Defense News reported yesterday how military procurement minister Quentin Davies’ told the Parliament that Britain’s future armored vehicles must come with modification rights, but need not be actually built in Britain. While Davies had been saying roughly this for several months, his statement, a related speech at RUSI, and a new policy document made the strategy quite clear.
Neanderthalic opinion might whinge about the decline of empire, etc., etc., but for the Army, the Royal Marines, and British taxpayers, this is unquestionably good news. As long ago as 1985, as Baroness Thatcher’s government was debating how to dispose of Westland Helicopters, Michael Heseltine invoked the experience of the Falklands War, observing that sovereign freedom of action hinged not upon one’s ability to build any given military platform domestically, but to modify and repair them. Lasting interruptions in supply apply mostly to countries like North Korea. British military performance in Afghanistan and Iraq has only been aided so far by the recent supply of armored vehicles from South Africa, the United States, Sweden, and Singapore, so it is hard to see why what applies in an emergency should not apply generally.
It is not even obvious that this is altogether bad news for BAE Systems. The company is bidding on the Army’s two priority projects—the Warrior Lethality Improvement Program (WLIP) and the FRES tracked scout vehicle—but neither bid involves a wholly British-build product. The WLIP entry comes from the CTA consortium with Nexter, and its light tank will probably be based on Hägglunds’ CV90. Allowing offshore production may actually provide BAE’s management the encouragement needed to source what they need from where they can most efficiently get it. That’s just good business, regardless of the industry.
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