Defence Aviation Repair Agency

[1] In March 2002, John Smith again asked for further assurances on progress around Project Red Dragon, a proposed plan to co-develop RAF St Athan as an aerospace centre of excellence as a public/private partnership.

Project Red Dragon would replace RAF St Athan's existing repair centre - spread out across a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) site - and create a new, state-of-the-art facility.

360 posts went as part of streamlining to make DARA more efficient and better able to compete with the private sector for lucrative aircraft repair contracts.

[3] The second and more controversial reason is that DARA lost out to the RAF for a contract, worth £150m, to upgrade the airforce's fleet of ageing Harrier jump jets.

[4] Effectively, this was the announcement of a U-turn in strategy by the MOD to centralise aircraft maintenance, and the break-up of DARA by privatisation of its various divisions.

Jim Cooper, general secretary of Prospect, the union representing specialist civilian staff in the MOD, called for plans to privatise DARA to be scrapped.

Defence Procurement Minister Adam Ingram said the jet will eventually be phased out by 2015 when the new F-35 "Lightning" Joint Strike Fighter arrives in the next decade.

On 22 May 2007 it was announced by the Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support, Lord Drayson, that DARA would be merged with ABRO, the Army Base Repair Organisation.