You are entirely correct. Lockheed and Boeing will be delighted if Europe doesnt get its act together.
There’s absolutely no reason why Europe cant emulate what it did in the missile, the comercial aircraft area, the helicopter and the space business. The market is there, the resources are there (for crying out loud, even in this “almost nill defense budget” times, Western Europe spends three times more than Russia!), the industry is there. Do an “MBDA” out of Dassault and Airbus, get some realistic KKP’s, throw in 35 billion euros in R&D, wait till 2035 and serve the dam thing with white wine.
What it cant happen is having three european xerox airframes that do the same bloody thing.

EU does not have three times money of Russia to spend on defence. Infact both EF and Rafale lines will closed down without exports. How is that Gripen doing and that so called small awacs.
Airbus can’t afford anything better than A320. Even that need alot imports.
Russia at this point does not need exports to India and China to procure several thousands of its own fighters. for EU export is main thing and consider lack of military power it is coming at cost that out weigh benefit .

What countries?

The UK is leaving the EU.

Welcome to the United States of Europe.

It’s about capability both financial and technical. UK is losing both as Trump implement American first.
Dassault simply has wider market from Egypt to India to Qatar. These countries will have money but Saudis will have far less for follow-up order for UK and even that is shared with rest of EU consortium.

The Spanish economy is now growing at rates that Germany, France & Italy can only dream about.

The kind of GDP Spain is creating is simply not conductive for industrial project like 5G fighter.

http://www.citymetric.com/business/madrid-s-residents-are-being-forced-out-city-centre-blame-airbnb-3048

You mean Duterte should level the entire city with MLRS fire?

Duterte is not capable of anything.
Filipino labor depended on Middleast and they can teach him lesson for opening mouth too wide . I don’t even trust Chinese can help him. Maybe Vietnam.

Juncker gave speech about EU defence fund and as example he mention Meteor success as it’s built by 6 or so countries. Clearly lack of understanding .

This is big news buried in the recent headlines over PCA, B-21, F-35. etc. Finally, the USAF is committing to capability upgrades for the F-16/-15 fleets with APG-83 and EPAWSS. The legacy fleet will be flying at least until the late 2020’s (F-15C), and into the 2030’s for some of the F-16’s and F-15E. Some was obviously funding due to BCA. On the other hand, considering the known delays in the F-35 ramp up and block buys, the service dragged their feet committing to upgrading the F-16 fleet, and backtracked several times on scope and scale of the modernization.

How exactly is that capability upgrade. will they have CFT so that range is closer to F35 so it can work in same group without extra tankers. how about engine upgrades so it can use more common parts and same ground procedures . I doubt it will have same design cockpit and simulators as F35. These are too old airframes that will increase costs.

Kudos…. Hope you didn’t waste your entire day searching for a non-profit that gave Russia a favorable rating. Unfortunately, you are confusing ratings over information released to the public on budget information (which pretty much every developed nation does), and the real issue I was referring to- corruption, kickbacks, and accurate reporting of defense spending.

You can disagree, but the high profile cases were even reported in Russian news, In 2011, the military prosecutor estimated that a fifth of defense spending was stolen or misappropriated.

You’ve made absurd claims that the DoD or U.S. government is “hiding” the true cost of the F-35 by including such things as long lead items into contracts that are a matter of public record, in spite of a multitude of budget documents and reports (that are also a matter of public record). Then try to claim you can find accurate information Su-30 costs from Russia. It would help if you (and Defense-Aerospace) took even a few minutes to look at procurement practices in the DoD.

The true cost of Su-30 or any fighter to Russian society is far far less than true cost of F-35 to US. The un stated things I let you imagine .

ITs not any better the GTF , LEAP,PD are of same generation but PD-14 engine its more tuned for MS-21 program , So the advantage is not a big one but even 1 % fuel efficiency matter.

GTF has MTU parts that makes it even more problmetic and unreliable and potentially far more expensive than initially estimated. The time for over investment and free financing is likely over.
https://m.moodys.com/research-preview/Moodys-changes-outlook-on-MTUs-Baa3-rating-to-negative-affirms–PR_348062?