Been doing some research for my dissertation - most of it pretty boring, all of it tedious. Some of it was a real eye opener. I was going over the Ministry of Defence's accounts for the past 15 years, in particular 2010-2011 and 2012-13, and sweet Zombie Jesus, the accountants are clearly retarded. In making budget cuts to save money, the MoD has spent more than it would have saved.
For example - the Harrier fleet. It was cut back in 2010-11 (rather than 2016), to save £21 million.
We sold the fleet to the USMC, for £16million (so already, we're at a loss). Except - we didn't "sell" them. Before the Yanks would buy our planes, we have to retrofit and upgrade them - and then post them over. At a cost of £1.29 billion.
This completely ignores the fact that the Harrier's replacement - the F-35 Super Turkey is 4 years behind schedule, still not out of testing, and now costs £27 million per unit (instead of the original planned £9.6 mil/unit). Radar, avionics, gun and weapons not included. We were supposed to be getting 140 for the FAA and about 80 for the RAF. Now we'll be lucky if we can afford 60 for both FAA & RAF.
Jesus, this really is all ridiculous, and just the tip of the iceberg. It's really pissing me off because people are getting paid to do this. And getting away with it.
Edit - whoops, I got the Super-Turkey's price wrong. It's not £27mil/ unit. It's £
127 mil/unit. Value for money
