Originally Posted by
t43562
Disregarding Aeralis itself for the time being, how can any country develop industrial and technological capability with this attitude?
1) By planning and investing over a sufficiently long timeframe that novel low TRL approaches can get picked up and brought to high TRL in time to compete for major procurements.
2) By not over-programming so egregiously that every new financial year turns immediately into a bunfight over what expenditure can be deferred.
3) By not continually choosing to protect near term activity designed to make organisations look 'busy and relevant', or to spend money with existing 'strategic suppliers' who claim they need it now to preserve 'strategic capacity'.
4) By taking account of non-monetary value in Treasury investment cases.
Oh dear!
Also, linked to 3), this is UK defence aerospace we're talking about. If Aeralis was in any danger of producing something credible, BAES would have moved to buy them or make them go away by now. The fact that they haven't is its own data point.