| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <plotd@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Another Dead Judge |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Aug 1998 18:47:27 +0100 |
100000@****.ugcs.caltech.edu>, Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU> writes
>On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Paul J. Adam wrote:
>
>> Now, few if any megacorps will buy critical assets from each other
>> (Saeder-Krupp buying Ares tanks/aircraft/missiles? Not exactly
>> likely...)
>Pst....Paul, then why'd you have Blade pulling an _Ares_Alpha off a dead
>_Aztlan_ guard? I didn't think "the government that is the corporation"
>of Aztlan/Aztechnology would be too happy about buying a rival's product.
>Mostly a joke here, but you should be careful about your continuity. =)
Aztlan Sourcebook, page 178, the Jaguar Guard use Alphas.
No, it doesn't make sense, but there you go.
Mind you, assault rifles are easy to copy or licence-produce, and _very_
easy to reverse-engineer (look how many nations turn out various
Kalashnikov derivatives...)
>> Ares can make no profit without sales, and yet to make sales of major
>> military equipment it _must_ present as a stable, long-term ally. Or,
>> they make a "sale" that includes transfer of all IPR and design data on
>> the aircraft / missile / tank / whatever, because they are not trusted:
>> and so they lose out on the lucrative PDS contract, and the data they
>> spent billions developing is in the hands of their customers, to be
>> passed on to their competitors if necessary.
>
>Honestly they probably wouldn't make the sale if it meant they had to
>transfer over all the data.
That's the rule today, for us at least. We develop the weapon, and UK
MoD has full visibility of what we build for them, so that they _can_ in
theory go elsewhere to have someone else produce or support for them.
They sit in on our design reviews, they have full visibility of all our
work and of whatever our subcontractors produce.
The golden rule - they've got the gold so they make the rules :) We do
it their way, it guarantees they're happy with the finished product, and
we get a nice profit at the end of it. Developing "a system" and hawking
it around is generally a lot less successful than accepting a
development contract from a major customer and _then_ trying to export
it to others.
>With extraterritoriality, they cannot afford
>to have the close friendly relationships that American aerospace firms
>have with the millitary today.
Possibly why the UCAS uses Fed-Boeing Eagles (don't know if F-B is
extraterritorial, but it would make sense for them _not_ to be - big
competitive edge over a megacorp there).
>Certain things would effectively be "black
>boxes." Especially some of the more critical avionics and structural
>components.
Which doesn't fill service users with joy. Maintenance by LRU (just swap
black boxes and send the duff one back to depot) is fine on the front
line, but the further back you go the less useful such a policy is.
> They probably would be very silent on the matter of
>manufacturing as well. For instance, they would hardly be willing to
>advertise the intricacies of how to forge a wing box out of a
>metalic-glass alloy.
Again - no proprietary techniques or components to be used on Sting Ray.
We got badly burned by a subcontractor that maintained IPR on a key
component, and both we as prime contractors and the MoD as customers are
determined not to let that expensive little exercise happen again.
Don't like that? Don't bid on the contract...
>P.S. Anybody care to enlighten the list on the new squad rifle to be
>fielded by the US? Saw it in July's _Popular Science_. Made by HK, 20-30
>shot standard NATO squad rifle round and an overbarrel 6-shot 20mm
>explosive shell with a microchip timed fuse so that you can airburst it
>around corners. Built in 6x day/night-scope and link to a helmet-cam (can
>you say, SmarkGun Level 0?). Scary stuff.
Jeff, you mean you don't recognise where I got the idea for the L7? :)
This is the Offensive Infantry Combat Weapon, or OICW, which has been
kicking around for a while: the H&K/Alliant Techsystems weapon is one of
the contenders, the other is from Olin.
The idea is to reduce the need for marksmanship by using grenades
instead of bullets: instead of aiming at a target, allowing for range
and deflection and suchlike, you put an aiming mark on the target, lase
it for range, aim again using the corrected mark and fire.
There are a number of question marks over the project, though: ranging
from the lethality of the grenades (there's only so much payload you can
put in a 20mm round, and the fragments are more easily defeated by body
armour than bullets) to their weight and the numbers a soldier can
carry, to doubts about how robust all this high-techery is going to be
after a week in the field.
The "guncam" link to a helmet cam is from British Aerospace (who own
H&K), I used a version at a trade show (in a virtual Copehill Down - I
was the only person in four days to recognisethe place :) ) and it's got
definite potential, though it can be disorienting at times.
Those with long memories may remember both the ACR program and Project
Salvo, though... both of which concluded that the M-16 was still about
as good as infantry got, and that trying to compensate for a lack of
training with technology was a losing prospect.
--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...
Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
