Germany could join Tempest, but the production shares are fixed, agreements are signed they will be at a level below the three partners. The best they’d get is domestic production and license production of components. The difference is that’s much cheaper than financing and purchasing Le Rafale Évolué without even the benefits of contributing or gaining knowledge via technology transfer.
Regardless of how you spin it, Germany’s shafted themselves, but equally France is offering an absolutely rotten deal to them.
I mean with Spain germany already has a partner, sweden does exist as well, GCAP is already sorted and not an option and if nothing works then doing it alone is always a possibility since germany other than france does actually have the money to go solo on a program like this. It would be insanely expensive and take a lot of time but the german government would rather 100% finance a program that actually benefits the local industry than pay 33% of a program that only benefits Dassault
Yeah, I agree. It makes a useful tool, but should only be confined to a small part of the overall airforce. If we ever get Falklands 2.0. I think we are gunna be screwed.
Yeah. Stealth is incredibly niche. If the context is right, its useful, but the rest of the time its a waste of time and resources. The fact the F-35 will give up its stealth the moment it needs any sort of heavy loadout, is just funny as hell
Rafale évolué is Rafale F5 and not part of the FCAS deal, so i don’t really know where that comes from.
The 80% on NGF i learnt today tbh, and i’ll agree it’s a Rheinmetal level d*** move
I think Dassault is making the whole thing as unappealing as possible to do it alone at this point tbh. Difference is, unlike in the 80s, the french gov isn’t following, for now.
I think stealth is the future until someone finds a way to make it irrelevant. But it should be paired with traditional metrics of performance. The F-35 is also a poor option because it basically follows an F-16 light-fighter type concept thats slightly overweight, rather than the F-22 which followed an F-15 kinda medium fighter metric which suits wayyyy more people if you’re just buying one aircraft.
Then there’s the fact that it has literally like 4 different weapon types and only one of them has any A2G or A2S capabilities… and its a freefall bomb.
The UK didn’t make it easier by choosing the B over the C either as at least the C could’ve used internal NSM and has a range actually in the same ballpark as a Eurofighter without external CFT’s. Even if its considerably slower.
Le Rafale Évolué sounds better (more culturally relevant) than ‘Rafale 2.0’ (FCAS under Dassault leadership) but my point was that it’s essentially a Rafale successor but Dassault have said to Germany ‘we make it, you pay for it, you get to make some at the end if you’re lucky’. For any self respecting nation (particularly one with a military budget planned to be almost twice of France’s right now) that isn’t feasible.
I agree with you on Dassault’s motives… hence why Trappier needs to stop being a child, if he wants his jet to be as good as possible he needs to get a grip.
That’s basically what a nation does when it buys fighter. Pay for it, we make it.
So Germany or the UK isn’t “self-respecting” because they buy F35s (i’ll give UK a pass, they got workshare)
Or maybe it’s just a question of size ? But then it’s a poor argument, the argument should be “who makes what good”. For example completely buying a Leopard 2 knock off even from a country that made the Leclerc does not seem to shock anyone, even stating the deal offered to Nexter was “very generous”.
Well, it feels like the exact mirror situation on the other side of the Rhine.
I agree Trappier can act a little childish, but it’s its job to protect its company’s interests at the end of the day. Seeing as he was quite motivated to join the program in 2018 and slowly shifted in behavior, one must assume there’s maybe just a little bit more than “Trappier is a man-child” to the whole story.
I’ll agree the 80% move sounds like a definitive “ok we wanna leave now”, and not a reasonable demand.
I won’t argue about this for too much longer, because i feel like we’re going into loops at this point. If Germany feels like they are getting shafted, they can totally leave whenever they want (with their money and whatever they worked on in the program). Nobody is restraining them.
But germany and spain are not paying for a jet they are paying for a 100 billion € R&D program with a buildup of industrial capabilites and skill increase for every partner involved, its completely different to just buying F35s as a replacement. And since the KMW Nexter merge the situation for MGCS is also a different one, One Franco-German joint venture + Rheinmetall on the german side and Thales for France is actually balanced compared to Dassaults proposal.
There is, Trappier is greedy and this program is Dassaults lifeline after the Rafales service life is over so he either wants a bigger piece of the cake without paying for it or Dassault does it alone on French taxpayers cost with a potentially worse end product. In both cases Trappier wins, everyone else loses.
Indeed but by financing development too they will likely shoulder more costs than a purebred customer because their industry isn’t getting the financial benefits of being a developer nor the intellectual benefits of financed research and development either.
E.g the UK’s 48 F-35’s cost them ~£110m per unit for a total cost of 5.2bn the UK invested £10bn in development costs alone.
The UK has workshares on F-35’s but I can assure you i’ll be the first one to call that purchase stupid seeing as it does literally zero of the roles we bought it to do xD.
I can’t comment on tanks as i’m not as clue’d in as with naval and aircraft affairs but tank programmes are significantly cheaper.
Certainly he’s being a good CEO to a point. At the end of the day the French government is his customer (and his biggest shareholder) and so if they want a collaboration, that’s what he is expected to deliver. The options are he either relents or Germany leaves, from the DGA’s perspective, they asked him to share.
That’s a very interesting point you make i’d say, but it’s not that simple :
First because of the inability of France to build any fighter jet without Dassault, which would make the french gov position in the program really uncomfortable.
Second because if they let Dassault sink, they’ll have to face the public opinion. The french usually don’t like companies, but Dassault is one of the few that is quite popular.
They did not ask for 80% on anything, it was denied and it made no sense anyway, also, only reports came from german side + those articles ignored all the time the official answer but still continue as of today by mentionning only the 80% to make more drama.
Some of those articles were also released for a ““really really strange reason”” on day that negociations took place between the differents members of the FCAS program.
Care to link that official answer? Because the only thing i could find are 2 small articles with one line from a press conference with Trappier saying that they dont want 80%
Indeed, I just mean as the majority shareholder the DGA could simply request his removal and replacement. Trappier may indeed be fuming but the people paying the bills are the ones in charge.
I definitely see your position though and I think Dassaults position as not only Frances only aerospace manufacturer but also as a rather good one makes it a little bit harder to get them to do what you want. Whereas BAE are the exact opposite, they will only do exactly what you ask for and you bet you’ve gotta pay them for it first.
Yeah thats the same article i found however what stroke me as odd is that Trappier is talking about control while the inital articles were about workshare. But that might just be Reuters being weird with translation and wording.
"Discussions on revamping the FCAS cooperation don’t call into question the goals and overall balance of the project, which is a “program of equals,” the armaments directorate said.
However, the ongoing talks will “lead to a reworking of the division of labor between each industrial player,” the DGA said. “Each player’s share of the work is not a given but will be the result of discussions between the partners.”
So everyone is equal but France is more equal than the others?
For me your question was already answered, it’s for everyone not just others.
In anycase we will have all the answers of what happened and how FCAS continue in december at the same time as the purchase from germany will be announced from what i get.
And neither Airbus nor the german or spanish government ever questioned that
not sure where you have that info from im fairly sure that there is no official statement from either airbus, Bundeswehr or the government ruling out carrier and nuclear capabilities