The Troubles With HMS Astute
These are reported in several papers like here in the Telegraph.
But then this is always the case with new defence projects. I always remember a non-working radar for the Tornado, that was known as Blue Circle, because it was just a concrete dummy. The story is in the Wikpedia entry for the aircraft.
Because of some delays to the radar, some development aircraft flew with a concrete weight in place of the radar assembly. In a nod to some other radar names of the day (Blue Parrot, Blue Fox) this was nicknamed Blue Circle – cynics suggested that at leastBlue Circle gave more consistent results. Unfortunately, the ‘Blue’ series radars were made by Ferranti – and the AI24 Foxhunter for the Tornado was made by GEC. At least one senior civil servant thought that the AI24 was a Ferranti-made radar as a result… (Ferranti made the antenna mounting assembly as a subcontractor to GEC. At least that bit was delivered on time and to budget, although they later discovered that GEC was blaming them for delays. Cute trick.)
British defence contractors never seem to get it right first time.
On the other hand new products usually don’t work a hundred percent of the time. I’ve seen a New Bus for London, that has broken down and they are rumoured to have the odd air-conditioning problem.
But then you could probably get 5,000 New Buses for London for the price of HMS Astute. And anyway with the bus, there’s usually another along in a few minutes.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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