Originally Posted by
GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU
We mustn't forget that from SR (Air) 420 emerged a specification for a an aeroplane with 4 fanjet engines (low noise fatigue for the crew, high altitude capability for search range, fast patrol station transit time, etc). Whatever other aeroplane was chosen would have to have been a converted airliner, then. The Treasury, being simple but devious folk, would have found the idea of recycling an existing machine quite attractive (their understanding of a Through-deck Cruiser springs to mind). So here we are.
......As a minor point, though, I don't think the villagers of Bramhall would appreciate Woodford being placed next to Wilmslow.
Oh I'd forgotten all about the ASR. Words fail me.....for a moment. If it was as beautifully written
as ASR400 was for the Nimrod AEW, no wonder it got off to a bad start. ASR 400 was the most comprehensively useless document I've ever read with an engineering purpose in mind. Utterly vaccuous. Perhaps the poorest piece of staff work to float off the old OR desks.
However, unlike the Nimrod AEW, the MRA4 did actually have much promise of getting off to a half way decent start. The requirements were well and widely advised by good technical and ops folk; it's just that the advice didn't all come through into the spec as it should. I could hardly believe the advice I'd given - on performance characteristics, isolation needs of some data, and standards management - had been almost totally omitted. That was DPA's fault, not BAE's; and it took quite an argument to put it back on track, plus severe budget.
In the end with all the lost requirements it's a miracle we didn't get a biplane Hudson with turboprops, two observer platforms, semaphore and morse comms and no bomb bay.
But - rant over - that's life acquiring big and complex systems. Bear in mind that no one (whoever they are, whatever their loyalties) comes to work with the intention of doing a bad job. No one gets everything right and in the end it comes down to what you can argue against a contract (where you will never win every last point) compared to what you 'must' have - and horse trade the rest. DPA knows it and so does BAE and every other supplier. And I'm sorry to have to say it guys, the military is/are the world's worst at stating requirements and sticking to them - and that bu
ers up everyone on all sides.
On the serious point re Woodford's location. Nuts! I like Wilmslow and remember it from the time it was a quaint old town where I lived in the 60s (at the RAF camp...long lost). And anyway I knew and regularly visited every pub within a 10 mile radius of Woodford - to ensure community relations were maintained to best modern standards and practices of course - so the good burghers (no, not Wimpy or McD's!) of Bramhall can jolly well be grateful I kept the pubs profitable and open for them.
