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'Astonishing' Errors In MoD Aircraft Deal

Can't we take the Russian approach to binding government contracts?

Throw a couple of directors in jail on some "interesting" charges and then offer to buy out the contract for a nominal sum?
 
Woops, i was thinking of Airbus.

But at the end of the day, with A300 and 330, and the scrap of Hercules, Tri's and VC-10, we will be maintaining a more capable air force for possibly less money, for more time.

Although our fleet will be smaller, so will our role after Afghanistan as far as the SDR is concerned. On top of that, looking at the buying price isnt very revealing, you have to look at the price to maintain it for the next 3 decades, compared to how much we would be likely to spend keeping our current lot air worthy with upgrades.

It may have been a stupid choice to go with the A330 and then have to spend a whole load extra, but we're stuck with it now and theres no other direction to go. Im sure in the long run it will end up cheaper to keep in the sky.



Huh?

It's a modern, hugely popular and current commercial airliner, and like all airliners, they're designed to be very reliable, simple to fix and easy to fix without breaking the bank. Unlike a VC10 that's been out of service for decades and needs bespoke engineering support and unobtanium parts, you can land at pretty much any airport in the world and wander over to the maintenance hanger and the resident AIRBUS qualified engineers will be able to fix your A330MRTT while you wait and if they don't have the parts in stock, AIRBUS will fly them out within 24hrs guaranteed.

There is no defending this PFI deal for FSTA. It's the aviation equivalent of buying a Ford Focus and having it looked after and maintained by a Rolls Royce dealer who charges you RR rates for parts and labour.
 
What do you mean Huh?

You just summed up my point yourself so you seem to have understood me saying that the Airbus and A330 are good investments for the future fleet as opposed to our current aircraft.
 
you can land at pretty much any airport in the world and wander over to the maintenance hanger and the resident AIRBUS qualified engineers will be able to fix your A330MRTT while you wait and if they don't have the parts in stock, AIRBUS will fly them out within 24hrs guaranteed.

.
I bet we will have gold-plated the aircraft and changed the spec resulting in a mass of one-off special mods. The techs will then say that the MOD widget cannot be replaced by the unplated civvy widget available locally because its not been tested etc etc. The MOD spec widget will be ordered........flown out.......unpacked from the MOD spec package....to reveal a civvy spec widget inside the inner plastic bag.
 
Can't we take the Russian approach to binding government contracts?

Throw a couple of directors in jail on some "interesting" charges and then offer to buy out the contract for a nominal sum?

AirTanker is a Consortium of Babcock, Cobham, EADS, Rolls-Royce and Thales UK so no shortage of choice but suppose you have to look firstly at AirTanker itself rather than shareholders.

Current MD has only been there since Feb. 2008 so were such tactics to be adopted, the midnight knock would no doubt fall upon somebody who has been there for a while. Like the current Chairman and "Director of Customer Relations". Who is an Air Vice-Marshal (Ret’d), just the chap to be dealing with your only customer.
 
The one area I have some sympathy for is the fact that it took a while to decide we wanted DAS on the airframes - don't forget that TELIC and HERRICK did not exist back when we came up with this harebrained scheme, and it was doubtless thought unlikely that we'd want to sustain a multi-year airbridge into a hot warzone with a strategic A/T fleet.

Which is the fear a lot of us have over the current SDSR, they have already said that they wont cut anything related to the current OPs in Afghanistan. This means that all the cuts will have to come from other capabilities leaving us with a military only suitable for COIN in sandy places, the last 10 years alone have taught us we can't see into the future yet Defence policy appears to be driven by hoping for the best and only planning for that as well.
 
The first one has just been rolled out and should be flying imminently.

Aside from the DAS, another minor limitation forced by lack of cash is that the RAF A330s cannot receive fuel. This is a not insignificant limitation as 'force extending' tankers by transferring the fuel from other AAR assets is a commonly used operational technique.

The A330 per se is an excellent AT and AAR type. As we found with the C-17s, leasing is merely a short term measure to transfer costs into another budget. No one in the military wanted it this way. Something else that we can thank Gordon for.

Regards,
MM
 
God knows why we can't tear the contract up, bollocks to AirTanker let them pay however much it costs. If the law says we can't the government can/should change it. AirTanker knew they were massively ripping the MOD off, just because the MOD are notoriously crap at writing contracts it's not acceptable to take the piss. We should make an example of them. The MOD and by extention the armed forces and the public have been milked by similiar theiving gits for years. /rant off
 
God knows why we can't tear the contract up, bollocks to AirTanker let them pay however much it costs. If the law says we can't the government can/should change it.
Surprisingly we are actually technically allowed to do this apparently, even though changing the rules after its happened I thought wasn't allowed. The main problems though are it would bollocks up future government contracts since everyone will raise their prices and demand massive up-front payments just in case the government later changed its mind and that the other parties would sue and tie things up in court for donkey's years, and unfortunately they tend to have the better lawyers.
 
However, where this sort of decision comes to light, wouldn't it be great if you could in some way hold the Chancellor and Chief Secretary of the Treasury personally finacially responsible for the mistake. Even make it so that any debt so incurred is not written off on their death.

I don't know why it's not the case. A company director who took silly decisions which led to the failure of a company would be held personally, financially and criminally responsible.
 
I don't know why it's not the case. A company director who took silly decisions which led to the failure of a company would be held personally, financially and criminally responsible.

Ooh, Tony and Gordon in the dock for financial mismanagement? That'd make Labour's use of the Freedom of Information Act just to dig dirt on the Tories look rather amateurish, wouldn't it? Colour me interested!

We could just bring back the old punishments for treason...
 
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