St Athan
St Athan, along with Aberporth and LLanbedr are now essentially "owned" (in terms of their futures) by the Welsh Assembly Govt (WAG) - I have the name of their Project Manager if anyone wants it to look at moving work there - please PM me. ParcAberporth is now being seen as a centre of excellence for UAV development and flight testing, based on the privately owned runway for West Wales Airport next door.
The remaining DARA VC10 work is being competed (sorry market tested - but without DARA being allowed to bid!) so depending on who wins and whether they keep the work at St Athan there could be very little of the original DARA work left and I assume that DARA will soon be no more as the other depots such as Sealand and Fleetlands' work is competed. St Athan may have a significantly increased military future depending on who wins the Defence Ground Training competition, but in the meantime WAG together with their colleagues in Aerospace Wales Forum are doing a good job, with some success, to get aviation activities into St Athan. I understand that the decision has been made to retain an operational airfield no matter what - but I guess that even this would have to be subject to review if the economics don't work.
JB