China to buy Eurofighters?

"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 18:44:55 -0000, Keith Willshaw
wrote:

"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 13:11:12 -0000, Keith Willshaw
wrote:

In fact there is no prospect of the ban being lifted anytime soon.
While the French Government and some corporate bodies
have pressed for it

And the German govmt.

Cite please.

http://www.cabalamat.org/weblog/art_97.html


Hearsay at best

I'd rather prefer a record of a statement by a member of the German
government.

Keith

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 04:10:46 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"phil hunt" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 00:40:10 GMT, Scott Ferrin
wrote:

At least the US has control over Navstar. I don't know if they do
this or not but I don't imagine it would be impossible to say, deny
all service to a war zone except to those using such and such
decription.

Would it be technically possible to have a local positioning
system for military purposes? If it had lots of transmitters and
switched frequencies often, it would probably be hard to jam or
destroy.

Such systems have already been used for decades in the training arena. For
example, at FT Irwin (NTC), the maneuver area (a large area at that; some
350K acres when the system was originally set up) was covered with a
transmitter/receiver system that pinpointed the location of vehicles or even
manpacked locator transmitters, allowing the creation of a digital map of
each exercise for use in conducting the after action reviews (held in what
was appropriately called the "Starwars Room"). I believe that the latest
version of this system now uses GPS to provide the location data, though.

There is too much required work to establish such a system in a tactical
area. All of the points have to be carefully surveyed (and unless you use
GPS to do *that* then you are back to the old, slow manual survey loop)and
line-of-site considerations must be met. Then you'd have to worry about
redundancy, or else the loss of a single transmitter would be catastrophic.
At the pace of current operations, this is just not feasible.

GPS remains the best alternative, and remember that the "selective
availability" (SA) function remains capable of denying highly accurate GPS
usage to other parties within a theater of operations (without affecting
other worldwide users) if so desired (see http://www.igeb.gov/sa.shtml ).

Brooks


I don't imagine China and Europe would give the US that kind of
control over Galileo ;-)

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 20:15:13 GMT, "Gord Beaman" ) wrote:

Alan Minyard wrote:

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 06:11:46 -0600, "tscottme" wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote in message
...



In my opinion selling them top of the line stuff is the height of
stupidity. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what the
situation is going to be with China and the West in ten to fifteen
years.

What makes you think the Europeans don't want the next problem for the
US to be as bad as possible? They have no hope of exceeding the US
unless a full-scale war devastates the US. The fact that it helps
communists is a happy coincidence.

Roger that. The europeans are hardly our "friends".

Al Minyard

Sad as it is to contemplate very few countries are genuinely
friendly with others. Friendship is usually predicated on
usefulness and can be ruined rather quickly.

I believe that communication is the key to increasing this
valuable commodity and I think that the internet plays a part in
this.

Now if we can just keep from killing each other long enough for
this and other communication avenues yet uninvented to take
effect we just might avoid ruining it all irretrievably with WMD.

I hope so anyway...or am I barking up an empty tree?...and are my
little grand-babies doomed to become small pools of flaming
smoking matter running off the edge of the concrete sidewalk near
their school?

I would opine that "friends" and "they are about to nuke us" are many
shades of gray apart. France has nukes, and "hates" the US, but they
are at least smart enough to realize that attacking the US with Nukes
would be national suicide.

Selling the most advanced aircraft that you are capable of building
to obviously hostile, repressive regimes is not the act of a "friend"

Al Minyard

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Selling the most advanced aircraft that you are capable of building
to obviously hostile, repressive regimes is not the act of a "friend"

Al, you do realise that France is not part of the Eurofighter consortium
and so is only interested in selling Rafale? (Which story hasn't
appeared... yet).

Now me, I'd be more worried about how military technology seems to go to
Israel and then appear in Beijing shortly thereafter, but that's just
me.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 21:35:31 GMT, Scott Ferrin wrote:
On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 18:12:33 +0000, ess (phil
hunt) wrote:
You say that as if you assume hostility is obviously going to
happen. I'd like to see your reasoning for that...

And it seems you assume that it won't.

I don't recall making any such assumption.

Hoping that nothing will ever
happen isn't such a great idea because if it does and you're not
prepared or worse have strengthened a potential advisary,

Many countries are potential adversaries. And trading with them
(whether in arms or other goods) strengthens them. Should Europe
then not trade with large parts of the world?

China isn't currently a military threat angainst Europe: they've no
motive to attack us and in any case would have to fight their way
through several thousand miles of Asian countries to do so.

China might get involved in wars with one or more of its neighbours.
If it did, possession of Eurofighters would help it. How might these
neighbours respond? By beefing up their air forces themselves,
probably. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all rich countries who
could easily afford to spend more on air power. If they did, it's
reasonable to expect that some of the contracts would go Europe's
way (the best counter to a Eurofighter may be another Eurofighter).

you're
begging for trouble. China is bent on becoming a superpower

Indeed they are doing so, with an average 8% yearly economic growth
rate.

and also
has it's eye on expansion and intimidation.

The last time China went to war was 1979, against Vietnam.

I think it's unlikely they will start a war any time soon. Why would
they? Time is on their side (their economy is growing faster than
others), and they know it. Far better, from their point of view, not
to fight until they are stronger. By which time (2020 or so), the
Eurofighter will no longer be the latest thing, leading to automatic
air dominance.

Do you think Taiwan has
500 missiles pointed at it for kicks? At some point China will decide
to give it a go.

Maybe, maybe not.

If China did attack Taiwan, it's likely that even if they did win,
both theirs and the Taiwanese economies would be ruined (consider
the result of a Taiwanese air raid on the Three Gorges dam). So in
winning the war, they'd set back their economic development by
decades, making themselves weaker. This would not the the action of
rational people.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 07:22:20 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 19:06:00 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

The EU will exceed the US economically next year (if it hasn't
already).

How can a shrinking economy, with high unemployment (Europe) overtake a
growing economy, with decreasing unemployment (the US)?

Prediction: in 2004 the EU's economy wil grow by more than the USA's
economy.

Evidence ofr that prediction?

75 million people will join the EU in 2004, boosting its GDP by 10%.
Normal economic growth will be maybe 2-3%, for a total of 12-13%.

I doubt that the USA's economy will grow by that much.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 07:19:16 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:36:29 -0800, Tarver Engineering wrote:


Nope: http://www.eurolegal.org/uspoleur.shtml

Doesm't disagree with me. It shows thje EU's GDP as about 10% less
than the USA's, which difference will be made up next year when 10
new countries join.

Not really. The additional countries all have economies that are pretty
much in the basket right now, and adding a bunch of new poor people
won't make much difference,

It'll make about 10% of difference. If you disagree, come up with
exact figures to refute this.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 07:19:16 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:
Furthermore, the euro has been appreciating against the dollar (by
20% this year) so if we count GDP at current exchange rates (the
other way being PPP) the EU may already be ahead.

You should remember that the Euro/Dollar ratio has been manipulated very
hard by some of the European countries,

Actually, European countries don't have the power to control
exchange rates. If you don't agree, ask George Soros or Norman
Lamont, who will no doubt put you right.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 07:22:20 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:


Prediction: in 2004 the EU's economy wil grow by more than the USA's
economy.

Evidence of that prediction?

75 million people will join the EU in 2004, boosting its GDP by 10%.

6% at best. These aren't rich, or even average, countries.

Normal economic growth will be maybe 2-3%, for a total of 12-13%.

Over the last year, the EU economy grew by 0.6%, with no particular
trend to do better over the next year, while the primary "Euro zone"
grew by a whopping 0.3%. In the meantime, the US economy grew about 2%,
in a very bad year, about three times faster than Europe's economy. And
US economic growth has teken off since those numbers came out.

Even if the EU met both of your predictions, they'd pretty much tie the
*current* US economy, and that's not going to happen.

I doubt that the USA's economy will grow by that much.

Current plans are for 3% to 4% over the next year, conservatively. We
had enough growth this *quarter* to allow 2.5% for the year, even with
no growth in the other quarters. If the economy stays at anything like
current rates, we could see 5% year-to-year growth...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 07:19:16 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
ess (phil hunt) wrote:

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:36:29 -0800, Tarver Engineering
wrote:


Nope: http://www.eurolegal.org/uspoleur.shtml

Doesm't disagree with me. It shows thje EU's GDP as about 10% less
than the USA's, which difference will be made up next year when 10
new countries join.

Not really. The additional countries all have economies that are pretty
much in the basket right now, and adding a bunch of new poor people
won't make much difference,

It'll make about 10% of difference. If you disagree, come up with
exact figures to refute this.

Right after you come up with the ones that support it...

....and even if they *did* manage to come up with that 10% extra, they'd
only barely match *this* year's numbers, never mind the growth we're
seeing in the US (that's not happening in the EU, which might see a
massive 0.5% growth instead of your blindingly optimistic 3%).

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.