Noray wrote:RJMAZ wrote:An operator would persist with an aircraft that has a few problems. To fully replace an aircraft halfway through its service life the problems have to be extremely large. This is an extremely embarrassing moment for the European aerospace industry.
Russians equipment always had a reputation of over promising on performance with high maintenance cost and no spare parts. It seems Europe now has this reputation.
I think the Eurofighter and A400M will suffer the same fate. In 10 years time I could see the hourly operating cost being double the cost of today. They will both have accelerated retirements or super low availability due to increased cost and poor parts support.
This ignores the fact that European programmes have evolved to avoid earlier mistakes that plagued the NH90, Tiger and EF with their individualized subfleets that are hard to maintain. The commercial approach was chosen for the A400M in reaction to these problems: There is one basic A400M type with individual configuration items to be selected by the customers, but all of that controlled by Airbus.
There is also the issue of how France has operated both types, in the hostile environment of the Mali region, in combat operations, since 2013, Italy the NH-90 in Afghanistan. So the issue seems to be one of technical support as well as the specialized local mods.
France, as shown by the purchase for SF support of C-130J, shows for a perceived urgent need, they won’t hang around for local industry, so these choppers must have performed with at least reasonable levels of serviceability.
Guess what they have recently ordered for modernising their rotary wing SF support? Improved NH-90’s.
It is perhaps not surprising that these NH-90’s are used by the armed forces of two of the major industrial partners, who also do a lot of operational use, often in tough conditions.
If RJMAZ wants to perpetuate his idea that everything American is great and everything European is useless, despite it’s laughable lack of historical perspective nor knowledge of actual military operations, (y’know, what they are designed and built for), I would suggest a look at the UK’s buy in the mid 1990’s of 8 SF support CH-47’s. A well proven, beloved even machine, already with a long and extensive use with the RAF.
The parallels with the debarcle down under of this thread are compelling, speaking of that region, remember the RAN’s experience with those Kamen choppers?
And what became of those CH-47’s? The foolish UK industry of RJMAZ’s imagination, modded them for service over a decade after delivery, off they went for service including in Afghanistan.
Nothing wrong with the design in both cases, the issues were with bad contracts, poor customer support, compounded by local issues, political/industrial
What goes for Boeing and Kamen then should also apply to the NH-90 and Tiger.
