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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0335.PDF
• . • • . •,•••..-. :,.•••.'•'• . ••,• ,••'•;..' ':,•:;-'.•• H-:'••':•. '-'-:'•'".-:.• ••.. ....... • . . . . • . • .... :• . -";: ..• . '. • • • ••• •• CHT Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 International HURSDAY MARCH 7, 1963 Number 2817 Volume 83 Editor-in-Chief IAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H.F.KING MBE Technical Editor W.T.CU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDE N Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 320 Air Commerce 323 Ultrasonic Testing and Flight Safety 330 Straight and Level 332 Letters 33 3 Sleek Ship 336 Industry International 338 Sport and Business 34.0 World Gliding Championships 342 Missiles and Spaceflight 346 Service Aviation 350 lline Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canada and USA J15.00. Second Class Hall privileges authorized at New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bucha nan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner <t Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1963. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Government Spending: THE process by which military requirements are formulated by the Air Ministry, accepted or rejected by the Ministry of Aviation and the Treasury, and put out for tender to the industry is traditionally cloaked in a form of secrecy. We say a form of secrecy because information may deliberately be leaked in influential quarters whenever particular interests demand that public pressure be applied. The military require ment for secrecy concerning new weapons has, it seems, been progressively subordinated to a political need to solve all problems according to expediency and blind economy. The Treasury has the responsibility of not spending any money at all if it can avoid it; and against this background the Government must supply the basic requirements of the Services and apportion work to companies or areas where it is needed most. The Services must on occasion accom modate even their most firmly stated requirements to any financial, economic or technical conditions which obtain at a given moment. Vacillation and delay become inevitable. In other instances the notion of a "British lead" can too easily breed complacency. The Minister can happily state that we have such a lead and fail to exploit it. It is said that we are losing our best scientists: we may also be wasting our best developments. When, at the eleventh hour, a requirement is finally accepted the whole project may be rushed to the industry with feverish haste. Bids for major developments might be called for unreasonably quickly after the detailed requirement is finally made known, and the industry may be obliged to provide proposals based on incomplete information, and priced com petitively rather than precisely. Only when the bidding is finished is anyone able to get down to real details and discover what the true price might be. Long afterwards Parliament may be told that a weapon esti mated to cost £x million will in fact cost twice as much—and the industry is brought into disrepute. —and Public Accountability Development policy can seldom be effectively examined or understood by those who must provide the resources for its realization. Knowledge able and capable civil servants may lack the authority to take decisions, and nobody appears to be capable of stating a consistent policy. In the end everyone suffers. Co-ordination between national defence requirements and export prospects is likewise deficient. Too often the industry has been castigated for failing to sell abroad a weapon developed solely for a restricted national requirement, and companies may be prevented by "security" from benefiting their international reputations by even mentioning significant accomplishments. Meanwhile, are not the imperfections of the procurement system being obscured by misuse of "security"? British military development pro grammes continue to be the greatest strongholds wherein public funds can be committed irrevocably without public accountability.
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