BUB: Procurement and Acquisitions

This BUB looks at how governments and spending their tax dollars...

Or in Greece's case, how they are spending someone else's tax dollars.

Greece is struggling to pull itself out of an unprecedented financial crisis that saw it narrowly avoid defaulting on its debt, and can ill-afford to spend billions on the military while it slashes pensions and salaries.

Athens is currently in talks with France over the purchase of six frigates, while Germany, France and others are eager to sell it fighter jets.

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Meanwhile, Turkey is continuing their outrage over the Israeli raid on a Turkish "aid" convoy linked to a terrorist-supporting 'charity', but not enough to cancel the delivery of their aerial fleet of Israeli-made UAVs.

The increasingly Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has expressed outrage over the killing of nine passengers, at least four of them Turks, during an interception operation by the Israel Navy on May 31.
Turkish Islamists organized the six-vessel flotilla that sought to break the siege of the Gaza Strip and clashed with Israel Navy commandos.

"Three joint military exercises scheduled with Israel were canceled," Erdogan said. "Turkey’s hostility is as strong as its friendship is valuable."

But officials said the Heron program marked a military priority and would not be affected. They said five out of the six Herons were being deployed on a nearly daily basis.

"Nobody should expect us to declare war on Israel because of this incident," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.

Officials said the Turkish Defense Ministry would not block the delivery of Israeli UAVs to Ankara's military. They said Turkey has already paid most of the $190 million for the procurement of 10 Heron UAVs from the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries.

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Are France and the UK looking at a joint acquisition of aerial refueling tankers? Maybe.

The UK is in talks with France to share the cost of a multibillion-pound deal to provide refuelling tankers for the Royal Air Force in the most tangible sign yet of closer defence co-operation between the nations.

Under the proposal, the UK would offload some of the 14 tankers it is buying to France, the head of Europe’s largest aerospace and defence group said on Wednesday.

Louis Gallois, chief executive of EADS, the lead company in the consortium providing the aircraft, said there is “contact with France” which is looking to renew its own tanker fleet.

“We understand they are discussing this,” he said, noting that a deal could help the UK cut the cost of leasing the aircraft under the current private finance initiative.

The much-delayed £10.5bn ($15bn) programme to provide tankers has come under fire for being too expensive. Under the 27-year PFI contract, the AirTanker consortium will lease the aircraft, specifically Airbus A330-200s, to the Ministry of Defence.

By: Brant