Christophe Gomart Warns: European F-35s at Risk of US Control
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Partially but the big advantage of being in a big alliance, it sharing stuff. That is the most effective way of progressing.
Take microchips for example. Taiwan is making them, with european machines and the european machines use american technology. Taiwan is able to create cutting edge microchips because they are allied and dependent on their allies. Similarly, a lot of russian technology has its roots in the soviet era, when russians had access to scientists/technology from all over eastern Europe.
Apes together strong. Thats the strength of alliances. But if you have a bad faith ape, that ape can destroy the effort of all other apes. Thats the weakness of alliances. For strategically important things(jet planes), you might be willing to take an efficiency hit, by creating things independently for security reasons. Which is why the french have rafale.
But keep making cutting edge things in order to maintain and improve your defence industry capabilities is very expensive. Thats why Canada doesnt have a jet plane industry, even though they used to have a very capable fighter jet industry. Or you could be like Russia, where you can design new planes but dont have the money to produce them, so you are basically spending a lot of money, creating one off planes.
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Not doubting his general point. But it is a bit weird of Mr Gomart to pick the Rafale to prove it.
It is precisely what happened there (France leaving the Eurofighter Typhoon programme and doing their own model due to not being able to find a common compromise) that cripples European alternatives and enables American models to dominate our market.
Would we be able to agree on common standardised models, we could have far more for far less and it could be European.
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That is mainly because Germany does not want to give the US all the blueprints of Eurofighter, rather then it being technically impossible to do.
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He is French.
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Currently Germany uses Tornados as nuclear bombers (as part of US nuclear sharing), those are ancient and held in the air with panzer tape, so Germany urgently needed a replacement, and yes the F35 is certified for US nukes, of course it is. The Eurofighter isn't -- but could. Easily. If Eurofighter was ok with sending necessary data over to the Americans, which they aren't, because industrial espionage: When you give data to the Pentagon Lockheed-Martin etc. inexplicably somehow also have access to it.
Eurofighter would be a-ok with getting Typhoons certified for French nukes, not that the French won't spy but they have all that data already anyways via Airbus. Which is why the general idea of switching over to French nuclear sharing was floated but at least at that time that was considered to be, if happening at all, quite a ways off so the F35 was ordered as a stop-gap. Only for the bomber tornados, mind you, the EW ones are getting replaced by brand-new EW Typhoons.
First ones are scheduled to arrive 2026, I'm very much in favour of cancelling that contract, if that's expensive well buy them but then sell them on.
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My grandma died because of understaffed hospital but the scummy right-wingers are discussing which fighter planes we should be buying lmao.
Hope the revolution comes soon
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..and there's nothing wrong with that. We just all (!) need to understand the errors from the past in order to not repeat them. I would have liked him making a slightly more deliberate statement more.
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Might be the reason, but doesn't change the situation. I heared the RAF Typhoons are years ahead and also able to carry nuclear bombs.
Anyhow flooding the zone with Mirrages, Rafaels, Gripen and Eurofighters would be nice
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But does Europe need anything like that? The European fighters could easily deal with the Russian ones, and that's basically all that counts unless they want to fight the US, in which case you still don't want the F-35 for obvious reasons.
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Just like the cylons. It's for the best, nobody wants European pilots to die, esp if we can just boop them and they can't fight.
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That's what you get for buying highly complex equipment from allies so unreliable they might qualify as enemies.
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Perhaps because we technically correctly think that using money on warfare is a complete waste of money and resources.
Until of course it isn't.
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The difference is mainly that the UK has their own nuclear warheads, so adapting a plane that's partially manufactured by them to those bombs is a pretty straightforward task that doesn't require sharing of secrets with an increasingly hostile "ally".
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Thanks for explaining. I was under the impression they can carry US made warheads, but this makes much more sense.
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That's just a guess from me, but since the UK has a eomestic nuclear weapons programme, it would make a lot of sense to them to develop their own bombs and equip their own aircraft for dropping them.
A different part of the UK's nuclear deterrent is awfully US dependent, though, they chose US made Trident ballistic missiles as carrier system for their submarine launched strategic warheads.
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Dated March 2023 this article is not so explicit about Typhoon being capable
So they bought the F-35 (but remanufactured the electroings much like Israel). -
The UK does not have nuclear capable Eurofighter either. The only operational nuclear weapon system in British service is Trident, which is a submarine-launched ballistic missile.
As for Eurofighter of each Tranch are mostly the same design. However a Tranch1 Eurofighter is a much less capable plane then a Tranch3 one. The big difference is that the UK is replacing its Tranch1 Eurofighters with F-35 and Germany is waiting longer for Tranch4 Eurofighters, which will been completed 2030. There are also some differences in the weapons they carry and some different targeting pods and the like, but nothing insanely big.
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You dont need the F-35 just for the russian planes, you need it for the russian ground to air missiles and radars(and targets that those things might protect). While you can suppress enemy air defences with non stealthy aircraft, that is much riskier and much more limited in scope. Which is why Russia isnt using its massive airforce in a way that is expected(by western standards). Even Ukraine's very limited anti-air capability has shut down the ukranian airspace to russian aircraft.
A stealth aircraft allows you to penetrate much deeper into enemy airspace and/or in a safer manner. It unlocks a completely different mission capability.
This is also useful against airplanes. Imagine if european planes have a radar with 120km range and a missile with 60km range. The equivalent russian planes have a 100km range radar and a 50km range missile. So while the european planes have the advantage, this advantage is anything mindblowing.
Now imagine a european stealth aircraft, with the same missile and radar but because it is stealth, it can only be detected within 20km of a russian aircraft. That means that the stealth plane can go in, shoot a missile and get out before the russian plane even detects it. The advantage is immense and allows the stealth aircraft to be orders of magnitude more effective.
There is a reason why everyone, including China, is spending billions to make stealth airplanes. The only reason people think stealth is irrelevant is because of russian propaganda, because Russia is too poor to produce stealth airplanes. The thing is, designing AND producing a stealth airplane is very expensive. There are a few european designs but those things wont be coming out for another 10+ years at the earliest(or in 20 years if we want to be realistic). In the meantime, Europe decided to use the f-35, which is a very capable and cheap aircraft(actually cheaper than rafale, etc).
It doesnt help that we have 2 different 6th generation airplane designs in Europe. It's a clusterfuck. Maybe Trump will help Europe get its shit together.
