Thank you both for this very interesting discussion.
Just as a point of clarification, I did have a conversation with a senior procurement official yesterday, and there was no intention of frustrating any conversation that might occur as a result of the bidding process. The idea was to try to achieve an orderly bidding process, but they have since withdrawn and it's back to however it is we used to do things. I just want to make that point.
Your conversation about the navy and coast guard led me to think about an experience I had recently in Miami with a NATO group on an absolutely magnificent coast guard ship. Our Coast Guard or our navy would be delighted to have the ship, and I think the Americans have recently purchased about 55 of them. Its area of operation was off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico, which coincidentally was the same area of operation that a couple of our navy boats were in. It led me to wonder whether we should continue to maintain this distinction between the Coast Guard and the navy, and whether really we should be seeing the entire naval domain awareness, control, warning, constabulary functions, terrorist- and war-fighting functions all as a bit of a spectrum of conflict.
Your debate has actually brought that out a bit more. This is a general question. I just wonder whether we can continue to afford the luxury of the separation between the coast guard and the navy, given the threat spectrum, from both state and non-state, but also inevitably the increasing responsibility in the Arctic.
Whoever wants to pick that up first can answer. I appreciate it's a general question, but I think it's something we need to come to ground on sooner rather than later.