The French company Eurocopter recently proposed its Cougar Mark 2+ for Portuguese search and rescue. Splendid, cried the Portuguese, presumably on the lines of !magnifico. Malheureusement, said Eurocopter, there is, as yet, no manual for the Cougar Mark 2+. That's all right, said the Portuguese. We'll assess your helicopter anyway.
Ah, said Eurocopter. We haven't actually got a Cougar Mark 2+ available yet for testing, but we do have a Cougar Mark 2. And the Portuguese sighed heavily in Portuguese, and said: Look, you haven't got the manual, and you haven't got the helicopter you're trying to sell us, but you have an old helicopter that you're not trying to sell us, and you want us to fly around in the old one imagining that it's the new one, and pretending to assess one helicopter by flying another. Is that right?
Reconsider
Mais oui, declared the Eurocopter bosses - at which point the Portuguese smiled tightly, made their excuses and left. Eurocopter appealed to the Portuguese Minister for Defence, who ordered the assessment committee to reconsider the Eurocopter proposal. You're the boss, said his committee, and six months later Eurocopter were finally back in the contest. But they were still using the old helicopter, which, though it has a similar name, is a radically different machine from the one they were actually trying to sell.
Basically, the new one's the same as the one for testing, muttered Eurocopter, only better.
It's not the same, snarled the Portuguese. For a start, the 2+ has got a different engine, which doesn't even exist yet.
Here! We've got a model of the engine, cried Eurocopter. Look! Imagine this, only 500 times bigger. Vroom, vroom!
It's not just the engine. The Cougar 2+ has different gears, rotors which haven't flown, a different structure, and look, you've got fuel tanks projecting beneath the winch-door, and that'll mean the winch will have to be stuck out far away from the central axis of the helicopter, and the door won't be vertically accessible, and this in a search and rescue helicopter? Absolutely bloody brilliant. Anything else you want to sell us?
A Citroen Xantia, but we haven't one with us. So would you like to try a 1979 DeuxChevaux, one careful lady owner, clock genuine, suspension needs a bit of work, what do you say to 10 million francs?
Exit one Portuguese committee, scowling. The Portuguese report on the Cougar 2+ is a model of terseness. It runs as follows: Proposal for Eurocopter Cougar 2+: Strengths? Nothing to report. Weaknesses? The helicopter does not exist yet.
Acquisition
Which is why the Portuguese will not be buying the Cougar 2+, though Eurocopter's abysmal performance didn't prevent it from accusing the Portuguese of "incompetence and corruption". The Portuguese are now thinking about suing Eurocopter for delaying their helicopter acquisition programme by a year.
Our own evaluation team has been looking for new helicopters to re-equip the Airs Corps. How, I wonder, did Eurocopter make its presentation? Did it say, Look, sorry, our Cougar 2+ isn't ready yet, but the Big Wheel at Eurodisney will give you a really good idea of how it goes up and down, and we haven't made the engine yet, but Francois here can draw it for you, if m'sieur has a pencil and a bit of paper. . ?
The Air Corps options lie between a Sikorsky S92, which is still being developed and which has no orders yet; the EH 101, which is flying with Canada, Italy, the UK and Japan, which the Portuguese evaluers loved and Lisbon is almost certain to order; and, of course, the Cougar 2+, which isn't flying quite yet, but we have a little Airfix kit here, which with a little tube of glue, comme ca, will give m'sieur an excellent impression of its capabilities - perhaps we can discuss these over foie gras and skylarks' tongues at La Tour D'Argent? And finally, there is the tender from Bond Helicopters to supply and maintain either the untried and untested S92 or a version of the Puma, so tried and tested that it is a flying Amstrad. The Bond offer would sideline and perhaps even kill the Air Corps's proud engineering traditions. Is that really what we want?
At which point, I can sense coming over the horizon the purchasing principles which 20 years ago caused us to buy a hibernicised version of the Dauphine, which turned out to be a Swiss penknife of a helicopter: it could and can do just about everything poorly, and virtually nothing well, though the reception of Lyric FM on its radio is rather good if you land on Lyric FM's roof and stick the chopper's aerial directly into the station transmitter.
Cheap options
The EH 101 is the most expensive option. It is also European, which is relevant only if it is good. As the Portuguese have discovered, it is the best. But what about cost? Well, we've tried cheap options before, and they've always ended in tears. Moreover, for both the S92 and the Cougar 2+, Ireland would almost certainly be the launch customer. In other words, whatever problems they have, we'll be the first to discover them, probably the hard and costly way. On the other hand, the EH 101, already in service across the world, looks set to equip search and rescue operations the length of the Atlantic seaboard of Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Straits of Gibraltar, excluding France. Does not a common European solution to a common European problem make common European sense?