A new joint French and British missile development scheme will revolutionize the way the countries operate together, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has said.<\/p>\n
Fallon made the announcement at the Franco-British Council meeting in Paris on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The move will involve the creation of \u201cCross-Channel Centres of Excellence Strategy<\/em>\u201d to streamline missile development and will see 400 new jobs created at arms giant MBDA\u2019s Bolton and Stevenage sites.<\/p>\n \u201cTo keep Britain strong, it\u2019s vital we develop mutual security through innovation and cooperation. By securing a rising defense budget, working with allies and investing in Centres of Excellence, we can keep Britain at the cutting-edge of technology,<\/em>\u201d Fallon said, adding that the deal would ensure \u201chigh-skilled jobs through innovation and will help keep Britain safer and more secure.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the military is seeking \u201cto extend the boundaries of traditional interstate co-operation, to the advantage of both countries, including by increasing UK and French military capability and promoting competitiveness in exports.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The announcement comes a day after it emerged that UK warships may be left defenseless because no viable replacement has been found for the current Harpoon anti-ship missile system.<\/p>\n According to the defense website IHS Jane\u2019s, a lack of funding could see the ships left vulnerable to attack from other military vessels.<\/p>\n Naval vessels will still have onboard guns, but these can only fire at a range of 17 miles (27.35 kilometers), which is short of the 20-mile range boated by the radar-guided Harpoon missile.<\/p>\n It is also feared that the maritime helicopter fleet could be rendered vulnerable when the navy\u2019s air-launched Sea Skua missile reaches the end of its service life in March 2017.<\/p>\n The Wildcat helicopter\u2019s new missile system is not expected to be operational until 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new joint French and British missile development scheme will revolutionize the way the countries operate together, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has said. Fallon made the announcement at the Franco-British Council meeting in Paris on Thursday. The move will involve the creation of \u201cCross-Channel Centres of Excellence Strategy\u201d to streamline missile development and will see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-279822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}