Before anyone says, "without it, there will be a capability gap!" Wake up: that gap is already there with a programme/system that does not work, and has little likelihood of doing so...
And, again, before anyone says that £3.36bn in 2010 money is £4.4bn in 2020 money, so, we should spend even more with a failed programme to ensure that we meet another failure?
Question for the @DefenceHQ /@BritishArmy: did Ajax Scout pass the independent Gateway 4 Review? If so, make a public statement to that effect. If not, admit it. Remember: you're spending taxpayers' money, not your own... @RishiSunak@hmtreasury
Further, can we get detail: IOC of Ajax is 30 June 2021. a) will this be met, b) what does IOC mean? Is it just delivery of vehicles, or is it in-service, deployable vehicles/sub-units? If you can't answer this, then it is fair to assume that the programme is in trouble.
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Apache weaponry... Hearing that despite being deemed a significantly superior capability (oh, and it works, and is cheaper), MoD has decided to ditch Brimstone for AH64E, and go with JAGM. @nicholadrummond@bealejonathan@byMBDA @BeaverWestminster @benmoores2@ArmyAirCorps @
The Army Air Corps, having started off as hostile to Brimstone ("it's an RAF weapon"), seem to have been won over - but somewhere between Main Building and Abbeywood, someone/some people have been told by either of Boeing/Lockheed Martin that integrating Brimstone would be...
Yes, that's right: £3.47bn with nothing to show for it, and little sign that there will be any result any time soon. Over the past 3 budget years, £1.73bn has been spent, at a time when, it is pretty obvious, that the programme has been in deep doo-doo @thepagey@wavellroom
So, at a time of non-delivery of Ajax, the contractor has received 50% of all outlays on the programme since it kicked off in 2009-10. Simple question: how can these payments continue when there is no delivery of an acceptable product?
Oh dear, oh dear, it has already started! Let's start with a basic factoid: for a £450m budget, you'd be lucky to buy 10 Blackhawks, not the 20 that - reportedly - are required. express.co.uk/news/uk/141882…
And please don't come back saying that a Blackhawk is $20m - that is for a non-flyable aircraft. The average cost for export customers is $60m - and even that does not cover everything. BTW, does anyone believe that the SF would be "happy" with a vanilla Blackhawk?
Unlikely... And once you start adding all that SF night flying stuff, your £450m budget looks even less adequate. So, quite frankly, SF/SBS "support" for the Blackhawk is looking pretty irrelevant.