art wrote:Leovinus wrote:art wrote:
It is, and I agree with the sentiment. Though it's all quite sensitive at this stage, so far as I can tell. Especially politically. It's hard enough for Germany and France to share the FCAS. Inviting a nation that's extracted itself from the Union and created a massive headache in Brussels (though I personally want them back in and welcome them with open arms) add its voice to the chorus doesn't seem appetising. And that's even assuming Britain didn't go its own way precisely for that reason to begin with.
If we suppose the reverse, that Europe comes to the UK, would they be willing to offset enough parts of the project in turn? Would they allow enough say in the Tempest programs shape to satisfy Europe? Possibly if we bank-roll it enough I suppose. Because I doubt the UK has the financial strength to pull through on it's own without making very painful sacrifices elsewhere in the national budget. It's a political quagmire.
But time is running out. Once development starts in earnest on either project you'll start locking down you industrial partnerships and intellectual properties for the final product. And it's not as though these two industrial bases can serve the same program if they merge later on. Adding yet another diplomatic and legal headache.
As it stands it feels as though we'd be marching towards another TSR2 scenario for one or both programs. Unless clearer head prevail. Granted, if both succeed (even if they do so by the barest of margines) it's more aircraft for enthusiasts to gawk at. So there is that...
Or no aeroplanes to gawk at if both projects run out of money / political will.
The big problem to me is that France would want to be lead partner in any re-worked advanced European fighter partnership, making demands that the others could not accept.
Though I share Leovinus sentiments, the fact this Tempest project began in 2015, only the initial model was shown 3 years later, before enough people in the UK, just, were persuaded by a bunch of charlatans, chancers, crooks, to vote to impose economic sanctions on ourselves.
More to the point perhaps is that two of the Typhoon partners, the UK and Italy, might remember how France acted in the mid 80's with the FEFA project, that evolved into Eurofighter.
The demands for 39% share, their engines, smaller than the other partners wanted (to fit on their then two smaller carriers), it was wondered if this was not just a tactic to delay things while France pressed ahead with as always intended, their own national project.
Post Cold War, that won't work, budgets are tighter, even so we have seen some echos of that attitude with the FACA, though they say they have resolved them.
Compare this with the quiet work of the Tempest team, (can we
please drop the redundant TSR-2 comparison, without wanting to repeat just how out of wack that is with today), remember Tempest is unlike that project, multi national. Not for some political reason (beyond appeasing the UK Treasury), it's a practical one.
What the nations involved, UK, Italy, increasingly Sweden, require, in the UK and Italy's case replacing the same aircraft, what they each bring to the project, both technically and to an extent, political cover, harder to axe multi national projects.