The problem with siging up as a partner years ahead of production is things like this happen (see below) production moves to the right...costs skyrocket and capabilties suffer in the meantime.
US media yesterday... paraphrased ..
US to scale back on future fighters
A Pentagon decision ......change in strategic priorities. Rumsfeld trying to transform the military to deal with unconventional threats....
"What does Al Qaeda's air force look like?" said one defense official working on the Pentagon's assessment, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review.
......some inside the Defense Department say that the deepest cuts could come in the Joint Strike Fighter program.....the Pentagon could cut the Air Force's allotment of the planes by half.
Officials involved in the review process say that the option of canceling one or both of the programs is on the table.....
...... Pentagon officials hoped to make some decisions about weapons programs by September or October, as the Defense Department prepared its fiscal year 2007 budget.
The Joint Strike Fighter and the F/A-22 have been plagued by cost overruns and production delays. ..... the Government Accountability Office called the JSF's original business case, laid out by the Pentagon in 1996, "unexecutable."
"When you have difficult budget choices to make, several of the Pentagon's expensive modernization programs become likely targets," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
"The JSF sits at the top of that list."
Food for thought on A6000
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