Carol L. Cook
And, when Europe is unified, its Aerospace Industry is going to gain new impetus. Part of this will come from the gradual trend away from nationalistic rivalries toward a more perceptive and aggressive leadership. France has been advocating this sort of approach for many years, but could not implement it in the multi-national world that has been Western Europe.
Leadership of the new and economically more powerful pan-European Aerospace Industry is almost certainly going to devolve onto French shoulders. Britain, West Germany, and Italy will all play key roles in the fields of technology, finance and marketing, but France alone among the major European powers has displayed the necessary combination of imagination, planning capacity and foresight to provide effective leadership in the world market.
The French have been instrumental in establishing a proto-European Aerospace Industry—The Airbus Industry Consortium—that has demonstrated it can compete technologically with the U.S. The French also showed early on that they had the courage of their convictions in pulling out of NATO to avoid what they considered a too-great and too-long dependence on U.S. technology.
The Chinese are also getting more into the Aerospace Industry. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force of China is pursuing aircraft update projects and the phased development of two new designs in a forced modernization program that is structured to fit government-imposed austerity constraints. The Ministry of Aerospace Industry in China is coordinating a fundamental shift from military to commercial and export-oriented production in its factories throughout China as part of a plan to modernize the China industrial base with Western assistance.
Ten years of political “openness” in China have created a strong environment for Aerospace manufacturing. Chinese factories build more than 20 types of bombers, fighters, trainers, and helicopters. This is a very strong base for the design and production of future aircraft for world markets.
To increase efficiency, safety and aircraft comfort, Chinese design bureaus, factories and sub-system manufacturers are beginning to compete for projects. Joint ventures with foreign companies have helped introduce Western manufacturing equipment, technology and procurement philosophy in China.
Japan is equally becoming strong in the Aerospace market. Japan is set to launch its first spacecraft to the Moon, a mission indicative of both Japan’s interest in future lunar exploration and the maturing of space program capacities in the Pacific Basin. Large Japanese engineering companies have begun to spend millions of dollars of their own funds to develop technology that could be used for a manned lunar base.
The Japanese companies hope these technology efforts will enable them to participate with the U.S. in the development of a manned lunar base early in the 21st Century.
Soviet Ministry of Aviation executives, visiting the U.S. for a university-sponsored management education program, said they are interested in pursuing joint ventures with U.S. Aerospace firms.
It appears that any joint venture between Soviet and U.S. jet engine firms would have to begin on a small scale with cooperative research on a technical problem such as noise reduction. Only after this type of effort would it be possible to consider larger ventures. But, this is a beginning.
Thus, it is becoming perfectly clear that the U.S. cannot just sit back and hold the Aerospace market. The U.S. is going to have to become more competitive itself if it wants to keep the Aerospace Industry as one of its largest, most important industries.