Britain signs CV contract
Filed under: Contract Awards, England, Scotland, VT Group, production program
The British Ministry of Defense signed the contract with the VT Group to build the two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. See an article here. Previous reports had the Scottish government worried that Britain might renege on the deal due to differences with the emerging nationalistic mood in Scotland. See a post here. The total contract value is about $7.5 B with as always with these kind of programs the chance to go higher.
Scotland’s government snipes over CV delays
Worried about the effect on their workforce, Scottish MPs criticized the English government for not moving fast enough to award the new CV construction contract. For more see the BBC here. The two carriers will be built primarily in Scottish shipyards and will cost over 4 billion Pounds. Scotland is worried that with a possible change in the future constitutional relationship between the two countries may make the British government turn to English yards for the work. The Scottish defence industry is heavily dependent on English orders, not having had much luck securing foreign work. More to come on this, I am sure.
UK to privatize aircrew training
Filed under: England, Lockheed Martin, Military Aviation, VT Group, 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 like the US struggles to pay for current operations
Filed under: Department of Defense, England, Federal Budget Process, VT Group
The US DoD has had a habit over the last five years to raid the investment accounts to fund current operations. This means they take RDT&E and procurement funding and convert it to Operations & Maintenance for war efforts. This is not always a good practice as it can play havoc with development and production programs. Part of the problem is that the Congress does not always budget well funding these types of programs and not putting enough into O&M. Now it seems the UK has the same problem according to this article. The UK MOD has proposed taking funding from programs to meet the demands of current operations and fund the two new carriers the British are about to start building. In the long run this is not a good practice as you create bills that have to be met in the out years, or end up canceling programs.
Labor government cuts defence budget, English contractors feel pain
This analysis in The Guardian says that BAE and the VT Group will lose billions in orders from the British government if planned cuts to the defence budget go through. Because some of the contracts for hardware have cancellation clauses the government may be force to buy the systems and then sell them to other nations. This is all part of an attempt to reduce public spending.
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