Seeing all this wobbling around by the Eurofighter partners (of what is potentially a very promising weapon) makes me wonder if the Germans wouldn't
have been better off going with the French iso the Italians and Brits, 2 nations that begin a pan European multi billion project that could have been good for
its forces and industry and subsequently also get fully engaged with its
potentially biggest competitor, the JSF, be it only as glorified parts suppliers.
A French-German-Spanish program would've been a lot more effective and
wouldn't have had the problem of having a key partner that is essentially
unreliable because of a conflict of interest.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're just pissing away our ability
to develop,design and produce complete fighter aircraft that can compete with the best out there.
At the same time nobody seems to have a problem with getting completely
dependant of 1 US company that completely monopolizes the market with something that essentially more and more looks like a pipedream that won't meet is initial goals but nevertheless will be hideously expensive.
F35 so far looks like it;
-won't be as stealthy as initially envisioned
-will not carry some of the UK weapons
-has problems all throughout its flight envelope
-won't have its wunderhelmet but an of the shelf alternative instead
-won't have its sourcecode available for its customers
-will be at least 2.5 times as expensive as intitially envisioned
-won't be easy nor cheap to maintain
-will cost at least 40% more expensive to operate per flight hour compared with the F16
-etc..... .
It's easy to be critical about the French but one thing is sure they certainly don't lack vision and healthy ambition ,we should be honest with ourself and admit that they at least try to keep an indigenous fighter production capability alive.