Then again, if you tried to setup a busienss with the level of 'customer-owned' dependencies (that subsequently fail!) you would be laughed off the Stock Exchange! BAES were put in this position by the circumstances the MoD faced. I won't go into this anymore to avoid thread drift, suffice to say I think we are looking at the same thing from slightly different angles! My own opinion (and I have seen from both sides!) is that it's not doing so badly..considering... but I do concede that in comparison with some of the slicker commercial (civilian) companies, there's a lot to learn - BAES and MoD both!
