Paul Davis

The black South African, Bishop Desmond Tutu, was today awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was in recognition of the fight within his country against apartheid, a struggle in which black and white South Africans unite to bring their country out of conflict and crisis.

Nelson Mandela came to Dublin to thank the Irish people for their role in the fight against apartheid.

In many ways, yeah, value for money.

We've traditionally done that.

That's how we purchase.

And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way.

Let's be very clear.

When we're buying, maybe staplers.

But the significant difference is that when we're buying something like infrastructure, which is defense capability, we want to buy something that we have an ability to be able to manage into the next generation.

Probably a decade, decade after.

Here's the problem.

We tend to think in the life of a contract, three years, five years.

We don't think of the use of equipment or use of infrastructure for 20, 25 years and 30 years.

And will we still have the capability to be able to run that when the contract finishes?

It's more important than even a software update.

Let's take the basic maintenance problem.

We buy F-35s and now suddenly we're dependent on parts and components that are sourced externally and that we have no control over.

But if you take it even at a more simple level, rather than just the F-35s, let's think of the simple radar system that we're now sourcing.

And the radar system we know is built around intelligence and interpretation.