Interesting to note though that today you have two editorials very supportive of the NG/EADS deals from both end of the spectrum, ie from the very conservative Washington Times and the very liberal NY Times:

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080307/EDITORIAL/235683565/1013

Cantankerous over tankers
Being uncompetitive hurts: Just ask aircraft maker Boeing, and the wide swath of the Pacific Northwest workforce it employs. Last week, the world’s second-largest aerospace and defense contractor lost its bid for a much-anticipated $40 billion Pentagon contract to supply 179 air tankers, bested by a consortium of Northrop Grumman and European firm Airbus. The loss has tripped off a congressional firestorm: Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and a growing number in the House and Senate are asking why the Air Force would give such a massive contract to any aircraft maker but a U.S. firm in this deteriorating economic climate. “I can’t think of a worse time for a worse decision,” said Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, whose state is home to 74,000 Boeing jobs. “We’ve got to start over.”

Mr. Murtha and colleagues have a duty as a matter of proper congressional oversight to ensure that the Pentagon awards such large contracts fairly and properly. In this economic climate, we’d go so far as to argue that lawmakers have a patriotic duty — especially during wartime — to ensure that U.S. contracts are awarded domestically to the extent possible. The trouble is that the watchdogs are unlikely to find any reason to oppose the deal on the contracting merits — as opposed to the very unfavorable political economy — once they examine the criteria and the data on how each proposal stacks up. The Pentagon has every incentive in this election year and softening economy to side with the domestic firm if at all possible. But the decision was not even very close, according to industry analysts.

As Lexington Institute defense analyst Loren Thompson put it this week in an issue brief: “Boeing didn’t manage to beat Northrop in a single measure of merit.” Most tellingly, Mr. Thompson reports that Pentagon reviewers concluded that “if they funded the Northrop Grumman proposal they could have 49 superior tankers operating by 2013, whereas if they funded the Boeing proposal, they would have only 19 considerably less capable planes in that year. The Northrop-EADS offering was deemed much better in virtually all regards.”

For now, lawmakers are directing their ire to the Pentagon, which should pry loose any remaining information not already public. But they might also undertake the less popular task of asking Boeing some hard questions. Congressional anger over the export of taxpayer-funded jobs will get us only so far if domestic competitors are not up to the challenge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/opinion/07fri1.html?ex=1205557200&en=d17b7122fd07fe9d&ei=5070

Buy the Best Tanker
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Published: March 7, 2008
The Air Force’s selection of a European supplier over Boeing for its next generation of tanker aircraft has sparked a frenzy of predictable bipartisan complaints: How could the military outsource these patriotic jobs?

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Post a Comment »Read All Comments (52) »Lawmakers from Washington State, where Boeing is a big employer, denounced the decision as a “blow to the American aerospace industry, American workers and America’s men and women in uniform.” Representative John Murtha, the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, warned that Congress could cut all funding for the multibillion-dollar contract if the Air Force didn’t satisfactorily justify its choice.

Fulminating politicians, unsurprisingly, have avoided explaining the consequences of their arguments: that they would rather have the Air Force buy a more expensive plane, and one that it says doesn’t meet its needs nearly as well, if it were made by an American company.

According to Air Force officials, the refueler developed by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, or EADS, the parent company of Airbus, in partnership with Northrop Grumman will perform better than Boeing’s in many ways. Based on the Airbus A330, it is bigger and can transport more fuel, cargo and people than Boeing’s 767. Boeing’s delays in delivering tanker planes to Italy and Japan likely also hurt its bid.

Defense procurement is a global business. Boeing sells military aircraft and other defense systems all over the world. It and other American companies could suffer if a move to wrest the tanker contract from EADS and Northrop provoked a protectionist backlash in European capitals. American allies are already dismayed by the protectionist tone of this year’s presidential campaign.

In 2003, Congress quashed a deal tailor-made for Boeing to lease 100 tankers to the Air Force because the top Air Force official negotiating the deal was also found to have been negotiating a job with Boeing. Now, Congressional critics say buying from EADS is unworthy because the United States is suing the company at the World Trade Organization over subsidies received from European governments.

The W.T.O.’s dispute settlement panel has not ruled on this charge, nor has it ruled on Brussels’s accusation that Boeing receives hidden subsidies from Washington. Both companies should be taken off the public dole. But if the lawsuit was a deal breaker, EADS shouldn’t have been allowed to bid.

Boeing claimed that if it had won the contract, it would have created 44,000 jobs in this country. The EADS-Northrop group says its tanker will support 25,000 jobs here. The tanker would be assembled at a new facility in Alabama. General Electric would make the engines, mostly in the United States. These job projections, however, are estimates and not hard commitments. And procurement rules sensibly require the Air Force to choose the best aircraft.

The issue has already migrated to the campaign. Senator John McCain is being criticized by Congressional Democrats for leading the probe that upended Boeing’s sweetheart deal in 2003. Fortunately, he hasn’t expressed any regret. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton quickly added complaints about the Air Force’s choice to their shrill anti-trade rhetoric.

The Air Force is expected to brief Boeing on Friday about the selection. If Boeing thinks it got a raw deal, it can appeal to the Government Accountability Office, the oversight arm of Congress. If the G.A.O. finds merit, it could tell the Air Force to reopen the competition.

For Congress to reverse the decision on “Buy America” grounds would be bad for taxpayers: requiring them to pay for aircraft that provide less value for the money. It would also be bad diplomacy and bad business. And that can’t be good for the country.

First off its no big secrete that Russia wants a larger stake in Airbus which has allot of folks on the Hill not to happy about the Tanker Deal or have you been missing the last year or so on how the Cold War has sort of started to heat back up with us and the Russians guess you missed the Bear Flights then right. As for the last part lets not go their because by your statement it shows you don’t care to much for Mr. Bush..

You still do not make sense. The French and the Germans have set up Airbus and EADS as part of their industrial and security policy. They are not about to relinquish the control of those key industrial sectors to any foreign power, even if cooperation with some countries is foreseen. The argument according to which Russia could control EADS/airbus is a red herring. As said, such an argument could only be entertained by the (very) weak of mind.

Sorry but the F-35 is build in the United States designed in the United States and has no overseas parts in it.

Hear, hear, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy and other international participants in the F-35 project. The contractual promise you have been given that your national companies could compete for work on the programme and be given the opportunity to bid on workshare on a competitive basis was a simple lie. Everything has to be made in the US.

Again, please make my day, ensure that US congressmen and government state loudly your point.

Article in the weekly standard of this week on the matter – basically saying the French stand no chance as they dare sell stuff to Pakistan. Also points out that selling stuff to Pakistan is one more anti-american French action as the technology will end up in China. But I suppose only the US can rightfully sell military equipment to Pakistan.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/832aseet.asp

The French Connection
Selling arms to all the wrong people.
by Reuben F. Johnson
03/05/2008 12:00:00 AM

INDIA IS ONE OF THE MOST important customers for two of the world’s major arms producers: France and Russia. Both nations have recently had fairly good success in this market and are competing there along with four other U.S. and European suppliers for a large export contract for fighter aircraft.

Russia’s record in India as of late has not been stellar, but for all of their mistakes the arms brokers in Moscow have been smart enough to realize the cardinal rule of success in this huge market: you cannot sell to India and Pakistan at the same time. Unfortunately for firms like Dassault Aviation SA, officials in Paris have not yet learned this lesson. It may be the costliest mistake–both financially and diplomatically–since the fracas over French opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Tales about Russia’s state arms export agency, Rosoboronexport (ROE), and its predecessor organizations managing to do more to prevent arms exports by Russia’s defense industry than to promote them have been legion in post-Soviet Russia. Like any other export product that generates large amounts of hard currency (gold, caviar, diamonds, sable furs, natural gas) the foreign sale of weaponry has been tightly controlled so that the profits all ends up in the hands of a select few.

But this cabal of former (and active) intelligence officers and ex-military officials generally receives poor marks from many in the Russian defense industry and is credited with little more than the capacity to line their own pockets. One of the 1990s arms export organizations that ROE was born out of was called Rosvooruzheniye, which is a combination of two words that meant “Russian armaments.” Russian defense industry officials almost immediately began referring to the employees of this organization as “Rosvori,” which sounded like a catchy little abbreviation of the agency’s name, but actually meant “Russian thieves.”

Not surprisingly, some of the high-profile contracts that ROE previously signed with one of Russia’s most important customers, India, are now in deep trouble–behind schedule and way over budget. Officials in New Delhi now talk more often about “diversifying their supplier” base, which is an oblique way of saying they are fed up and want to find another nation besides Russia from which to purchase arms.

In theory, French industry should be best positioned to benefit from ROE fumbling the ball in India. France has already sold submarines, fighter aircraft, and a host of other weapon systems to New Delhi, making it one of the top three sellers of defense exports to the subcontinent.

Like ROE in Russia, France’s Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (DGA) is the state agency responsible for regulating and promoting defense exports. But, DGA is, in theory, an agency that is quite a bit more professional in its orientation than its Russian counterpart. The function of DGA is to offer “packages” of weapon systems from several arms producers to create synergies that would not be possible if the individual French defense firms were all marketing the materiel independently.

However, real-world practice has turned out to be quite different. When asked if DGA has at times been as counterproductive to industry’s efforts at selling abroad as Rosoboronexport (ROE) has been to Russian defense firms, several French company representatives replied “that is not an entirely inaccurate or bad analogy.”

Dassault Aviation SA, producers of several generations of the Mirage-series of fighter aircraft, have probably suffered more than others in this regard, having been roundly frustrated in their efforts to sell the firm’s next-generation Rafale omnirole fighter abroad. Last year the company saw defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in Morocco, where the sale of the Rafale had been thought to be a foregone conclusion.

In what appears to have been a classic case of the left hand not being aware of what the right hand is doing, DGA made one of its packaged offers to Morocco, which included two frigates and 18 Rafale fighters.

Unfortunately, DGA forgot to inform Dassault and its industry partners that it had tendered the offer to the Moroccans. Dassault, et. al. only learned of the DGA offer when they made their own proposal to Morocco for 18 Rafales some weeks later. They then discovered that DGA’s proposal was €500 million less than what the standard kitted out complement for this number of aircraft should be.

The consequence of this fiasco is that Morocco will buy one frigate, but will opt for a purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-16 instead of the Rafale. “This is more or less the legacy of the DGA to date,” commented one French industry observer. “There are frigates being sold everywhere, but no fighters.” “One frigate has managed to shoot down 18 Rafales,” added one of the editors of France’s Libération newspaper.

The loss is particularly annoying to Dassault, which had previously been part of an industry team program to modernize the Moroccan Mirage F1 fleet. This contract had been thought to put the French firm in the prime position to make a Rafale sale.

At the time, this proverbial “last straw” prompted French president Nicolas Sarkozy to completely reorganize France’s defense export administration. Le Figaro reported late last year that a new high-level arms export task force would now oversee the DGA’s activity, and would be headed by the president himself plus the prime minister, the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and finance, and the commander-in-chief of the army.

All of which sounded like a great idea at the time except that it appears to have had no positive effect.

Bruno Berthet, assistant director for international development at the French Defense Ministry, announced this week that despite negative reporting on this issue for several months, DGA intends to sign a provisional deal that would allow Pakistan to obtain MICA air-to-air missiles (AAM) from France’s MBDA and the RC400 radar from Thales, the French defense electronics conglomerate.

“The talks are on the right track, and there are diplomatic comings and goings between the two countries,” Berthet told the Associated Press earlier in the week, but added that it was too early to say when a memorandum of understanding might be signed. The MICA AAMs and Thales radars would equip the joint Sino-Pakistan JF-17/FC-1 fighter that is being built by the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and China’s Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute.

“If you are serious about continuing to do defense business in India,” said one French industry representative, “then this deal makes no sense. The MICA missiles are the same as on the Dassault Mirage 2000 aircraft that have previously been sold to India, and the RC400 radar is the same as the RDY-3 model design that Dassault have proposed to install in the Indian Mirages as part of an upgrade program. DGA are essentially selling the Pakistanis–at a time of heightened instability in that country–the same radar and missile technology that has already been sold to India. This will compromise a good portion of the IAF’s fighter force.”

If the contract with Pakistan is signed it may irreparably damage Dassault’s chances to successfully bid the Rafale for India’s current fighter aircraft contract competition. This program, called the M-MRCA (Medium-Multirole Combat Aircraft) procurement, is projected to add up to 200 or more aircraft by the time the initial contract and follow-on sales are tallied up–making it the biggest arms export deal in more than three decades. “This is a high opportunity cost–if you are French industry–just to sell some accessory items to the Pakistani Air Force,” commented one industry insider.

Diplomatically, the fallout could be even worse. The JF-17/FC-1 is a program in which Pakistan and China have always shared technology acquired by one partner with the other. Chinese industry would be almost certain to acquire this technology. This not only gives Beijing a path to circumvent the EU arms embargo that has been in place since the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, but it also spells bad news for Taiwan.

The Taiwan Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) operates 60 Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighters that are equipped with the same MICA AAM (Taiwan purchased almost a thousand units of this weapon) and the Thales RDY radar. Thus, the signing of this deal between France and Pakistan would essentially make these ROCAF Mirages useless in any defense of the island nation by an attack from the mainland. This is potentially another loss for Dassault in that Taiwan is also in the market for more fighters. If the DGA sabotage the ROCAF Mirage fleet with this Pakistan program then Taipei will more than likely opt to purchase more of the Lockheed Martin F-16s that they also operate.

Paris can be a very political place, as the saying goes, but nothing about the politics of DGA seems to square with the interests of France’s industry or the desire of President Sarkozy to try and repair strained relations with the United States. Crippling the air force of Taiwan, one of America’s oldest allies, and handing over advanced military technology to a government in Pakistan that is less stable by the day probably falls into the category of actions that would displease Washington.

Which is why DGA probably now deserves the “worse than Rosoboronexport” label. Both nations’ state arms agencies have torpedoed export sales opportunities that they should have been able to close. However, the Russian agency has yet to do such a thorough job of damaging ties with long-standing clients and aggravating Washington to the level that DGA seems determined to reach. Sarkozy needs to step in and put an end to this deal–while there is still enough of a French military aerospace industry in existence to be saved by his actions–and prevent another diplomatic row with the United States.

[QUOTE=aurcov;1223309In case you don’t know, the A 330 is more expensive than the 767. .[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

In case you didnt read what the USAF said, NG/EADS beat Boeing on all counts (criterion), meaning including that of costs.

Like I said this is far from over, I wouldn’t be surprise to see some of the Govs pull there State Citz. out of combat and bring them home, and before any of you say I’m full of it. Well folks back in the 80s both Govn of Vermont and Maine did just that and on top of that they wouldn’t let the USAF come and collect the 135 or F-16 claiming that they were State property.

Well, if this is the case and if we go towards that kind of extreme, it will get interesting. It will show that even when the Europeans come up with the equipment that the US military clearly desire and provide the industrial set up to ensure that the US taxpayer does not lose out, they have no chance whatsoever to sell anything to the US. This when these European governments have year in year out forked out billions to procure US products (and rightly so when these products were superior).

Hopefully, the concerned European governments will take the appropriate conclusions and measures one day.

The main reason is that most of these older ex USAF base can’t handle the weight of the Airslut and would need to spend allot of money to bring them up to standers.

And the beef I have with the US is that kind of attitude (i.e. using words like Airslut), the total incapacity to even admit that non american companies can manufacture decent products, the need to constantly diss Airbus or have to argue that if they are successful that must be because they are cheating (whereas both Boeing and Airbus are cheating). Well, I have news for you: both Airbus and Boeing produce decent products. Maybe you’ll see the light one day, but I certainly do not hold my breath.

News from this morning – T4 on its knees again, all bagage system blocked up, passengers cant check bags in. Who is supposed to get T4 after BA transfer to T5??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7254455.stm

Passengers planning to fly from Heathrow’s Terminal Four are facing severe delays because of problems with baggage handling software.
BA, the main airline based at the terminal, is warning its customers that they may not be able to travel if they have luggage to be checked in.

The problem began on Tuesday. Airport operator BAA said it is working as hard as it can to repair the system.

It said passengers should check with their airline before setting out.

The problem has restricted passengers to two items of hand luggage.

Long-haul customers

A BA spokesman said: “We would like to apologise to our customers for the disruption as a result of the failure of the airport’s baggage system in Terminal 4”.

We are hoping that everything will be sorted out soon

BAA spokesman

The terminal handles baggage for the airline’s long-haul customers flying in World Traveller (economy) and World Traveller Plus (premium economy) cabins.

BAA said it had technicians working all night to try to fix the software problem. “We are hoping that everything will be sorted out soon,” a spokesman said.

Passengers are being asked to consider checking in fewer items of hold luggage.

BA said passengers due to fly from T4 are eligible for a refund, can re-book to a different destination or travel on a later date.

It has published full details of the options available to customers affected on its website.

Sorry, I meant to say that Indian Airlines operates 50+ A320s (or family).