The US Air Force secretary has called for European defence contractors to get more access to Pentagon contracts to stimulate stiffer competition in the US domestic aerospace industry.
James Roche, who controls a $90bn annual budget, warned that consolidation among US contractors in the 1990s had left Washington over-dependent on a small number of key suppliers in certain sectors. He said the main way to correct this was to encourage overseas manufacturers to compete for defence department spending.
"I have always wanted to have a situation where you take this transatlantic thing seriously," Mr Roche said. "It's the only way we're going to discipline the big airframe makers in the United States."
His comments come amid a scandal around Boeing's $23.5bn leasing deal for a hundred 767 refuelling tankers, where air force officials have been accused of giving the US aerospace group an unfair advantage over European rival EADS, parent of Airbus.
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