Ignore the lame editing, but some good footage of Su-27SM in Syria with a rather heavy bomb load.

Nice music, but where are the adidas stripes on those Flankers?

Nic

look at the numbers.
Airbus provides more jobs, more value, more technology to France or Germany than the old national bits ever provided.

Yeah I doubt the EF provided more value to each member state. And the technology is shared. IE when you want to export stuff you are in direct competition with your partners, so you have to take turns who is going to market something somewhere.

Besides, airbus in France employs I don’t know how many foreigners. So how is it more jobs when half of them are Italian or Spanish or Brits or Germans? It doesn’t matter if they work in France, it’s not jobs for french people.

Airbus is one of those cases in wich the sum provided something vastly more capable than the original pieces, the total combined backlog for Airbus is a trillion Euros (!), almost half of it will go to France.

Airbus should do airliners, period. Half of that will go to airbus shareholders, not to France.

The french had an awesome helicopter industry, and now look it’s european. What’s to gain for France?

It’s quite telling that most of the successful programs that tomcat quoted were programs made before consolidation hence before cooperation 😀

Nic

the national independence, which is something the french are quite willing to keep

I’m not sure macron agrees with you there. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. We’ll see if he manages to sabotage the french fighter know how, or if he leaves that to some ulterior government.

But be sure they’re going to axe Dassault at some point.

Nic

Europe isn’t a commie concept, Europe is a continent which includes many very different countries, and it should remain as such. Preferably with countries within Europe managing to live in peace, which should be possible were it not for massive immigration balkanising it from within.

Partnering with someone who made the EF isn’t funny in the least IMO.

Deducting VAT on the India sale just makes it look that much worse and give credence to the notion that France is silently subsidizing or shifting internal costs to keep the price down in the Senate docs.

I can’t see any other explanation for $100 mil for a “bare plane”.

Senate numbers for french birds include VAT, who talked about deducting VAT from the Indian order? (besides you that is).

Indian birds (may) cost 100 mil / bird, but it’s probably because the french recoup part of the development cost (which was planned in the Rafale program from the start), and for other indian specific upgrades, development.

France paid 68,8 Million € for 1 Rafale C including 20% VAT. Live with it (invoicing VAT on defense deals is probably yet another commie plan to steal from 1 budget column and pour the money into another, but I digress).

I’m eager to see if you are actually going to argue that it’s more expensive in 2018 when production doubled 😀

Nic

When you have allies like the US you have much better things to worry about than ballistic missiles or asymetric whatnot.

Nic

To be fair, the picture itself states LPI, not directional and if someone hasn’t read the AFM article or others pointing this out then it is justified to point out that LPI isn’t automatically directional.

And to be fair to the poster who said it was directional (and who didn’t say that the picture meant directional datalink, but he probably knew it from reading it somewhere, or maybe even just by the logical deduction that LPI = directional)…

When you don’t know you are allowed to shup up, instead of contradicting someone for saying something while having no clue. Not saying that for you but for the poster who was quick to point out the pic never mentionned “directional directly”.

Nic