Diplomacy à la française
Fascinating stuff on how “you can generally tell which countries the French government is trying to get an arms deal going with by the amount of diplomatic effort going in.”
So this story of a $40,000,000,000 contract to supply new air tankers for the U.S. Air Force indicates a serious amount of lobbying.
Bad news for the U.K.’s influence in the U.S.A.: previously, the lack of sufficient air tankers for the U.S. forces meant they had to arrange help from the R.A.F., for example before the invasion of Afghanistan. Presumably, once this contract is up and running, the U.K. becomes just that little bit more expendable.
Did the UK even bother trying to block this deal? Gordon Brown becomes more of a creep and a numpty in my mind with every passing day.
Filed under: Life
Hi Jackie,
I completely agree with you about Gordon Brown, but on these new tankers:
1. Yes, major coup for EADS/Airbus (sorry, Northrop Grumman), if the order survives going through Congress!
2. I’m not sure there is much the UK government could have done to block it.
3. I don’t think they would want to, given that it will create/sustain a lot of jobs in the UK (making the wings and maybe other bits and bobs).
4. The RAF are also buying new airbus A330 based tankers (if someone will fund the PFI deal), so there should be some commonality in parts and ground equipment.
5. The RAF uses a different inflight refueling tech than the US air force (probe and drogue vs boom and receptacle), so I’m guessing that in Afghanistan the RAF was refueling US navy and marine corp aircraft, which also use probe and drogue. I don’t know if the new A330 tankers, for either the US air force or RAF, will support both options.
Interesting insight, Ed - thanks! I find this stuff fascinating, as I said in my post. I’m glad I have readers with such informed perspectives!
Seems the KC-45 will have both (very sensible), so maybe we won’t be needed so much to help in the future.
http://www.northropgrumman.com/kc45/operations/section.html
My concern was that no one in the UK would even have thought about the possibility that the money and jobs (whilst very handy) weren’t the only issue for Sarko. Least of all the socialist cretins that pass for the leadership of the Labour Party.
It’s a classic manoeuvre: cash, jobs, geopolitical influence, and a good press back home. And Sarko can claim all this whilst insisting that all he cares about is the European common good. It’s straight out of the Francois Mitterrand edition of The Prince.
If the UK government wants to kid itself that getting some jobs for a couple of years (which no doubt have to be subsidized at taxpayer expense) is worth dropping a notch towards “expendable and redundant” on the US policy barometer… it’s a different set of priorities.