Viscount was successful by any measure. Vanguard lost large sums for Vickers, Britannia for us and Bristol. BAES has made more, employed more by designing and making (most of) the wings for many thousands of Airbus products than all of some hundreds of legacy types. BAES Military A/c has done rather better on 40% of many hundreds of Tornadoes than on (most of) some hundreds of Lightnings, Hawks, Harriers. UK very much has an aerospace industry. We just don't assemble many flyaway products.
The business has changed and no point in bemoaning that. Boeing initially was to have made almost nothing on 787. But they designed it all.
Judged by return on investment, exceeding Post Office Savings Account: Viscount, Hunter, Canberra, RR Dart, Spey, RB211-and Trent families, and Airbus wings are the sole business successes of UK Aero. Military programmes cannot be judged by that single measure: posters here have heaped abuse on many UK products, praise on others. There is no immaculate case to give National resources to a product simply because it flies and is Made in Britain. If King Air (Shadow R1) and Global Express (Sentinel R1), 707-as-AWACS (E-3D) and -as-ELINT (Rivet Joint) do the job better than might a Jetstream, Andover, Nimrod platform, then...that's what this Board's Users deserve.
Last edited by tornadoken; 17th Jan 2013 at 13:37.