BAE Systems has signed a memorandum of understanding with two Polish defence companies covering the potential localised production of the M88A2 armoured recovery vehicle in Poland, the company has announced.
The non-binding agreement with Wojskowe Zakłady Motoryzacyjne and H. Cegielski-Poznań, both members of the state-owned PGZ Capital Group and specialists in the sustainment and manufacture of tracked armoured vehicles, reflects what BAE Systems described as a shared commitment to expanding Polish industrial capability for sustainment and support, alongside the potential for building the recovery vehicle itself in the country.
The framework builds on the licensing agreement BAE Systems and WZM signed in 2025, which centred on maintenance, repair, overhaul and sustainment of the M88A2, and brings HCP’s manufacturing strengths into the collaboration to combine with WZM’s existing sustainment expertise.
Dean Medland, vice president for Sustainment and International at BAE Systems, said: “This agreement is a testament to how BAE Systems does business: prioritising the needs of our allies through strong local strategic relationships. By integrating our global expertise with the support and manufacturing capabilities of WZM and HCP, we are not just providing equipment; we are investing in Polish defence and local industrial growth. Strengthening Poland’s capability around the M88A2 ensures the sustainment and support of the critical recovery capabilities its forces depend on for years to come.”
Grzegorz Szkaradek, CEO of HCP and chairman of both companies’ management boards, said the signing was “a landmark moment not only for our plants, but for the entire city of Poznań,” adding: “By combining HCP’s unique production facilities with WZM’s extensive armor and service experience, we are becoming a strong and comprehensive partner for BAE Systems in Greater Poland. This collaboration is a clear signal that Poznań is emerging as a key production and service hub for cutting-edge armored platforms for the Polish Army. This will bring Poznań not only new technologies and unique engineering expertise, but also stability and growth for decades to come.”
The M88A2 is the recovery variant supporting the M1 Abrams tanks Poland is fielding in numbers, with the enhanced horsepower and upgraded armour protection, including armoured track skirts and armour panels, to manoeuvre and extract a 70-tonne stranded vehicle and its crew to safety, and BAE Systems said it is working with the Polish Land Forces to provide unified recovery capabilities able to recover every armoured vehicle in the Polish Army’s fleet.
Poland has ordered hundreds of Abrams tanks from the United States.
Oh!
‘Poland has ordered hundreds of Abrams tanks from the United States.’
How can they afford that?
‘Poland has not committed to the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goal and lacks a national climate law for carbon neutrality.’ (Carbon Removal Policy in Poland)
Maybe they actually read what the IPCC said?
‘The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’
The latest research supports Poland’s position on carbon neutrality.
‘…the experiments show that the effect of IR-active gases is strongly influenced by convection and that a considerable portion of the warming observed in classical demonstrations is not due to radiative effects, but rather to gas effects that inhibit convection. For the real atmosphere the interplay of convection and the other mechanical heat fluxes with the GHGs can be understood as lifting warmer air parcels from the lower to the upper troposphere, from where heat can be released more efficiently to space by radiation. Thus, these fluxes prove to be central components in the Earth’s heat transport and at the same time relativize the sole significance of IR-active gases as sources for global warming.’
Radiative and Convective Heat-Transfer in the Atmosphere: Some Basic Laboratory Studies, Michael Schnell, Hermann Harde, 2026
‘So when convection is included as a contributing factor in these lab experiments (see also Wagoner et al., 2010 or Seim and Olsen, 2020), the temperature effect of adding 10% CO2 is reduced to just 0.1°C. This temperature change is so negligible that it is effectively below the resolution of the measurement sensors.
The real-world atmosphere has convective heat transfer dominating and 100s of times smaller CO2 concentrations than in this lab experiment. Thus, it can be concluded that the climate sensitivity to even a massive CO2 increase is effectively zero.’
Poland appears to be well served by its politicians. Britain, on the other hand, seems to be run by a bunch of loons and fruitcakes…
I see you’re back again commenting about things you have no knowledge on. The IPCC quote you’ve used is a classic example of quote-mining. The full context is about the difficulty of predicting specific regional climate states decades ahead. It explicitly does not say that warming from greenhouse gases is uncertain. The same IPCC reports you’re selectively quoting from conclude with very high confidence that human-caused warming is real and accelerating.
The Schnell and Harde paper is from a small journal and represents a fringe position rejected by the overwhelming body of atmospheric physics. The conclusion that ‘climate sensitivity to CO2 is effectively zero’ contradicts not just climate models but direct empirical measurements of outgoing radiation from satellites, ocean heat content data, and ice core records going back 800,000 years. Lab experiments that isolate convection don’t replicate the stratified atmosphere, where CO2’s radiative forcing operates across the full column.
Hermann Harde, one of the paper’s authors, is a known figure in climate denial circles who has had papers rejected or heavily criticised by mainstream atmospheric physicists before. The fact that this paper ended up in a brand new self-published journal rather than an established atmospheric science journal tells you everything about how it fared in genuine peer review.
Poland’s position on carbon neutrality is a political choice, not a scientific one. You’re entitled to hold the same view, but dressing it up as ‘the latest research’ when that research sits well outside the scientific consensus doesn’t make it stronger, it just means you’ve found the one paper that agrees with you.
‘…see also Wagoner et al., 2010 or Seim and Olsen, 2020’
‘Poland’s position on carbon neutrality is a political choice, not a scientific one’…as is Britain’s…
That’s simply not true and you know it, Britains choice is based on the science accepted by the overwhelming number of experts and scientific research and published papers on the matter. Polands is based on politically ignoring that because its priority after so long under the Soviet heel is to economically expend as fast as it can and become a power large enough to control its own destiny and as so much of its industry started from such an environmentally negative starting point it has forgone immediate climate initiatives in favour of what it deems survival. To casually compare our two positions especially when exploiting most of the materials they do is no longer remotely practical or even a financial option in this Country (for various reasons) is a ludicrous and unsustainable take. Only oil/gas extraction is a marginal argument here, but our fields are now over 90% dry, gas was never high yield anyway and increasingly marginal (we have import supplemented it since 2000), new options are expensive at best (Jackdaw might be viable but hardly substantial), oil companies almost need to be given very generous terms to invest further and sadly as we were stupid enough to never set up a sovereign wealth fund (unlike Norway and others) and sold off our Govt owned assets in the North Sea, only some unpredictable tax returns would benefit us at all. Even industry experts don’t claim it would lower fuel costs or benefit us beyond that tax though obviously maintaining jobs longer would benefit Aberdeen. Not sure how that feeds into our defence industry mind, just delaying the inevitable a decade or so which can be judged on those merits of but. But seriously comparing ourselves to Poland truly is about as misguided as it gets, a hundred years ago maybe.
By the way Poland is investing heavily in electric car production and other green areas to modernise so to simply claim it doesn’t believe in climate change and the opportunity transformation provides is simply more self serving misdirection.
You want more references?
Christy, J. R., R. T. McNider (2017). Satellite bulk tropospheric temperatures as a metric for climate
sensitivity. Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 53, 511-518.
Christy, J. R. (2022). Time series construction of Oregon and Washington snowfall since 1890 and an
update of California snowfall through 2020. Journal of Hydrometeorology 23, 1845-1860.
Connolly, R., M. Connolly, W. Soon, et al. (2019). Northern Hemisphere snow-cover trends (1967–
2018): A comparison between climate models and observations. Geosciences 9, 135.
Datseris, G., B. Stevens (2021). Earth’s albedo and its symmetry. AGU Advances 2,
e2021AV000440
Karl, T.R., S. J. Hassol, C. D. Miller, W. L. Murray, eds. (2006). Temperature Trends in the Lower
Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences. U.S. Climate Change Science
Program/Subcommittee on Global Change Research.
Klotzbach, P.J., R. A. Pielke, Sr., R. A. Pielke, Jr., J. R. Christy, R. T. McNider (2009). An alternative
explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere.
Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres 114(D21).
McKitrick, R. and J. R. Christy (2020). Pervasive warming bias in CMIP6 tropospheric layers. Earth and
Space Science 7.
Palmer, T., and B. Stevens (2019). The scientific challenge of understanding and estimating climate
change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(49), 24390–24395.
Santer B D, P.W. Thorne, L Haimberger et al. (2008) Consistency of modelled and observed temperature
trends in the tropical troposphere International Journal of Climatology 28 1703–22
Santer, B.D. S. Po-Chedley, L. Zhao, C et al. (2023) Exceptional stratospheric contribution to human
fingerprints on atmospheric temperature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 120
(20) e2300758120
And so on and so forth…
Let me know when you have finished reading those and I will send you some more.
This is ‘climate consensus’ ?
‘A group of countries including Italy, Poland and Czechia says the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is driving up costs for business and making Europe uncompetitive. Italy has called for lower carbon prices and softer rules.
Italy is also leading a push against a new “do no significant harm” rule that the European Commission wants to insert into its proposed budget for 2028-34.
The rule would proscribe spending on policies or projects that hurt the environment, which Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister, says will choke off EU funding to key industries.
“In a world in which the US and China are mobilising billions upon billions to boost their own industry and competitiveness, Europe cannot … become an obstacle to its own industry and competitiveness,” Meloni said last month…
Brussels has also eased the pedal on its 2035 target to phase out petrol and diesel cars, after Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, said the rules had to “better align climate targets, market realities, businesses and jobs”.
Chat GPT is awsome for bollocks like this list of ‘references’ … he’s not read any of them but wields them like Bat Fink’s wings: a “Shield of Steel” to fend of alternative opinions.
If you had any knowledge of the subject, had done any reading yourself? you would recognise these references immediately…
And your position, references…?
Crickets…
IPCC full quote:
‘Further work is required to improve the ability to detect, attribute and understand climate change, to reduce uncertainties, and to project future climate changes. In particular, there is a need for additional systematic observations, modelling and process studies. A serious concern is the decline of observational networks. Further work is needed in eight broad areas:…
• Improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios, including development and exploration of long-term ensemble simulations using complex models.The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.’
The IPCC has just retired the most extreme of such ‘scenarios’ (RCP8.5) upon which Britain’s nutty pursuit of net zero is mainly based.
‘The fact that RCP8.5 was implausible has been well established in the scientific literature since 2017. Further evidence has refined that view in the years since….RCP8.5, and other extreme scenarios, were never plausible. Recent (post-2005) trends and energy outlook projections (to 2040) of global CO2 emissions are substantially lower than projected by baseline scenarios used in the IPCC’s Fifth (AR5) and Sixth (AR6) Assessment Reports, and are well off-track from widely-cited high-emission marker scenarios such as RCP8.5…I fully understand both the need to save face and to portray climate policies as being more effective than they actually have been. However, if we do not accurately understand the reasons for the RCP8.5 debacle then we risk repeating those mistakes.’
‘IPCC baseline scenarios have over-projected CO2 emissions and economic growth’ Environmental Research 2020
Poland is buying off the shelf armoured vehicles. If the UK gave up on AUKUS, the Nuclear deterrent and the 6th Gen fighter programme. Then the British Army could have a thousand Abrams tanks.
Our economy is four times the size of Poland’s economy. We are quite simply throwing away the budgetary allocations that should be made to national security.
‘Some £408 billion will be required by 2050 to install and operate Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) infrastructure in the UK. More than £50 billion of subsidies has been earmarked to support projects that together only account for 8% of the UK’s 2050 CCS target.’
The Runaway Cost of UK Carbon Capture and Storage Subsidies
Carbon Capture Storage is a complete boondoggle. ‘Despite its long history, carbon capture is a problematic technology. A new IEEFA study reviewed the capacity and performance of 13 flagship projects and found that 10 of the 13 failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.’
The carbon capture crux: Lessons learned September 01, 2022
Britain is the world’s fifth largest economy, may soon overtake Japan to once more become the world’s fourth biggest.
We are a permanent member of the UN security council…but successive governments have failed to shoulder the burden of national security, hiding behind our allies on Continental Europe and elsewhere.
Shameful!
If you seriously think Britain will soon overtake a Japan in the size of our economy then the rest of your arguments make perfect if delusional sense. However if it is inline to do so, (do we overtake Germany along the way), then wow what the hell are we all whinging about, we have clearly never had it so good. Great times are clearly ahead, great green times too. 🎆
The UK is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) to surpass Japan’s nominal GDP by roughly 2030, with forecasts suggesting it could also overtake Germany’s economy sometime in the 2030s to 2040s
Patrick, why do we want 1,000 Abrams tanks – thats more MBTs than we had during the Cold War.
We purchased a mere 386 CR2 MBTs for the newer, smaller post-Cold War army. Who would crew 1,000 tanks – the army can only just crew three Type 44 regiments.
Why Abrams? The plan to have 148 CR3s is on track. (admittedly 148 is less than we need for a fully resourced ‘armoured division’ and Trg Org, Repair Pool and Attrition Reserve).
You do know the proven effects of large CO2 emissions over the earth’s history I presume, well perhaps not. Earth has gone through a number of periods before settling down as we know it today, where large CO2 releases from internal flare ups have on at least one occasion destroyed almost all plant life other than some sub surface remnants that fortunately for us managed to regenerate the Earths on land resources once conditions allowed if over extremely long period, otherwise if the Earth had had to completely re generate such life it would either have not happened at all or would have taken millions of more years with no guarantee it would be like anything we see today. This is all contained in records gathered from the Earth’s crust.
Michael Schnell and Hermann Harde have a minority view that is not broadly accepted by other experts and their laboratory based experiments should not be considered remotely conclusive about how CO2 operates in a very complex atmospheric scenario. As such at the very least it would be madness to hope such minority views are correct considering the consequences.
Arguing about the exact effects of Global Warming is one thing and can be valid to seriously claim large emissions of CO2 has no effect on climate change (and worse) is so delusional that it makes RFK seem rational.
As for claiming that Poland can spend so much on defence simply because it has no serious carbon neutral ambitions, is simply ludicrous. If we gave up or delayed our own ambitions tomorrow it would do little if anything to further defence spending here, at best there would be a marginal short term option available. Poland’s ability to spend so much more of its gdp is almost all political and the receptive attitude of its population what with being being next to a Country that has abused it over much of its 1000+ year history (arguably the oldest nation in Europe), of which it has only enjoyed independence for some 300 years in that time. Its economy is also growing rather fast and could well pass ours during the thirties. Also due to its history and exploitation during the Soviet period its economy is very different to ours and understandably it is going to take much longer for it to transform to a green economy. That should not be used as an excuse use for us to ignore realities even as we should discuss timings and any potential need to adjust them.
‘Since 1750, additions to the atmospheric CO2 concentration derived from natural emission sources associated with biological processes are about 4.5 times larger than the contribution from fossil fuel emissions (e.g., 22.9 ppm per year from nature, 5.2 ppm per year from fossil fuel combustion).’
Refined Reservoir Routing (RRR) and Its Application to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Balance,Koutsoyiannis, 2024
‘CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.’
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, Humlum, Stordahl, and Solheim
The cost of net zero is highly likely to be above the 2020 estimate of roughly £3 trillion from the National Electricity System Operator (NESO).
Poland and most other European countries have wisely decided that to be unaffordable. Britain, on the other hand, on the basis of no evidence only flawed modelling, has decided to ruin itself.
Strange that the IPCC report says the exact opposite of that when I search it ,….,
I give, above, the exact and entire quote from the IPCC…but then it is very much a political organisation quite capable, as with all political organisations, politicians, of saying one thing one day and something completely in contradiction the next…
I can’t believe this comments section has devolved to such an extent that we now have climate denialists haunting the place.
That is a misrepresentation. I am a fully paid up believer in climate change. The climate is clearly changing…has always changed…always will change.
The expression ‘climate denialist’ condemns itself and its users out of hand; risible; easily dismissed; entirely nugatory.
Tell me your age.
Name: Monro
Rank: Director
Number: 596
Boomer. Knew it.
Name: Monro
Rank: Director
Number: 596
Directors can face personal accountability and penalties in the following situations:
Health & Safety Breaches: Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (Section 37), directors can be prosecuted, fined, or imprisoned if an employee’s injury or fatality was caused by the company’s negligence or consent.
Employment Law & Statutory Rights: If directors knowingly cause the company to breach statutory employment rights (e.g., withholding minimum wage, denying holiday pay, or suppressing whistleblowing), courts can pierce the corporate veil to make directors personally liable to the employees.
Vicarious Liability in Torts: If a director personally directs or induces an employee to commit a legal wrong (a tort), such as fraud or intellectual property infringement on behalf of the company, the director can be sued alongside the PLC.
Unlawful Discrimination & Harassment: While the company is primarily liable for employee discrimination or harassment, directors and individual employees can be named personally as respondents in employment tribunals if they were directly involved in the discriminatory acts
Monro, what does 596 mean?
Classical music fans know it as BWV 596—the famous organ transcription by Johann Sebastian Bach of Vivaldi’s Concerto in D minor (L’Estro Armonico).
It is also the official box number for the popular Funko Chewbacca (A New Hope) Pop! Vinyl figure and the Knuckles as Superman crossover figure.
Ooh I bet that made you feel soooo important.
Oh please. Labelling a person who disagrees with you on a complicated postion a “Climate Denialist”. It’s all very imature student politics. It’s a flashing neon sign of weakness in an argument.
Oh, I forgot that I could convince the braindead about the causes and impacts of climate change. They obviously didn’t tell me that at the seminar. (Protip: you can’t be convinced. I know this for a fact.)
Please. I call you “climate denialists” because it’s what you are. It’s either that or “subnormals”. Your choice. I’m perfectly content with either.
We all know what it means, it’s long held shorthand for a very distinct position on the causes (or otherwise) of climate change ie whether humans are the major cause or not, it reflects those that ignore the evidence no matter what, I have heard flat earthers use scientific evidence to disprove the majority position that the World is founded on so one can clearly (if one is open to it) understand the scope to find or misrepresent evidence on climate change especially when there is so much still to learn. Seems to me if so many on the right or just unthinking wish to use ‘woke’ in the way they do then I see nothing wrong in calling out climate deniers in that particular way for what they are. One can believe in what they say or otherwise but seriously using the term ‘immature student politics’ is not only so 1970s, but is laughably no higher up the scale of objective thought, reasoning or intellect is it. Nor is repeating ‘name rank and number’ as some sort of smart ass response I guess.
No it’s a juvenile disingenuous attempt to discredit anyone who may question approved narratives about policy decisions made by governments. Science is not dogma. It’s findings change with new information. Or at least it should do. We should listen to alternative points of view and not instantly clown them if they dissent.
The term “climate denier” is used to “other” oppostion. It is used broadly. It is used not merely against people who deny the possibility of human impact on climate but it is also used monolithically against people who criticise policy decisions and priorites that governments make.
Government is complicated. There are competing demands. Obsessing about the priorities of Greta Thunberg and Dale Vincent in a time of economic and international crisis derseves to be criticised. Priotising windmills and solar over nuclear in a northern climate derserve to be criticised. Funding the planting of trees in Uganda instead of your Strategic Defence Review deserves to be criticised.
Labelling everyone who points at this obsession with Net Zero to the ruin of everything else as a “climate denier” is disingenous and infantile. It’s like reading the screed of Rik the peoples poet from the Young Ones. These are not serious people. They’re closed mind mumbling approved phrases and would be just as happy being outside banging pots and pans to the holy NHS.
‘One of the world’s biggest news agencies, the Associated Press, put a marker down with an addition to its Stylebook – the document that sets the house rules for writers.
The AP’s new Stylebook entry on climate change and global warming goes like this:
To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers.
The AP’s decision, explained in a blog post by the agency’s vice president and director of media relations Paul Colford, is important because, as one of the world’s biggest news agencies, so many people around the globe read the stories that its journalists produce.
I don’t like the term “climate denier” or “climate change denier” either, because nobody is accusing anyone of holding the view that the world doesn’t have a climate or that it’s climate hasn’t changed in the past.’
So complicated that everyone agrees apart from the looirs and those with adgendas
Not everyone agrees on scale, scope or solution. Is Defence of the realm more important or less important than Net Zero targets? What percentage of GDP should we lose to attain these targets? 10% 100%? Are people in Industrial towns just supposed to shut up and take it so that Posh Metropolitans can feel good about themselves?
No point in having defence of there is nothing left to defend
I came onto this article to read about the Armoured Vehicle!!
The political spats are one thing, bad enough but sprinked amongst the subject matter sort of normal?
But this, this isn’t a climate weather forum!
Was that it?? By the time i got to the end of the comments section I’d completely forgot what it was about!
This article, above, is about a British company helping to re-arm Poland with sufficient armoured vehicles so that Poland can meet its commitments to NATO’s conventional deterrent. That draws the question as to why Britain is not itself re-arming with sufficient armoured vehicles to meet its own commitments to NATO.
And the answer is, in part, Britain’s spending on net zero. Consequently, discussing the utility of Britain’s net zero agenda is both relevant and vitally important for national security budgets.
‘Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, came into power posing security as the ‘first duty’ of government; Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, even cited Bernard Williams in suggesting that how a government secures the country is the ‘first political question’.
Something called ‘securonomics’ was the answer to this question, capturing how security and resilience spans multiple areas of social and industrial policy in an age of ‘hybrid’ threats. However, by skirting around the centrality of defence itself as the strongest guarantee of security, the past week has highlighted how securonomics may have acted as something of a sleight of hand.
This agenda enabled a party constitutionally incapable of establishing a clear order of priorities to have its cake and eat it, presenting what social democrats are comfortable spending money on – welfare, Net Zero, infrastructure – not as complements to defence, but as substitutes for what keeps the UK militarily safe in the last instance. This displacement activity defies the reality of physical geography, with the British Isles vulnerable to the actions of an aggressive adversary located close by.’
Prof. Harry Pitts, Head, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor, Political Economy and the Future of Work, University of Exeter, June 2026
Regardless of views on climate change, recent middle eastern events have highlighted the fragility of reliance on fossil fuels (at a global level anyway). One of the benefits of shifting towards carbon neutral energy production is surely that renewables are geopolitically more stable once built. Wind and solar don’t care whether shipping is passing through the Straits of Hormuz.
That doesnt make them a perfect strategic choice necessarily, but I fail to see how moving towards carbon neutral energy production can be seen as a poor strategic defence choice if the financial costs of doing so are within reach.
When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun don’t shine, nether of these rare events in Britain?
‘In December and January, Britain faced two spells of so-called dunkelflaute. The first, hitting around the 12 December, saw wind – the largest source of energy in the UK last year overall – drop to 6% of total supply. In response gas power stations ramped up to their highest output ever recorded, supplying more than 73% of Britain’s electricity and sending power prices soaring. Wind output dropped suddenly again in the New Year….The combination of a long cold snap and low wind speeds left Britain’s power system relying heavily on natural gas and imports, drawing down the nation’s gas storage to ‘concerningly low’ levels, and coming close to generation falling short of peak demand.’ 2024
Nuclear has to work at 80% of capacity to justify its CAPEX so cannot be used as intermittent back up.
Net zero is a nonsense; a dangerous nonsense. Britain still has plenty of fields to exploit in the North Sea and plenty of gas sitting below us. Instead we import from Norway from fields immediately adjacent to our own. Dotty…
I notice that you didnt actually respond to my point about the geopolitical stability associated with moving away from fossil fuel dependence, instead re-emphasising your own already clearly stated views on net zero
I made the point that sun and wind cannot provide ‘geopolitical stability’ since they are intermittent, nuclear cannot provide intermittent back up whereas our own reserves of fossil fuels can.
‘The British Geological Survey (BGS) estimates the UK’s total shale gas resource is vast—ranging between 822 and 2,281 trillion cubic feet (central estimate 1,329 trillion cubic feet).’
‘…over 7 billion barrels are geologically proven and technically accessible (North Sea). These resources include:
0.5 billion barrels in near-term developments with advanced plans, 1.4 billion barrels in potentially commercial discoveries. Over 7.3 billion barrels within reach of existing infrastructure – making them viable as tiebacks to existing platforms. The findings show these new projects would make a material difference to the UK’s energy independence.’
OEUK 2025
BAES also makes (or can make) perfectly good AFVs in the UK for the British Army. A pity they were turned down to make the Ajax (CV90 recce) for reasons that are still somewhat unclear, although we can all speculate.