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."

Comments

Re:About time

[SirGarlon]

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.

Re:Official flight test results (Re:Aircraft facts

[Shinobi]

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.....

Re:Political theater

[Henriok]

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.