draken,
It's all very well forcing a consolidation of the shipbuilding to ensure it's strategic survival but the surely the question should be whether the last government wrote a cheque they couldn't cash?
We know there is a blackhole in the equipment programme somewhere in the region of £36 billion over the next ten years, according to the NAO. This appears to use an optimistic figure for the cost of the JCA (whatever form it takes) and omits the cost of Future Surface Combatant so it would appear the gap would be even greater by 2016 if action isn't taken.
Considering that the MOD was forced to re-profile the contract not long after signing it, how likely is it they have put sufficient thought into what happens 10 years down the line? Indeed, when they re-profiled how much thought was put into the long term effects of the change and not just the short-term in year savings? Or was the MOD in crisis mode and planning to worry about that when the time comes?
It seems to me that criticising BAE here or the previous government for signing such a contract misses the real point: that the last government provided insufficient funding, permanently deprived projects of funding because of delays between 2002 and 2007 (would shipbuilding be in the present mess had the carriers gone ahead earlier or the full requirement of Type 45s been ordered?), and made promises that they had no way of keeping.