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RAF gets a new fighter with a gun it cannot fire
Via a poster at David's Medienkritic. I'm trying to come up w/a snarky comment and I just can't. I've supposed to rely on them for help??????????????
Attempts by the Ministry of Defence to save money will leave all 232 of the RAF's new Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft with a gun they cannot fire.
| "But it does look ferocious!" |
The MoD decided five years ago that it could save £90 million on the £105 billion project by not having a machine cannon in the British version of the Eurofighter... To make matters worse, each individual part of the makeweight's shape also had to weigh exactly the same as the real thing. In short, the cheapest option was to fit the cannon. So all 232 of the RAF's Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft will be fitted with the gun at a cost of £90 million - but in order to save what is now a mere £2.5 million they will have no rounds to fire... The collapse of the Warsaw Pact led to the aircraft being described as an obsolete piece of Cold War equipment. The Germans immediately cut the number of aircraft they needed, largely because they inherited a lot of fighters from East Germany.
| ... which were obsolete pieces of Cold War equipment themselves... |
The British response was to tie all four partners into a tightly controlled contract in which anyone who pulled out must pay the same amount of money in damages as they would if they took the aircraft. That has come back to haunt Britain, which alone among the four nations has no money to pay for the Eurofighters it ordered and is resisting calls to sign up for its second tranche of 89 aircraft.
Maybe instead of banning fox hunting, they should tax it?
<This keeps up, we're going to be lend-leasing again.>
I say, old chap, can you spare a quid for some bullets?
oh, that's how you get on pg. 1!
Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-09-16 |
