[j1vms]

> "The Air Force had to convince Sony to..."

To be a fly on the wall during that discussion. I'm sure money wasn't an issue for the Air Force, or that Sony had some balls of steel.

[callalex]

Are you implying that the Air Force is in the business of making “offers that cannot be refused” especially to foreign owned companies?

[redis_mlc]

Well, actually yes.

Notice how there's very few military aircraft companies in the USA?

That's because the little fish got a visit from Washington saying, "that was your last contract unless you merge."

Northrop tried to resist, for a while anyway.

Regarding foreign companies, the Avro Arrow was cut up after the US offered Canada a northern missile defense network. The Arrow was an early Mach 2 interceptor - think of the foreign sales possibilities.

Many of the designers ended up at NASA.