Britische Polemik: Kauft doch bei den Amis!

Es scheint, dass nicht nur die Deutschen Probleme mit der Rüstungsbeschaffung und ihrer nationalen Rüstungsindustrie haben: eine interessante Polemik aus Großbritannien, hier mal zur Diskussion gestellt.

Aus dem Telegraph:

So that’s it then: Britain’s just a third-class power. And yet our defence budget is the fifth biggest in the world. It’s around the same as that of France, and France has a proper aircraft carrier – complete with planes. France also has hundreds of operational strike jets, not scores; it has maritime-patrol planes; its army may soon have twice as many soldiers as ours.
Why don’t we have all that?
The answer is, mostly, the British defence industry. Dominated by BAE Systems, our arms industry is lamentably inefficient. Its products are often horrifyingly expensive. They require parts and technical support not only from the US but other nations too – we gain no independence by purchasing “British-made” kit like the Eurofighter. (The Eurofighter cannot be sold without American permission as it is full of US technology.) If, instead, we simply bought off the shelf, mostly from America, we could easily afford powerful forces.

In Teilen kommt mir das bekannt vor… auch wenn eine solche radikale Haltung weder in Großbritannien noch in einem anderen größeren europäischen Land ernsthaft in Erwägung gezogen würde.

(Foto:Typhoon aircraft from RAF Coningsby practicing for the Royal Jubilee celebrations by performing a diamond-nine formation over Lincolnshire May 18, 2102 – SAC Graham Taylor/Open Government License)