The European drone program has been given a green light and has entered contractual phase. Joint endeavor between Airbus, France’s Dassault Aviation and Italy’s Leonardo. Assembly will occur in Manching, Germany

45 comments

  3. Great, now we got our own killer drones. /s

    I’ld love to see who was involved and what investments and “lobbyist contacts” they have.

  6. The message of strategic autonomy comes across loud and clear. It lays the foundation for our own military industrial complex. Both Russia and the US are so out of their league if Europe gets its shit together.

  11. The EU has know-how but I predict a failure. Multi nation projects in the EU usually takes a lot longer and much more expensive than single nation projects. The engineering teams usually fight with each other because of egoistic reasons (Eurofighter-Rafale). The participating countries charge the participating states several times more than what it really cost for corruption.

    The Eurofighter program started almost simultaneously with F-15 program in1971, and entered in service in 2003.

  16. There’s already European companies that sell drones. This isn’t about autonomy, this is about the eu pushing for more control over industry.

  22. I really need to look into how cooperation between countries at rhis level works because it would seem like a clusterfuck.

  27. This probably explains the biggest build up of military might in Europe for 50 years.
    These drones and other new military hardware don’t come cheap.
    The companies that sell this stuff will be getting big orders from governments who have been told off by USA for not spending enough on defense.

  29. Everyone who works for companies that produce these weapons should just quit.

    Imagine a world with just rifles and guns for police/hunters/etc and governments actually spending that saved money on saving the planet.

  31. Does that mean we can start droning people we don’t like in other countries like the USA?

  34. I still don’t understand why the Germans wanted such a heavy lifter… but always seemed to have doubts about arming it.

    Unless the idea was to load it like a mule with external tanks and acquisition pods lol

  35. Looking at the plane, it really doesn’t look that advanced- stealthy. In this time of long range AA -missiles that can cover huge distances, it looks like it is a massive target, only useable against low-tech adversaries.

  42. Hilarious how the anti-death people gets downvoted. Drones should not be used, the US example has been a horrible lesson in extra-judicial murder.

  45. Lol Leonardo… I hope the biggest responsibility they have is printing the little flags… anything else… well.

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