Is this pretty accurate? I haven't seen anything official except "announcements will be made in due course". My (RAF) view of it is:
FRES - Would appear to be by the far the most important, but a lot of different vehicles have been purchased under UORs for Afghanistan, although nowhere near 3000. Are they doing the business or is the army on ops still short of decent vehicles? Maybe I should go over to AARSE. I understand that most of the difficulties with this programme are self inflicted, with the army changing the requirement every 5 minutes (or every year or so).
Bowman - Disaster. Anyone know why? General concensus seems to be we bit off more than we could chew. Or was the contractor crap?
FIST - agree with last sentence. Sayings about run before walk spring to mind.
MLRS - From my restricted point of view appears to be a nice to have rather than must have. Any artillery guys on PPRuNe can comment?
C130 - 12 down. Good job we don't have much demand for tactical transport at the moment. Don't understand why we don't cut the SH force as well.
Nimrod - Saved due to jobs, IMHO, rather than a furore or Afghanistan/Iraq capability.
Astutes and T45s - JFC must be rubbing his hands in delight knowing he can use those.