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US Spying Costs Boeing Military Jet Deal With Brazil
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report shedding light on one consequence of increasing knowledge of the extent of U.S. government spying: "Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal. ... The timing of the announcement, after more than a decade of off-and-on negotiations, appeared to catch the companies involved by surprise. Even Juniti Saito, Brazil's top air force commander, said on Wednesday that he only heard of the decision a day earlier in a meeting with President Dilma Rousseff. Until earlier this year, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet had been considered the front runner. But revelations of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency in Brazil, including personal communication by Rousseff, led Brazil to believe it could not trust a U.S. company."
At this point, I think it's inevitable that spying will be a central issue in the 2016 Presidential election, and neither party will dare to defend the status quo. Corporate campaign donors are starting to see the economic implications, and they'll be raising a hell of a fuss by the time two more years have gone by.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
... and easier to maintain as well. The Saab Gripen is an awesome aircraft and a good choice. On the other hand the Gripens do still have lots of US parts in them so it's not as if US companies don't stand to gain, they'll just gain less. Theoretically the USA can even veto the sale because of the US parts in the Gripen if they want to be really petty about this and piss the Brazilians off even more. The most delicious part of this development (from the point of view of Airbus, EADS, Sukhoi, Dassault et al) is that Boeing, a long time beneficiary of US government sponsored industrial espionage, has been hosted by it's own petard for a change.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If that is their worry, then buying any NATO countries produce would not help them. AFAIK The SAAB Gripens use American engines, avionics and components. Apart from the airframe and the final country of assembly (and some local parts), they are not really making much a difference as far trust of the hardware goes.
If that was the real worry, then you'd have to buy someone elses (probably Russian), but they went out of the race a while ago.
Fun detail: our large intercity older roads are actually not that straight for most part, as they are intended to be repairable after B-52/TU-95 does a carpet bombing run. Large roads tend to slightly curve back and forth, so carpet bombing from a bomber flying in a straight line would miss most of its load. This makes road repairs much easier.
Side roads on the other hand are often designed to be functional as small air strips, so they are straight.
they have source to the avionics, the radar etc.
it is normal procedure to buy it so that you as the buyer have the source, at least finland does even for the hornets(the smaller non-super) and there has been domestic modifications to the fw. certainly the swedes do for the components they buy from usa and code sharing has been a part of their negotiation tactics.
and last time I checked, Sweden wasn't a NATO country and has no intention of being one either. norway is and that's how norway was pressured into buying f35's and not gripens(the leaked cables reveal all about it)... the 3rd country in the race was france and they are a nato country.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
SAAB has made many concessions over the transfer of technology. I wonder how it will work out. Plus they propose to "make" them in Brazil. I wonder how much it will cost them since embraer has to outsource the assembly of many of their planes in Europe to be cost efficient.
The Gripen has many parts which are originated from the USA. The volvo engine used by current Gripens is a modified general electrics one. No small part of their electronics is American too. Besides, the Gripen NG now exists only on paper. It has short range and carry little ordinance. Best contender wasn't the F18 but the Dassault Rafale. Except in the US press of course. The French were ready to make a technology tranfer the americans would have never accepted, with good reasons. The Brazilians and the French already cooperate closely on Brazil's future nuclear submarines and that was supposed to seal a military alliance between the two countries. Sarkozy had even agreed to buy some Brazilian tranports France doesn't need to sweeten the deal.
And everyone who is even slightly interested in defense matters know the everyone which has the means spy on everyone. The Brazilian military knew this like the others Snowden or no Snowden.
The ones who rage and are really surprised now are the French, no the US.
Ah yes, that report, written by Dassault themselves, even in the face of Gripen curbstomping Rafale in red flag excercises, and Gripen proving that it was better at strike missions in Libya.
Basically, Dassault has such a foothold in the Swiss Air Force that they can write the requirements and testing specs to favour Dassault. It's like trying to sell Gripen or Typhoon to the US or Russian Air Forces.....
The fact that the military didn't even know about this snap-decision
The decision might seem sudden but Brasil have already chose Gripen in several occasions during the last 10 years. Those decisions have been interrupted by sudden economic downturn, and corruption, political instability and other stuff. Gripen seems to have been favored by the Brasilian military and Industry all these years though, and since all competitors are eliminated du to various reasons (technical, political, corruption, cost), there was no reason not to take the decision now.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
This might change some of Boeing's thinking with regard to relocating their commercial operations. Back when I worked there (before McDonald Douglas took over), Boeing Commercial Aircraft was largely a stand alone enterprise. In fact, there was some talk about spinning off the military and aerospace divisions. That changed after the merger and some of the recent reorganizations have combined commercial and military aircraft engineering groups.
But if the rest of the world perceives Boeing as being a tool of the USA's political/military complex, they might want to reconsider tainting their successful commercial jet business with that reputation. The F/A-18 deal is lost. But the company will really be up a creek if they start losing commercial sales as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
The official mission was recon, but their RoE didn't preclude strikes, if there was a pressing need.
2 times, 39's simultaneously engaged and destroyed multiple ground targets, and at least 3 other times they provided the target data to Rafale's(Too bad 39's have to run with reduced datalink capacity to interface with NATO planes, including the Rafale)
As for Dassault involvement, they are issuing bearer bonds to Swiss politicians, Dassault "consultants" are working as personal advisors to at least 3 defense ministry officials, and are also suspects in the brewing indian bribery scandal regarding the Rafale procurement. Keep in mind, SAAB and the Swedish government have sidestepped BAE for the Swiss procurement, because BAE is too corrupt, and Dassault has an operational record just as dirty as that of BAE, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, with the belgian scandal being just one of them.
When general Gygax made a revised statement of operational capacity after 2010, when Gripen NG showed off the planned abilities, there was an immediate lobbying blitz and further bearer bonds thrown in the direction of parliament and defense ministry.
In fact, Dassault are still pushing the 2006-2008 evaluations to the swiss parliament, completely ignoring the post-2010 evaluations. They even willfully broke the rules of the tender by attempting to renegotiate after the bidding timeframe was closed.