"Peter Kemp" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 09:29:13 -0400, Yeff wrote:

Not impressed with this story - the paper claims....

But, just as the Royal Air Force prepares to take delivery of the first
of
more than 200 Eurofighters to which it has been committed for almost a
decade, it has emerged that the RAF will not have all of them in its
hands
for long.

A sheepish Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted that moves are already
underway to sell off dozens of the brand-new super-fighters as soon as
they
are delivered.

But what the MOD actually said was......

"Some consideration has been given to the scope to provide for early
export
of Eurofighter Typhoon to potential overseas customers," admitted armed
forces minister Adam Ingram. "If pursued, a sale might be accomplished by
adjusting the delivery profile to the RAF. The RAF remains, however, the
primary customer for these aircraft and any decision made will take full
account of its requirements."

Which is different. The MOD is saying it's prepared to delay delivery
of some of its buy in order to allow quicker delivery of export
models.

Extremely suspect journalism in other words.

While I generally agree with your critique in terms of the usual
journalistic twisting of words, the MoD quote does allow leeway for them to
say later, "Well, we relooked at our requirements and decided we *really*
did not need 232 of these aircraft, that 180 is just fine..." or some such
drivel. It is not as if it should be a surprise that the RAF and/or UK
government might cut back on their "requirement"; for gosh sakes, they are
so close to the bone that they plan to field a chunk of them sans-guns
solely based upon financial concerns (that indicates a pretty nasty
budgeting situation to me). The USAF has adjusted (downward) its requirments
for the F/A-22 over the years--that other nations would do the same for
high-dollar systems is to be expected, especially given the change in the
nature of the threat spectrum.

Brooks


Peter Kemp