As reported in Show News July 14, the Rt. Hon. Baroness Taylor of Bolton, Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, came to Farnborough to launch a new phase of study contracts for the UK's Team Complex Weapon.

At an event depressingly familiar to Lord Drayson's 2005 Farnborough launch of the Complex Weapons plan--which suffered broiling temperatures and a total blackout--the minister was forced to brief in a crowded, airless room with no air conditioning. Nevertheless, she managed to stay positive about Farnborough and the UK aerospace industry.

Six assessment-phase contracts valued at 74 million pounds ($148.6 million) have been awarded to start work on six key complex weapons programs. These include the Indirect Fire Precision Attack Loitering Munition (Fire Shadow), two missiles to meet the Light and Heavy components of the Future Air-to-Surface Guided Weapon, a 50-kg air-to-ground missile for helicopters and fast jets, the Common Anti-Air Modular Missile for naval air defense and a Storm Shadow capability-enhancement program.

At the heart of the Complex Weapons plan, said the minister, was a "shift in the overall balance of procurement to meet existing needs while guaranteeing long-term capability development." She noted the need to keep complex weapons skills within the UK to secure operational sovereignty and hailed the new agreement as "a step away from bespoke contracts and on to flexible, more modular [weapons] design."

"In my relatively new position as Minister for Defence Equipment, I am dealing with the legacy of programs which stretch back 10 or 15 years. Some of the decisions made back then have turned out to be not so great now. It's no good to have rigid planning that can't be adjusted. This first year's funding is about proving new concepts," she said, adding that "the plan is about overall strategy, not hard and fast budgets."

Steve Wadey, the head of MBDA UK and chairman of Team Complex weapons said, "I can't emphasize enough how much of a milestone this is. It has taken over four years of work to turn this proposition into a reality that allows solid investment over the medium and long term. We have a long journey ahead of us, but we must deliver and make it a success."

Rear Admiral Amjad Hussain, the Ministry of Defence's director general weapons, told Show News, "These six weapons programs are not the only thing in the pipeline, but they are the first steps to prove the principles of this new way of doing business. Each one is testing a different principle, sometimes more than one. At the end of the assessment phase we will decide if this truly is a better way of going forward with complex weapons. I'm pretty sure it is."