The timing could have been better. Just as the USA finally its cumbersome export controls are hindering coalition interoperability and industrial co-operation, the UK decides in favour of long-term European solutions for key air-to-air missile and transport aircraft requirements.
While the UK's highly political decisions would appear to deal a serious blow to US hopes for increased transatlantic co-operation, they may not harm the longer-term prospects for the creation of a single defence market encompassing North America and Europe.
Selection of the European Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missile, despite its higher cost and later delivery, was undoubtedly influenced by concerns over the possibility of a US veto on sales of the competing AMRAAM-developments to arm export versions of the Eurofighter.
The USA has only itself to blame for those concerns. Export control idiocies have made the country an unreliable industrial ally. Now the USA is doing something about it, but the imminent revamp of the licensing process is likely to fall short of the exemption from export controls that the Pentagon sought for the UK.
Such an exemption might have helped tilt the tables in favour of the AMRAAM, but the point is moot - Meteor has been launched, and there could yet be a positive outcome for transatlantic co-operation. Boeing's involvement in the Meteor consortium means that, in several years, when the USA begins looking for a new air-to-air missile, there will be a rival to any next-generation AMRAAM. The choice of Meteor also ensures the major European NATO nations will all operate the same missile, eventually.
A similar rationale can be applied to the UK's decision to back the Airbus Military Company A400M. While the USA would have preferred the UK to have bought extra Lockheed Martin C-130Js, or acquired more Boeing C-17s, the decision in favour of the A400M moves the concept of a joint European airlift force closer.
Since the Kosovo conflict, the USA has demanded that its European NATO allies close the "capabilities gap" exposed by the coalition operation. Many of the impending export control changes are intended to speed the transfer of technology to NATO nations to close the gap.
US industrialists, meanwhile, have seized on the capabilities issue to demand an integrated transatlantic marketplace supported by a transatlantic defence industrial base. In return for reforming US export controls, they argue, Europe should remove barriers to competition. US and European companies would then be free to join forces through alliances and even mergers.
The UK's European procurement decisions would appear to fly in the face of both demands. But European and US industries are still being shaped and it may be too early for the playing field to be fully flattened.
Take the position of BAE Systems. Decisions in favour of Meteor and A400M could be seen as strengthening its position in the European market at a time when the UK company appears to have been frozen out of the consolidation of mainland Europe's industry by the formation of EADS. Its involvement in the programmes could yet prove useful in the USA.
BAE says its focus for further acquisitions and alliances is now the USA, not Europe. In this endeavour, its strong links with Europe are an advantage to a potential US partner. The fact that almost 70% of EADS' business is in joint ventures with BAE could make the UK company the ideal entry into Europe.
What could upset this scenario is a failure by the USA to deliver on promises of increased technology transfer to the UK and other NATO allies. The US/German/Italian MEADS air-defence programme has almost come unstuck because of US reluctance to release missile technology. The US/UK Tracer combat vehicle programme is in jeopardy because of unilateral changes in requirements by the USA.
If the USA does not get it right on technology transfer, then the UK may not be willing to participate in the US Joint Strike Fighter programme and BAE may find itself forced further into the European camp. If that happens, then the UK Government's pro-European procurements will appear prophetic.
Source: Flight International
