Chapter 732 Are the French Being Strangled?

Not only Bernard Ziegler, who had just looked confident, but also Anne, who was sitting next to him and just watching the fun, was stunned after seeing such a thing.

First, it was slightly different from the "simple metal plate" mentioned by the former, and second, this thing was not close to any workpiece in her cognitive range.

"Dr. Ziegler, what is this?"

She turned her head and hesitated for a moment, but finally asked.

Although the number of workpieces that can be produced by forging technology is tens of thousands, considering that the Chinese side agreed almost without hesitation after they applied for a visit, Anne reasonably speculated that the thing in front of her should still be related to aviation.

"Aircraft fuselage bulkhead... what else can it be?"

Ziegler was almost blushing because of this question. After all, he was still vowing a few minutes ago that the trial production process would definitely make a simplest workpiece at random.

As a result, when the blind box was opened, someone took out a big thing.

But Annie didn't mean to mock:

"But... this..."

She wanted to say that this thing looked different from the airplane bulkheads she had seen, but after the initial mental shock, she quickly reacted:

"Oh... so this should be from a fighter plane..."

Ziegler nodded, his eyes still fixed on the forging press and the workpiece that had been hoisted in the air:

"Yes, it's from the rear fuselage of a fighter plane, and it looks like the size of this plane is probably not small..."

While speaking, the host on the stage had announced the successful trial production of the die forging press product zero, and a tsunami of cheers and applause suddenly rose from the stands in China.

Of course, strictly speaking, this is not actually the first workpiece produced by the die forging press.

In the process of equipment development and process testing, there must be a lot of actual machine tests.

However, the semi-finished products or test products produced in those steps cannot be counted as "products" and will not have official production serial numbers.

Although the EU delegation was certainly not as excited as the Chinese themselves, the atmosphere was already there, so they also applauded, and some even shouted a few times in Chinese pronunciations that they were not familiar with.

Anne had never come into contact with military aircraft in her entire career, otherwise she would not have been unable to recognize what this thing was just now. Therefore, she just followed the applause and asked in a daze:

"But... it looks like there is still a big gap compared to the size of A320 and A330, right?"

Ziegler shook his head:

"Fighters naturally cannot be compared with mainline passenger aircraft in size. The spanwise size of this workpiece... uh, that is, the width, I estimate it to be about 2.5 meters, slightly smaller than the A320, and the height is even worse..."

"But on the other hand, passenger aircraft do not need to withstand the same large overload as fighter jets during flight, so even if the size is smaller, the structural strength of fighter jets may not be lower than that of small and medium-sized passenger aircraft..."

"In other words, do they really have the ability to produce large parts of the A320 fuselage now?"

Annie clapped twice and then put down her palm and asked in a low voice.

"No one can say they have the ability before the product is certified."

Ziegler replied:

"However, at least from the size and purpose of this workpiece, they definitely have the potential, so after I go back this time, I will consider arranging a round of production appraisal. If it passes, we can gradually transfer some of the fuselage structural parts to China for production."

Although there was a mistake in the judgment just now, Ziegler is not a stubborn person.

Besides, as a senior leader of Airbus, the Asian assembly center is also good for him.

At this point, he suddenly turned his head to look at Anne next to him, and changed the subject:

"Mrs. Colombo, you JAA cannot set up additional policy barriers in this regard."

In terms of industrial transfer, the interests of JAA as an industrial management agency and Airbus Group as an enterprise are not completely consistent.

Although the original intention of the former was to improve the competitiveness of the latter, it has already derived its own million-dollar workers after so many years of development.

For example, many senior executives of JAA have party backgrounds in several major European countries, and naturally hope to keep the aviation industry within their own scope.

However, this kind of interest is not monolithic.

If the forces behind these people are in the opposition, they will hope that the company will take away all the jobs.

For example, the expansion of Airbus's Toulouse plant happened to be such a thing.

The person in charge of the environmental assessment happened to be an opposition in the Midi-Pyrénées Regional Council, and no matter how much money was given, he was unwilling to give performance to his political opponents.

Otherwise, Airbus would not be so active in the matter of the Asian assembly center.

Anne waved her hand decisively:

"Don't worry, we have signed an agreement before to provide policy convenience for the final assembly project in China."

But obviously, such words alone cannot gain Ziegler's trust.

How can he not know what kind of morals the EU institutions are? If they really want to interfere, it may be difficult to restrain them with just an agreement.

Seeing the other party looking at her with a suspicious look, Anne also knew that her organization was not very trustworthy.

In fact, the reason why she was sent here to connect with this package of projects was largely because she and her husband were highly bound to the interests of China, so they would be more attentive to the work.

However, such things must not be said in public, so Anne had to explain further:

"Moreover, it's not just an agreement. Revitalizing the euro is now the top priority of the European Union, especially several countries in the eurozone. The Chinese now have a lot of cards in their hands, and no one will joke about this matter."

"It's better to be like this..."

Ziegler said and turned his eyes to the front again.

The workpiece has been placed on a special bracket at this time, and it looks like it is ready for visitors.

Sure enough, several staff members came up soon and said in not-so-fluent French and English that the equipment had been locked and invited the EU delegation members to visit the production area.

Compared with his peers, Ziegler had little interest in the majestic machine itself.

After all, the die forging press itself is already a very mature industrial equipment, and the overall structure that can be seen from the outside is actually nothing to look at -

There are only a few types in total, and even a lot of information is completely public.

The really valuable part lies in the design details of several core structural parts, as well as the algorithms and operating logic of the corresponding industrial control system.

Especially the latter.

At present, the forging press in France is also in urgent need of CNC transformation, but the Russians who built the equipment have lost a lot of technical information, resulting in a not very optimistic progress in the transformation.

As for the other similar equipment in the world, they are all antiques that were put into use thirty or forty years ago.

Only the Huaxia machine may have considered the application of CNC system in the design stage and made targeted optimization.

The reference value is still full.

It's a pity that the tour schedule does not include the equipment operation room.

Of course, this is reasonable.

After all, letting outsiders visit this kind of equipment is mainly to demonstrate capabilities, or to show off, and no one would be stupid enough to reveal their own special skills.

Therefore, Ziegler almost went straight to the side of the newly produced bulkhead.

It was not until this time that he realized that the size he had just estimated was a bit small.

The width is not 2.5 meters, but more than 3 meters.

And if only the fuselage bulkhead has a width of 3 meters, then the whole aircraft...

"It should be a heavy fighter, right?"

Just as Ziegler leaned over to see if he could see some clues, a slightly unfamiliar voice suddenly came out from behind him.

It was French.

He turned around and found that the person who came was a half-familiar face that he had some impression of but could not remember clearly.

But in any case, it must be someone in this delegation.

"Well, judging from the size of the fuselage structure, the aircraft itself must be the size of an F15 or Su-27."

Ziegler nodded, and then turned his attention back to the workpiece:

"I remember that China should have signed a contract with the Russians to produce Su-27 fighters in their country. So it seems that it should be used on it."

"Speaking of which, the Chinese air force equipment has been updated very quickly in recent years. I remember that when they held an air show the year before last, they only took out an improved version of the second-generation fighter. Only three years have passed, and they are about to produce their own third-generation heavy fighter..."

The tone of this sentence revealed a bit of sourness.

Although the Mirage 2000 is also considered a third-generation aircraft, it is obviously far behind its peers in terms of size and development potential.

This also reminded Ziegler of the other party's identity.

He should be the head of a department of Dassault.

But he can't remember which department it is.

"Isn't your Rafale going to be in service soon? When I went to a meeting in March, I heard from Dr. Fischever that the first mass-produced model has begun to be manufactured. Although it is still a little small, the technical level is definitely better than the Su-27 ten years ago, right?"

Daniel Fischever, head of Airbus's combat aviation systems department, is responsible for developing combat-related software control systems for the Rafale fighter.

He is an old colleague of Ziegler.

"It was true before..."

The other party took two steps forward and stood side by side with Ziegler:

"But at the beginning of this month, General Electric suddenly withdrew its technical support to Snecma, so the situation is a bit uncertain..."