Sad but not surprising. I echo a lot of the sentiments on here, but have to say that this has been coming for the last 15 years. MOD wigs have wasted such insane inordinate ammounts of money in the last 15 years, on incompetent badly thought out, and bungled procurement programs, it was only a matter of time before a government was forced to make such sacrifice. the crunch has come for MOD

it’s MOD’s fault, rather than a question of short sighted MP’s. As an organisation, it has resisted change or any efforts to make it more efficient and less wasteful for the last 20 years, putting it in the sitiuation it is in now. It’s easy to target defence cuts as the culprit, but how can a badly run, old fashioned organisation expect to continue to write off £8-12 billion every year on complete c0ck ups, and then baulk when huge culls like this take place?!. I’m no politician fan, but seems to me its easy to blame them and private industry, when fury should be directed at the top floors within MOD. We only get to see the end reasult, ie Harrier and Nimrod cancellations, but just look at every sigle procurement deal in the last 15 years, and it makes for astonishing reading!. The incompetency and wasteage within MOD really is absolutely incredible..and it has now come up against a roothless government that is prepared to do what ever is necessary to deal with it. Read the Dispatches papers on MOD procurement for the last 15 years, its a real eye opener!!

poor Harrier! 🙁

the f111 escape pod at dumfries was apparently used in anger in the uk, i wonder if this is the one?

got a pic or any idea what it looks like? then I can have a root through

If this is Tony O’Neill who lives in England (the Arrows GP car makes me think it is as he had a lot of Arrows bits about 20 years ago) then this is the latest of his collections.
He is a friend of a friend who I knew for a short time in the late 80’s. His previous collections included Arrows GP cars (he drove a demonstration in an Arrows A11 turbo car at Lydden around 1989/90 with help from Arrows) and later he had a collection of Porsche 956/962 Group C sportscars and a Porsche 935 or two – not bad for someone whose early career was as a development engineer at Greeves motorcycles.

I think one of his Arrows is on display at PTR Racing in Horley/Gatwick. I had a look around it a few weeks ago, and its definitely a runner. The staff said it was on loan from a “local collector” who’s into planes and bikes too. Think I may have met the guy. some time last year a guy approached me whilst working on the Lightning and professed to have a mint runnable Jag in his garage/workshop near Haywards Heath. I took it with a pinch of salt, but perhaps he wasnt a b****ter after all 🙂

It did indeed, it was purchased by GAM, along with “juliet” and “Kilo”, and a deal was done to allow it to go to Marsden. We retained the interior for J and K, to replace components that MOD took without permission, after the sale had alredy taken place.

Cant help but think that the long term future for a machine like this could only be secured by putting her undercover . I can think of one place with a long association with the type that it would perfectly fit in but it would require vision and commitment from her current custodians.

and there’s the rub David. Unfortunately the LA is not just the one willing custodian of CR…

Wish you well Phil, and hope that the pig headed attitude has gone for 724’s sake. If you need any help from Gatwick/AALO, don’t hesitate to make contact, that is genuine, we really want to see her get some TLC too..

I guarantee you guys will get zero reply