Ghost Bat Briefing - Youtube/Wales Adventures
There is something I took away from this.
First of all it is a simple aircraft. It is the production facility and supply chains that are the more complex and ultimately just is important, arguably more important than the aircraft itself. This facility will be owned and controlled by Boeing which isn’t a good thing.
The US is also building CCAs but it is taking a different approach. To start with it is using multiple manufacturers. This guarantees competition which ultimately should give them more innovation, better quality and the best price. Meanwhile we have locked ourselves in with Boeing for the production life of this aircraft. Not sure this is a win for us.
Back in the day we used to have the Government Aircraft Factory. As the name suggests it was government owned and controlled. We built many aircraft types at that factory. It built Canberra bombers, Jindivik drones, Mirages, F-18s and so on. Ironically what was the GAF eventually ended up in the hands of Boeing and that same facility was probably largely responsible for the design and construction of the MQ-28.
Really the government should not of relinquished control of the GAF as it was clearly a strategic asset.
What the government should consider doing is setting up its own aviation manufacturing hub similar to the shipbuilding industry. This would free us up from dependency on one aircraft manufacturer. In this day and age a facility like this could easily bounce around between an array of different products that could either be built under licence or locally designed.
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