France and Britain will consider sharing Europe's new A400M military transporter as part of closer military ties, but have ruled out common use of aircraft carriers, the countries' defence ministers said on Friday, according to Reuters. French Defence Minister Herve Morin and his British counterpart Liam Fox were discussing military cooperation at a meeting in Paris as the countries both seek defence savings to help rebalance public finances. "When it comes to the procurement of A400M, it makes a great deal of sense when we have budgetary constraints," Fox told reporters. "We can use economies of scale and use the sharing of assets to ensure that we might have a greater pool of assets that we might have were we to act independently." "(The talks) are an ongoing process that we are following the pace of the British, who are in a deep strategic review with serious budget issues," Herve Morin said, adding specific areas being studied included the maintenance and operation of the A400M, a project of planemaker EADS. The A400M, designed to carry soldiers and heavy equipment to combat zones, has run into technical problems in developing turboprop engines that have helped push the 20 billion euro ($25.6 billion) project years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget. "If this was purely a process about getting a better bang for the buck, then it would not have a long-term future," Fox said. "Partnerships will be extremely important and in terms of countries (being) linked to deploy and spend ... for the UK it makes our two major allies the United states and France."
