Hyd3failure,
It is a Thales (UK) design that has been chosen as CVF, designed in the UK. It will now be engineered and developed by a BAES/Thales consortium with integration of the entire project by KBR, who are a US firm.
I think that makes it about as British as you can get!
Jobzaguddun,
What about licence production? Been done, in the sixties, when a whole raft of indigenous (and mainly impractical and ill-conceived) aircraft projects were cancelled we had the Sea King licence built by Westland, well over 50% of the F-4K/M Phantom was built in the UK in addition to the RR engines.
Prior to that the Wessex was a licence built S-58, the Whirlwind was a licence built S-55, the Sioux was a licence built Bell 47, so Westland have quite a history here, as too do their new Italian owners who licence built Bell 47’s Sea Kings, Chinooks, Bell 204/205’s Bell 212’s et al.
Tucumseh,
“the first thing in the contract is a maintained set of secondary masters and an agreement that we appoint a UK Design Custodian.”
Sorry, but that may have worked in the era of the C-130K but in the age of the C-130J it is absolutely impossible. NO OEM will release software source codes, LMAS will not even give them to the US military so UK MOD can go whistle. This is what is a real worry over F-35 and is taking up so much time to try and negotiate at very senior political level, and that’s as a Tier 1 design partner!
If you buy from overseas you are stuck as any OEM will earn ten times the amount from through life support as they will from the original sale of the kit.