ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the state's involvement in the industry from its inception, that is, the nurturing of aerospace as an 'infant' industry. It considers the state's maintenance of aircraft enterprises on the grounds that they are national assets. The chapter examines the attitude of European states who foster joint aerospace ventures in the name of enhanced competitiveness of their own national aircraft industries. The state's role in nurturing a domestic aircraft industry is as old as the industry itself. An integral part of being a defence contractor in the USA is the guarantee of government support whenever certain circumstances arise; namely, a financial crisis visited upon the organisation in the first place and an indispensable position within the Department of Defense procurement system in the second. Nationalisation has been a gambit of both capitalist and communist states, but its record of continuity has been much more discordant in the liberal democracies.
