Afghanistan Eating Into British Investment In Defense And U.S. May Follow

November 16, 2009 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: BNET 
England's Royal Air Force is supposedly preparing a list of suggested cuts to existing forces and bases to get ahead of the next budget. The idea...

RAF Merlins headed to Afghanistan

October 1, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News 

BENSON, England, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- With its Merlin helicopters pulled out of Iraq, the British Royal air force said it was preparing to deploy the transport vehicle and its crew to Afghanistan.

RAF updates Puma fleet

September 30, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News 

BENSON, England, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A $479 million upgrade to the Puma helicopter fleet in the British Royal Air Force improves its power and extends its life cycle, the Ministry of Defense said.

Training system upgraded for RAF’s Nimrod

September 28, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News 

CRAWLEY, England, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Thales UK and BAE Systems announced the completion of upgrades to aircrew synthetic training aids for the British Royal Air Force maritime attack aircraft.

Sentry to return to Royal Air Force fleet

September 17, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News 

LONDON, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- After two years of repairs following damage from a collision, the British Royal Air Force will soon return a Sentry aircraft to operational status.

Tornado sustainment phase II deals awarded

August 26, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News 

LONDON, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- The British Royal Air Force announced contracts have been awarded to support a phase II sustainment program for its fleet of Tornado GR4/4A combat aircraft.

England Vacillating On Next Batch Of Eurofighters

Back in May we had written that England would go ahead with the full buy of the next order of Eurofighter Typhoon modern fighter aircraft. This was based on the fact that the costs associated with canceling the contract would be prohibitive. There was also some hope that part of the aircraft could be used to fulfill foriegn military sales rather then seeing service with the Royal Air Force.

Now it is reported that the deal may fall through after all. England like America is faced with economic problems that have led to massive borrowing and an attempt to spend their way out off the recession. This means that funds are limited and the cost of the new aircraft fairly prohibitive. Not only will there be the cost of breaking the contract but several thousand jobs related to building the aircraft may be lost. The government is trying to renegotiate the price or the fees in order to save some money but time is running out. Germany has restated their support for the program and an intent to go ahead and buy the latest batch.

When the original contract was signed England did not imagine that they would not have enough money. It was they who insisted on the strict and high fees if the contract was not followed through on in an attempt to keep the other countries involved from leaving. This had happened several times in the past when NATO and the U.S. joined on various development and procurement programs.

UK to privatize aircrew training

Bump – Further details on the contract the UK signed with Ascent, the joint venture of Lockheed and VT, to conduct aviation training have come out. See this article for some of the new details. It is a 25 year contract with the contractor that will be implemented incrementally as the current training program completes.

According to this short report, the UK is ready to transition all of its pilot training to a private contractor. This is for the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and Army rotary wing pilots. If this is true it represents a major change in how training has been done in the past. One would have to assume that there are major cost savings in this transition away from maintaining their own aircraft and training staff. Beyond saying that Lockheed Martina and VT will carry out the contract no details were given as to how it would be done.

UK orders 14 tankers from EADS

As predicted EADS along with a group of English and French companies won a contract to build 14 tankers for the Royal Air Force. See a story here. The contract is worth $26 Billion. Boeing had been eliminated from the competition a few years earlier.

Rackspace Wins Joint Server Farm Tender To Support MOD Websites

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing, today announces it has won a three-year, competitive deal to provide fully managed support to the Joint Server Farm (JSF), a secure hosting environment for Ministry of Defence (MOD) websites. The relationship will see MOD, Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force websites consolidated onto a single, virtualised infrastructure to enable easier management, greater efficiencies and scalabilit

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