Ah, the old "Sovereignty" debate.
Did you know that most Western Military aircraft contain many
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR
- which restricts export to some degree) restricted items? - for example the GPS anti-spoofing modules that most military aircraft carry are ITAR protected. Aerospace is now Global and so Sovereignty comes less and less applicable. Another good example is fighter aircraft tyres, none are produced in the UK, in fact I believe Typhoon's tyres are made by "Kumho" - a Korean manufacturer that is one of the five companies worldwide qualified to produce and export aircraft tires. How do we get around having enough spare tyres to ensure that the Koreans can't stop us doing the "Queen's business"? We stockpile them!
Look at BAESYSTEMS, a Global Company of 107,000 workforce - some 44,000 work in the USA alone plus another 5,000 in Saudi Arabia. I believe at the last count the UK workforce was less than 30,000. If you want to buy one of these fancy unmanned aircraft from BAESYSTEMS in the USA (
BAE Systems - Welcome) - guess what? Some of it is ITAR protected! In fact most of the unmanned air system modems and satellite hardware is also ITAR protected.
270v DC generation and servo actuators are currently the sole preserve of US industry - ITAR protected. They're used on F-22, F-35 and also B787 and Airbus A380.
So with all that in mind, buying from BAESYSTEMS or other UK manufacturers these days does not guarantee Sovereign Operations as we used to know it - but hey that's globalisation for you!
The B Word