BAES Management Approach
Jabba,
Fair questions you raise - but let's look at the situation from the other end of the telescope.
1. We are the only Western Country who's government insists on competing away national capabilities.
2. We have an incompetent Civil Service who are trying to protect their backsides from redundancy caused by outsouring their roles to a far more efficient Industrial base. Hence every piece of 'government' news about our industry has an anti-industry bias (too-expensive, incompetent, late, the only way of 'saving' the armed forces is more civil servants blah blah blah). BAES, as the biggest, takes most flak - but RR are not far behind.
3. We have an airforce whose most vocal members shout out that if it's not American it must be rubbish.
4. We have a public who don't really want anything to do with defence - it's a bit like not wanting to know where meat comes from - and certainly don't see the need to preserve national capability (particularly when the civil service, government and operators all appear to proclaim industry's incompetence, poor cost effectiveness, shoddy products etc).
5. As an industry we have been suffering a gradual decline for years, such that we are now only really competent as system suppliers (rather than a complete weapon system). We do not have enough throughput, nor any indictaion of any future orders, to warrant 'investing for the future' by maintaining empty sites.
Whilst I don't always agree with the level of emotion put across by MancC, nor necessarily his targets, in this case he is spot on. This is the end of an era - the UK no longer has the capability to design and develop large military systems aircraft. This is entirely down to lack of demand/political will to continue to pay for that privilege, which is an argument for the politicians and if this is the direction the country wants to take then we who work in the industry will just have to accept it.
Against such a backdrop, why oh why do you think any Company should be expected to maintain capability and capacity out of the goodness of their shareholders hearts?
(Rant over - I feel better now)