In message , phil hunt
writes
On 23 Dec 2003 16:07:42 GMT, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Possibly. Another interpretation is that it's in continuation of
british policy of getting bad value for money in military equipment.
Another example of the same policy is the MRAV armoured vehicle:
Britain spent large amounts of money developing an 8x8 wheeled
vehicle (why? there are plenty of others on the market, and its a
mature technology so no big breakthroughs are possible),

See any hybrid diesel/electric 8x8s out there? Or any rapidly
reconfigurable vehicles available off-the-shelf?

MRAV had some goals, none of the off-the-shelf candidates met them,
turns out MRAV didn't either. But then MRAV wasn't too expensive.

The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
something wrong here.

Not really, no. The UK buys the strategic lift and the support
infrastructure to be able to put troops, tanks, ships and aircraft far
overseas and fight: other countries concentrate on headline-grabbing
numbers of frontline assets but aren't able to send them anywhere (and
aren't tested in their ability to commit them to combat).


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk