On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 13:08:34 -0500, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

Gee, you would not be whining if you developed these kind of systems with
your own money, would you? Break off your relaiance on US aid money and then
you can chart your own course free of US involvment--until then, life is a
bitch when the US decides that Arrow has too great a range for the sensitive
Indo-Pakistani region at present (and consider yourself lucky that we did
not sit on that recent sale of the Phalcon radar to India, where we had to
sell the Pakistanis some radar aerostats to maintain some level of balance
between the two sides). Maybe you can sell it to the PRC, like you did the
Python AAM?

There's a point there, but OTOH the original poster does have a fair
point, too.

America treats her allies really, really shabbily on things like this;
I understand WHY (hell, I go to college thanks to US combat vehicle
headsets, including FMS), but it still seems shabby. We can, and
should, let the Israelis and our European allies have a fair shot in
situations like this. Why?

1) It may well be better. (See Arrow, purpose-designed for ABM work.
Personally, I would actually prefer it if the US adopted Arrow; it
seems to be a plain better piece of equipment for the task.)

2) It makes the inevitable disagreements easier to bear; it's a lot
easier to agree not to sell to, say, the PRC, if you know that you at
least have a fair playing field in other sales competitions.

3) It lets our allies develop their defense industries. (It's
forgotten that mostly, the reason Israel and similar countries depend
on US aid money is because they can't dev their own local sources. Why
can't they do that? Because they can't recoup their costs in the
ever-more-important export market when they compete against the US,
who then forces them NOT to compete.)

So, Kevin...if you want the Israelis not to depend on US aid or not to
sell to the PRC, you have to quit hamstringing them, and actually make
it possible for them to win vs the US on the export markets.

John