“German taxpayers’ money would be used to consolidate the European aviation industry unilaterally in France,” assesses Germany’s aerospace industries’ association
Let’s get over with it.
France is doing the Eurofighter stuff all over again. They’re just looking for funding not partnership.
Saab and others would be eager to collaborate and we cannot effort to waste more time. Last resort would be UK’s Tempest initiative.
We all knew this was coming when Nexter and KMW were allowed to merge.
The common tank project which France needs to succeed was all that kept them invested in cooperation. Now that KNDS is covering the main part as one common French-German company they don’t need to pretend anymore and can continue to push hard for all FCAS development and production to be done in France by France for France, everyone else be damned.
That is dead, if FCAS dies. Neither Nexter nor KMW are willing to cooperate on anything besides the new mbt project. However Rheinmetall has the Panther, which is a pretty good tank and seems to enter production soon. So if FCAS fails, the Bundeswehr might well go for that as well leaving France in a pretty bad position.
Maybe Germany should switch to GCAP (Tempest) with the UK, Italy and Japan. The original Eurofighter program was the same mess and everyone left it to develop the Typhoon instead.
The original Eurofighter program was the same mess
or the Boxer program (France left when the French proposal wasn’t chosen to build their own 8x8).
Ffs… even Taurus/StormShadow happened because France needs to call all the shots every time. APACHE started as a French-German cruise missile project. Yet France refused to even consider any advanced bunker-breaking warhead and so Germany left to build their own based on what was co-developed up to that point. Only for France to then change their minds later and develop something alongside the specs as envisioned by Germany with the UK. So now we have 2 conceptionally identical and very similiar cruise missiles in Europe produced by separate branches of MBDA… the actual difference? More work done by French workers because that’s all that matters.
From what I’ve heard it’s too late join that program now.
France has the navy capable of mobilizing those fighter jets and some competition would be better for the entirety of the EU. Profits should not stand in the way of the most capable and efficient defence of the free world.
FFS, France! You don’t want to end up like the Brits do ya?
