There is still a difference between 1) selling aircraft to the military services and 2) direct subsidies for purely civilian airliner research and development-or to subsidize direct marketing for global sales, i.e. Airbus "Inc", Ltd/GmbH....
A difference between:
1 Huge amounts of funding through NASA and DoD for 'military' projects which are immediately read across to civil - eg latest core for CFM-56 engine
Buying lots of aircraft at over the odds prices that you don't really need anyway
Not re-engining your B52s or C-5s cos a non-American engine option is so-overwhelmingly better on all counts that it would make it painstakingly obvious that you were buying American solely to fund pratts or GE
or
2 A government loan where they are effectively a risk and revenue sharing partner. If the project fails they get nothing back, if it succeeds they get there money back + more over a long time period...
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/su/loans...endix03-03.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1293073.stm
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TB/00/tb031400.html
The U.K. has published details of its Airbus loan repayments. Of the $369 million (in 2000 dollars) provided to BAE Systems for A320 launch aid, BAE/Airbus has repaid $459.2 million, with a certain amount levied against the delivery of each airplane (even beyond the amount needed to repay the loan). This has given the U.K. government an impressive profit of $126 million on this program.