Of course you are right. One has to be careful – but I just love a little speculation (that’s what a forum is for, isn’t it? keeping things open and out of the box), and I see the offload scenario as pretty realistic. There are simply too many airframes and not enough quids in the system. Having the big three in EU-land (FRG, FRA, UK) operate 150 frontline fast jets each is a realistic future scenario in my mind.

Concerning those others – España and Deutschland: It’s not like either of them has a lot of money left for toys. Spain has around 80 Hornets and F1 in its frontline units and I see that they might bitch about reduced numbers and warping the workshare agreement cause they’ll take their full share – but hey! let them have more 400M work and they’ll be fine.
But Germany? They might also have 20 or so they could offload to non-consortium states. The Arabs might go for the full 72, and India is also not yet decided, for example. Room for compromises, in my mind.

Money is just so thight now, and it will become even tighter till fall, that everybody will be just too happy to reduce defense related expenditures. I can also dream up a scenario where EADS will be forced to count the 400M delay against a drop in total Eurofighter numbers, as part of some penalty.

Oh, I see.

Being honest, the idea of using the A400M fiasco has a “discussion leverage” never crossed my mind! It´s an interesting idea… If that happened BAE Systems would probably demand Tom Enders head on a plate! :diablo:

Cheers