Last December it announced a pounds 630m contract for GEC Marconi to supply and support Spearfish for the Navy
Posted in General on 24. Jul, 2010
Last December it announced a pounds 630m contract for GEC Marconi to supply and support Spearfish for the Navy. But the plane is reported to damage its cameras each time it lands. The company was commissioned to develop the Phoenix drone, a remote-controlled spy plane, designed to fly over battlefields and bring back photographs of enemy positions and artillery. Fewer than half the Tigerfish, it had been discovered, could get anywhere near their targets.None of this has apparently dented the MoD’s confidence in GEC. During the Falklands conflict in 1982, HMS Conqueror, the submarine that sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, was forced to use a Second World War vintage torpedo to ensure a “kill”. But the tracking system was only 60 to 80 per cent effective; it was vulnerable to radar jamming; and it turned out to be too complex for the Tornado’s missile system.The finished product was so late that, by 1985, Tornado pilots were flying with concrete ballast in the noses of their jets to simulate the weight the radar should have taken up.
Even in the Gulf war, six years later, the radars were unable to do what they were supposed to do. Fortunately, by the time the Tornados took to the air, the Iraqi air force had fled.The Tigerfish torpedo – whose development was taken over by Marconi Underwater Systems, a GEC subsidiary in 1972 – also proved inadequate in war. To get it working to the original specification would have cost a further pounds 500m.Then there was the Foxhunter radar system This was to be used on RAF Tornado fighters. It was supposed to be capable of identifying up to 20 enemy planes more than 100 miles away while avoiding detection by enemy radar. Nimrod, said GEC Avionics in 1977, was going to be the best early warning system that money could buy.It was cancelled in 1986 By then, it had become an international laughing stock.
After more than pounds 1bn had been spent, it was thrown on the scrapheap. American Awacs aircraft were brought in to replace it.Spearfish itself, designed to hunt down and destroy nuclear submarines with a complex sonar targeting system, was brought into service only in March last year, seven years behind schedule and pounds 175m over its pounds 885m budget. Its problems were not, presumably, confined to its boomerang effect: Dr McIntosh told MPs that, at that stage of its trials, it was “performing appallingly”.GEC’s remarkable catalogue of defence project failures did not prevent Lord Weinstock and his company from taking over VSEL, builders of the Trident submarine, earlier this year and thus rivalling British Aerospace as Britain’s biggest defence contractor.Arnold Weinstock, as he was before his ennoblement, is reportedly fond of asking his directors: “Why are you spending my money?” After the Nimrod fiasco, the most famous and spectacular failure of all, the MoD started to ask the same question of his company.It was partly GEC lobbying that persuaded the Government to develop Nimrod rather than buy the cheaper, more reliable Awacs system from the US. And they all have one thing in common: they were developed by Britain’s largest electronics company, GEC, under its managing director, Lord Weinstock.The troubled systems include:t The Tigerfish, the Spearfish’s predecessor, which was still unreliable after 15 years of development.t Radar systems for jet fighters and Royal Navy frigates that do not work properly.t A pounds 270m unmanned spy plane which should have been ready three years ago but is still beset by problems.t Britain’s Airborne Early Warning aircraft system, based on the successful 1960s-vintage Nimrod, which could not distinguish between enemy planes and lorries on the A1.
She said soldiers arrived at her village, and ordered people to leave their homes after throwing their possessions into the sea at gunpoint. Some children were as young as 12.At the NMSP Tavoy District camp, Nai Ban Ya Mon interprets the softly spoken words of a shy 21-year old woman, Mi Sheinta, from Demokran on the west coast. Workers had to bring food to supplement the few rations shared between them daily. “The Slorc are dividing families; they take from us the chance to earn a living.” Nai Sor Teh says that the labourers encouraged children at the site to rest, but the soldiers beat them and ordered them to work.