sidevalve
“It seems though that it's become fashionable for some crew room cognescenti to denigrate QinetiQ, chiefly it seems for wanting to make - cover your ears - a profit”.
What you say is basically correct, but remember that this profit, and all other QQ costs, only comes from one place – the Defence Budget. I say this without wishing to denigrate QQ or Dstl or PFG or DARA or any of the other services that DEC and DPA did not have to budget for in the past.
A simple example. A project is costed at £20M pre-QQ/Dstl etc. During the project life the PM is suddenly told, “You’ve got to pay for all these services - £4M please. And we‘re not giving you extra money, you must cut something” (thereby failing to meet the endorsed requirement). Letter to DEC, “What do you want to cut”. He reluctantly chooses one of the sensors you speak of. User complains of a capability gap the project was designed to bridge. And so on.
This is nothing more than a political device to chop the Defence Budget by stealth. This is not hypothetical – I can quote numerous examples involving much larger sums than this, and greater losses to capability. The politicos rely on this knowledge fading with the passage of time, and the influx of new staff who don’t know the history. Just so you know.