Leveraging Military Technologies as a Medium Power: Spain, the Eurofighter and FCAS

• Bronk, Justin ^[1]
  1. [1] Royal United Services Institute

     Royal United Services Institute

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: IV Congreso Nacional de i+d en Defensa y Seguridad DESEi+d 2016: Actas, 16, 17 y 18 de noviembre de 2016 / José Serna Serrano (dir. congr.), María del Pilar Sánchez Andrada (dir. congr.), Ignacio Álvarez Rodríguez (dir. congr.), 2016, ISBN 978-84-946021-3-9, págs. 1233-1238
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • As medium powers seek to maintain the ability to defend their interests and project power overseas with ever smaller armed forces and capped or declining budgets, the importance of ensuringaccess to the latest technologies continues to increase. However, even more so than during the arms race of the late Cold War, Europe's medium powers are struggling to afford to buy cutting edge technologies from the US, let alone develop them from scratch. With internal markets so small and export markets increasingly dominated by the US and Russia, European defence industries seem unable to keep pace except in a few niche areas. It is important to examine, therefore, at what pointmedium powers should attempt to buy into the development programmes of other larger powers inorder to minimise costs and risk whilst fielding capabilities as early and as well suited to national requirements as possible. Here, the author will look at this issue through the lens of two aerospace examples; Spanishexperience with the Eurofighter Typhoon project and the potential for wider European involvementin the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project currently being led by BAE Systems in Britain andDassault/Saab in France and Sweden. One represents an example of Spain maintaining top-tierfighter capabilities despite a relatively small R&D budget and order base – but at much higher costand smaller fleet size than intended - through European cooperation, whilst the other representspossibly the last opportunity for Spain to maintain a military aerospace industry of its own, albeitinterdependent with the needs of peer/near peer powers