Roger Cohen asks if Europe matters any more:

At a recent meeting here of the Council for the United States and Italy, a group that brings together influential folk from both sides of the Atlantic, America's often withering view of Europe was as clear as the light on the lagoon. That view may be summarized as follows: a Continent reluctant to spend on defense, offering only "postmodernist" armies useful enough as peacekeepers but next to useless as warriors, given to earnest blah-blah about the pre-eminence of international law, inhabited by a declining and evermore aged citizenry living in overregulated economies that have not shown significant growth for at least five years. Contrast that image with another offered at the meeting: that of an India growing at over 7 percent a year, inhabited by more than 500 million people under the age of 25, busy buying hundreds of advanced aircraft, convinced that armies are still created to fight, churning out English-speaking high-tech graduates by the million each year, and persuaded by Islamic terrorism that its strategic goals and America's are often identical or at least complementary.

So, which of these parts of the world is more worthy of the attention of the United States? Which is a compelling affair: the intensifying and fast-changing relationship with India, or the largely stagnant alliance with Europe that served above all a cold-war strategic challenge now overcome?

That says it all really. Buying advanced aircraft. Because they cannot actually manufacture advanced aircraft with their current technology base.

Buying Russian aircraft I might add.

Hmmm... Turns out they only seem to be buying 50 Su-30MKI. So where are the hundreds of advanced aircraft? Are those the Mig-29s, Jaguars and Mirage 2000s? Those are hardly advanced. Maybe they were advanced... back in the 1980s.

- Israel has to buy their aircraft as well, but no-one is going to suggest they're inferior in battle just because they're not flying planes make in Israel. And as the Chinese have discovered, its very difficult to create a homebased jet industry, even with stolen technology.

- The Indian air force is to buy 126 new war planes and it says that American-built F-16 fighters are among those being considered.

- Indian airlines starred at the Paris Air Show on Tuesday, accounting for over half of the $13 billion of jet deals divided between Boeing and Airbus.

Until the Tornado came along, Germany had not made any advanced aircraft since the late unpleasantness of fifty years ago.

Italy had not made any advanced aircaft at all until the Eurofighter.

Japan only manufactured a handful of the F-2 (formerly FSX).

What a bunch of technological backwaters!

BTW, Tom, Japan is an even better example of the problem than China. Japan has a far better techno-industrial base, has partnered with Boeing and other Western aerospace manufacturers, and even produces rockets and satellites. However, it has yet to produce any kind of viable airliner---turns out that systems engineering and costs combine to make entry very costly. So, even cooperative ventures often don't pan out, in this regard.

Germany wants to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council. On what grounds? India is the world's largest democracy, an emerging technology powerhouse (they have developed their own series of space boosters, missiles, and nuclear weapons) and has a much better claim to permanent membership than yet another stagnant European country. If the UN Charter were being written today, few would seriously consider France for a permanent seat on the UNSC, but they got the pity vote following WWII.

Actually the Italians had a better air industry than you may think. Not at the level of the leading nations (they built their engines under license) but they had the Macchi C205 during WWII:
Photo
Wikipedia entry

So you might say they were more or less at the level the Chinese are now. Maybe better, since the Chinese cannot get a license for their engines and they had more than one design (Fiat also made aircraft using that engine).

Here is a jet powered Fiat G91:
Pictures
Specs

Yes the cost of entry is high. Especially for designing and manufacturing engines. I am sort of suprised the Japanese do not make better civilian aircraft. Heck you would think with the automobile and heavy vehicle (e.g. Komatsu) industry they have they would manufacture decent tanks, but they just license build US M1s. Their whole military seems to consist of license built US weapons.
I mean, even the Koreans seem to at least be able to design and manufacture their own tanks.

gojira:

No, the Japanese Type 90 is actually domestically produced and mostly domestically designed. It has a three-man crew, compared to the 4-man M-1. While it uses the 120mm Rheinmetall gun, so does just about every Western tank design (w/ the exception of the British Chieftain and Challenger). Its suspension and powerpack are different from those of the US M-1 as well.

Conversely, the South Korean Type 88 MBT is widely considered to be a "baby M-1."

As for comparison with the Italians, the point is that in the POST-WWII period, Italy has not designed either airliners nor first-line combat aircraft. (The introduction of the G91 would coincide w/ about the time that the F-100 SuperSabre was coming into service, i.e., sustained supersonic flight.)

To presume that either India or China is technologically backward because they do not produce their own combat aircraft is, simply, wrong. Given the high costs, it may well make more sense to purchase from abroad (and in the case of the Chinese, that also means co-production, as in the case of the Su-27).

Interesting comment about the Type 90. I read, in someplace I cannot remember right now, that it was an M1 clone and I guess I never bothered to look deeper into it. You are correct that it is quite different, even seems to have an autoloader.

As for airliners, heck, those are the hardest of them all. Because of the huge fixed costs. If it was not for Airbus all the competition to Boeing in that segment would have been dead or bought off already (Lockheed, Douglas, De Havilland, etc).

Most of the competition is in the lower end of the segment (regional or private jets).