South Korea is changing the basis on which its Defence Acquisition Programme Administration (DAPA) accepts offsets. The move follows last month’s appointment of a new controller for DAPA. “It won’t favour offsets.”
DAPA is now wondering whether the whole F-35 programme was a conspiracy. Senior people who negotiated the offset contracts with Blenheim and with the FMS are being investigated and are facing jail. Also: “A U.S. government official who negotiated a deal with us now works for a company who provides funding - It would have been all over the news.”
Neither the government nor the contractors were willing to discuss offset costs, so DAPA wrote to some of the largest companies with which it does business... “No-one was helpful in sharing the numbers.” Then they discovered the cost was...
Germany and Norway are continuing with a bilateral government-to-government industrial cooperation agreement. Norwegian MoD says that the agreement differs from the traditional direct offset approach and is now viewed as an indirect (defence) offset opportunity.
Australian government officials are growing frustrated with Naval Group following delays in the signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement linked to the Future Submarine procurement. Defence minister Christopher Pyne snubbed meetings with high level French officials.