UK invests in ammunition production

August 19, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: BAE Systems, Contract Awards, England, logistics, production program 

The UK Ministry of Defence signed an approximately $4 B contract with BAE systems to buy ammunition, explosives and also to rebuild the former Royal Ordnance factories. BAE had bought the formally Government owned ammunition production sites in 1987 and have slowly closed down capacity. BAE had been looking at selling off this part of the company, but this long term contract with the UK military should stop that in the near term. As part of the contract BAE will invest in modernizing and upgrading the factories.

The story is in the Times.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Poorly written contract grounds UK CH-47

June 3, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, England, Military Aviation, production program 

In 2001 the British military purchased 8 CH-47 Chinooks to support special operations. Unfortunately the contract did not buy access to the aircraft source code for the software. This meant that the UK military could not certify the aircraft for any but day operations. See a story here. This has meant that the aircraft have sat for seven years not being used. At one point the UK government planned to convert them to regular cargo CH-47 aircraft but used the money for other things in the end. Obviously a clause to allow access to the technical data would have driven up the price a bit, but it would have allowed the military to certify the aircraft for night and bad weather operations. As it is there has been little gained by buying these aircraft, at really no fault of Boeing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,