(
@Gravelbelly can doubtless offer some of his own horror stories, such as the way the RAF stiffed Ferranti on TIALD)
Ahhhh, TIALD. As ever,
@Archimedes and
@Magic_Mushroom are the subject matter experts for this one.
So: it's 1990, and the state of the art for aiming your laser-guided bombs is an item of US kit called PAVE SPIKE. Put a thermal camera and a laser in a pod; give the talking baggage a screen and a cute little joystick to steer it around and point the shiny light at the thing you want explosively disassembled. Comes GRANBY, and the BBC news gets lots of camera footage of it doing its thing over Iraq.
There are a couple of limitations; it isn't well stabilised, so the talking baggage has to put a lot of effort into keeping the little crosshairs pointed at the target, regardless whether Biggles in the front seat has decided that staying at the same altitude (or flying in a straight line) are not activities that will enhance your survival prospects; and that a 4G turn is just the thing to avoid an untimely end over downtown Iraq.
Fortunately, Ferranti's Electro-Optics Division, then based in a converted jam factory in Edinburgh's Robertson Avenue, has been working on this problem for a year or four. They've come up with a two-channel, stabilised pod. The talking baggage can choose thermal or TV camera; and the camera / laser designator is stabilised so that once you point it at something, it tries to stay pointing at it regardless of how hard Biggles in the front is, errr, waggling his stick. Cutting-edge stuff, better than anything the Americans or Israelis have, shiny...
In fact, they've got two pre-production pods doing trials in 1990; apparently, the innards were still
wire-wrapped, and they were bedding down the software and hardware, but it was at the stage where it could be taken out for a walk without embarrassing itself by leaking all over the back of the car. Gloss white paint job, dead sleek, just the thing to put on the stand at Paris or Farnborough.
So... comes Christmas 1990, and the RAF decides that actually, this JP233 is all very well - but medium level is the way ahead, and it could do with some airborne laser designation. A squadron of Buccaneers, as the only aircraft in the RAF that has PAVE SPIKE integrated, gets the good news that it too is going to war (I got to listen to a presentation by a UAS Squadron Leader, who'd spent the air war living on the 15th floor of the Dhahran Hilton, just underneath the all-night disco, and flying his Buccaneer over Iraq on alternate days).
About the same time, some bright spark in the RAF asks whether they can take the TIALD trials pods for a live-firing trial (because it's fitted to Tornado GR.1), and otherwise they're never going to hear the end of it from all those smug Buccaneer pilots from 12 Sqn. There's a certain amount of sucking of teeth, crossing of fingers, and perhaps even a minor sacrifice to the gods of engineering (
black cockerel,
silver knife - or an unwary intern, either will do), and Ferranti says yes. The two trials pods are given a quick spray-can of sand-coloured paint, some felt-tip nose art ("Sandra" and "Tracy" - the Fat Slags of Viz comic), and off they head to war. Where they "just work", and hopefully impress everyone with the Godlike Status of Edinburgh Engineers. Yeah, right. If you're ever in Abbey Wood, you may see one of those pods on a plinth - paint job and nose art still in place.
Afterwards, the commercial blokes are turning f***ing cartwheels. Huge success, user delighted, customer impressed. Electro-Optics Division has bet the farm on this one, and invested heavily - surely now the production contract will be signed, and the accountants can breathe a sigh of relief?
"Yup!" says MoD.
"We're absolutely chuffed to f**k. So grateful. anything we can do, you name it"
"Ahhh, how about buying some of them, then?" asks Ferranti.
"After all, it's damn near off-the-shelf now, and we're really short of cash".
"Errr" says MoD,
"Hold on, ummm capital budget, err peace dividend, ahhhh chequebook in other coat, oh bugger the cat's eaten it, maybe next year, just waiting for that defence review, any day now..."
It took several years, and an eventual order for somewhat fewer pods than had originally been agreed. By then, Ferranti had actually gone bust and rescued by GEC (who were chuffed to bits that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was going to be put in its box over a merger with their biggest competitor in the avionics business, because jobs in Conservative marginals).
I'm sure someone else can tell the sorry tale of LR TRIGAT - I seem to remember that BAE got as far as starting to build a production facility before MoD canned the contract. Or the 81mm MERLIN round (a radar-guided "smart" mortar round, able to rain top-attack death on the Massed Hordes of 20th Guards Tank Army).