G.A.A Highland Games - Celtic Arms Talks

[KrisNord]

The conversation in the kitchen had turned to business and plates were now being collected from breakfast. King Finley bid guests such as Evanthe and the royals from Achkaerin a happy day at the games and along with the Grand Marshall Kenneth Macrae, Queen Eithne and Queen Talulla made his way up to the roof of the estate house where they had views over the whole of the Games Arena. Now it was just the pureblooded Celts Finley broke out the best whiskey and sat everyone down.

"Now downstairs someone asked whether I'd be interested in becoming part of the Celtic Co-Operative Armament Project. I've seen some of its products and its done good work. I have two questions though, what would being part of it involve and how would it improve our military?"

[FFion]

Queen Talulla was not a military expert but she understood the Celtic Co-Operative Armament Project well enough. "To try and respond to your two questions I'll do my best. At its highest level it is an agency made up of a minister and an officer from each service drawn from the nations involved. When one of us requires a new piece of equipment we send our minister a description of what is needed. At that point any of the other members can sign up for that need with us. There is then some negotiation and we finalize a specification for the item of equipment. Once this is set up we tender out the various parts, so for a tank, engine, gun, tracks, armour and so on. The work is aimed to be split evenly between the nations involved with the panel of ministers and officers having the final say. Once everything is agreed the project commences with everything split evenly between the nations involved in terms of costs, profit sharing from sales and the like. Now to answer your second question how would it improve your military, well from my knowledge your nations military is already rather formidable. What you have however is an ability to lower the initial cost and research and development and tap into a wider range of innovation. The idea of a large scale co-operative projects can help us all make our nations military a more effective unit based on cutting edge technology. From our view point if you were to join the Project then you would be bringing onboard a wealth of expertise."

[Maes]

Eithne stepped in before Finley could respond. "I think I'd like to add to Talulla's point. The Co-Op have a lot to offer you, our system has saved us each money and while you have much more than us each penny saved is a penny you can invest elsewhere. We've got several exceptional projects that have been completed. Once a project is in production you've then got local industries thinking up ways to improve further the packages, imagine then not just Cenneg boffins doing this but those of several other nations. In return you can offer something to us, recent combat experiences. You soldiers in Lodja have seen live combat far more recently than our forces. As such you can be a useful adviser as to the real world application of these technologies. I'd be excited at what we could achieve together. Why not come in for an initail project. If it goes well you stay in, if it goes badly you drop out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

[Dal]

Grand Marshall Kenneth Macrae nodded as the two monarchs spoke. "I think this project would make a good addition to the Celtic Friendship organisation you, Seaforth and Cantabria established. Imagine if we could also include those nations. Do you think that would be possible in the long run."

[KrisNord]

Finley liked the idea of what he had heard. The set up wouldn't suit every procurement need, nor would it be something Finley would want as it had the potential to short change some of his own nations manufacturers but it was also a chance to get those manufacturers more work. "I think we'd like to come on board, at least for now, and see where things take us. We'll review the situation in a year or so. I would suggest however that we look at perhaps seeing what these militaries are capable of so could I invite you to a training exercise, I'd like to put together a joint Celtic task force for it, say 10,000 men from all our nations and I'll either put up a further 10,000 men as an enemy force or we could invite our allies from the CNN. Is this something you would be interested in?"

[FFion]

"For our part we'd be delighted to work with your CNN allies. It would certainly make a much larger exercise. Celts V's CNN"