French ire and English sang froid characterise the European- defence debate after the UK chose a US helicopter.
Douglas Barrie/LONDON
JACQUES CHIRAC, the French President, "deplores" the UK's choice of the Westland/McDonnell Douglas WAH-64D Apache Longbow as its next attack helicopter, while his head of procurement, Henri Conze, says that it is a "negative signal toward Europe". UK defence minister Michael Portillo, meanwhile, maintains that it is business as usual as far as European collaboration is concerned.
Unfortunately for Portillo, to the French Government, "business as usual" means the UK paying lip service to European defence integration while buying US aircraft.
The British Army's requirement for an attack helicopter is only the latest in a list of programmes to become ensnared in the politics of European-defence procurement. The situation is made more complex by the whirlwind of industrial restructuring now under way among the world's defence industries as they seek to position themselves to fight for dominance in the next century.
France has turned the UK's attack-helicopter decision into a litmus test of its commitment to an integrated European-defence industrial base. The same tactics had been deployed, with some success, by French officials when the UK was agonising over whether to purchase the Lockheed C-130J or the proposed European Future Large Aircraft for its military-transport requirement. The UK eventually bought time by ordering some C-130Js and renewing its interest in the FLA project.
The UK insists that it held an open helicopter competition between the European champion, the Eurocopter Tiger, and the two US contenders, the Apache and a derivative of the Bell Cobra.
Much of the rhetoric emanating from France can be dismissed as the result of a bruised ego, but the underlying problem will not be so easily ignored.
While all parties, the UK included, advocate closer defence integration at an industrial and procurement level, a fundamental difficulty remains to be addressed: the UK is apparently committed to competition, while France, with Germany in tow, pursues a policy of closed procurement. Franco/ German strategy is to create a central-procurement organisation around which their fast-merging defence industries can coalesce. The UK wants to be part of such an organisation, but not at any price.
French policy remains geared towards supporting a predominantly nationalised defence industrial base. Its military specifies a weapons system and French industry is awarded a contract to develop it. Continuity, not competition, is the ideological driver behind this policy.
There are few indications that this is going to change in the near future, so drawing the UK into a French-dominated European-defence industrial base is a problem.
The UK is also keen to keep the "Atlantic Bridge" open. The US Department of Defense points out that the UK defence industry is its largest external supplier. Committing to a European policy based around a "Fortress Europe" procurement approach would probably damage UK industry's position in the US market.
If dire warnings of ostracism as a result of the attack-helicopter decision were not enough, senior French Government officials are also seeking to pressurise the UK into procuring the Matra/Aerospatiale Apache for the Royal Air Force's conventional air-launched stand-off missile requirement.
The Apache bid, like that of the Tiger, is being led by British Aerospace, which is involved in tortuous negotiations with Matra over the merger of the two companies' missile divisions.
The French Government is blocking approval of the deal, demanding that the merger be built round an Apache procurement. In Whitehall, such demands are viewed as arrogant and anti-competitive, embodying the worst of traditional French "procurement policy".
To compound the situation, a maritime-patrol-aircraft competition between Dassault Aviation's Atlantic 2, a revamped BAe Nimrod and the Lockheed P-3C Orion is also in full swing. This allegedly prompted Chirac to urge UK Prime Minister John Major at a recent meeting to buy anything but US aircraft.
The problem for BAe is that cross-Channel collaboration could be vital to its future combat-aircraft aspirations. It has already started work on a future combat-aircraft study with Dassault. The final aim would be to see a single European consortium designing and producing the next generation of combat aircraft beyond the Eurofighter 2000 and the Dassault Rafale.
Radar and engine collaboration is also under way to support the programme. In classic UK style, however, the UK Ministry of Defence is keeping its options open by co-operating with the USA as a junior partner in the Joint Advanced Strike Technology fighter programme.
European manufacturers, and their governments, cannot afford to be complacent over giving direction to future defence industrial policy. US defence rationalisation is creating industrial giants, which threaten to dominate the international marketplace. Europe, if it is to compete, must put its own house in order in the near future.
This will almost certainly require that France accept that some form of competition is vital, while the UK recognises that intervention is sometimes necessary to protect certain core industrial competencies.
Source: Flight International
