Budget Rivalry
In the early 1960s, the Royal Navy began to plan for new aircraft carriers to replace its aging fleet. To the Navy, this was a perfectly legitimate and necessary common sense exercise, not in need of explanation. The Royal Air Force, however, saw the renewal as a chance to defeat the Royal Navy and win the budget share which would have been necessary for new carriers. In order to do this, they compiled a history of Royal Navy aircraft carriers and a history of Royal Air Force tactical bombers, comparing the two and finding in favour of bombers. They then submitted this to the Treasury, proposing the TSR-2 tactical strike aircraft in place of the RN's new generation aircraft carriers.
The government cancelled both the TSR-2 and, later, the CVA-01, showing that 'when the individual armed forces fight, only the Treasury wins'.
Read more about this topic: 1966 Defence White Paper
Famous quotes containing the words budget and/or rivalry:
“You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.”
—Joseph E. Levine (b. 1905)
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)