So are you asserting that the US economy and aerospace industry hasn’t benefitted in any way from the Texan II (PC-9), Goshawk (Hawk) and Harrier programmes? Steve

Yeah, pretty much. The level of industrial consolidation and complexity of modern aerospace projects is leading to fewer and fewer players. A country that merely assembles aircraft can’t create the product itself, and therefore the economic benefit is always less than if it designed and built the aircraft itself. Not to mention the strategic issues involved.

The Europeans understand this. If Sikorsky goes under and the V-22 gets cancelled, down the road we’re not going to see a whole lot from the American helicopter industry. Globalization is fine for razor blades and VCRs and the like, but we’ve got to retain the ability to design and build certain equipment here. Having Commanche get killed and now this- it’s going to hurt that company. And I don’t want to have to look to Eurocopter and Agusta in a decade or two for all our helicopter needs.

Arthur

I don’t have the specs for the VH models in front of me, but I think the H-92 had more powerful engines and was lighter than the EH-101, so the difference in single engine out performance isn’t just a 1/2 vs. 2/3 issue. Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers so I’ll wait before disagreeing on this point.

If three engines are inherently safer or better than two, how come our airlines aren’t all still flying tri-jets?

And besides,the US has admitted to losing enough helo’s to the insurgency in Iraq before now,why cover this one up?

Agree in general, but there’s something more palatable to the public when an aircraft goes down by accident rather than from an attack.

I don’t know whether anyone would lie about it, but the army makes a big distinction between combat deaths and non-combat related ones. I remember one guy who had been crippled when his vehicle overturned during an attack on a convoy. He wanted a purple heart, but the army initially said that it was merely a traffic accident and didn’t qualify. Like the driver just coincidently lost control of the humvee as the RPG went shooting by.

The Chinese premier will not do that, because the USA is the biggest market for Chinese exports and not the other way around.

True. The loss of the U.S. market would be a big problem for China, and it would make a lot of people happy in the U.S. Not Wal-Mart, not a lot of corporate heads. But the end of American capitalism’s low-wage nirvana and the effect of the pegged yuan would be better for American manufacturers.

In any case, China is still focused on developing its economy, and though long term they probably see themselves as the other end of a bipolar world, its not the time yet to openly seek that role by backing Iran here.

The A400M on the other hand – and I openly admit I don’t like it (as it looks today on paper), but not because it is an European project – is a queer mix of tactical performance and “strategic” MTOW.

According to Airbus, that’s going to be one of the advantages of A400. On their website, they say:

The current military transport fleets of the world do not meet future airlift requirements; they provide today’s forces with inadequate payload and range capability, lack of combined strategic / intra-theatre transportation capability, lack of commonality and interoperability between different forces, far too small cargo hold cross-sections for modern loads, and low fleet availability (reliability) by modern standards.

So these are the problems that Airbus thinks exist and which they think the A400 will solve. Whether they make money obviously depends on whether enough foreign air forces agree with them. Sounds like maybe they’re targeting it at smallish to midrange air forces who can’t afford a big transport fleet and are looking for a kind of ‘multirole’ transport.

I’m trying to figure out why the Pakistanis even need to think about it. And you’d think if the Afghans needed to build their air force, they could get donations of old trashed out equipment from somebody.