Chapter 732: The French are stuck?

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

Firstly, it is slightly different from the "simple metal plate" mentioned earlier, and secondly, this thing is 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 forging process can produce tens of thousands of workpieces, considering that after they applied for a visit, China agreed without hesitation, so Anne reasonably speculated that the thing in front of her should still be related to aviation. right.

"The aircraft fuselage partition... what else could it be?"

Ziegler was almost turned red by this question. After all, he had sworn a few minutes ago that the trial production process would involve just making the simplest workpiece.

As a result, when the blind box was opened, a big guy was taken out.

But Anne didn’t mean anything sarcastic:

"But...this..."

She originally wanted to say that this thing looked different from the airplane partitions she had seen, but she quickly realized it after the initial mental shock:

"Oh...so this should be a fighter jet..."

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

"Yes, the rear fuselage of the fighter jet, and it seems that the size of this aircraft is probably quite small..."

While talking, the host on the stage announced the success of the trial production of product zero of the die forging press, and a wave of cheers and applause burst out from the stands in China.

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

During the equipment development and process testing process, there must be a large number of actual machine tests.

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

Although the EU delegation will certainly not be as excited as the Chinese themselves, the atmosphere has reached this point anyway, so they also applauded, and some even learned to shout in unfamiliar Chinese pronunciation. How many voices.

Anne had never been exposed to military aircraft in her entire career, otherwise she would not have been able to recognize what this thing was just now, so she just clapped along and asked confusedly:

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

Ziegler shook his head:

"Fighters naturally cannot compare in size with mainline airliners. The spanwise size of this workpiece...well, the width. I visually measured it to be about 2.5 meters, which is slightly smaller than the A320. As for the height, the difference is even greater..."

"But on the other hand, passenger aircraft do not need to withstand as much overload as fighter jets during flight, so even if they are 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 airframe now?"

Annie patted it twice before putting down her palm and asked in a low voice.

“No one can say they are competent until the product is certified.”

Ziegler replied:

"However, at least judging from the size and purpose of this workpiece, they definitely have this potential, so after returning this time, I will consider arranging a round of production appraisal. If it can pass, we can start to gradually put part of the fuselage The production of structural parts will be transferred to China.”

Although his judgment just now was a bit wrong, Ziegler is not a hard-tongued person.

Moreover, as a senior leader of Airbus, the Asian assembly center is also beneficial to him.

Having said this, he suddenly turned to look at Anne next to him, and at the same time changed the subject:

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

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

Although the original intention of the former's establishment was to improve the competitiveness of the latter, after so many years of development, it has already generated millions of workers of its own.

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

However, this kind of interest relationship is not monolithic.

If the forces behind these people are from the opposition, they will hope that companies will get rid of all jobs.

For example, the expansion of Airbus's Toulouse factory has caught up with such a thing.

The person in charge of the environmental assessment happens to be an opponent of the Midi-Pyrenees regional assembly, and he is unwilling to deliver results to his political opponents no matter how much money he pays.

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

Annie waved her hands decisively:

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

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

How can he still not understand the virtues of the EU institutions? If he really wants to interfere with it, it will be difficult to restrain it with just a piece of agreement.

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

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

But this kind of thing must not be said in public, so Anne had to explain further:

"Moreover, it's not just about the agreement. Revitalizing the euro is now a top priority for the EU, especially for several countries in the euro zone. The Chinese have a lot of cards in their hands right now, and no one will joke about it."

"It's best..."

Ziegler said and turned his gaze forward again.

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

Sure enough, several staff members soon came up and stated in less fluent French and English that the equipment had been locked and invited members of the EU delegation to visit the production area.

Compared to his colleagues around him, Ziegler had little interest in the majestic machine itself.

After all, the die forging press itself is already a very mature industrial equipment. The overall structure that can be seen at a glance from the outside is actually nothing interesting——

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

The truly valuable part lies in the design details of several core structural components, 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. However, the Russians who built the equipment back then have lost a lot of technical data, so the progress of the transformation has not been optimistic.

As for several other similar types of 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 systems in the design stage and made targeted optimizations.

The reference value is still full.

Unfortunately, the tour itinerary did not include the equipment operation room.

Of course, this is reasonable.

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

Therefore, Ziegler almost went directly to the newly produced bulkhead.

It was only then that he realized that the size he had just estimated was a bit too small.

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

And if only the fuselage frame has a width of 3 meters, then the entire aircraft...

"It should be a heavy fighter, right?"

Just when Ziegler leaned down to see if he could discern any clues, a slightly unfamiliar voice suddenly came out from behind him.

It's French.

He turned around and found that the person who came was a half-lived face that he had a vague impression of but couldn't remember clearly.

But in short, it must be someone from this delegation.

"Well, judging from the size of the fuselage structural parts, 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 fighter jets in their country. From this point of view, it should be used there."

"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 showed an improved version of the second-generation fighter jet. Only three years have passed, and it is almost Produced its own third-generation heavy fighter..."

There was a bit of sourness in the tone of this sentence.

Although the Mirage 2000 can be considered a third-generation aircraft, there is obviously a certain gap between it and its peers in terms of size and development potential.

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

It should be the head of a department at Dassault.

But he couldn't remember exactly which department it was.

"Isn't your Rafale about to enter service soon? When I went to a meeting in March, I heard Dr. Fischeffer say that the first mass production model has begun to be manufactured. Although it is still a bit small, the technical level is definitely higher than ten Isn’t the Su-27 from years ago stronger?”

Daniel Fischeffer, head of Airbus’ combat aviation systems division, is responsible for developing combat-related software control systems for the Rafale fighter jets.

We are old colleagues with Ziegler.

"This was indeed the case before..."

The opponent 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 for Snecma, so the situation is a bit difficult to say..."