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Recent media coverage about BAE Systems has been pretty awful for the UK's largest manufacturer. It has focused mainly on continuing fall out from the way that the Serious Fraud Office was pressurised by the Government late last year to drop an investigation into alleged bribes paid by BAE to Saudis, in the massive Al Yamamah defence deal.

Just weeks ago, for example, it emerged that the US made a diplomatic protest about the ending of that investigation.

However BAE yesterday waggled two fingers at its critics by agreeing to buy a leading US manufacturer of protective armour for military and civilian vehicles, Armor Holdings, for well over £2bn.

Armor is a significant supplier to the Pentagon. It also owns proprietary technologies in the manufacturer of specialist armour.

If BAE were in seriously bad odour with the US, it presumably wouldn't be allowed to buy this business – which requires presidential approval under the Exon-Florio National Security Test for Foreign Investment.

I spoke to BAE chief executive Mike Turner yesterday, and he said that his US colleagues are in and out of the Pentagon all the time and have detected no reluctance on the part of the US military to do business with BAE.

However BAE has not sought any kind of pre-approval from the US Government, so there is a risk that the takeover of Armor won’t proceed as smoothly as BAE would like. Apart from anything else, BAE’s US competitors may not be able to resist the temptation to exploit the ever-present Congressional neurosis about sales of US assets to overseas businesses.

That risk came into focus overnight, as the FT has reported that the US Congress has asked to be briefed by the State Department on its diplomatic protest about the dropping of the bribes investigation.

Apparently, Congress won't approve a number of BAE exports from BAE’s existing US operations until satisfied about the termination of the Saudi investigation.

All of which is embarrassing for BAE, which very much sees its future in the US and as a supplier to the US military.

The uncertainty could be a bit worse than embarrassing because BAE is today endeavouring to raise £750m from the sale of new BAE shares.

Now my sense is that investors generally like the look of the Armor acquisition, although they may be slightly wary of the way that Armor takes this defence specialist into the civilian armoured vehicle market as well as the military one.

Turner, for one, is ebullient. He pointed out that in a series of investments over a few short years, BAE has become the world-leader in military land vehicles, at a time when demand from the Pentagon is significant.

But investors will be unsettled by the continued rumblings about the dropping of the SFO probe – which is not the best backdrop for selling £750m of new BAE shares.

If I were running a hedge fund – and there are no immediate plans for me to set up a leveraged long-short fund financed by licence-payers' money – I’d probably be making mischief in BAE shares this morning.