"The purchase gives BAE greater access to Pentagon contracts"
and the Chinese access to the workings of US weapons systems.(i.e thru the weapons ban lift by EU)
We deal with BAE quite a bit where I work. They have a number of US based divisions, which are the divisions we work with most commonly.
Those divisions are based in the US. They hire American employees. The usually work on American defense projects.
The company I work for is a US based company. However we do have a diviaion in England, and we have a sizable division in Canada.
We follow appropriate export regulations when selling products outside the US. We follow appropriate laws on disclosing information, and it's usually the various non-disclosure agreements that are the most restrictive issue when exchanging information.
If the EU lifts the ban on selling weapons to China, then I expect that our government will place some serious limitations on what technology can be exported to the EU.
It's really a losing proposition for the EU, but they're playing political games trying to show their independence.
It makes about as much sense as Canada withdrawl from the balistic missle defense.
However, we're the ones with a viable military, they aren't, so such actions hurt them far worse than they hurt us.
United Defense took a big hit when the Crusader project was cancelled. I'm not surprised to hear that they were purchased.
BAE systems has made it clear that it won't bid to supply weapon systems to the PRC if the EU lifts it's armsban in order to keep it's (sizable) commitment to the US market.