France is a second-rate country in electronics (though why producing your weapons “locally” makes your air force better or worse is a mystery to me).
May be because you don’t know anything about BVR missiles and ECM technologies ?
Ask yourself why the Iraki super530D performed quite well against Iranian F-4 and F-14 but were unable to shot down a single aircraft during GW1.
Advanced BVR missiles are political weapons, they can give a country a global superiority over its neighbours. if you make these missiles yourself, you control your political choices, in 3 words, YOU ARE INDEPENDANT. If you buy these missiles from an other country, you may be a political puppet of this country (no missiles and your mighty airf orce become as usefull as a charter compagny).
The french military budget is smaller than Britain’s (something like $20B vs. about $30B, and trivial compared to US budget). The french haven’t won a war by themselves in centuries. Hell, they are the only country that lost TWO wars to the Italians. In Desert Storm, they barely scraped together a few thousand soldiers to go to the Gulf. Their aircraft refused to fly missions outside Kuwait because they were worried it was too dangerous (in other words, they refused to fly any real missions against any real targets, given that the Republican Guards were positioned just north of Kuwait, and given that strategic targets were obviously outside Kuwait).
In case you’re still wondering: France does NOT have the best air force in Europe. No Way, No How. Impossible.
Please try to read some real History books instead of anti-french-revisionist- for-commercial-purpose (buy my anti french T-shirt and mugs) web sites :p
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