Procurement decision
Setting aside the taxi, I think it a good move to have apparently ditched the long standing government (not MoD) edict that sonics hardware and software must be sourced from (what was) GEC-Marconi. I always felt this restrictive and wondered if operators knew far better and cheaper equipment was available, but denied them. To try to prove what had merely been hearsay, in 1994 I ran a blind trial at the JAAC pitting an upgrade of the AQS902G-DS system processor against a foreign one used by, for example, Canada and Australia. The latter won hands down. The operators / guinea pigs were both RN and RAF and were astonished at the performance. The Gods stepped in and demanded I buy the poorer value one for a related RN programme. It was then transferred to DHSA and I never found out what they did, but they'd be under the same edict.
Tourist may remember this, but every 18 months we spent in the region of £xM getting around 2% extra detection range via software updates. (Hard to call 2% an upgrade). In 1995 we developed a separate system that gave 78% for £758 per operator, with recurring costs of £2 per flight for batteries. Rejected as too embarrassing, but the Canadians took an interest. As did our Merlin people, whose SOBS had been in the Boscombe trials crew at BUTEC, FORACS and AUTEC, but they were soon told to wind it in.
Sorry, drifting a little bit, but the point is that designated strategic technologies are mostly governed by political directives. MoD has little say.