it's almost as though the MoD procurement budget was more about industrial subsidy than about equipping troops and saving lives."

Yes,

The international tax pot is the biggest pot of money in the world, and yet nobody has ever tried to rob it.

Well, nobody has ever been caught robbing it which is almost the same thing.

Now if I developed an Armageddon device then they would throw me in the clink, but if BAE or Lockhead or some other rich bastard organisation developed an Armageddon device they would receive a knighthood and a big fat wad of cash. Oh and these rich bastard organisations also give highly paid consultancy jobs to world leaders that start wars.

Just an observation that's all, no need to send out the helicopters.....

They prefer to just fire tank rounds at anything that moves from a safe distance. Why look inside a room when you can just blow it up? :(

..thought they just flattened the neighbourhood to make sure it was safe.....

...to such a ballcam -

*drumroll*

Spraypaint on the lenses.

I'll market and sell small spray cans to be issued to servicemen for a knockdown MoD special price of £500 a pop.

Hows that sound?

Sell a public model with wifi, then you just lob it into some changing rooms and it automatically uploads the footage to youtube.

We built a similar clever gadget for our own troops. It let them do something while safely hidden behind a wall instead of standing up waving their arms around in the air for 30secs as they do now.

Soldiers loved the prototype - then we tried to make it:

It has to be compatible with the Bowman radio - but it doesn't need a radio - ok we'll get back to you (they never did)

All electronic equipment has to interface with the "infantry soldier 2000 platform", they hope to have the specs for this available sometime around 20xx

Then it will have to be redesigned to mil-spec - but the point is that it uses cheap off the shelf commodity parts, that's why it's light/cheap/easy to use. And your manufacturing process will have to be redesigned to our specs, and we will tell you which approved parts you can use (ever tried to buy Nato made memory chips!)

Then they will only buy from approved suppliers = Thales/BAe/whatever the global arms co is called this month.

In the end we sold them to the Isrealis instead.

The seecam'n'cum?

I think I'm off to join an Israeli student union!

Like all hardware, I'd wait for version 2.

I wouldn't want to fire my Mk1 i-ball through a window or round a corner!

Yep, mine's the one with the eyepatch.

OOOOOH, I-ball = "eyeball".

that took me way too long to get, damn apple :(

Wasn't the 360-degree trick used first in .. THE MATRIX ? ;-)

Paris, coz next time she might invest in an i-ball (instead on green lighting).

what if, after blasting through the door, it gets lodged in the guts of one of the occupants?

will it have lights so that remote surgeons will be able to diagnose the wound severity from the bits of plumbing that are visible?