What if, France never left the Eurofighter consortium

[BlackBat242]

Even the relaxed requirement was still equal to the Jaguar's STOL performance.

Nice one there... very funny.

 

[Purpletrouble]

Arch: thanks for the cross-channel input which Brit-centrics need.

France leaving MRCA let UK in, so Thanks be to the Lord. But France leaving (to be EF) was more than a shame, closer to a catastrophe. Despite a decade of politicians' attempts to shot-gun Dassault+BAES into many-named Future-things, we appear now again to have failed, and are on the verge of duplication, FRG+France, UK+Italy in Team Tempest with whoever. This is a gross failure of Statecraft. Sole beneficiaries will be whoever might emerge in the sights of these mid-century assets. By wasting industrial resources on minor peculiars preventing commonality, we deny ourselves scale economies and the opportunity-work not being done by the duplicate team - for example effort in the cyber field where others are eroding our sovereignty.

We should close out "fault" on Rafale+Typhoon (+Gripen); we should learn that our neighbours must be our friends; we should talk till exhausted, to come up with a max-common solution. What McNamara tried to do with F-111A+B, succeeded with F-4s. Compromise: the good enough. Assign Centres of Excellence, so that small industries can hold up their heads in the Team: so: I do engine, you do Missile A, he does Missile B. Italy flourished thus on Tornado, Spain on EF.

Yes to all of that in theory. But I’m guessing you haven’t tried to work with the French?

As Einstein said (or perhaps not, it seems disputed), 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

FCAS with Japan seems transformational vs yet another certain failure with the French.

Ask the Germans how happy they are in their FCAS…

(Can anyone produce a military reason for Qatar to buy Rafale+Typhoon?)

As Clauswitz said, war is politics by other means.

Qatar want every western power to be on their side vs Iran/rest of Gulf/delete as per what week it is.

Hence buying multiple is politics, which is also military.