“Contractorization” may be an ugly word, but for Lockheed Martin and Britain’s VT Group, it is pretty good business. Their joint venture, called Ascent, last month won a £635 million ($1.25 billion) contract to provide the military flying training system (MFTS) for UK armed forces over the next 25 years. During that time, a further £6 billion ($11.8 billion) could be spent on training aircraft, simulators, equipment and services. Today, most British military aircrew are still trained on aging, “round-dial” systems that are quite unsuitable for the age of digital, glass cockpits.
MFTS is the latest public-private partnership to be concluded by the British government. It is also a further step in the Ministry of Defence’s unprecedented embrace of private industry, which now provides a wide range of operational and support functions that were previously run by uniformed personnel. One of the oldest examples–the Defence Helicopter Flying School–has now been running for nearly 11 years.
