A1Bill,
As you decline to answer my points, let me make a comment on your "summary" and compare just your first three quoted paragraphs with the original. For some reason you have moved things around and ommitted parts of the discussion and in so doing changed the context of the discussion in a way that makes it appear that the statements that were made were accepted as you have represented them.
I have used bold on the bits you edited out.
I have marked in red a paragraph that is from much earlier in the discussion that you have moved and, therefore, changed its context completely.
Mr Burbage : We do a lot of analysis at Lockheed Martin. We use validated and accepted air force detailed campaign-level tools. We also put loop in simulations and high-fidelity cockpit type simulations. I do not know where that data came from—Gary may have a better feel for it—but that is not what the current assessment shows. Again, you are pulling information from before we had the full definition of what this airplane can do.
Mr ADAMS: These guys need to know where we are getting this—
ACTING CHAIR: I told them Aviation Week and Space Technology.
Mr ADAMS: Okay—sorry.
Mr Liberson : Our current assessment that we speak of is: greater than six to one relative loss exchange ratio against in four versus eight engagement scenarios—four blue at 35s versus eight advanced red threats in the 2015 to 2020 time frame.
ACTING CHAIR: What are those advanced threats?
Mr Liberson: I cannot get into the specifics of those advanced threats. They are classified.
ACTING CHAIR: This says Su27. My concern with that is that Su27 is an old aeroplane. You could be analysing it against camels. How are we supposed to take this when you are saying, 'We're not going to tell you what threats we're analysing'?
Air Cdre Bentley: Doctor, I think I have already answered that. We have provided that analysis to all the participating nations and to all their officials. They have all of the details of those threats and all of the details of those analyses. Each of those nations, each of those experts in those nations, have taken that analysis and have done analysis of their own and have come up with an agreed position, that the F35 is the best aeroplane for them.
ACTING CHAIR: The point that I am making is that here you have obviously reported, as has the United States Air Force, when you were wanting to sell a story. You have said what the threats were; you have said it is Su27 and MiG29. We are not asking for details of the exact geometry of the analysis, what assumptions were made about ECM or anything else. All we are asking is, for instance: was the MIG29 analysed; was the PAC FA analysed; was the J20 analysed? We do not want to know the specifics.
Air Cdre Bentley: Dr Jensen, if you were to receive a classified briefing, you would be able to understand what those threats were and how that analysis was done.
Mr Burbage: It is probably also important to add that pilots from the Royal Australian Air Force, all the participating nations' air forces and all three US services have come into the manned tactical simulator, the pilot-in-the-loop high-fidelity simulation of an advanced high-threat environment. They have actually flown the airplane in that environment, and the results of those simulations show that the airplane is effectively meeting its operational requirements.
Your final paragraph is again moved and was actually in response to a question from the Acting Chair who was trying to ascertain what the trials had involved. Burbage and Liberson were continually dodging the question on the grounds of security. You also missed off the beginning of the quote thus; again the bits you missed out is in bold:
Air Cdre Bentley : No, it is not an excuse. All of the defence officials who are appropriately cleared in all of the nations that are participating in this country know exactly what we have briefed, what those briefings entail and what the analysis entails, and they have chosen F35. If you are purporting to be a huge—
ACTING CHAIR: So what you are saying is, 'Believe us; we've got all the classified data in a brown paper bag'—
Air Cdre Bentley: Believe the nine best air forces in the world as far as their operators and their analysts are concerned and I think that you will come to realise that it is not us telling the story; it is them telling the story to their governments and their governments making a decision to go forward with this aeroplane.
Now why would you deliberately change the order of those statements in such a misleading way? Unlike your version of events, the briefing was not accepted quite as readily as you suggest.