Why don't we buy our military aircraft from....
 

Almost all our military aircraft are built by European consortia or the U.S. As the world now stands, is there perhaps an opening, even a necessity, to take a wider view? Initial posturing prior to negotiations proper, suggest we're in for hard Brexit whatever we want so looking after our interests isnt a priority for them, to say the least. Several areas of the world have vibrant aerospace industry without ever featuring in our inventory; SE Asia, Brazil ((thentucano worked out ok) Is it even so unthinkable we buy stuff from the Russians?

I would offer that is a very dubious path, with questionable supply chains and factory support all subject to political whims. Several buyers of Russian equipment have been very displeased with spares support. I would also be worried about source codes and possible hidden lines inside the software.

Ah, so you don't think our Chinese power station's such a great idea?..

Interesting point you raise. Arms sales are a huge deal, one of the few bright spots in the Russian economy. If there was the remotest hint of them being liable to "selective sabotage" through software or whatever, any prospect of overseas sales would be over. Would they really sacrifice a key industry for a very temporary military advantage?

i Guess they let people out for Christmas

ShotOne has a point - and anyway - there is such a thing as building under licence - which would increase employment in this country and ensure we controlled the spares and the software.

If you disagree, wetstart you could always make your own point rather than a catcall. Anyway this isn't principally about Russia; its a big world. Expanding our traditional shopping area could have a double benefit if it made those new suppliers more disposed to considering buying British

IMHO the idea is not so crazy as it is seen at the first sight.
Of course it will never happen with UK and other NATO members, but technically it is possible.
Look e.g. at Israel. They take MiGs as a platform only, throwing out obsolete radars and other avionics, add a weapon control system with interfaces to non-Russian missiles and sell worldwide.
And in this case the issue of malicious lines in the source code can be eliminated.

Which MiGs do Israel operate.....?

None!

They may update the FISHBED, and flog it about, but they sure as heck don't buy their operational fighters from Russia!

AtomKraft, you do not read attentively.
The word "operate" was not used. Instead, the key words were "sell worldwide". And again, I was only addressing technical issues. From the political point of view the whole topic does not make sense.

Do you mean we should buy from Israel then? Or Russia?

You said, look for example, at Israel...

Well, THEY don't buy from Russia. Israel is an example of a country that flogs things that they wont use themselves!

Again, let's not get strung up on Russia. We DO buy from Israel (watchkeeper). I'm interested why you feel this is politically impossible Avan; there have been big political upheavals in recent months.

Because the political upheaval both here and in the US has been largely about reducing ties, not increasing them.

The people who'd be kicking up a fuss would be agitating towards doing it ourselves, not farming out the work to someone else.

The third world is littered with derelict Russian equipment. Even the Russian Far East Air Force suffers the same problem. Low TBOs and a lack of spares leads to continuous cannibalisation.

Are you actually serious? We are told by people like RUSI that there will be future conflicts involving Russia and China, we are already fighting a pseudo-proxy war against/around them in the middle east and you want to be beholden to their spare parts chain and back up? Madness. Is it Apr 1?

Are we talking about the RAF now?:\

Hmm, we've really got hung up on Russia. Its a big world; is shopping outside our usual confine really an April 1 scenario?

We have already seen people looking to prosecute (and more to the point sue) the MoD where its procurement of UK equipment came with less than optimum safety case documentation. What sort of safety case do you think we'd get with an Israeli or Chinese aeroplane? Do you think there would be a fully 00-970 and 05-123-compliant set of performance analyses to support a rigorous RTS?

I know some parts of america have legalised smoking that stuff, but we should try to practice abstinence when considering serious issues...

:E

PDR

But we ARE buying (remotely piloted) aircraft from the Israelis already. Are you saying only Euro or US types are capable of certification? How is Tucano certified then?

That new Brazilian freighter looks very interesting..................

Stop bringing up Tucano now please, it's a relatively small non-complex training aircraft, built under licence by a UK firm, and was procured well before the regulatory environment we now find ourselves in existed. If you don't like the Russia focus, which producer did you have in mind for these purchases? Israel, China, Brazil, Switzerland? That's about it isn't it if we're considering 'traditional' suppliers from Uncle Sam (incidentally some of his are hardly MAA compliant either..).

See what happens when you disturb the status quo...

We're not actually.

Hermes was operated under a service agreement that was theatre specific. Not a good lobg term solution.

Watchkeeper is a different airframe and system; there isn't much Israeli content actually left in it - this is one of the reasons its so expensive. Buying from the Israelis direct wouldn't meet airworthiness standards.

This isn't just an Israeli problem. It also exists with US equipment as they have both different standards and don't release evidence. Look at Airseeker - no airworthiness case at all as the US wouldn't release evidence, hence SoS carries ownership of the risk. This sign off is the only reason we're flying now.

The MoD response to Haddon-Cave has not been good.

To be serious, I wonder why Gripen from Sweden is not considered?
It is not as perfect as Typhoon, but costs about a half only. And could be a good "lighter" complement to Typhoon. Instead, a much more costly F-35 had been chosen...

"Hermes was operated under a service agreement that was theatre specific. Not a good lobg term solution"

you mean it was delivered when we needed it & it worked ............. heaven forbid we fall into THAT trap again.........................

No, we are buying an aeroplane BASED on an Israeli design which has been reworked and documented by others (at rather extraordinary cost, but that's another story) to meet the certification needs for UK use.

Tucano is a simple aeroplane procured many decades ago when the regulatory touch was "lighter". A better example might be the Mk3 Chinook...

PDR

Just built your own stuff like you used too...

And like the French still do :p

BAE should be quite capable of designing and producing any aircraft we need. If the MoD found a few competent people to keep a very tight rein on BAE there is no reason for costs to get out of hand as they have with F-35.

Tantris is an example of modern from the round up design by BAe..however I doubt it is incompetence that had led to F35 price escalation...

Possibly not after all - way back in history: The final cost of the first 310 Spitfires, after delays and increased programme costs, came to £1,870,242 or £1,533 more per aircraft than originally estimated. Production aircraft cost about £9,500. The most expensive components were the hand-fabricated and finished fuselage at approximately £2,500, then the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine at £2,000, followed by the wings at £1,800 a pair, guns and undercarriage, both at £800 each, and the propeller at £350.
£1500 more per aircraft was a whole lot in 1938.
Taranis is a good example - it is in many ways a full sized aircraft - just lacking a human capable cockpit. So BAE are quite capable.

Ok, I'll bite.
During the FLA competition which eventually was won by the A400M, a derivative of the An-70 was considered but the issues raised above (certification, spares support etc. ) ruled it out.

RoyalistFlyer said "If the MoD found a few competent people to keep a very tight rein on BAE there is no reason for costs to get out of hand as they have with F-35."

I was present ( as possibly was Tucumseh) in the mid-90s, when the then CDP, Sir Robert Walmsley stated in a Town Hall address at Shabbywood that there was no place in his Procurement Executive for technical experts. That's when the rot set in, and contractorisation for technical expertise took over, and in-house competence declined.

Design and build your own stuff! The UK has a proud history of producing very good aircraft and imagine the expertise/ industry/ job losses that would occur otherwise....

Not to be too literalist, but it occurs that we buy military hardware from where we do because the object is not to actually acquire appropriate military hardware at a competitive price, but to further various economic goals.

For instance, it seems to this uninitiated civilian that the aircraft carriers are an absolutely absurd and asinine decision, a worst-of-both-worlds disaster, one so completely irredeemable that only corruption or criminal stupidity could explain it. Similar things can be said about the F-35 purchase, the Type 45 destroyers, Nimrod MRA4, and others.

I am a civilian with only a passing interest, but this much is clear to me. Final decisions on these things are made by politicians who have not been selected for this sort of decision-making, who probably don't see themselves as particularly invested in the results, have significant vested interests as regards short-term popularity among select groups, and probably don't have a passing interest in military affairs.

So, in short, don't we get a terrible, awful deal which risks lives and wastes hundreds of billions... because we're not really trying to avoid those outcomes?

Instead, we're trying (for instance) to get Gordon Brown reelected.

I hope you all realize that a significant amount of US military equipment is produced by UK owned subsidiaries operating in the US. Rolls-Royce Indianapolis is one such example.

.............and of course if we build it ourselves the capital cost (and associated risk) has to be included in the price and borne initially by the manufacturer. In theory the CAPEX is recouped in the unit cost of production and in later batches once this is paid off the profit margin increases.

But in the UK we don't like spending money up front nowadays and therefore don't really do high volume manufacturing on these sort of things by ourselves any more. Hence the various consortiums to spread the cost and the risks around a bit............

Also UK only orders will not underpin this type of model. If you took the P8 for example we are capable of building this mission platform from scratch. Or modifying an Airbus platform to complete the role. But an order of 8 or 12 airframes and development of various systems and modifications means it's just not going to be viable. So we pay a fair chunk more and buy an off-the-shelf option............reduce the risk and accept that the supplier is recovering his CAPEX from us (or taking the profit associated with a mature product)

Our Victorian forefathers who ran the industrial revolution would laugh at our incompetence with regard to production runs and CAPEX versus risk profile analysis. And lucky for us they never thought this way or we'd have no railways, sewers, roads, canals or anything else for that matter...........

A-VAN - I too have often wondered why the RAF has never brought Gripen - even if it was just for use in the UKADR/QRA scenario where we are really interested in numbers more than just technology to achieve the intercept..........

Arc

Our victorian forefathers mostly went bust. Most of the original railways suffered the "sunk envstment syndrome" in which a large number of investors sunk money into the project to build a railway. The company then went bust, and someoine else bought it for under 1p in the £1 (or more probably 1/4d in the £1 in those days). The original invetsors lost their shirts, and the subsequent owners & users benefitted from the free development.

In the UK we don't build military equipment as "speculative developments" because the specific requirements of each user as so different. So the business model used is one of being contracted to design and develop tro a user requirement. That's why the government funds the development programme and the manufacturing tooling. The balance to that is the permitted profit margins on the production and support phases are tiny compared to what would be deemed "normal" in other areas of commerce. The cutom,er also chooses whether the contractor tools up for large or small production volumes - there is no business case for the contractor to investy in larger volume tooling with a customer who almost never follows through with repeat orders while the production line is still open.

The downside is that the user feels free to both (a) continually change the requirement and then blame the contractor for the spiraling cost of change, and (b) at any time cancel the whole project on a whim (veruy common in the UK defence sector). Given that a project may be completely cancelled at any time, and that on cancellation only the costs of contracted expenditure can be demanded as a cancellation fee, there is absolutely no business case for a contractor to invest a single penny more than actually contracted.

The lack of a business case means that if the contractor's directors decided to spend company money on these things, and it results in a loss, they have failed to discharge their legal obligations in regard to the shareholder's money. The company's shareholders can therefore sue the directors personally to recover the loss, because they have acted contrary to their legal duty and so are not protected by the limited liability status.

It was stumbling blocks like these that made it necessary for the CV(F)/QEC contract to be a 15-year guarranteed ship-building contract rather than a specific contract to design and build two missile magnets. The up-front investments required could not be made due to the risks of cancellation - risks that showed to be all too real because the Camoron government tried very hard to cancel the QEC build in the 2010 SDSR, and would have succeeeded (leaving the cointractor cash-negative to the tune of a few hundred million) had it been contracted "conventionally"...

PDR

Hi PDR

Good points made.

Ultimately it comes back to the old 'risk versus reward' argument and I think that currently in UK there is less appetite for risk than in previous time periods.

WRT to the Victorians I agree with what you say, although technically the situation is the same for shareholders now as it was then and is linked directly to my point above.

Arc

And yet getting BAE to build everything continues to be seen as lower risk, despite endless, brain-numbingly expensive lessons to the exact contrary.

Again, I say: it's either deliberate malfeasance, or it's a level of stupidity so extreme that heads should be rolling.

WHich lessons would those be?

PDR

Good posts PDR1. I suppose the worst experience I had was 3 years of hoop jumping running a supposedly open competition for a programme; then being told by politicians to award it to a company who didn't even bid. Which just so happened to be in the Minister for Defence Procurement's constituency. Who were then bought by a company who had withdrawn from the original bid on the grounds the job was too difficult; and 6 months in asked to be released from the contract because they couldn't hit the first milestone. There isn't a single thing anyone in MoD can do about such machinations. Thank goodness for the likes of Boscombe, GEC-Marconi and Westland, who dug us out.

I was thinking of the things I mentioned above. The carriers, MRA4, Type 45, Astute class submarines, all beset by gigantic problems, years late, so overbudget that I barely know how how to describe it without resorting to Edvard Munch.

I could go off into a justification of why all of these projects seem to me to be an unmitigated disaster, but the destroyers are the topical example. They don't even work as oceangoing vehicles, let alone as warfighting machines. My understanding is that they are or soon will be effectively unarmed against any target other than (radar-observable) aircraft or stationary targets on land.

As far as I know once Harpoon goes out of service, the UK will have no ability to attack enemy shipping other than bombing it, which rather assumes a lack of anti-aircraft capability on the part of the enemy, or or torpedoing it. And there are only seven attack submarines in the navy.

I honestly don't want to come off as an unqualified whiner, but when this is the case, and the government attitude is constantly "no problem, BAE, have another couple of hundred million," questions have to be asked.

Edit - Posts like tucumseh's, above, go some way to reinforcing my point of view.

P