It's been a long time since I have lost ALL credibility. Hoorah (and how cute).
The world has changed since the UK went into the JSF project. The sovereign state has nor become part of the EU bloc.
We have seen over recent years that there is more of a drive to Euro projects (Typhoon, Tornado, Jaguar, Merlin, A400) than US - and then it's the things we needed but couldn't do (Chinook, Herk, Phantom, Sentry).
As the sole Tier 1 mate, in at $1Bn as opposed to Italy's measly $800M (figures from jsf.com) then 'our' access to the F35 will / should be more privileged than anyone else's' save the US. (A few extra Hundred Millions from Turkey, Denmark & Norway too).
Now if BAE Systems take the learning and reverse engineer it for evolution into the next new euro-stealth alongside Panavia / Sepecat / Eurofighter / EADS then the commercially sensitive innovations will leak away to the nasty foreigners - and hence a strengthening of the NoForn.
At the point at which my credibility evaporated I said that the 'special' in 'special relationship' was not there...and that is because we now have a more special relationship with the EU.
A singular EU defence / offence framework will see a NATO-Light and the associated drive to interoperability - so maybe we have been forced towards a TTFN position for procurement.
Maybe I read it incorrectly...maybe not.
Last edited by Finnpog; 27th Nov 2009 at 20:18.