MoD plans raid on landmine removal fund to keep Tornados flying in Iraq

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

Money set aside to clear landmines and remove arms from conflict zones is to be raided to pay a private defence contractor to keep Tornado jets flying in Iraq, according to a confidential memo seen by the Guardian. The Ministry of Defence plans to pay BAE Systems from the multimillion-pound Conflict Prevention Fund - which covers projects such as destroying weapons in Bosnia and landmines in Mozambique - to subsidise the £5m-£10m cost of servicing each of the six planes.
...
The decision to close the fast jets and engines business of Dara, the Defence Aviation Repair Agency, based at St Athan, Glamorgan, from last April provoked a huge row in 2005. Trade unions, MPs and the all-party Commons defence committee condemned the move. At the time the committee concluded it was "perverse and wasteful for the MoD to invest large amounts of public money to renovate the facilities at RAF Marham when it has at its disposal a state-of-the-art facility at St Athan". The committee said: "It is doubtful that the facilities at RAF Marham will ever match those at Dara (in) St Athan."

A memo sent to Lady Taylor, the minister for defence equipment and support, reveals that the RAF has had to increase its operations in Iraq, and six Tornados have required servicing this year. "The net result is that there is insufficient capacity available at RAF Marham to meet the full requirements of the operational and training task," the memo says.

The memo proposes, and the minister accepts, that BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, should take over the work because it has a "gap" between completing an order for Saudi Arabia and new Tornado capability trials. It goes on: "The use of BAE Systems Warton will incur additional costs. BAE Systems are in the process of calculating these costs, but there is yet no timescale for their presentation to MoD. The additional monies will be subject of a claim against the Conflict Prevention Fund." The memo acknowledges there will be anger about the decision, which will attract "adverse comment from the unions". It adds: "Defensive news briefs are being developed to counter adverse media comment." Yesterday the Guardian showed the memo to the union Unite, which called for an inquiry by MPs on the defence committee and said it would seek an urgent meeting with the minister.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/10/military.baesystemsbusiness

---

It just sounds like a big 'fuck you' to normal humanity, doesn't it? Short of money to keep warplanes flying? Then just take it from the paltry effort to clean up the mess the military has already made! :banghead:

[Kolesar]

1. A mercator projection overlayed with population data

That sure is an interesting map in your sig line. The phrase "white man's burden" gets stuck in my head, somehow.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. They do many more maps like that here:

http://www.worldmapper.org/index.html

I think they actually start from an equal area projection (Peters projection, perhaps?), rather than Mercator, to produce each map - see http://www.worldmapper.org/about.html . They have an animation of the morphing of the equal area map to the population one.

[Divernan]

3. Hillary will be ecstatic! She's all for cluster bombs "ya know"!

and supports Bush in Iraq. Maiming & killing civilians, and destroying their pitiful little plots of land for farming are just some of those collateral costs that HRC is happy to accept.