WhiteOvies,
Maybe you're right and we have to somehow take a leap of faith and put
our trust into the people working the problem(s).
And also granted, budgets, timeframes, and keeping up initially promised performance parameters seems to be ever more unachievable goals in the defense industry.
However all this is still not an excuse of what is currently happening with the JSF (or for any other platform), it boils down to a systemic fault that exist in the client-supplier relationship that exists between the industry and the client/nations involved.
With the F35 however whe're once more entering new unchartered territories whereby we are now left with 1 supplier who completely monopolized the market combined with ,what is perceived by most ill informed but decision making, politicians that believe that the F35 is the only option if you want to buy a next generation fighter that can do the job for the next 3 decades.
It used to be so that there where always at least 2 or more options if you wanted to buy something as expensive as a fighter platform (F16/F18/M2000/.....) and before the F4 or MIII, the F104, SAAB's Draken, F102/106, etc... .
Now this option has all but gone simply because 20 years ago LM redefined the categorization of fighter platforms whereby surprise, surprise they always had the only highest category available.
Don't mind that the parameters have changed considerably just to jeep their own products in that special league of extraordinary products.
This whole 5th generation folly has to end somewhere, it used to be about
affordability, maintainability, supercruise, netwerklinked, sensorfusion, stealth and superior flight characteristics, no LM product has achieved this and now they just redefine at will.
Our willingness to just follow the Americans no matter what it turns out to be is just borderline retarded.
We are squandering our own fighter building abilities, we are killing healthy competition even within the US market and we are ultimately left with a subpar product that is too costly, has to compromise too much to tailor to all clients needs and will be too dependant on LM's unique knowledge for future upgrades or implementations of non-standard weapons.
If things go over budget and past a preset timeframe wouldn't it be better to spend the money here and at least keep the resulting knowledge?
Just look how you guys stopped developping the Typhoon with 85% of the work done, now you have no AESA, still A2G weapons issues, no TVC on any of the production jets, and apparently still unresolved sensor fusion issues (acc to the Swiss), also the very promising EJ200 has been stopped in its further development tracks, where is the 230 and 270KN version in the latest
production tranches?
ISO biting the bullet and finishing the Typhoon job properly, you now are involved in an even bigger possible quagmire with the F35.
This is not an anti-America rant, I love the US and admire the stuff they can build and don't mind one iota if we buy from them.
However even the communist Soviets understood many years ago that competition leads to better results, with the F35 we've pretty much abandonned this proven road leaving us only the hope that "things will turn out ok eventually"
We're gonna have to put our trust into Lockheed and believe them just for the sake of their beautiful blue eyes (Dutch expression).
[** Another rant succesfully ended **]