gasax
I think your post is nice and succinct - and obviously reflects my own thinking.
I am pretty sure we could design and build our own good aeroplanes - if we were allowed, and shock horror, we could always just buy some stuff 'off the shelf' if it did what we needed it to do (fast and flexible). Mind you that would do away with a mountain of people in various Government departments and QUANGOs who are all allowed to have a tinker with requirements for something they will never use, never have to use and are usually unqualified to comment on anyway................. and therefore raises the cost and turns a 'standard item' into a 'non standard' one. All this assumes we have an engineering and manufacturing capability - oh hang on a minute.............
I am always reminded of that cartoon 'What the customer wanted...........' whenever I think about this stuff...................
Arc