Reported French demands for a greater share of work in the fighter jet programme have escalated long-standing tensions with Airbus, which leads the German side of the project.
While that generally might be true, European joint defence projects including France unfortunately have a long tradition of having difficulties getting off the ground.
Granted, I’m looking at this from a German perspective and I’m keen to hear from a French perspective, but (reportedly) asking for a workload of 80% in a project involving three nations just seems like the priority is that your domestic producer (Dassault) builds it while the other countries pay for it.
I get that France cannot repeat the Rafale approach and have Dassault alone build a new domestic fighter, but then the workload should also be distributed fairly and the project be treated more than ‘European financing of Dassaults plans’.
Funnily enough Airbus already is a Spanish-French-German joint company with many facilities in France.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my description of many German businesses these days also apply to many French businesses, but i haven’t had any professional contact with businesses in France yet.
While that generally might be true, European joint defence projects including France unfortunately have a long tradition of having difficulties getting off the ground.
Granted, I’m looking at this from a German perspective and I’m keen to hear from a French perspective, but (reportedly) asking for a workload of 80% in a project involving three nations just seems like the priority is that your domestic producer (Dassault) builds it while the other countries pay for it.
I get that France cannot repeat the Rafale approach and have Dassault alone build a new domestic fighter, but then the workload should also be distributed fairly and the project be treated more than ‘European financing of Dassaults plans’.
Funnily enough Airbus already is a Spanish-French-German joint company with many facilities in France.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my description of many German businesses these days also apply to many French businesses, but i haven’t had any professional contact with businesses in France yet.