I suppose to a fiction writer like Forsyth Tornado and Typhoon are synonyms, I wonder if we can take the rest of his pontificating any more seriously?
The Typhoon sale to Saudi is a pretty interesting case, it appears that BAE cleverly ‘factored in’ the 72 that they expected to sell to Saudi when it was announced how many the RAF were going to buy and that these would equip three bases; Leuchars, Leeming and Conningsby. Normally any exports outside the consortium countries, like the handful to Austria would have been new work and gravy to the whole group, but in this case it seems that BAE took a rather larger slice of the work share than they would otherwise have done. Now seemingly the need for Leeming has disapeared and the same number of A/C will go to Saudi.
But I don’t think any of the BAE employees who contribute to this forum need worry too much even if the Saudi sale were to go t*ts up, I’m sure that the press will be fairly swiftly briefed on all the anticipated job loses and MOD persuaded somehow or other that it really does need Leeming as a Typhoon base after all.
Thanks to the moderating influence of the other members of the group at least Typhoon will be a fairly useful fighter, at least by the standards of what BAE is capable of lumbering UK MOD with when left to their own devices, (unsupervised by the three other countries) I need cite only Nimrod MR4 as an example.
On the MR4 most of the really clever stuff, the mission electronics is subbed to Boeing anyway leaving a fairly straightforward upgrade to the engines and airframe of an admittedly fragile and apparently carelessly assembled vintage airframe, but something BAE should have been able to manage on its own with little problems. But oh dear what a meal they have made of it.
Maybe if columnists like Forsyth were a little less partisan and a little more critical BAE would be obliged to finally stop acting like a nationalised company. At least if it was nationalised the UK taxpayer could be expecting to feel the benefit of that Saudi order...