CAB148-30-Defence and Oversea Policy Committee Meetings Relating to 1967 Disturbances-1967 — Page 214

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1.

ANGLO-FRENCH VARIABLE GEOMETRY AIRCRAFT

(Previous Reference: OPD (67) 19th Meeting, Minute 2)

The Committee had before them a memorandum by the Defence Secretary and the Minister of State, Ministry of Technology (OPD(67) 51) on the

implications of the French decision not to participate in the Anglo-French variable/geometry aircraft project; and a memorandum by the Minister of Technology (OPD(67) 53) on the industrial implications.

THE DEFENCE SECRETARY said that, at a meeting which he and the Minister of State, Ministry of Technology had had with M. Messmer, the French Minister

for the Armed Forces, in the previous week, the decision of the French Government not to participate in the joint development with us of a variable

geometry aircraft had been confirmed, The reason given for this decision

had been that France could not afford to undertake a further new major

project in addition to those already in her programme. This appeared to

accord with the facts of the situation and the French were willing to accept

in a communique to be published that day, that the responsibility for not

proceeding with the project lay wholly with them.

We were now presented with a difficult problem. The project had been

stated publicly to be the core of our military aircraft programme. The main combat aircraft design team at the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC)

Warton now had no major project on hand and, unless one was provided, the

team would rapidly disintegrate and with it our capacity to design and

develop high performance combat aircraft. We would then have to rely on

foreign purchases for any combat aircraft that we might need beyond the

F 111 and Phantom; and the purchases that we had arranged of these two

aircraft would not sustain the front line strength of the RAF that had

hitherto been planned beyond the middle 1970s.

We now had three courses open to us; these were to proceed with a

national project for a somewhat simpler aircraft to meet our requirement for

strike, to attempt to secure collaboration with other partners than France

in a joint project or to buy additional F 111K, or possibly some combination of Buccaneer, Jaguar and Phantom aircraft. If we were to develop a

national V/G aircraft the capital cost was estimated at £350 million,

£30 million more than the estimate for the joint aircraft because we would

have to pay the whole cost of development and a slightly higher production cost.

There would however be little risk of escalation in these estimated costs as

the aircraft would be a relatively simple one and methods of project cost

estimating and control had been markedly improved in the recent past. This

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