Christophe Gomart Warns: European F-35s at Risk of US Control
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Kay. Coming from Germany it is about the nukes of our .. ehm.. "friends".
We still use the Tornado from 1974 because of incompabilities of our Eurofighters. -
Does that matter though? e.g. if you do a nuclear strike, wouldn't you bring enough support to make sure the nuke reaches its target?
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Because none of them have the capabilities of the F-35. And they are even more expensive than the F-35.
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the Rafale is used for nuclear deterrence and can carry medium range air launched cruise missiles. They are to be replaced with hypersonic cruise missiles launches with the Rafale F5 until 2035.
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If so, it must be because they don't have enough R&D money because we haven't been buying them. Own goal.
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Looking at the reactions when Poland bought US planes taught me a lot about the lack of maturity / insights from Eastern European countries, still blinded by the shining lights from NATO and US while ignoring their EU neighbours.
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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.
