JSF contract
With the JSF contract scheduled to be announced tommorrow, interesting last minute bit of lobbying here.
US jet fighter should be killed or cut--think tank
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - With the Pentagon set to tap a company Friday to build its next-generation fighter jet, an influential U.S. group has concluded the projected $200 billion program should be scaled back sharply -- or killed outright as part of a sweeping military modernization.
At least two of three planned versions of the Joint Strike Fighter should be scrapped, with the possible exception of the one designed to land on aircraft carriers, experts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said in a draft of a report to be published next month.
Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - news) and Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA - news) are competing for the deal that could let the winner dominate worldwide jet fighter construction for the next 50 years.
Analysts at the center, noted for taking the long view on U.S. defense, argued the Air Force in particular would be wrong to stick to plans to buy 1,763 of the aircraft over coming decades -- the lion's share of the projected U.S. order.
"In a future conflict, enemy missile forces numbering in the thousands could hold the in-theater bases, upon which the bulk of U.S. air power relies, at risk for the duration of hostilities,'' said the draft made available to Reuters.
The authors, Robert Martinage and Michael Vickers, cited the advent of combat drones that ultimately could be launched from carriers plus new Lockheed F-16 Block 60 fighters that could fill tactical aviation gaps if the Joint Strike Fighter were scrubbed.
LESSON OF AFGHANISTAN
As in the current U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, "the U.S. military may increasingly be called upon to project power deep inland -- beyond the unrefueled range of the JSF,'' Martinage said in an interview.
The military should reopen the Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC - news) production line and buy 40 more long-range B-2 bombers, while boosting funding for unmanned aircraft such as the General Atomics-built Predator and the Northrop-built Global Hawk, he said.
Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon war planner who is the center's director and an advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said: "If I were king for a day, I'd cancel the land-based version'' and the short take-off and landing model planned for the Marines who, he said, had enough fire support.
But Krepinevich, fresh from serving on a panel that looked at the perceived threat to forward bases, added in a telephone interview that he would speed up plans to put the radar-evading "stealth'' aircraft on Navy carriers. He said he would cut short the Navy's purchase of the Boeing F/A-18 E/F "Super Hornet,'' which is not designed to elude radar.
Krepinevich said he and his colleagues had been busy lately with, "a lot of senators and congressmen who are interested in reforming the military and thinking differently about the future.''
The Air Force and Marine versions of the JSF were a "poster child'' for President Bush's campaign promise to "skip a generation'' of military technology, he said.
Randolph Harrison, a spokesman for Boeing's JSF program, discounted Krepinevich's critique as "think tank's conjecture.'' A Lockheed spokesman, John Kent, said: "Tankers exist for a reason and that's to extend the range of an airplane.''
Currently, the Navy is planning to buy 480 copies of the highly modular, relatively low-cost JSF; the Marine Corps, 609; the British Royal Air Force, 90; and the Royal Navy, 60. Absent any changes, the combined total would be 3,002 to be delivered starting in 2009.
The contract being awarded Friday involves refining the design, building, testing and evaluating it, but does not include orders for actual production models.
The program faces competition for scarce dollars from two other big tactical aircraft -- the Lockheed F-22 "Raptor'' in production for the Air Force and the F/A-18 E/F being produced for the Navy.
STILL IN "WILDERNESS''
"Something's going to have to give, either in timing or in numbers'' on one or all of these programs, said Richard Aboulafia, of Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia, aerospace consultant.
The Joint Strike Fighter is "still very much in the wilderness,'' he said.
But U.S. coalition-building for the war on terrorism appears to have given the JSF an important shot in the arm since Britain, the staunchest U.S. ally, already had committed $2 billion of its own in development funds.
"Right now we are in the business of building coalitions,'' Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, told reporters Oct. 5. "We have to ask ourselves whether and how a decision on the Joint Strike Fighter might affect those coalitions.''
The JSF is also intended as a low-cost replacement for the F-16 in export markets, another reason the program should go ahead, said Stuart McCutchan, publisher of the industry newsletter Defense Mergers & Acquisitions.