"I don't know what the notion of Britain building an F35 is all about - if we want an F35 fleet then we'll get one, and all the nonsense about sharing technology will be forgotten as it always has been since the 1950's."
What the technology issue is all about is cock all to do with building the damned things, it's much more to do with supporting them in service.
This isn't a Buccaneer or a Jag, nor even a Tornado. The technology we're seeking would probably be required to conduct Majors, and would certainly be required if you wanted to do a quick and dirty installation of some new piece of kit (ECM, a recce pod, new weapons) to meet a UOR.
And, indeed, to do a normal, slow-time, full-up weapons integration.
And the JSF team's track record in being helpful about integrating UK weapons onto JSF has, thus far, hardly been confidence inspiring. External ASRAAM? Meteor? Internal EPW IV? etc.
We're already looking at an aircraft whose unique selling point is its ability to do 'first day of war' type missions in an LO configuration (all internal weapons carriage) but which cannot carry any of the UK's 'first day of war' weapons internally. We are looking at an aircraft which cannot carry a meaningful loadout of the AD weapons we were aiming to standardise on. At an aircraft which cannot carry ASRAAM except by sacrificing one of its precious internal weapons bays. Because if it were cleared for external ASRAAM and Meteor we might sell such weapons to some JSF customers, taking business away from AIM-9X and AMRAAM.
The US attitude, articulated and repeated ad nauseam by senior LM folk at Singapore was that "This is very advanced technology. The US Government has invested very large amounts of money and will remain the decider of what does and doesn't happen." There seems no appetite to compromise, and no recognition whatsoever that Britain might be 'cut some slack' and treated as being a particularly close ally. The underlying message was clearly that we need to shut up or f*ck off.
JSF is good for BAE, industrially. Building it is no problem with or without technology transfer. They will build the rear end of every JSF built, as long as they can provide best value. But that is entirely unrelated to the UK uptake of aircraft. It's what our £1 Bn Tier One status bought us.