MoD hands Royal Navy project to BAE

[LFFC]

MoD hands over Royal Navy project to BAE to bypass £700m tax

The Times - 31 Mar 08

The Ministry of Defence will reluctantly hand control of a project to build two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy to BAE Systems in an attempt to avoid a £700 million tax bill.

The £3.8 billion carriers will be built by an alliance of companies including BAE, VT, Babcock and Thales UK, but only one must be named prime contractor. In a twist of tax law, VAT is applied to ships built by multiple companies but not to those built by only one.

The Government had hoped not to give BAE, Europe’s largest defence company, prime status on the project because it fears a return to the days of cost overruns and delays in big defence projects.

[glad rag]

LOL two Navy projects mentioned £2.2 BILLION over budget....................

[Two's in]

Saving a £700 million tax bill by giving BAE the role of Prime. That is just farkin hilarious.

[MarkD]

Because they'd rather give t'Bungling Baron 700,000,000 pounds than the Treasury?

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

Why didn't they go the Panavia/Eurofighter role and set up a "consortium" company to be, in effect, the prime? With the various partners holding their various shares of the prime?

[Jetex Jim]

A senior political figure told The Times: “We are worried that the MoD cannot control BAE and it is taxpayers who end up paying the price.”

Well somebody said it, now how about figuring out a way to control them?

[Wensleydale]

Surely, the money for project comes from the Treasury and the Tax goes back to the Treasury. All the Government had to do was to hand the Tax back to the MOD. They have missed out on an anouncement of new additional funding! Spin ain't what it used to be.

[Northern Circuit]

hmmmm.......BAE......what could go wrong?

[modtinbasher]

Some fine dining on the horizon! Remember when I was spending money BAe reps were told at one point that they were not treating us enough......yum yum!

MTB

[soddim]

Neither MOD nor BAE appear capable of managing large defence projects so perhaps they should have found a company that could.

[cyrilranch]

Was not the Thales the company that won the contact in the first place , but the MP's did not like this because they thought/told that a French Company had won it .when infact it was U.K company part own by the French. The same company that lost the Bowman contact in 2003 because of the same MP's.

[Ivan Rogov]

So it's BAe and Thales, who get their naval expertise from DCN who built the Charles De Gaulle . On top of that we have entered into a joint design phase with the French, when will we learn, erm I mean identify from our mistakes
I know the US made huge improvements in carrier sorties rates in the 90's to provide better bang for buck. A quick Google gives CVF a 110 Dave sorties a day with 40 aircraft (includes Merlins) while CVN 21 (Future US CVN) estimates 160 with 90 aircraft (includes E-2, Seahawk, etc.) Any Nautical Bods have any better figures, are these claims true?

[MarkD]

All the Government had to do was to hand the Tax back to the MOD

As if the Treasury would let that happen

[Not_a_boffin]

Think you'll find that CVF + Dave =110 is absolute max, whereas CVN21+90 = 160 is sustained. They have certainly got over 200 sorties/day from a Nimitz deck in the last few years...

[oversteer]

How do we end up with the ridiculous situation where a government agency has to pay tax to .. er.. the government??

[Ivan Rogov]

Why buy JSF when it looks like the classified Naval Typhoon trial was successful

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/Ent%20deck%201.jpg

[Flyingblind]

So secret in fact that the two aircraft were trying to look French.

[Kendo66]

LOL!

I must admit to being a trifle confused about the Superbug though?! Is that the CdG?

[Not_a_boffin]

Looks like Eisenhower or Nimitz

[Obi Wan Russell]

The number on the flight deck is 65, ie CVN 65. Welcome aboard the USS Enterprise! Still going strong after all these years (in service 1961)