I note that sweetman used his usual unnamed source again. "according to senior service and industry officials at the Defense IQ International Fighter Conference here."
and as you pointed out, he was the 'only' person to say the supposed buy of f16 and f15
Is this the same as Gripen being the new USAF trainer, or how the reprogramming labs work?
PS, I guess it's lucky I don't live in Perth then, hey. You need to face it LO, sweetman's a joke.
However what is f35 news and may add to the cost per unit in 2017 is
Budget '17: Pentagon Planning Cuts in Production, R&D
Then on Dec. 2, Kendall warned that "the disproportionate hits on '17 are going to be on modernization. I think that will probably be more on production than R&D."
"The F-35 is not — it is impossible in this budget to entirely protect it, just put it that way," Kendall responded.
"Dollar for dollar, it probably gives us more combat capability than any other investment we're making, but we have a lot of other things that we have to do as well. So it's not entirely fenced. I can't say it's entirely fenced [off from cuts]."
However, he did say programs that make up the nuclear triad — the Ohio-class submarine, Long Range Strike-Bomber and new ICBM designs — would be a "priority" in the budget.
or
http://air.dfns.net/2015/12/07/israe...in-early-2017/
Israel to inactivate one F-16 squadron in early 2017
The Israeli Air Force will inactivate one squadron of F-16 fighters in early 2017 once its F-35s arrived from the United States.