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Germany is exploring options to push ahead with the development of its next-generation fighter jet without France should industry partner Dassault Aviation SA continue to insist on a controlling role in the program.
I’m starting to hate headlines in general. Everything sounds less sensational as soon as you read the first paragraph.
Everything sounds less sensational as soon as you read the first paragraph.
…which you only read because the sensationalist headline made you click. It’s a very destructive mechanism.
…which you only read because the sensationalist headline made you click.
I’m not sure I agree with that. But…
It’s a very destructive mechanism.
yes. Escalation. Like car headlights getting brighter and brighter because going back to the level of, say, 25 years ago would leave you blind half the time.
The French being a pain in an international fighter collaboration? Who ever could have seen that coming? Again.
That was exactly what I thought as well. The French that told the Belgians to go fuck themselves for wanting to participate are hard to deal with?!? Color me tricolored surprised
Is it France or is it Dassault, or Airbus? Partnering Airbus is already led by a French engineer from a headquarter in France.
Airbus’ headquarters are legally registered in Leiden, Netherlands, but daily management is conducted from the company’s main office located in Blagnac, France.[13] The SE in its corporate name stands for Societas Europaea.[14] The company is led by CEO Guillaume Faury
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus
Guillaume Faury (French pronunciation: [ɡijom foʁi]; born 22 February 1968) is a French engineer and businessman.
It’s Dassault. They have been making aggressive moves to claim ownership of the program, down to saying they can do it all alone without external participation. The “external participation” partners are not particularly happy about it.
Could they be right though? Airbus could be too committee driven to offer substantial contributions. Airbus could use its political capital to secure their share of the profits while not being helpful in the development of the aircraft.
This sounds like a KF51 against MGCS conflict of interests scenario.
Could they be right though? Airbus could be too committee driven to offer substantial contributions.
Both firms, Airbus and Dassault, proved they can build a modern fighter (Eurofighter and Rafale).
A multinational project can only work if the distribution is fair and agreements are honoured.
They probably are right that they could do it alone given that they made the Rafale, but that doesn’t mean it would be better if they did. Airbus was the largest contributor to the Eurofighter Typhoon, so we equally know that they’ve got experience bringing a project like this to fruit
Maybe they should split the design and the manufacturing. Everyone can throw a design to the table and then choose the best. And then and only then talk about which part is build by which partner.
I am by no means an expert in this kind of thing, but I believe they usually separate it by broad categories of components. In the Eurofighter, for example, avionics were primarily handled by the Italian part of the consortium. The F-35 similarly has a lot of the vertical take-off stuff handled by the British partner companies because they’ve got experience with that
I think it’s important to remember that this is a move away from a single unreliable choke point. For the F35 (probably the best fighter available right now) that’s the USA, newly unreliable. Making Dassault the new choke point is as good as the company is reliable, and “not being able to play nice with peers” is not the best start.
FCAS is a multinational project with pillars, or work packages, distributed among the three partners France, Germany and Spain. This division among national lines takes precedence over the division among company lines, as the project deals with national classified data which may only be handled by citizens of the corresponding nation.
So while Airbus is an international company, it has German and Spanish work packages that only German and Spanish nationals are allowed to see/work on.
French Dassault was responsible for Pillar one, the core of the project, which was the development of the “New Generation Fighter”.
Dassault/France decided to pull out of FCAS and develop their “New Generation Fighter” entirely on their own.
Now German and Spanish partners are left with an FCAS project without its centerpiece, and they are mad.
Anger is mostly directed at Dassault, which is refusing to work with its supposed partners, turning a tri-national project into a national with no regard for the effect this has on German and Spanish counterparts.
But the French Government also has a part in this. Dassault is their contractor, but they allow this to happen.
