European Defence Decision-Making: Dilemmas of Collaborative Arms Procurement by Antonio Calcara

Author:Antonio Calcara [Calcara, Antonio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Intergovernmental Organizations, Europe, Political Science, Political Freedom, History, Security (National & International), General
ISBN: 9781000039528
Google: c9HTDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 48806090
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-03-02T08:51:32+00:00

5 The Eurofighter

The genesis of the Eurofighter can be traced back to the end of the 70s. The joint programme was considered, from the outset, a priority among major European arms producers for two main reasons. First, there was a common military requirement to improve air capabilities, in order to counter the Soviet high-tech equipped fighter aircrafts, such as the Mig-29 Fulcrum and the Su-27 Flanker. Second, after the successful experience of the MRCA/Tornado, European countries were very well disposed towards collaborative military programmes, especially concerning lower production costs and spin-off of technological innovation on a European scale (Walker 1974). In this context, the spiralling unit cost of military fighter aircrafts produced strong pressures to achieve economies of scale, to share costs and know-how and to access state-of-the-art defence technologies and capabilities (Tucker 1991: 113).

The Eurofighter consortium was formed in 1983 with the name “Future European Fighter Aircraft” and initially included five nations (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK). In early 1985, France left the consortium to develop its own domestic project, the “Rafale”. Nevertheless, the four remaining countries agreed on the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA) programme, commonly known as Eurofighter, in December 1985. In the 1980s, the Eurofighter possessed several features that made it unique in the aerospace field. First, it was the first modern military fighter built in four different assembly lines: in fact, the four participating countries produced components that were common to every fighter but each partner was responsible for the final assembly and customization of its own model. Second, the Eurofighter assumed, from the beginning, a very ambitious configuration. More precisely, the joint European programme was conceived to be the most advanced multirole-fighter in the world, with both air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities (Hartley 2006: 3–4). However, despite these ambitious expectations, the Eurofighter’s operational and industrial definition has been marked by extremely complicated negotiations. Although European participating countries agreed on a number of contentious issues, including the fighter’s weight, expected combat mission, engine power and deployment date, they struggled to find an agreement on the organizational structure and on industrial work-share allocation of the programme. For these reasons, the Eurofighter has been considered a very controversial collaborative project (Tucker 1991: 113). Its high and rising costs, delays in delivering to the armed forces, as well as continuous concerns about its operational relevance in the post-Cold War strategic environment, produced considerable criticisms about the actual performance of the joint armament programme. The chapter’s aim is to explore the underlying cooperative and competitive dynamics that have characterized each phase of the Eurofighter’s development, with a particular attention to project definition, project leadership, definition of technical standards and industrial work-share. Overall, this analysis aims to empirically investigate European governments’ and firms’ preferences towards the Eurofighter. Why did some countries participate in the programme and others prefer to refrain from acting cooperatively? What were the sources of European countries’ preferences towards the Eurofighter?

The chapter is structured as follows: first, I briefly describe the context in which the Eurofighter was conceived, as well as its main organizational and managerial features.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.