The Yorkshire Ranter with two very good pieces on the JSF project. This code that we’re not going to be allowed to have because we might give it to the French or something. Actually, we wrote it in the first place.
Europhobia and Guido both think there’s something very fishy about Rod Aldridge stepping down from Crapita. If he’s done nothing wrong, why’s he leaving?
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Haven’t we got a whole fleet of Chinooks that are effectively grounded because they don’t have radar and so can’t fly in cloudy weather? If I remember rightly, the Americans are holding back the upgrade software on Intellectual Property issues. Mind you, nicking our stuff goes back a long way. I remember seeing a very interesting documentary on how a British team nearly had the first supersonic jet. Before their project was shelved, the British did a knowledge transfer deal with the Americans, you know, we tell them what we know, they tell us what they know. We told them all we knew, and then it turned out the Americans knew precisely diddly squat, said thank you and went off and developed the Bell. Something tells me we haven’t learnt our lesson yet.
Over on the Euro Refurendum Blog they’ve been following this quite closely and they appear to have come down on the Americans side. The American fear is less France but more the fact that France would likely pass on technological information to China, who of course the EU now has relatively close treaty ties to. This fear is quite justified. Why hand stealth to the Chinese on a plate?
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