"When it's working it works just fine but, to me, [the May 2014 failure] just sounds like bad workmanship," said Marco Caceres, senior analyst and director of space studies at the Teal Group. "It could be the bolts were poorly manufactured, it might have been corrosion — maybe they didn't screw them on tight enough; who knows?"

"I would be astonished if the French don't deliver both ships," said Joel Johnson, a defense trade consultant with the Teal Group.

An official at the French Embassy in Washington declined to provide comment beyond what Hollande said on Monday.
Bloomberg reports that the construction of the second carrier, called the Sevastopol, is roughly 75 percent complete and paid for.

Russia is buying the ships from France because it's cheaper and faster than having to design one on its own. In the original deal, signed in 2011, the two countries agreed that the first two ships would be built and completed in France, with a third and fourth ship to be built in Russia.

Johnson said France could refuse to provide technical assistance to build the follow-on ships for Russia but that beyond that, France would most likely stick to its original agreement. This is partly because France, like other European countries, can't afford America's idealism when it comes to defense exports.

"There's no European country that can support a defense industry without exports," Johnson said. "It's much more painful for them to cut off exports and antagonize a customer than it is for the United States."

Therefore, compared to the United States, France has a reputation as a "highly dependable arms exporter," Johnson said. France risks hurting that image if it reneges on its Mistral contract with Russia.

"It requires an extensive crew, a dozen men, and they all have to be highly trained," said Steve Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia, and an expert in Russian military technology. "Some of the tasks are less complicated, like more administrative tasks, but difficult training is required either way."

According to Zaloga, it's not as if the pro-separatists just found the launcher and pointed it at the aircraft. First of all, operating the launcher typically requires two or three other other radar vehicles and a supporting command system.

"All of the vehicles have to interact together at the same time, which is why the U.S. government is suspicious about who was helping them use the equipment," Zaloga said.

he powerful Cold War-era Buk missile system was built to protect Soviet army units from attacking aircraft during wartime. Unlike fixed-weapons used for national air defense, a Buk system in the field being used by separatist rebels likely wouldn't have information from air-traffic control centers, said Steve Zaloga, a senior analyst for the Teal Group Corp. in Virginia.

"The Buk system is not designed for peacetime use where it interacts with air traffic control," Zaloga said. "They would have seen a radar blip at 33,000 feet, but that's all they would have seen."

And the RD-180 has its supporters. "There's nothing out there that's better in terms of weight-to-power ratio than the RD-180," said Marco Caceres, an analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group. "I don't know if you can come up with an engine as powerful as the RD-180 in a short time from scratch. "It's really more about developing the least expensive engine that will make the Atlas V much cheaper commercially."