{"id":67153,"date":"2006-01-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/01\/05\/la-pressante-lettre-de-tony-blair-au-pere-noel-a-propos-du-jsf\/"},"modified":"2006-01-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-05T00:00:00","slug":"la-pressante-lettre-de-tony-blair-au-pere-noel-a-propos-du-jsf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/01\/05\/la-pressante-lettre-de-tony-blair-au-pere-noel-a-propos-du-jsf\/","title":{"rendered":"La pressante lettre de Tony Blair au P\u00e8re No\u00ebl (\u00e0 propos du JSF)<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

La pressante lettre de Tony Blair au P\u00e8re No\u00ebl (\u00e0 propos du JSF)<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

\t5 janvier 2006 Le sujet dont tout le monde parle dans les milieux qui comptent dans ces mati\u00e8res, c’est bien s\u00fbr le Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Ce n’est plus le sujet qui f\u00e2che, c’est le sujet qui panique. Quand on saucissonne le probl\u00e8me, c’est pire encore ; comme, par exemple, lorsque les Britanniques d\u00e9couvrent que les Am\u00e9ricains pourraient bien envisager d’abandonner le deuxi\u00e8me moteur pour le JSF \u00e0 d\u00e9collage court\/vertical (au d\u00e9part, deux moteurs pr\u00e9vus pour la saine \u00e9mulation de la concurrence) ; ce serait bien s\u00fbr celui de Rolls qu’on laissera tomber, \u00e0 l’avantage de l’Am\u00e9ricain Pratt & Whitney.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe 31 d\u00e9cembre, le Financial Times<\/em> nous informait de ceci : \u00ab The next 12 months will also be crucial for the Joint Strike Fighter in the US, the world’s most expensive weapons project. Gareth Evans, defence and aerospace consultant at AT Kearney, says: All our main companies have a big stake and they will be looking to see what the partnership aspects will be. Rolls-Royce is already fearing the worst after well-placed Washington insiders said the Pentagon was planning to kill plans for a second JSF engine, which would have been developed by GE and Rolls-Royce. The British engine maker is developing a jump’ system for the aircraft that will allow it to land vertically, but losing out on the engine work would be a huge disappointment for its defence business.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLa chose, telle qu’elle s’annonce, est si am\u00e8re que Tony Blair a pris sa plume la plus pressante et qu’il a \u00e9crit \u00e0 GW Bush. Cela donne ceci, selon nos sources int\u00e9rieures :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab British Prime Minister Tony Blair has written to U.S. President George W. Bush to try to save a multibillion-dollar contract to develop an engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon’s costliest warplane program, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. A letter went from the prime minister to the president shortly before Christmas, said a person who asked not to be identified because of the matter’s sensitivity. At issue is a Pentagon plan, reported last week but in the works for more than a month, to kill a $2.4 billion General Electric Co.-Rolls-Royce Plc contract to develop an alternate turbofan engine for the fighter. Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies Corp. unit, is building the engine that will go in the first F-35s, a family of single-engine, radar-evading aircraft being built by Lockheed Martin Corp. Proponents of an alternate engine have cited potential savings through competition. But developing a second engine has boosted development costs, something the Pentagon is under pressure to pare. If upheld by the White House and Congress in budget wrangling, canceling the project could mean tens of billions of dollars in extra sales over decades for Pratt & Whitney. Saving the alternate engine program was the purpose of (Blair’s) letter, another person familiar the matter said. Rolls-Royce described the alternate engine program in a statement as an important collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom but declined to comment on the Pentagon’s cancellation plan. The White House did not return a phone call seeking comment. Britain has committed at least $2 billion to co-development of the F-35, the most of any of the project’s eight foreign partners. GE and Rolls-Royce, one of Britain’s premier brands, won the $2.4 billion development contract in July. It is due to run through September 2013. The F-135 co-development partners include Britain, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe probl\u00e8me de cette question des moteurs est qu’elle est divis\u00e9e entre plusieurs autorit\u00e9s. Le moteur Rolls ne concerne que la version ADAC\/V du Marine Corps (et des Britanniques). Les autres services impliqu\u00e9s, qui sont terriblement serr\u00e9s au niveau budg\u00e9taire, cherchent \u00e0 faire des \u00e9conomies dans tous les sens. D’ores et d\u00e9j\u00e0, l’U.S. Navy aurait retir\u00e9 sa participation. L’USAF pourrait suivre. De telles conditions rendent tr\u00e8s difficile de maintenir la coh\u00e9sion n\u00e9cessaire au soutien du deuxi\u00e8me moteur. Les Britanniques ne sont pas g\u00e2t\u00e9s.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tL’ann\u00e9e du JSF commence sur les chapeaux de roues, post-combustion allum\u00e9e, avec encore plus de sujets d’inqui\u00e9tude que nous-m\u00eames n’en pr\u00e9voyions<\/a>. Les Britanniques sont aux premi\u00e8res loges. Ils sont les interlocuteurs directs et quasiment exclusifs de la crise des relations transatlantiques que va devenir le programme JSF.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tComme les autres coop\u00e9rants, les Britanniques sont requis de signer leur engagement de commande du JSF d’ici la fin de l’ann\u00e9e. Ils veulent absolument ce qu’ils nomment la souverainet\u00e9 op\u00e9rationnelle, c’est-\u00e0-dire un transfert de contr\u00f4le de la maintenance, de la logistique et de l’\u00e9ventuelle modernisation de l’appareil. Les Am\u00e9ricains refusent net. Des n\u00e9gociations ont eu lieu \u00e0 Washington en d\u00e9cembre, entre BAE et le MoD d’une part, les Am\u00e9ricains d’autre part. Elles se sont sold\u00e9es par un \u00e9chec complet. Encore s’agit-il d’une n\u00e9gociation sur un principe, alors que les difficult\u00e9s surgissent de toutes parts, comme on le voit avec cette question du moteur.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl se confirme chaque jour davantage que le programme JSF est un programme tentaculaire qui devient un pi\u00e8ge tentaculaire. La multiplicit\u00e9 et l’universalit\u00e9 du JSF paraissaient sa plus fondamentale vertu lorsque la seule appr\u00e9ciation qu’on en avait reposait sur les illusions qu’on entretenait \u00e0 son sujet, et sur la vision virtualiste qu’on en avait. Depuis qu’on est entr\u00e9 dans la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 de ce programme, cette multiplicit\u00e9 et cette universalit\u00e9 n’ont pour effet que de multiplier et d’universaliser les difficult\u00e9s. Aucun pays est enfonc\u00e9 plus profond dans ce pi\u00e8ge que le Royaume-Uni, qui est arriv\u00e9 dans une zone de rupture avec son exigence de souverainet\u00e9 op\u00e9rationnelle, exigence sine qua non<\/em> que, d’une fa\u00e7on cette fois assez ing\u00e9nue, les Am\u00e9ricains peuvent difficilement rencontrer. C’est sans doute le comble du programme JSF que de mettre les Britanniques, ma\u00eetres de la diplomatie, des engagements habiles (pour eux) et des compromis triomphants (toujours pour eux) dans une situation de rupture o\u00f9 ils seraient accul\u00e9s \u00e0 des d\u00e9cisions radicales hors de tout compromis possible. C’est peut-\u00eatre Robert North<\/a> qui a envisag\u00e9 le sc\u00e9nario le plus acceptable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La pressante lettre de Tony Blair au P\u00e8re No\u00ebl (\u00e0 propos du JSF) 5 janvier 2006 Le sujet dont tout le monde parle dans les milieux qui comptent dans ces mati\u00e8res, c’est bien s\u00fbr le Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Ce n’est plus le sujet qui f\u00e2che, c’est le sujet qui panique. Quand on saucissonne le… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3845,705,250,3825,4963,4962,4764],"class_list":["post-67153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-article","tag-blair","tag-jsf","tag-north","tag-pratt","tag-rolls","tag-whitney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}