Originally Posted by
Jabba_TG12
I see what you're saying Melchett, but I'm inclined to think that the capability exists - what doesnt exist is the desire, the vision, the commercial cojones to do it.
Different things, are they not?
Jabba, you may be right - I'm not expert enough on the aerospace industry to know the fine detail. But if we have the know how to produce engines and wings, then full fuselage and the rest shouldn't be a stretch - although our lack of recent experience in end-to-end production would concern me if we are looking to claim an effective capability. My instinct says these days we are better at building submarine 'bombers' rather than FJ 'bombers'.
But, and its a big but - in terms of planning and considering enemy threat we consider both capability and intent. Without one of these factors then we may judge the threat not to be there or at least one to watch rather than worry about. Do you not raise a similar point? Regardless of technical ability, if we have neither the desire nor will to do it, then effectively we don't have an end-to-end aerospace capability.
As I mentioned previously, we could do worse than have a look at France and Sweden who seem to be more capable of building an end-to-end capability than we do with either similar or lower capacity.