ABSTRACT
Technological imperative is the industry's hallmark. Rendered possible by an interactive combination of demand-pull and technology-push innovations, market evolution and technical development have gone hand-in-hand. On the demand side, the industry was compelled to respond to the requirements of military and civil operators. By virtue of the correlation between technological sophistication on the one hand, and fiscal constraints of states on the other, the military market will become increasingly balkanised. At the upper end of the technological scale, the US lead will continue to be challenged by the Soviet Union. For their part, the major European countries will attempt to maintain an indigenous warplane design and production capability which will reside somewhere below that of the USA. The technology transfer inherent in such offsets can only serve to upgrade the capabilities of newly-industrialising countries aircraft industries.
