War on Terror meets Cold War Mark II
An obscure article in the Business section of the local paper aroused my curiosity.
[BG]
The land war in Afghanistan is provoking constant controversy as to troop numbers, I.E.D.-proof vehicles, and a shortage of
helicopters.
The puzzle is that defence policy seems more concerned with upgrading Cold War armaments, like Trident; building new aircraft carriers; and playing a part in
the development and manufacture of the latest 'strike fighter' - the Lockheed Martin F-35 - described as "the world’s largest defence programme", none of which
seem to have much direct relevance to needs of the troops fighting in Afghanistan.
[AN]
Reading through various websites it becomes clear that the F-35 could be tasked with destroying the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile system.
Cold War MarkII?
A bit more complicated than that: it seems Syria and Iran might be using the S-300.
[UPI]
[*]
If a Western country - or a client state - wanted to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, the S-300 might hamper that objective.
However, not everyone is impressed with "the world’s largest defence programme":
Aussie air zealot savages ... stealth fighter
Is the F35 a waste of time?
The Moderate Voice
US DoD, Lockheed Martin seek to counter F-35 critics
U.S. F-35 dubbed 'Lightning II'
(*) The F-35's capability is particularly relevant in this time of increased concern over Russia's alleged sale of S-300s to Iran, a nation that has repeatedly threatened to "wipe Israel off the map"
UPI.com 20 January 2009Gates in plea to Israel for 'patience' over Iran
Aero firm swoops in on £250m deal
BAE Systems starts the construction of the F-35 Lightning II Carrier Variant (CV)
F-35 Arrives in the United Kingdom for Static Testing
Iran sanctions 'will not affect' Russia missile deal
Qinetiq
Wikipedia
Campaigners may decide to pursue an appeal, while Lord Justice Thomas frowns on 'low' fines ...Serious Fraud Office backs £30m BAE plea bargain despite opposition
Richard Alderman, head of the Serious Fraud Office, plans to press ahead with a controversial £30m plea bargain with the arms company BAE, legal sources say, despite criticism of such deals from a senior judge and anti-corruption campaigners.
Alderman's recent campaign against companies alleged to practise bribery overseas is throwing up novel legal problems.
Two protesting groups took his BAE deal to court, saying it was too soft, but a judge ruled against them. The Cornerhouse and the Campaign Against Arms Trade will decide whether to pursue an appeal after Easter. If their legal challenge is dropped, the way will then be clear for the deal thrashed out with BAE's lawyers to go ahead.
But the arms giant may end up facing the prospect of a bigger fine. Lord Justice Thomas gave a landmark ruling earlier this month in another corruption case, involving the chemical firm Innospec, that the agreed fine was too low, and such corporate crime should be treated more seriously ...
Guardian 01 April 2010 Corporate Sociopathy Log
The High Court granted an injunction which prohibits the SFO from "taking any further steps in its prosecution of BAE Systems" until the court decides whether or not to grant permission to Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and Corner House to apply for a judicial review of the plea bargain struck last month ...Anti-arms campaigners halt SFO deal with BAE
BAE last month agreed to pay the SFO £30m for failing to keep accounting records in Tanzania, after the investigator admitted it would not pursue a prosecution over allegations of bribery and corruption relating to Eastern Europe and Africa.
The settlement was viewed as an embarrassing climbdown for the SFO, especially as BAE agreed to pay $400m (£267m) to the US to settle a similar investigation looking at Saudi Arabia and Eastern Europe ...
Telegraph 02 Mar 2010BAE protesters win SFO injunction
BAE Systems, Europe’s largest military contractor, agreed on Friday to plead guilty to two criminal charges and pay nearly $450 million in penalties in the United States and Britain to end long-running investigations into questionable payments made to win huge contracts overseas ...BAE Settles Corruption Charges
Richard Alderman, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, described the $50 million settlement as a “pragmatic” one that would allow BAE to put the investigations behind it and allow his office to redeploy investigators to other cases.
But British advocacy groups that had fought several unsuccessful court battles to force authorities in Britain to investigate the company for corruption in arms deals involving Saudi Arabia and other countries criticized the settlement.
“This settlement means that the truth about these serious allegations against BAE will never be known,” said Nicholas Hildyard, a campaigner for the Corner House, a social justice advocacy group. “The U.K. fine may well be unprecedented, but it may easily create the perception that alleged bribers can simply pay their way out of trouble.” ...
The Serious Fraud Office also announced later on Friday that it was dropping charges against Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, an Austrian count who acted as a marketing consultant to BAE in helping to arrange leases for fighter planes in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Justice Department officials said that while the guilty plea would end their investigation of BAE, they were continuing to investigate some of the individuals involved in the case ...
NYT 05 Feb 2010BAE chiefs 'linked to bribes conspiracy'
BAE Systems pays $400m to settle bribery charges
How secret cash payments oiled £43bn arms deal
The big game hunter of the SFO ...
Military air traffic control – for country with no airforce
... minor accountancy charges
The BAE files
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police ...
Guardian 23 Jan 2010
Action against BAE is not in our interests
Only in Britain
Only in Britain could the Government knowingly victimise our biggest manufacturing company.
Selling kit to kill people with isn’t a great way to make a living but given where we are now, it is the best we've got; good for jobs when unemployment is soaring; good for the balance of payments in a nation accustomed to living beyond its means; good, maybe, for our international clout. Can you imagine the French equivalent of the SFO going after their Thales or the Americans prosecuting Lockheed or Northrupp? No. Of course not. Says it all, really.
Some of us are starting to miss Tony Blair, who at least had some regard for the British national interest.
Independent 01 October 2009SFO demands prosecution of BAE
"The Serious Fraud Office has announced today that it intends to seek the Attorney General's consent to prosecute BAE Systems for offences relating to overseas corruption and will prepare its papers to be submitted to the Attorney when the SFO considers it is ready to proceed." The latest investigation involves contracts BAE won from countries including Tanzania, the Czech Republic, Romania and South Africa.
The company has denied the allegations.
A separate case concerning a deal with Saudi Arabia was dropped in 2007 on national security grounds, following the intervention of then-prime minister Tony Blair.
Criminal charges would be brought under the 2001 Prevention of Corruption Act ...
Independent 01 October 2009The strange case of BAE
Fraud watchdog poised to decide on BAE bribery prosecution
SFO to rule on BAE Systems case
How the British won the Gripen contract
Double standards
Revealed: the £130bn cost of Trident replacement
The combined cost of replacing the Trident nuclear missile system and building, equipping and running two large aircraft carriers will be as much as £130bn, far more than the government has admitted, an in-depth study of the huge defence projects ... reveals today.
Ministers have said replacing Trident would cost up to £20bn, but key factors the government has left out of the calculation will push the final cost up to £97bn over the system's 30-year life, according to Greenpeace, the environment group.
Estimates of the cost of the proposed two carriers have already increased from £2bn to £5bn over the past 10 years. However, today's the report, In The Firing Line, says these ignore running costs of an estimated £10bn and do not include spending on the US-made F35 aircraft designed to fly from the ships.
Costs of the various aircraft planned for the carriers amount to £10bn. The price has risen by more than 70% – $50m (£30.3m) per aircraft – since 2001, according to official US figures.
The project has been subjected to such delays that the government has admitted at least one of the carriers will go to sea without any of the fighter bombers on board ...
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat economics spokesman, added that the report provided "powerful evidence to support claims that MoD equipment plans are totally unrealistic in the light of Britain's serious budgetary constraints."
Guardian 18 September 2009
Ministers hail jet-fighter deal
Ministers have welcomed the signing of a £3bn contract for 40 Typhoon jets as "excellent news" for the armed forces and the defence industry.
The first of the new aircraft, part of the Eurofighter defence programme, are expected to enter service in 2013.
About £900m has been knocked off the cost of the contract after heated negotiations between the UK and its partners Germany, Italy and Spain ...
Under the original agreement, the four countries were to split 620 jets between them in three separate batches. The latest agreement means 559 will either have been delivered or be in production.
The final batch has been divided into two tranches, fuelling speculation that it may be axed - although governments have always denied this.
The global recession is forcing all countries to reconsider their defence budgets and with an estimated cost per plane of £100m, the Typhoon programme has come under particular scrutiny ...
BBC NEWS 31 July 2009BAE files: Robert Wardle
Austria set to prosecute over BAE arms sales
Austria expects to bring corruption charges in connection with BAE arms sales, the first such prosecution in five years' of bribery investigations all over the world.
The Austrian prosecutors' decision follows the emergence of new documents that outline in considerable detail the channelling of secret BAE cash to Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, an Austrian aristocrat who worked undercover for the arms firm.
In one memo, Mensdorff claims Austria was persuaded to buy BAE's Eurofighters in 2002 for €1.7bn (£1.5bn), thanks to "aggressive incentive payments to key decision-makers" ...
Guardian 19 June 2009Austrian officials arrest BAE lobbyist
BAE paid £100m to secure South African arms deal
More than £100m was secretly paid by the arms company BAE to sell warplanes to South Africa, according to allegations in a detailed police dossier seen by the Guardian.
The leaked evidence from South African police and the British Serious Fraud Office quotes a BAE agent recommending "financially incentivising" politicians.
In the 1999 arms deal, the new ANC government in South Africa agreed to spend £1.6bn buying fleets of Hawk and Gripen warplanes.
Critics said the country, beset by unemployment and HIV/Aids, could not afford it. The Hawks, rejected by the military, cost twice as much as Italian equivalents.
The then South African defence minister, Joe Modise, and a key official, Chippy Shaik, insisted on the purchase.
The deal was signed after a personal lobbying mission on BAE's behalf by Tony Blair, the then prime minister. It is now alleged that a series of enormous undercover cash payments from BAE were also made ...
Guardian 05 December 2008
Trident cost and timetable questioned
Renewing Britain's multibillion pound Trident nuclear missile system involves huge risks and serious questions remain about the cost of the project, parliament's independent watchdog warns today.
The government's timetable is so tight that any delays could jeopardise the declared aim of the nuclear deterrent, adds the National Audit Office in a report highlighting risks involving the cost, design, and management of the controversial programme.
The Ministry of Defence, which is already planning to extend the life of existing Trident submarines by five years, estimates the cost of building a new three- or four-boat system at between £15bn and £20bn. "There are major areas of uncertainty in the budget ... which need to be resolved," says the NAO.
The costs are vulnerable to inflation, changes in exchange rates - Britain will buy the missiles from the US - changes in design, and how VAT will impact on the programme, today's report says.
The government has said that Trident's annual running costs would amount to up to 6% of the total defence budget over a lifespan of 25 years. With a defence budget of about £30bn, the lifetime cost of the planned Trident nuclear system could thus amount to well over twice the initial cost of building it. ...
Guardian 05 November 2008
UK 'fails to tackle foreign bribery'
Britain has been condemned for its 'continued failure' to meet its international obligations on tackling 'foreign bribery' ...
The OECD, the only international body enforcing anti-bribery accords, launched a review of UK measures in the wake of the decision of the Serious Fraud Office in 2006 to drop an investigation into BAE Systems over an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
The result is a hard-hitting condemnation of Government failure to implement the OECD 'Anti-Bribery Convention', due in force nearly nine years ago. ...
Orange 17 October 2008
Britain's failure to tackle corruption
BAE paid too little heed to ethics
Cash, contracts and crown princes
Revealed: official passes that give BAE access to the top at the MoD
The Ministry of Defence has given security passes to 38 employees of the arms giant BAE, allowing them to go in and out of the ministry's headquarters as they please, it has been revealed.
The disclosure has triggered accusations that the relationship between the MoD and BAE is too close and allows the arms company to exert too much political influence over the government.
The MoD is refusing to disclose the names of the BAE employees with the official passes, or why they were given them, saying the information would breach their privacy and security.
However, it is known that one has been held by BAE's chief lobbyist, Julian Scopes. The pass gave him access to the top levels of the ministry, enabling him to lobby ministers and senior officials and promote BAE's commercial interests. ...
The Guardian 16 August 2007
BAE And The Keys to The MoD
'...Jack Straw has always been the most pervasive and insidious supporter of BAE in the Cabinet. It was Straw who lobbied hardest against Cook's plans to limit BAE arms sales, and when Blair sacked Cook it was Straw who replaced him as Foreign Secretary. It was Straw who lobbied hardest for the investigation into the BAE bribes to be dropped, and it is Straw who now has become, supreme irony, Minister of Justice.
When Straw escorted Condoleeza Rice around the North West of England in March 2006, a BAE arms factory was the highlight of the trip.
Straw's links with BAE are partly conducted through Lord Taylor of Blackburn, the former leader of the Blackburn with Darwen Council that includes Straw's Blackburn constituency. Lord Taylor, an archetypal New Labour apparatchik from Straw's constituency machine, has lived off the taxpayer in Labour Party appointed posts all his life. He is now chiefly known as the second highest claimer of expenses in the House of Lords. In 2005 Lord Taylor claimed over £57,000 of tax-free expenses, over three times the average claim of under £19,000. he spoke 15 times in the year.
But he doesn't really need that public money anymore, as the grasping creep Taylor is the primary conduit between the defence industry and New Labour. He has been a highly paid "Consultant" to BAE for over a decade. He also has used some of that money to make major contributions to Jack Straw's election expenses in his Blackburn constituency, declared by Straw in the Register of Member's interests. Lord Taylor also regularly makes large contributions to fund Blackburn New Labour. When I stood against Straw in Blackburn at the last election, Taylor was present with Straw at a black tie event hosted by BAE in the constituency said to be "unrelated to the election".
Interestingly, this year in the House of Lords' Register of Members' interests, BAE has disappeared from Taylor's list of eleven paid consultancies and two paid directorships. It might be interesting to dig for links between these companies and BAE. Some are certainly arms firms - including the highly sinister Electronic Data Systems.
EDS is another of the arms companies that has made many billions from the Iraq war. Among their many current defence contracts is a $12 billion project on electronic systems for the US armed forces. Presumably a well-plugged in New Labour apparatchik like Lord Taylor was of no hindrance to EDS in March 2005 when they landed a £2.5 billion contract from the UK MOD for a similar project. Indeed, if Lord Taylor cannot help swing that kind of contract, why are EDS paying him?
I do not have power of words sufficiently to condemn the institutional sleaze of a system where a scumbag like Lord Taylor can be put, unelected, by Blair into a seat for life in the national legislature. There, while a legislator, he can act as a well paid and highly connected lobbyist for the arms industry. As someone who has been deeply patriotic, I must now say that I find myself unable to have any pride in my own country any longer.
What are our soldiers dying for again?'
Posted by Ken W, 20 August 2007
How the British won the Gripen contract
In November 1998 the South African cabinet named British Aerospace (BAe) as its preferred supplier to re-equip the South African Air Force (SAAF), as part of its strategic defence package programme. Cabinet formally went ahead with the purchase in September 1999.
In terms of the deal BAe is delivering 24 Hawk lead-in fighter trainers and 26 Gripen advanced light fighters to the SAAF. All the Hawks will be delivered over the course of 2006 and 2007. Delivery of the Gripens begins in 2008. According to the treasury South Africa has paid out R19,5bn for the two programmes so far, with the final cost expected to be R27,25bn. This makes up 57% of the total of R47,5bn that will have been spent on the packages between 2000 and 2011.
From almost the moment when the British government and armaments industry tabled their proposals to re-equip the South African defence force, in early 1997, there have been suspicions about the way in which they were went about trying to secure that contract. It is now a matter of public record that BAe planned to pay £180m in “secret commissions” after having won the deal. (It now claims to have reduced this to £112m.)
The possible use of bribery by BAe to secure the contract is currently being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in London ...
politics web 14 August 2007
The parallel universe of BAE
There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be able to run its own secret service.
This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government's decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics.
The email ended up in the hands of the arms company.
The Guardian 13 February 2007
Four long-standing issues
The Serious Fraud Office launched its investigation into "suspected false accounting" in respect the Saudi Arabian order for
fighter aircraft in November 2004.
There is no indication that this was regarded as a threat to the contract
until The Times report dated November 19, 2006.
All hell broke loose, coming as the report did on top of the ongoing police investigation into
cash-for-peerages.
Four long-standing issues surfaced in the wake of this affair:
- The size of Britain's defence budget;
- The possible obsolescence of the aircraft concerned, and the MoD's well-known lack of cost-control;
- The role of Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers where political and economic interests dictate
a certain "flexibility" of application.
Specifically, bribes and backhanders had been made illegal in the UK in 2003: does that law apply to British business selling abroad? The answer is that it does.
Writing in The Independent Andreas Whittam Smith points out that Lord Goldsmith had no get-out clause:Lord Goldsmith went on to say it had "been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest".
The word "necessary" raises questions. For the relevant piece of international law which Britain has ratified, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, makes no mention of "public interest" as a reason for not proceeding.
Indeed, Article 5 of the Convention is at pains to leave no such loophole. - The extent to which arms contracts over-ride serious concerns as to the nature of the regime buying the weapons.
Amnesty International's reports on Saudi Arabia echo an earlier controversy about arms for Indonesia.
[NB: Andreas Whittam Smith's article is not available on the net as at 14.12.07]
BAE to enjoy Indian summer with £1bn order for Hawk jets
BAE Systems is close to landing a controversial £1bn order for its Hawk trainer jets from the Indian government after more than a decade of talks.
In what has become a rags to riches story for BAE's factory in Brough, Humberside, this will be the second big order for Hawks after the UK Government last week prom- ised to spend £800m. Sources close to the talks revealed that the Indian contract could be confirmed "within a matter of weeks", although the final details have yet to be agreed.
The deal comes after intense lobbying by the British Government, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw taking it in turns to persuade the Indians to buy the jets.
In the last few days, George Fernandes, the Indian defence minister, has set up a special parliamentary committee to ensure that an order for trainer jets is placed quickly. The Hawk is the favourite.
Earlier this month, Mr Fernandes told the Indian parliament: "We are in the last stage to procure the advance jet trainers. We have asked the British Government a question pertaining to this particular jet trainer. If the answer comes today, we will buy it tomorrow."
A well-placed source said the question the minister was referring to was whether the British Government would itself place an order for Hawk trainer jets. The Indian government was worried that without the security of a British order, the ageing Hawks may become obsolete.
But the British order came in on Wednesday amid much controversy. Mr Hoon, backed by Mr Blair, overruled advice from his own officials and Chancellor Gordon Brown to buy 20 Hawk jets and establish an option on a further 28 ...
Independent 03 August 2003
A military white elephant?
... after more than a quarter of a century of development, and a decade later than planned, the RAF is finally receiving its first consignment of Eurofighters. ...
Since the aircraft was conceived, it has survived countless technical and financial crises, design revisions and rescue packages, changes of government and shifts in strategic priorities. The resulting warplane, with its thick, slightly stubby fuselage and sharply swept-back wings, is "one of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world", according to Stewart Penney, defence editor of the trade magazine Flight International.
But a feeling of unease lingers around the project. Partly this is down to the Eurofighter's problematic history; partly it is down to something more fundamental. As Penney admits:"The last time a UK pilot shot down an enemy aircraft was in 1982 in the Falklands."Since then, Britain's frequent wars have been fought against opponents either without air forces or without much chance to use them.
Yet the Eurofighter was devised in a very different era: when massed formations of Russian aircraft were anticipated by western military planners as an accompaniment to an invasion of Europe.
With this threat, real or otherwise, having long receded, the Eurofighter's original role, using its manoeuvrability and clever weapons systems to perform Battle of Britain-style heroics, has been replaced by something more ambiguous.
For critics of the international defence business and its political and military allies, the jet has become the perfect example of a well-connected industry's ability to make over-budget, redundant products and find a market for them regardless."The Eurofighter is completely out of date," says Susan Willett, a defence analyst and "long-term sceptic" about the jet. "It's a cold-war beast."... But to supporters of the Eurofighter, all these complaints are either irrelevant or incorrect."The aircraft is absolutely critical to the UK aerospace industry," says John Wall, the national aerospace secretary of the trade union Amicus. Estimates of the number of British jobs dependent on the project range from 10,000 to 80,000."These are worthwhile jobs," Penney adds. "Engineers, technicians, skilled artisans... often in places where there aren't many other jobs."
The Guardian Tuesday July 22, 2003
Military-industrial complex
President of the United States (and former General of the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction ...Wikipedia
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.