Nurse,
A valid point, but I think what us 'near sighted' contributors to this thread are criticising is not so much the equipment itself, but the inordinate amount of time that the MOD allows the procurement process to take.
This is often because we would rather buy an inferior/not yet available British product than an off the shelf foreign product that is available immediately. I am all for supporting British industry, but it must not be of a higher priority than on time capability, after all it's our lives that are at risk if we are poorly equipped.
I think that Challenger ll is probably the exception to the above examples, but Typhoon, MRA4 and T45's are horrendously expensive and long long overdue:
We could have had F15E's in around 1997 when Typhoon was first supposed to be available.
We could have had a MP platform based on a modern airliner. Again around the turn of the century and they wouldn't have cost c£300 million plus for each one.
I don't know too much about the T45's other that they are late and Very expensive.
None of this is to say that the above kit is no good, but with a Defence Budget that is ever more under pressure, can we afford to be paying (and waiting) for it?
This is why we are buying more and more equipment under UOR's. Not because it is the ideal way to procure, but it is the only way to get kit when we need it.