Which countries would be more likely to seel these weapons, France, the United States, Russia, China or Can I go shopping anywhere? As well, how many aircraft per squadron and if there a limit to the amount of money I could spend?

This is great news for a program in its infancy. Congrats to Eurocopter for creating such a great helicopter.

So let me get this right, you consider it fair to offer a cash incentive to an airline to order and stay exlusive to a particular manufacturer? As thats what you just said.

After all, this could only save thousands of jobs in the US

Yes, COULD. It is also possible this deal could worsen US Airway’s financial problems. Even with the collective cash injections, the US/HP merged airline will still have financial debts and this deal with airbus will sink them further into debt.

I don’t think EADS sees this US$250mil as a cash incentive but rather as an investment. And I think that it is only normal for US/HP to become an exclusive customer to Airbus otherwise the merger might not have become a reality and one of these two companies would have had very little chance of surviving. Of course another investor could have supplied US with the necessary funds to create this merger. However, I am sure that if Boeing had chosen to do something similar to what EADS did, then the US/HP fleet would have become an all Boeing fleet! Cheers!

To bad the Indian Navy didn’t purchase the Rafale! The next question is will France ever find a export cusotmer for there canard fighter???

Singapor is carefully reviewing the offer made by Dassault for 20 Rafales and Saudi Arabia recently announced they werer thinking of contracting Dassault for 49 aircraft with forty more on options. I am sure that other countries are presently looking at the aircraft for future orders.

The nest generation US CVN would be a good start. Apparently, if I remember correctly (I think I saw this on naval-technology.com) the rather large sail will be deleted from the design (Can’t remember where the bridge will be located). Then again, I saw this some time ago and the concept could have changed a million times by now! (Maybe I should quickly check my source for futher info!)

I was under the impression the Mirage 2000 that was shot down over Sarajavo was a Mirage 2000Nk. Could any one shed some light on this?

I understand the French Navy pilots go through their flight training with the US Navy…….

I spoke with one a couple of years ago at the airshow hosted in London, southwestern Ontario. He seemed to enjoy his time in the US although this was still at a time when both the governments of France and the United States were still at each other’s throats over the Iraq issue. He said he had not suffered from any type of heckling from American aircrews in regards to this debacle.
At the time, the US Navy was still using the T-2 Buckeye and he was just about to move on to his next phase of training on the T-45. Once that part of his curriculum was to be completed, he was scheduled to return to France where, according to him, he was going to be funneled into the Rafale community. He had also mentioned that there was a French woman in his class and she was about to move on to her next phase of training as well. However, he failed to mention what type of jet she would be assigned to once her training would be complete.
In the mean time, I believe future French naval aviators will continue to go through their training in the United States for a long time to come.

If Ellsworth does close down once the review has been completed, where would it’s assigned Lancer’s be deployed from. Does Dyess have the infrastructure to support the entire B-1 fleet? Or is the Bone’s fleet about to take another massive cut to its strength?