[HN Gopher] Future Combat Air System (FCAS)
___________________________________________________________________
Future Combat Air System (FCAS)
Author : belter
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-03-27 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airbus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airbus.com)
| hunglee2 wrote:
| European (mainly French / German) attempts at 'strategic
| autonomy' had been consistently thwarted by the UK's recalcitrant
| presence. Brexit should've been an opportunity, but Putin's
| invasion of Ukraine quickly shut that window. With the Germans
| now re-orientating their energy dependency from Russia to the US,
| as well as committing to buying billions of dollars worth of US
| military hardware, there is no chance of any 'EU led third way'
| kkfx wrote:
| That's what happen now, thanks to a big and powerful
| propaganda, but skyrocketing inflation (not really caused by
| Ukrainian war, and many know that) and decade long social
| degradation have put many on the brink of a civil war. Actually
| propaganda win, but can't do that for long.
|
| That means that's unlikely but not that unlikely that a big EU
| State (France, for instance) elect a new government that decide
| it's about time to exit NATO and propose a strategic
| partnership to Russia. It was about to happen and it was
| stopped by Eastern European countries just few months ago, it
| can came back quickly.
|
| Actually both USA and Russia prefer a not-really-united EU but
| EU Citizens are already united enough and since crisis bite
| things can change rapidly. At that point classic repression
| will fail and tentative to ride the unrest in different
| directions might not succeed. Italy and Germany are well
| subjugated by NATO, France is not, few other EU countries are
| middle-ground since they can't simply act alone.
|
| Re-orienting energy dependency is just an economic move: it's
| impossible to live on GNL shipping, it's impossible to complete
| the Green New Deal quick enough, the sole answer is keep and
| expand nuclear and only States have resources to do so, that
| means cutting out neoliberals who rule the energy. Even pushing
| renewable at maximum speed can't really work: it can work with
| new single-family homes, well placed, EU population density and
| actual civil structures are incompatible, dense cities can't
| have buildings re-made to be A-class quickly, electricity grid
| can't be re-made quickly etc hydro power can be added quickly
| but States who can orographically already have a significant
| slice of hydro and can't add much more, similarly we can't all
| change vehicles quickly. GNLs can't arrive quickly and being
| properly integrated in actual networks. That's why the EU
| without much advertisement continue to purchase Russian gas as
| usual. A change can happen in 7-8 years, perhaps hardly in 5-6
| years, not quicker than that. And that's not just energy, too
| many EU countries depend on other natural resources from Russia
| and can't substitute them on-the-spot.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| man you sure point too many things, back none, and just mix
| everything into goulash that doesn't make much sense (apart
| from outright lies which are also too many to actually
| discuss properly here)
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| You greatly understate EU defense dominance. Ship building,
| subs, tanks, semi-autonomous weapons, small arms, self-
| propelled artillery, etc., are all areas where EU member states
| meet or well exceed US/UK weapons exports, particularly Germany
| and France. Although not an EU member, Turkey is increasingly
| becoming a player in the drone, small arms and missile space.
| Its easy to confuse high profile programs like the the F35 with
| the much greater volume of other categories of arms.
| 323 wrote:
| Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of
| exporting everything:
|
| _2015: Germany's army is so under-equipped that it used
| broomsticks instead of machine guns in an exercise_
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/19.
| ..
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Maybe EU should keep some weapons for itself, instead of
| exporting everything:
|
| They got the message. IIRC, Germany's going to throw
| something like the equivalent of two years worth of _extra_
| defense spending at addressing its military under-funding
| problems, plus actually meeting its NATO obligation of 2%
| GDP in defense spending in the future. IIRC, there was even
| talk about making that a constitutional requirement as
| well.
| lorenzfx wrote:
| As commented below:
|
| That broomstick example gets paraded around a lot, but this
| was on a vehicle that wasn't supposed to have a gun in the
| first place.
|
| There is a lot of valid criticism on the readiness of
| Germany's armed forces, this isn't one.
| sofixa wrote:
| You can add aircraft (yes, there's no equivalent for the F-22
| and F-35 but both don't form the backbone of the USAF yet and
| cost an outrageous amount of money), and helicopters,
| rockets, radar/sonar, combat systems (Thales is a world
| leader in that sphere) to that list.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| Could you give some examples of how the "UK's recalcitrant
| presence" have 'thwarted European strategic autonomy'? Because
| the last time I checked, the UK was doing a lot of the heavy
| lifting of European security.
| Sakos wrote:
| Google "UK opposes plans for EU army", ca 2016
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| "Strategic autonomy" comes from investing in your armed
| forces, not adding a layer of bureaucracy on top of them
| WJW wrote:
| The EU army would be a layer of bureaucracy less, not
| more. So far the plans have not gone anywhere because
| national governments have been unwilling to give up final
| authority over their armies ("No German will command a
| Frenchman into battle!"). This has been partly due to
| historical mistrust, partly due to political
| considerations and partly due to a lack of urgency. This
| means that setting up any military activity in EU context
| (such as Operation Atalanta for example) requires going
| through all the individual national governments and
| asking for troops.
|
| A true EU-wide army would be a standing organization with
| pre-approved funding and means that could move much
| quicker than the current system. Investing in armed
| forces is also important, but adding up the funding of
| the individual member states already brings you quite far
| compared to basically any country except the US and
| China.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Note that there are also legal issues. The German army is
| the parliaments army, and as such the Bundestag must
| approve any mission that requires deployment outside
| German territory (NATO missions and EU missions are
| somewhat privileged). That would hinder foreign
| deployments of a joint European army.
| kkfx wrote:
| EU army means French army, since it's the sole remaining
| global power. And for us, EU Citizens, that would be a
| very good move, but the biggest real barrier is
| linguistic and even with social willingness (almost
| present even if, of course, does not emerge on mass
| media) and political willingness (not present almost at
| all) such barrier can't be solved.
|
| My own personal view is a smaller EU:
|
| - France
|
| - Spain
|
| - Italy (too tied to NATO due to WWII past, but less than
| Germany)
|
| - Portugal
|
| - then Germany (too tied to NATO due to WWII past)
|
| That form a new core EU in fiscal terms (even if all
| those countries are different real differences are
| limited), then in political terms with "cross-border
| parties", then in military terms like a small scale NATO
| lead by France. The the rest, smaller western countries
| can only follow, northern part who now talk out loud but
| in real terms can't live alone would have no choice but
| follow. UK can't do much now, with "the Commonwealth
| crisis" and the domestic intra-UK crisis there isn't much
| room to maneuver. Russia would not like that, of course,
| but between China (a historic enemy and still not really
| friendly and much interested in Russian eastern land) and
| a really united EU they'll jump the ship quickly: most of
| their infra, the tech they need is in the west and EU
| mutually need Russian resources instead of just tapping
| them giving back only industrial mass production.
|
| It's really unlikely but our best interest.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > Russia would not like that
|
| Oh, how much Russia would love that. A smaller EU? Are
| you kidding? Any day of the week, twice on Sunday.
| jl6 wrote:
| "Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at
| least 500 years: to create a disunited Europe."
| riffraff wrote:
| "Yes, minister" and "yes, prime minister" are incredibly
| fun and still very actual shows.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| yes but only via NATO, a US dominated military alliance.
|
| The UK has consistently opposed the creation of the EU army,
| as well as opposed unified foreign policy etc.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| It would have been hard, before the Ukraine invasion, to
| understand what goals of a unified foreign policy would be,
| or how the EU army would meet those goals. Now, post-
| invasion, there is a more common appreciation of how things
| are, but still early to say that there is going to be a
| coherent EU policy when the immediacy of the danger is
| past.
| Sakos wrote:
| Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of posting
| links like this on HN. Most people here seem to generally be
| clueless about geopolitics, history and military.
| stavros wrote:
| Comments like this make me wonder what the point is of
| posting comments like this on HN. They're just shitting on
| the parent comment without any substance.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Putin's invasion of Ukraine quickly shut that window. With
| the Germans now re-orientating their energy dependency from
| Russia to the US, as well as committing to buying billions of
| dollars worth of US military hardware, there is no chance of
| any 'EU led third way'
|
| I think that's backward: European defense independence was
| limited by funding; they talked about it but didn't invest in
| it. The Russian attack on Ukraine spurred Germany especially to
| fund defense; to think of the possibilities, Germany's GDP is
| about $4.2 trillion, Russia's is only $1.6 trillion [0].
| Germany's military alone could easily far oustrip Russia's[1].
| Germany's economy is 4th largest in the world, meaning they
| could build the 4th largest military - beyond a doubt they have
| the political, technological, and industrial capability. Add to
| that France, Italy, etc: The EU's total GDP is around $17
| trillion.
|
| Autonomy doesn't mean having no external dependencies. Only
| North Korea tries that intentionally, and you can see the
| results. Forcing countries like Russia and Iran to have no
| external dependencies is considered a severe punishment.
| Dependencies on allies is not only fine, it makes things far
| more efficient, which means you can afford far more military
| power and economic influence. Nobody can compete without
| friends.
|
| [0] To consider the enormous impact of GDP on defense, the US
| spends the equivalent of 50% of Russia's entire GDP on defense.
| For comparison, the target number for NATO is 2% of GDP.
|
| [1] Not an idle curiosity: Germany's enormous economy, relative
| even to Western European countries (the UK's and France's are
| about $3 trillion), makes Germany an eternal potential
| geopolitical threat, and is part of the reason for two world
| wars. That's one of the main original reasons for the EU and
| NATO - to keep Germany in the fold.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| The far bigger issue is that France and Germany (especially
| Germany) have a chronic underspending problem on their
| military. They choose to spend on social programs instead. You
| can't claim leadership of a pan-EU army when you yourself don't
| even meet the 2% GDP spending target set by NATO.
| Xylakant wrote:
| In 2020, German spent about 53 billion USD on its military,
| that's rank 7 world-wide. The UK spent 59 billion, about the
| same ballpark. The bigger problem in Germany is inefficient
| spending.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Using absolute numbers borders on fraud. What's the %?
| lorenzfx wrote:
| Why care about the %? What really matters are the
| capabilities, no matter the cost.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Correct, but if Germany wants to be a leader of a pan-EU
| army it needs to be a dominant military power in the region
| (for example the US globally, or Turkey in the East
| Mediterranean, or what Egypt/Libya used to be in the Middle
| East before the US decided to regime change them). Else you
| just get political squabbling because the various states
| have equal power and nothing gets done.
|
| I'm not saying social spending is bad, just that if playing
| a lead role in a pan-EU army is Germany's interest then it
| needs to spend more.
| Xylakant wrote:
| How will more money fix the fundamental issue of
| inefficient spending? It will just be more money
| inefficiently spent.
| nradov wrote:
| The bulk of the German military hasn't been combat effective
| for a long time, and is basically just a government jobs
| program.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/germany-cant-explain-use-
| broomstick...
|
| https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/10/20/all-of-
| germanys...
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/only-4-of-germanys-128-eurofighter-
| jet...
|
| It's going to take a while to rebuild into an organization
| capable of actually fighting.
| lorenzfx wrote:
| Did you read the first article?
|
| That broomstick example gets paraded around a lot, but this
| was on a vehicle, that wasn't supposed to have a gun in the
| first place.
|
| There is a lot of valid criticism on the readiness of
| Germany's armed forces, this isn't one.
| sgt101 wrote:
| You've made this comment twice - I am curious. Which
| configuration of the Boxer was it that was in the
| exercise without the weapon. I believe that the ambulance
| doesn't have one - which one was the German crew on?
| hunglee2 wrote:
| arguably those two are linked - you can rationalise that
| French / German govt have been reluctant to spend on military
| force over which they have less influence than they would
| prefer. Hence the arguments for an EU army, despite the
| existence of NATO. We will see what happens with the German
| U-turn on military spending whether this results in them
| falling into line alongside the Brits in NATO, or closer the
| French in a EU military force. I suspect it will now be the
| former, given the loss of leverage the Germans now have
| torginus wrote:
| I wonder if this thing will ever fly, and if it will, will it fly
| in less than 2 decades after the comparable US effort has entered
| service.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| With our dear dictator neighbor on the east showing his true
| colors, you may end up surprised how a common enemy like that
| can unite, even if temporarily, such a diverse place as
| European union
| durnygbur wrote:
| Please dip their share price once again, missed the opportunity
| three weeks ago. Thank you, internet. BTW if any European
| corporation says "cloud", from distance it smells with Deutsche
| Telekom and EU funds.
| boricj wrote:
| French here, last I've heard of it Dassault and Airbus were
| deadlocked on the split of industrial responsibilities and
| couldn't seem to be able to find an agreement. Hopefully I'm
| wrong, but this was starting to sound more and more like a repeat
| the break up of the Future European Fighter Aircraft project in
| the 80s that led to the separate Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter
| Typhoon programs... Which is a shame because we've done at least
| one successful French/German multinational military jet before
| (Alpha Jet). The Main Ground Combat System project, which is
| supposed to be our next generation main battle tank, was also
| deadlocked last I've heard of it.
|
| One thing's for sure, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war has
| profoundly shocked the entire European continent and has led to
| the biggest re-evaluation of our defense strategies in decades,
| along with energy policy and even food supply security. It's too
| early to tell exactly what will come of it, but national defense
| budgets are already rising significantly.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| torginus wrote:
| Sorry, random question: Would it be that bad if everyone went
| ahead and developed their own fighter according to their own
| requirements, but using the same basic technology, by which I
| mean they shared the development of engines, radar, avionics,
| weapons etc.?
| boricj wrote:
| Not a military analyst, but I'll try. Also French, so highly
| biased.
|
| That sounds a bit like the F-35, which was supposed to be a
| common platform for three different military jets with highly
| conflicting requirements (US Air Force wants an affordable
| single-engine stealth supersonic fighter, US Navy wants it
| operable from a aircraft carrier, US Marines wants it
| hovering like a Harrier), which is the definitive example on
| how to NOT manage a multirole jet fighter program, to the
| point where it's still not in full-rate production twenty
| years after the start of the program, arguably still not
| fully operational, still hideously expensive on per-hour fly
| rate and finally the US decided to both modernize old
| F-15/F-16 jets and start developing the sixth-generation
| NGAD.
|
| The Dassault Rafale on the other hand has three variants (B
| for twin seats, C for mono seat, M for the French Navy) which
| are basically identical except for a reinforced undercarriage
| for the M variant. Increased development costs and delays
| were mostly because of shrinking defense budgets and
| political squabbling post Cold War, not because of technical
| development issues. While the F1 block was an emergency
| stopgap for the Navy, later iterations and especially the F3R
| have proven to be very versatile and able to carry out
| basically any mission that the French Air Force and French
| Navy has, to the point that it is expected to be the only
| fighter/bomber/interceptor type in service when all the
| remaining Mirage 2000 variants get decommissioned in the
| coming years.
|
| I'd say the main differences are that culturally Dassault at
| its core is more of an design and engineering shop than an
| aircraft manufacturer (most manufacturing is outsourced,
| critical components and assembly are done in-house) so
| emphasis is placed more on design than production [0]; France
| wants an independent defense industry and an all-around fully
| capable military on a budget, thus we have no choice but to
| keep our costs under control in order to afford all of our
| gear; and finally while the Rafale ecosystem has a lot of
| companies (Thales and Safran for the biggest subcontractors),
| Dassault is unquestionably in charge of the program
| industrially and the DGA knows better than to try and
| micromanage them or to ask impossible or unbearably expensive
| requirements.
|
| [0] https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R1148.html for an
| analysis of the Mirage days of Dassault
| StopHammoTime wrote:
| No, because the cost of development is exceptionally high. As
| with the F-35 there are a lot of countries who would never be
| able to afford that level of capability unless the model of
| shared funding and development was taken.
|
| At the end of the day, poorly implemented systems, etc are
| far worse than shared technology.
| kkfx wrote:
| That's might sound a bit off topic but... ALL modern "wars" so
| far (in quotes because modern wars seen the past ones are veeeery
| asymmetrical) have proven a thing: tech makes difference to a
| certain extent, but in the end _motivated_ boots on ground
| decide, the classic western doctrine "few and well armed" have
| failed the real life test.
|
| That's means: we can perhaps made super-duper powerful fighter
| jets able to hit any target on earth unseen by no one,
| unstoppable. That's can just destroy the enemy army/infra, if
| that's the real target ok. BUT if the target is a bit more than
| just crushing enemy infrastructures/army (perhaps because the war
| have the exact purpose to grab those infra/resources that need
| them) the result of such hi-tech war is a sea of destruction, big
| amount of resources and life lost, people starving to the
| destruction _but no winner_.
|
| I'm convinced that more than hi tech combat systems we need many
| low tech, low costs weaponry + deterrence capacity (nukes). An
| enemy of course can hit some of them, some part of domestic infra
| easily with his super-hi-tech systems but can't really win. No
| one can produce enough of EuroFighters, F35, Su35, FCAS, DDG-X
| etc to really crash a swarm of simple and cheap war machines
| dispersed on the ground. Soviet Union discover that in
| Afghanistan, USA repeat the same mistake already made in Vietnam
| in the same country, France idem in Libya and Mali etc and in all
| those cases the enemy was just armed with limited tech against hi
| tech weaponry, logistic, TLCs etc.
|
| It's not much different than the classic mainframe vs cluster.
| Modern hyper-expensive systems are powerful SPOF while a cluster
| can survive on far less nodes. Similarly a country with a
| distributed enough productive and civil infrastructure can't
| easily be hit. An enemy can hit a target, few targets, but keep
| doing so with very expensive and so not much numerous weaponry
| means just having created destruction so entering the country
| still demand boots on ground, and on destroyed infra with a now
| very angry population that have nothing more to loose it's hard
| and nightmarish, beside that having wiped out most valuable infra
| at high prices (hi tech is costly) there is the need to rebuild
| many things because no war typically have the sole purpose of
| destruction, except those suicidal. Try to sell themselves to the
| defeated enemy to "morally" conquer it, as per Clausewitz
| classic, also fail the defeated survivors are not just "people
| who want the peace again", they have lost anything and they are
| very angry, some, probably the most wealthy and the most poor
| might change flag quickly the big mass of all other will not.
|
| In defensive terms that's not much better, the better defense is
| the attack capacity, witch means nukes these days, not few big
| but many small that can be smuggled in/around the enemy territory
| to give back a so deep wave of destruction no one is really
| interested to attack you first. The rest is these days not
| "classic war", like propaganda, corruptions, sabotage, etc.
|
| Long story short: to protect themselves nations should look at
| classic Swiss, Sweden, a small professional army for the few big
| weapons, all able population trained and armed at home, regular
| yearly based not-that-long and well paid exercise etc. To conquer
| there is a big need of powerful propaganda (we have it, too much
| and in wrong hands these days) to motivate people to go to war
| and than a guerrilla like invasion after classic asymmetric war
| techniques to weaken the enemy, in any case a war preps can't be
| hidden these days so attacks by surprise are a thing just on very
| local scale.
| kcb wrote:
| > the classic western doctrine "few and well armed" have failed
| the real life test.
|
| I'm really not seeing where or how you've come to this
| conclusion. Desert Storm and Iraq show the uselessness of low
| tech boots on the ground. Not even just the Iraqi side, most
| Western troops went on a long unoposed jaunt through the desert
| rather than fighting an enemy. I really don't see how an
| adversary is going to stay motivated after something like the
| air war before Desert Storm. Utter helplessness on the ground
| as 100s of aircraft and standoff munitions hit their targets.
| Sure guerilla war may continue but it remains to be seen how
| well guerilla warfare will work with 100s of advanced drones
| loitering overhead.
| 323 wrote:
| Hi-tech doesn't have to mean high-cost. See Javelin/NLAW which
| are relatively low-cost and surely can be made much cheaper if
| a large number are to be ordered.
|
| > _No one can produce enough of EuroFighters, F35, Su35, FCAS,
| DDG-X etc to really crash a swarm of simple and cheap war
| machines dispersed on the ground. Soviet Union discover that in
| Afghanistan,_
|
| The Ukrainians just proved you wrong, but with advanced anti-
| tank missiles not airplanes, which are hi-tech but low-cost
| anti-tank missiles.
| antattack wrote:
| Anti-tank grenades and missiles are not high-tech
| comparatively speaking. You can get 40 anti-tank missiles for
| the price of one F-35 fighter pilot helmet.
| [deleted]
| Gravityloss wrote:
| I have followed military aircraft technology for decades.
| Development costs for systems have risen very high.
|
| There are some systems like fighters in Europe, that are made by
| multiple small manufacturers. As a result the build quantities
| are low and costs high. Old systems are never renewed. They don't
| do well in export competitions. Some manufacturers are
| geographically located in one country like Dassault. SAAB is very
| much in Sweden with some US components.
|
| One solution to this would be to just make each project a large
| international megaproject, have most of the manufacturers in
| Europe coordinate. But this kills competition and makes projects
| complicated. There is a another method too.
|
| Instead, share basic research and build prototypes and share the
| lessons from those. Have manufacturers form multiple co-operating
| international alliances to compete for each program. Sustain
| multiple programs, even if it means some duplicity. Competition
| and independent capabilities are more important.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Are fighter jets so important in the age of drones? Shouldn't
| we invest in drones which are much cheaper? If "but we need
| something for air superiority", then isn't it achievable with
| space superiority and drones?
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Everything is needed
| LeanderK wrote:
| I wonder if unmanned but not independent aircrafts are just
| too risky to rely on them completely. If the adversary
| develops a successful jamming attack (or whatever, idk
| anything about this) it denies the country to operate in the
| area completely.
| boznz wrote:
| With all the effort being put into full self driving cars I
| would think a full self flying plane would be a lot easier
| with a lot less edge case scenarios than driving on a road
| with other users.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-27 23:02 UTC)