There’s great interest in Europe developing a homegrown UAS-building programme “to add reconnaissance and strike capability at lesser cost and risk to service members.”
Italian company Alenia Aermacchi, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica, has argued that a “European made UAV” is essential for “European operational sovereignty and independence in the management of information and intelligence.”
And at last month’s ILA Berlin Air Show, both Dassault and Airbus announced a plan to collaborate on developing a medium-altitude, long-endurance, or MALE, UAS similar to the General Atomics Reaper and Predator. According to news reports, the new UAS will feature long endurance and good manoeuvrability, and will emphasise reconnaissance capability over the ability to carry weapons. Their target date for first flight is 2020.
How to get to there from here?
The problem is that these three companies hail from three different countries — Italy, France, and Germany. (Airbus is traditionally viewed as a French-German company, and S&P Capital IQ reports that even after its recent reorganisation, the governments of both France and Germany own stakes in Airbus). And so these companies are asking three different governments to help build their UAS.
Sources suggest that development of the UAS could cost $68 million in just the first two years of the project, and potentially as much as $1 billion — and that’s just the development cost. Actually buying UAS would cost even more money. Unfortunately for the companies, their host governments don’t seem eager to foot this big of a bill. As German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said, “At the moment there is no pressure to make a decision.”
Too many irons in the fire
Further complicating matters, one of the corporate coalition’s three members, Dassault, is already trying to build an unmanned combat UAS in cooperation with Britain’s BAE Systems. Given that it’s already financing half the cost of building one UAS “on spec,” Dassault may not relish the thought of anteing up a third of the development costs of a second UAS — with no certain buyer. The more so, given that Dassault is under financial pressure after repeated failures to find international buyers for its Rafale fighter jet.
Source: Motley Fool