I am concerned that the SDSR will have an adverse effect on UK T&E, potentially risking loss of a huge amount of corporate knowledge and experience, particularly at Boscombe Down. The cancellation of the MRA4 and Harrier programmes is a huge loss to RAF capability but is also a huge loss to QinetiQ, which now has to decide what to do with the large teams of dedicated and talented people who were supporting these programmes.
With the planned early withdrawal of Sentinel and C-130J, and with VC10 and Tristar already due to be withdrawn once FSTA is in service, heavy aircraft T&E work is going to be reduced to almost nothing in terms of on-going in-service support, with the only remaining work coming from FSTA and A400M once they are in service. The fast jet side has also taken a big hit with the Harrier going out of service, even though it is nearing the end of a largely successful upgrade programme. Ongoing Tornado GR4 and Typhoon work is likely to be fairly limited, particularly once the Afghanistan withdrawal is completed, and on F-35 the UK T&E contribution is fairly small, hanging on to the coat-tails of the much larger US development T&E effort. With so many platforms leaving service, the TP requirement is likely to reduce too, which won't particularly help ETPS either. It seems the only area to have escaped fairly unscathed is rotary-wing, with Puma LEP and ongoing Merlin and Chinook work.
So is there a future for T&E in the UK? I would suggest it will be limited, and with very little practical trials work unless you work for a major manufacturer or are on the rotary-wing side of life. I suspect the number of redundancies already announced by QinetiQ will increase, because the large teams of people who were working on MRA4 and Harrier will now have nothing to do. It is a sad, sad day for military aviation in the UK. And my sympathy also is with personnel in the RAF and at BAES who are also likely to lose their jobs as a result of yesterday's announcements.
The other thing that really hasn't helped is the way traditional developmental T&E has slowly moved away from Boscombe Down and into the OEUs, often because the MOD budgetary arrangements cause OEU work to be "free" to the DE&S project teams, whereas QinetiQ work costs them. I am staggered that this budgetary distortion has never been properly resolved, and I think the quality and efficiency of UK T&E has suffered because of it. After all, what other nations have physically separated their OEUs away from the national centres of T&E expertise? The French have not, the Americans have not, so why on earth do we think we know better?
Sadly, I think that as a result of policy-driven anomalies such as these, added to the the less-than-sensible idea (IMHO) of including Boscombe Down within the QinetiQ privatisation in the first place, and as a result of the SDSR, UK T&E may now be in a terminal state of decline. A very sad end for an industry sector within which the UK used to be a world leader
What do other forum contributors think?