Airbus May Scrap Military Plane Project

Airbus announced today that it might scrap their development of the A400M European military airplane due to 'constant drain on resources'.  The $28.8 billion project has been troubled since the beginning, riddled with cost overruns.

An Airbus executive that runs the A400M program said today that the European government partners needed to step up to cover the budget overruns that Airbus is currently burdened with.  This has been a sore spot of Airbus and the European nation partners particularly with Germany and the UK.

I don't know.  The failure of this project could be a huge embarrassment to Airbus, but at the same time, it's all about the money.  If Airbus goes down because of this project, who cares about embarrassment.  Either way, this may be a bluff on the part of Airbus to put some pressure on to get government funding for this project.  Or it may be a genuine threat.

Airbus would have to pay the European governments back $8.2 billion in development funding it's received so far, but if projected costs exceed that amount, it might be worth it to scrap the program.

Again, it could just be a bluff.  Let's see if the EU gives.

In the mean time, the Americans are saying 'I told you so.'  Probably because they told them so.  The US government discouraged this program.  Many think because the US didn't want to lose their air superiority, even to allies.  The US say they wanted funds pumped into NATO technology upgrades.  Who knows, maybe a bit of both.