I was thinking on manufacture. Out goes the lift engine and a some airframe manufacture work. I know we contribute towards the A and C. Just not sure how much me lose if the B is cancelled.
As numbers reduce the chances of a second production line outside the USA are shrinking, and if there is one it is likely to be in Italy, who have increased their order above ours to get it. Even support and maintenance is looking dodgy.
Many of you will have been following the ITAR saga. We wish to be able to maintain and modify our own jets. That means access to source code etc. The promise was that ITAR would be changed and that BAe would do it. It is looking increasingly like it will never happen and contingency work is in hand to look at fallback options. The following is a revealing extract from the latest AWST where Cmdre Henley, the JSF IPT lead, was addressing the defence committee.
"Operational sovreignity is the key", says Henley. "We have defined the capability that we will require in the UK - and maintenance, repair and upgrade is but one of those - and we understande the technologies that will be needed to underpin that capability. We need to have those under sovereign control. They could either be in government or in the hands of US industry under direct contract with us, or they could be in the UK industrial base. We are working with the US goverbment to understand exactly where that will lie".
Henley says the process of "identifying stoppers and finding workarounds" on technology access and support issues is ongoing. He recognises that "we havenīt removed all [of these] to date".
Committee members repeatedly raised the issue of technology access and the UKīs ability to support the aircraft independently. Of these negotiations, Henley says: "We have set ourselves some milestones in the future, points at which we measure that achievement and take a judgement. Right now we are making progress and we have made some progress in the last few months"
He did not elelaborate on the nature of the "judgements", nor what the options were if achievements fell well short of the desired milestones.......
Last edited by ORAC; 4th Nov 2005 at 05:57.