The UK MoD's largest single new defence programme is the planned acquisition and operation of two new supercarriers for the Royal Navy. In recent months there has been much speculation regarding programme slippage and rising costs and the whole future of this core project has started to look vulnerable in an era of falling defence expenditure. As this programme is seen as an essential future defence asset by all three British armed services and the Government, an exercise in reassurance was undertaken recently in Whitehall to show that, despite the delays, real progress was being made to take the CVF programme forward. On 14 December 2005, the MoD announced that the industrial Aircraft Carrier Alliance structure to design, build and support the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier programme was being expanded with the aim of moving ahead to the next stage of the Assessment Phase. The current manufacturing alliance team of BAE Systems, Thales and KBR was being joined by VT Group and Babcock and plans for the construction and assembly of the two ships have been agreed. MoD is commiting £300m to develop the detailed design of the ships to the point at which manufacturing can begin. It was now hoped that a 'Main Gate' decision to go ahead with the carriers would be announced by the close of 2006, a year later than envisaged.
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