ABSTRACT
The effective end of the UK’s independent aircraft projects in the mid-1960s left British officials searching for collaboration partners. This task was largely delegated to the Plowden Committee, which is the main focus of this chapter. The British were intensely conflicted about the direction that international collaboration might take. The minutes of Plowden Committee meetings reveal a preference for France as a partner. Several influential officials, however, pressed instead for the “American option”, mainly because of the sheer size of the US military market. The Committee’s concluding report essentially designated any ambition towards an independent European policy as little more than a bargaining chip to be used in UK–US negotiations. It is thus little surprise that, despite the Committee’s recommendations, the British aircraft industry thereafter initiated enhanced Anglo–American and, to a lesser degree, Anglo–German collaboration. French ambitions towards a genuinely independent European defence industrial sector were increasingly marginalised.
