Just so wonderfully, wonderfully ironic on so many levels.Quote:
A controversial British deal to supply Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia may have hit an obstacle. It appears that the Eurofighter - long touted as proof that the UK and its continental partners can make serious combat kit without American help - actually contains significant amounts of US technology, and that Washington may not permit the Saudi sale.
Now the US State Department needs to decide whether to grant a tech-export licence allowing the British government to permit BAE's proposed sale of (as it turns out) partly-American Eurofighters to the Saudis. US export regs say such licences may be denied where there is "reasonable cause" to believe that the applicant has violated US law.
Clearly, the Justice department believes there is reasonable cause to think US law has been violated by the Bandar payments. Since the money actually came from a British government account, it could be argued that the UK state - rather than BAE as such - was the actor, and thus should be denied the export permit it is asking for.
According to the FT's informants, Justice officials in Washington certainly aren't happy to let State bureaucrats say they are "unaware" of BAE having broken any US laws. This follows requests for clarification by the US attorney-general from senators on the relevant oversight committees.
But the State people need to be unaware of American laws broken or they can't OK the sale.
A "senior administration official" hinted to the FT that the Feds' position might shift in the event of Blighty cooperating with them on the al-Yamamah probe. Repeated requests for the SFO's files have thus far been met with obstruction and delay in London.
Oh most excellent. Most, most excellent. So whether the SFO investigation goes ahead or not, the Yanks are likely going to force UK Gov to cooperate with the US Justice Department investigations into BAe on the same subject matter.* There's a turn up for the books, eh? When the country that hs made a fine art out of political cronyism and corruption is doing our government's job for it.
Quote:
All that to one side, today's news at the very least appears to have finally destroyed the concept of "appropriate sovereignty" which underpins the current British Defence Industrial Strategy. The thinking here is that Blighty will pay increased prices for less-capable military kit made partly in the UK, rather than buying cheaper and better gear from abroad. Equipment such as Eurofighter may cost more and do less, but - so goes the reasoning - at least we won't have to ask the Yanks for tech support all the time.
Except that it turns out we will.
Wonderful. And he has a point - we do spend a lot on UK grown kit that is more expensive and not as good as the off-the shelf stuff we could have bought from overseas (transport aircraft being a good example - we're still trying to get the A400M working, when we could just have bought C-5s or whatever from the Yanks). This is almost entirely to keep jobs in Britain rather than have the appropriate equipement a tth eright price. During the recent decisions on what to cut from the MoD budget to make ends meet, funnily enough the two future aircraft carriers were one of the budget items that definitely wouldn't be cut - guess which Scottish Prime Minister's constituency they're being built in, eh?
However, when it comes to fairly high tech stuff, I think we may be in just as bad or a worse position with something like with the almost-entirely-made-in-the-US-but-BAe-made-some-bits-so-it's-really-English-really-honest F35 where there are parts that we're not even allowed to know how they work. So buying off the shelf isn't always the way to go. But it would certainly be a lot cheaper, leaving more cash for actuall buying our front line bods the kit they need to either not get blown up by landmines or die of heatstroke.
*the US's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is very far reaching - it can pretty much apply to anyone anywhere no matter the lack of connection to the US
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