CONFIDENTIAL
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CONFIDENTIAL
1.
ANGLO-FRENCH COLLABORATION: HELICOPTERS
(Previous Reference: OPD(66) 23rd Meeting)
The Committee considered a memorandum by the Secretary of State for
Defence and the Minister of Aviation (OPD(67) 2) about Anglo-French
collaboration on helicopters.
These
THE DEFENCE SECRETARY said that, at the meeting which he and the Minister of Aviation were to have with the French Defence Minister (M. Messner)
in Paris on 16th January, they wished to have authority to reach agreement
with him on the collaborative development and production with France of a
group of three helicopters for use by, and in support of, the Army. were a helicopter (SA 330) which could be transported in Belfast and Hercules aircraft: a light observation helicopter (SA 340) and a utility helicopter (WG 13). Of these, the SA 330 was already under development in France, though we would contribute £3 million to the cost of this, while the cost of
developing the two lighter helicopters would be shared equally, France taking
the lead on the SA 340 and the United Kingdom on the WG 13. The agreement
would contain arrangements for the sharing of production which would take
account of national requirements for each of the helicopters and of assumed
exports. Exports of each helicopter would be shared in proportion to the
contributions of the two countries to development costs.
These arrangements had been devised to minimise any risk of the proposals having an adverse effect on our balance of payments. If, however,
imbalance arose either in workload or in the effects on the balance of
payments, becaused assumed national orders changed or because exports fell
short of expectations, the agreement would provide for compensating adjustments
in work sharing either within the agreement on helicopters themselves or on
other Anglo-French collaborative projects. The main problem in negotiations
would be to safeguard our position against French withdrawal from the WG 13,
which was the latest in time of the three projects and the most important to
us industrially. It would be essential to make clear to the French that
our commitment to the SA 340 would depend on a similar commitment on their
part to the WG 13. Since our prospective order for 600 SA 340 was very
attractive to the French it should be possible to achieve our objective.
The total cost was estimated at £99 million on the Defence budget over ten
years or, if the programme were delayed by a year, at £89 million, which was
close to the provision in the defence forward costings. One particularly welcome feature of the proposed agreement was that it would enable us to
obtain the SA 330, of which we needed 48, cheaply and on a basis of shared
production.
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