Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Battle off the coast of Abkhazia immediately after the war began. Some analysts even suggested that these ships may have left base before the outbreak of the war. Ukrainian authorities declared that they were ready to discuss with Russians the return of ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to Crimea. The commanding officer of the corvette "Mirazh", Captain Ivan Dubik, was received in Moscow by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who awarded him a military medal, along with other members of the Russian armed forces. Battle off the coast of Abkhazia The Battle off the coast of Abkhazia was a naval engagement between warships of the