versus<\/em> Northrtop Grumman\/EADS, pour embrasser la question plus fondamentale de la base industrielle US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tSieff d\u00e9marre d’un argument favorable au choix fait par l’USAF, selon lequel il ne serait pas mauvais que les Europ\u00e9ens, ces grands alli\u00e9s naturels des USA, aient eux aussi des capacit\u00e9s de production de syst\u00e8mes strat\u00e9giques globaux. Dans ce cadre, pourquoi les USA ne s’y \u00e9quiperaient-ils pas? R\u00e9ponse imm\u00e9diate: pas question…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00ab…at a time when the U.S. manufacturing base has been so heavily eroded in recent decades, first by Japan and the smaller East Asian industrial tigers, and then by China, losing such an important area of continuing U.S. high-tech global supremacy would have grave national repercussions.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAlso, supporters of the KC-45A deal with Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Co. have neglected to note what the effects the gravitational power of $100 billion in added investment and revenues in aerospace will be on the U.S. and European aerospace industries.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbBoeing and its industry teammates may well be forced to lay off scores of thousands of their most valuable engineers, designers and technicians. Once lost, that kind of experience and expertise is almost impossible to reassemble again. And as we have repeatedly noted in previous columns, it is the accumulation of expertise concentrated in tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians and skilled workers that is essential in ensuring efficient completion of ambitious high-tech programs on time and within budget.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbBoeing’s own negative experience with the Future Intelligence Architecture program of next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites demonstrated the dangers of taking such work away from a company in that case Lockheed Martin that had decades of successful institutionalized experience with such systems, and giving it to another corporation that, however impressive and reliable its work was in its own areas of expertise, would have to develop that kind of institutionalized experience from scratch.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn the case of the competing air tankers programs, it is Boeing that has now more than 50 years of successful maintenance and operating experience of such aircraft, and it is EADS that will have to learn these skills from scratch.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbCurrently, the U.S. aerospace industry has only one-seventh of the employees it had a quarter century ago under President Ronald Reagan. By contrast, EADS will receive the resources to hire and train thousands more engineers and technicians. This one decision therefore would threaten to undermine the Bush administration’s long-promised efforts to maintain and expand the traditional U.S. lead in global aerospace and high-tech industries.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tConsid\u00e9r\u00e9e objectivement, du point de vue strat\u00e9gique et des structures de la puissance, et sans appr\u00e9ciation politique fondamentale, l’argument de Martin Sieff a la logique pour lui. Il s’appuie m\u00eame sur des faits concrets solides, comme le constat d’une perte de capacit\u00e9s technologiques de Boeing dans une comp\u00e9tition interne US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tL’argument concerne l’essentiel de la puissance industrielle, le coeur de ce qu’est une base industrielle et une base technologique. Il constitue \u00e9videmment un argument pour un march\u00e9 de d\u00e9fense\/haute technologie auto-suffisant, avec les capacit\u00e9s souveraines de produire tous les syst\u00e8mes essentiels \u00e0 la s\u00e9curit\u00e9 strat\u00e9gique. Il forme la logique m\u00eame d’une fin de non-recevoir de toute id\u00e9e de coop\u00e9ration (transatlantique ou autre), d’une fa\u00e7on sans aucun doute s\u00e9duisante pour nombre de parlementaires US. Sieff parle l\u00e0 du fondement de la puissance des USA, par ailleurs assez diminu\u00e9 dans nombre de domaines pour \u00e9galement envisager de laisser le domaine de la base industrielle s’\u00e9roder encore plus qu’il n’a fait. (Sieff ajoute \u00e9galement l’argument des emplois \u00e0 cr\u00e9er aux USA \u00e0 l’occasion de ce contrat, argument qui va devenir de plus en plus fort \u00e0 mesure que la crise \u00e9conomique va s’amplifier.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tBien entendu, cet argument est, \u00e0 l’inverse, un argument \u00e9vident pour une autonomie europ\u00e9enne en mati\u00e8re industrielle et de d\u00e9fense. Il propose tous les arguments fondamentaux pour un Buy American Act<\/em> renforc\u00e9 et, de l’autre c\u00f4t\u00e9, pour un Buy European Act<\/em> (pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence europ\u00e9enne) \u00e0 cr\u00e9er de toutes pi\u00e8ces en Europe. C’est autour de cette question g\u00e9n\u00e9rale que le d\u00e9bat ouvert par le choix du programme KC-45 va se d\u00e9velopper aux USA. Cela pourrait \u00eatre l’occasion d’une d\u00e9marche similaire en Europe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tS’ils n’ont pas froid aux yeux, ce qui reste encore \u00e0 d\u00e9montrer, les Fran\u00e7ais devraient s’emparer de la question de la pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence europ\u00e9enne durant leur pr\u00e9sidence de l’UE. Ils pourraient ainsi jouer avec deux fers au feu: en faire aussi bien un argument pour une int\u00e9gration industrielle et technologique europ\u00e9enne qu’un moyen de riposte contre les USA si, comme c’est bien probable, le contrat des KC-45 est attaqu\u00e9 et remis en cause \u00e0 Washington. Dans ce genre de situation, il ne faut surtout pas esp\u00e9rer pour entreprendre. Le fait m\u00eame de poser officiellement le probl\u00e8me au moment d’une telle pol\u00e9mique (le programme KC-45) ne peut avoir que de bons r\u00e9sultats puisque cela s\u00e9merait le trouble chez ceux qui veulent prot\u00e9ger le statu quo<\/em> (c’est-\u00e0-dire une coop\u00e9ration transatlantique affirm\u00e9e et jamais r\u00e9alis\u00e9e).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 26 mars 2008 \u00e0 13H40<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
La critique contre le choix (Northrop Grumman et EADS) de l’USAF pour son programme KC-45 se pr\u00e9cise et devient plus sophistiqu\u00e9e. Un exemple de cette \u00e9volution se trouve dans l’analyse de Martin Sieff pour UPI, du 24 mars. L’int\u00e9r\u00eat de cette analyse est qu’elle d\u00e9borde largement la question du programme KC-45, voire de Boeing versus… <\/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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5518,3535,4581,4845,4895,41],"class_list":["post-69786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-base","tag-industrielle","tag-kc-45","tag-sieff","tag-upi","tag-usaf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69786","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=69786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}