If it's Government Policy, you can be guaranteed to leap to its defence, eh, Proone? And I say that as someone just left of centre on the political spectrum, and not as someone you can dismiss as an uncritical admirer of the Tories (though I did vote for one, last time out).
However damaging it might be to military capability and flexibility, however silly and doctrinaire it may be, if the grinning rock ape and his minnions support it, then so will you.
And since Tony, and Hoon, and Reid and all the other shabbily opportunistic and unprincipalled rogues embrace this shabby commercialisation and privatisation, then so do you.
There's no reason at all why the RAF shouldn't perform all of its own maintenance on virtually every aircraft now in the inventory (including -130J and Typhoon), nor why St Athan shouldn't continue to operate as an MU. Nor would many suppliers refuse to support the RAF's aspirations to provide its own support for future equipment, if that were the price of winning the order. If providing source codes to DARA were a pre-condition to winning the order, in most cases source codes would be provided. And even when they are not, the bulk of 'Depth' work is still traditional airframe- and engine-inspection, servicing, rectification, and repair, which does not have to be shuffled off to the merry Baron and his whippet-wielding chums.
The "commercial reality of the 21st Century" is that if risk-averse IPT leaders devolve their responsibilities to a monopolistic DA/OEM, the result will be a cheaper (in the short term) but significantly less flexible support system, in which the demands of 'lean' and 'just in time' are applied inappropriately, removing flexibility and adaptability, robbing the service of flexible, adaptable, deployable blue-suited manpower.
It's not anti BAE bias to point out the stark difference in cost and timescale between the Tornado and Jaguar upgrades, nor to point out the loss of three VC10 tankers for BAE's track convenience, nor the loss of Nimrod airframes (which allowed the possibility of a war surge) to support a given number of aircraft on the line during peacetime. Nor is it anti-BAE bias to point out that like any non-nationalised commercial concern, it is driven by profit, and a proportion of the price being paid by the RAF is being used to provide shareholder dividends and directors' bonuses.
Proper, honourable, decent and sensible Labour folk used to see a role for the state in strategically important industries and service provision, and didn't want to hive off every possible service for sub standard private industry to make a profit on.
What a pity that your hero, that effete, Fettes-educated, dishonourable, shifty wide boy doesn't seem capable of doing anything else than to slavishly follow inappropriate Thatcherite lunacy/orthodoxy.