Should we buy British?
 

As has been highlighted by today's news from Portsmouth BAe shipyard, certain industries are designated as strategic and the UK military are legally required to "buy British". Is this the right course? What if relaxing this enabled us to afford lots more ships/aircraft?

You are then dependant to the whims of other countries, same with fighters, buying into the F35 is all well and good until it degrades your ability to build fighters yourself, once you become reliant on foreign built assets you then lose the ability as staff and the knowledge base are lost. Trouble is reduce the demand by shrinking the Navy etc, you then cannot justify holding the capacity to build them.

ShotOne, this should cheer you up; https://www.gov.uk/government/news/m...ew-rfa-tankers . Old news now but they are still being built in South Korea. This is good value for the MoD but arguably not that good for UK PLC. Unless we have some reciprocal trade agreement with the South Koreans, all the money leaves the Country. Buying British would most probably cost more but much of the money would stay in our home economy. The brains trust in the Treasury doesn't allow the MoD a buy British bonus, though. Funny old world.

So we bought Nimrod MRA 4. Question answered..?

Trouble with buying foreign is that country can dictate use, or non use, as the case may be, by denying spares etc. As Australia has found out in the past.

BAe. The company that has single handedly destroyed Britain's defence industry. Aeroplanes, ships....

Brian

Agree re found out in past, at least now most seems to come from the US,
not sure if that is good or bad !!!

I heard this said on radio yesterday by Lord West, saying he would take all MoD contracts away from Scotland if they voted Yes. He said development, production etc should always be in England (hastily changed to include Wales and NI.)

Rivet Joint?

Why wouldn't you ?

If Scotland leaves the UK, it would be like having them built in India !

It is moments like that when politicians, especially inexperienced ones like West, reveal their true colours. You could understand your average politician blurting it out, as he is unlikely to be aware of anything related to Defence, but for a retired Admiral to say it just shows you the inner thinking of both MoD and government.

Buy British but do so with caution.
 

BAe has over the years used the buy British policy of Govenments of both party's to ramp up the price and deliver late, they just took the Govenments and tax payers for a ride.

The first time they got a message that this should not continue was when they so overpriced the Buldog refurbishment that they lost the contract to the Grob 115.

But undaunted by this they continued to rip off The tax payer with the Nimrod MR4 that as usual was late and over budget .............. The only way to show the con artists at the top of BAe that the UK tax payer had had enough of their antics was to chop up the project outside their office windows.

Not forgetting that the AEW 3 was only conceived as a concept to keep the Unions quiet when UK bought the Boeing...it was not anticipated that an early general Election would bring a union dominated Labour party to power and we would actually buy it! Political, rather than capability/value decisions cost a lot of money in the long run.

In 1988, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces told the UK House of Commons that the European Fighter Aircraft would "be a major project, costing the United Kingdom about £7 billion"
In 2011 the National Audit Office estimated the UK's "total programme cost [would] eventually hit £37 billion", for less aircraft.

This is typical. Our MoD and defence contractors produce often inferior kit, usually very late and at many times the original budget. Which might explain why we buy so much off the shelf from America. That way we get better kit a lot cheaper.

What we need is competition, a second British defence contractor able to take on major contracts and bring some efficiency to the market. An amalgam of Meggitt, Marshall, Qinteq etc might get there with some good management.

And maybe banning BAE from all new contracts until they get their act together.

There was a time when we made good kit at a good price and countries from all over the world bought their ships and aircraft from us. Unfortunately the power of the unions and weak management meant that potential productivity improvements were not implemented. So the rest of the world became more competitive and the UK lost the orders and the jobs. The main effect of union power is unemployment.

We pay tax and invest it in the armed forces as an insurance scheme - surely we should be looking at the technological and industrial elements of that insurance as being at least as important as the others?

Perhaps the problem is that in order to create something stable, a lot of companies have been squashed into a few huge ones and with that goes the customer's ability to bargain or change suppliers.

Then we would leave all those ships/aircraft parked in ports and airfields empty, because we can't afford the sailors or airmen to fill them (apparently)!.......

Assuming you mean fewer aircraft rather than less of an aircraft (as we nearly achieved both), are you allowing for the Germans buggering about with the RADAR fit, our lot sodding about with the gun fit, everyone sodding about with the final buy number and corresponding work-share and our lot sodding about again with the buy number and the production and delivery timetable?

t43562; you make a fair point. It reminds me of the "rationalisation" of the aircraft and missile industry in the late '50s. At least then, HSA could compete with BAC (and dear old Fred HP tried to compete with everybody) and nobody was daft enough to lump shipbuilders in with the deal.

Does anyone know where a list of our strategic assets can be found? The point I made above (badly) was that I thought Nimrod R and now Rivet Joint was one.

How do you figure that one out? The AEW3 was bought because NATO couldn't make its mind up and the Shack, well . . .

Then of course NATO bought the E3 after we committed to the AEW3.

Dervish,

Google is your friend. Just type in RAF or RN as a starting point and you will eventually get to everything you could want to know about our strategic assets. Nimrod R is in the process of being replaced by Rivet Joint. Two totally different aircraft but with the same mission.

It ultimately depends on whether we are producing what is needed and can be purchased at a reasonble cost (compared to products elsewhere).

It's not that long ago that Plod had to purchase British cars but that was untenable once the industry went down the tubes. Same could happen to the military.

Should BAE have been so quick to quit the civil market?