The Formidable Ingenuity of the European Aerospace Industry Available to Purchase

IN recent years, the European aerospace industry has become characterised by two forms of activity which, in the major industrial countries anyway, have become largely inter‐dependent. One of these is the increasing participation in international collaborative programmes and the other is a need to maintain what may be called a ‘domestic’ capability in aerospace technology that is not directly associated with any other country. The second form is becoming of less importance in many areas as Western Europe moves more and more towards common requirements and the shared production of complex equipment. An example of this type of agreement is the Panavia multi‐national company set up for production of the multi‐role combat aircraft (MRCA). The existence of NATO has been for many years a powerful factor in the realisation of such programmes.