[Osem]

All the benefits that the ships' construction and operation have brought to the shipyards etc and will bring in the future could've been achieved without the vast waste of money due to the flawed decision making, political dithering etc. Surely that would have been a better outcome for everyone concerned, including the taxpayer. Of course there are many past and existing beneficiaries of the contract but the fact remains that much needed money which could have been used to fund other military schemes was wasted. The MOD is a government department so is bound to be subject to political point scoring policy changes etc. It's also subject to a great deal of influence from high level forces personnel who rarely seem to agree on such matters and have vested interests in terms of securing resources for their own services. The MOD has presided over far too many costly mistakes in the past and they never seem to learn. Our servicemen pay the price.