Selling ships & subs

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olive greens 10/30/2006 1:37:57 PM

When one country sells a ship or sub to another (take your pick), wouldn't it be smart for the seller country to secretly insert a tracking device somewhere within that ship/sub so it can always be tracked by them?

If I was country x buying from country y, no matter how friendly we are I would be suspicious of such an action.... and there's no guarantee that I could ever find/detect said device.

From a customer view: If you get caught even once, your reputation will be shot to pieces. No matter how good your product you can be barred from ever making it back into that or allied markets. It has happened for the much less counts of bribery (ex. German HDW in India - an excellent sub caught up in a mess). Both India and Germany lost out because of some middlemen. Has that changed anything fundamentally in India? No! Middlemen's business is better than ever. Did it help Germans that they got caught for pushing just 4 old subs, and were effectively barred from bidding for 16 new ones? No. The real losers were the Indian Navy and the German company (and its workers).

Unless you have some real good ace up your sleave its never a good idea to push others around, and even then its not a good idea to tempt fate except in the most desperate situations. You might get away with it once because you are the sole supplier, but then the customer will be ever watchful in trying to find another source of weaponry.

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