It’s bad enough that Israel is selling weapons to China. But France? Quel horreur!
“A French company plans to display a tactical drone armed with advanced Israeli air-to-ground missiles at the 2005 Paris Air Show, in a bid to make France a leader in unmanned combat aircraft,” Defense News reports.
The Sperwer B, designed for battlefield reconnaissance, has been fitted with two Spike long-range, precision-strike missiles…
Israeli government-owned Rafael Armament Development Authority makes the Spike ER (extended range) guided weapon. The missile carries an advanced electro-optic system with a combined daytime camera and infrared seeker and fiber-optic data link. The 33-kilogram Spike ER is designed for precision strikes against small, moving ground targets at ranges of up to eight kilometers…
The Franco-Israeli cooperation on the drone marks a political turn for Paris, Jean-Paul Hbert, of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences Sociales, said. France sold Israel Dassault Mirage fighters used with devastating effect in the 1967 Six-Day War, but has not sold much military equipment to Israel since then.
France, already pushing ahead on several killer drone projects, isn’t the only European country developing armed robots to roam the skies. According to Aviation Week, England’s BAE Systems is working on a “classified low-radar-observable UCAV [unmanned combat aerial vehicle] project, dubbed Nightjar, for the British Defense Ministry.”
The program, suggest industry sources, has a twofold purpose. The first is to ensure the technology base for the development of a low-observable UCAV; the second is to provide leverage should the U.K. decide to participate in any comparable U.S. effort…
Earlier this year the British Defense Ministry joined the Pentagon’s Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program. Work from Nightjar will inevitably inform the U.K. participation. While the ministry remains publicly noncommittal as to whether it will pursue a European or a U.S. path… all indications are that U.S. route is far more likely.
The joint work will conclude with “live and virtual manned and unmanned assets from both nations operating in a networked coalition warfare scenario.” It’s possible that a Nightjar UCAV could take part in [U.S. drone test flights] in 2009.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Good Afternoon Mr. Shachtman,
It appears that the U.S. has given up another technological advantage we once had. With IBM now shifting it’s chip development to the Communists China’s PLA via a business deal approved by the Bush Commerance Dept. what’s next?
The day is not to far off when the largest American Defense Contractor will be China.
The rest of the world, read the bad guys are not dumb and it appears they have mastered “Networkcentric Warfare” before we have.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“Stewart’s Platoon”
Not to say that the Bush administration isn’t making horrible decisions, the scope of which we will only realize decades from now but, IBM kept its processor development division, selling off the notebook computer arm.
Good Afternoon G.,
I’m not to sure about that. Lenovo was insisting on all of IBM’s microcomputer business including its chip development. The plant in South Carolina where IBM developed and made the Power Chip had to be part of the deal or Lenovo was out. The Commerance Dept. rubber stamped the deal.
I don’t think Steve Jobs would have abruptly switched from the IBM Power Chip and into the laps of Intel and Microsoft if he didn’t think that he was going to have to learn to say McIntosh in Chinese.
The fact that Levono is nothing but a PO Box for Legend which is owned and operated by the PLO shouldn’t make Americans sleep well at night. The Chinese are in a full court press to buy, borrow or steal any technology that can be militarized.
The new generation of short range missiles of the Second Artt’y Corps. that are aimed at Tiawan is an indication of how the Chinese are using foreign technology.
IBM has a history of selling and licencing it’s technology to the highest bidder. Example is the tabulator during WWII. IBM leased the machines to the Germans to track the Jrws form their homes (census 1940) to the death camps (train scheduals, extermination lists etc.) IBM even had the balls after the war to bill the allies for damaged machines and put in for royalities on the cards the Germans used.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“Stewart’s Platoon”
I felt that I had to respond to this reactionist drivil..
“The French remember 1939 when the Americans sat back on there islationist backsides and let Hitler over run their country. You be the judge of who is right.”
Your wrong. BTW France fell in 1940, not 39.
THE US did not fail France when the lowcountries & France was overrun. France failed France when they did NOTHING during the “phoney war” period.
When firm action might have made the Reich(That was at the time Leary of a war with France) realise some possible consiquences to their aggresive actions.
The US was reluctant to get involved in the late 30′s early 40 because A) Europeans’ failure to repay their war debts,(helped the US retreated into isolationism.) & B) The U.S. had severely impaired its ability to act against aggression by passing a neutrality law that prohibited material assistance to all parties in foreign conflicts.
The US did not have an army that was capable of leading an overseas campaine intill 1943, muchless 1940. They did not even have enought equipment to train a modern(mobile)army, much less enought go to war with.
If you’ll look at some actual history. For instance the main Frence heavy tank at the begining of the war was FAR superior to the Panzer 2′s & 3′s, that the Germans were using. There are accounts of the 20mil cannons that the German were using NOT able to acheave a kill even from the sides at closer range.
If the French had actually LEARNED anything from the formalative tank doctrin at the end of WWI they would have Massed their tanks & made good use of em, instead they were used as isolated support tanks, that were easily cut off & captured or destroyed..
I’d say it was more a failure in Frence motivation & in mobile doctrin that lead to the fall of France. Than US failure to keep them out of France. What was the US suppost to keep them out with, Harsh language?
You ought to try the axis forum on the web for some more HARD facts. Stats & numbers will defeat
B.S. any day of the week.
BTW back on topic. LOL. I was leary when I has heard that the Chinese had bought the rights to produce the IBM 386 line of chips.. (This is at the same time that I was hearing that NASA was having to scrounge for old retired computers to get the discontinued 386chips that they needed to keep the diagnostic test gear for the Space Shuttle running.
What a wonderful world.
BKB
Israel’s “Spike-ER” missile is a very good, and cheap, anti-armor weapon. It’s also lighter than other options, which makes it very good for drones.
The Sperwer, on the other hand, has been trashcanned by Denmark, and Canada is also looking to phase them out.
Really, what we have here is a less capable Predator alternative.