ORAC, George K Lee, MPN11 et al…
There’s a good response to the Times article, from Howard Wheeldon FRAeS, in one of his occasional commentaries. It’s not a blog, and it’s only available to his 6,000-odd email subscribers, but here are a couple of relevant paragraphs:
The Times report highlighted a number of issues that had been known for several years [and have been] long ago resolved. I see this ‘report’ for what it is meant to be, politically damaging. Negative, spurious and speculative and for the most part, unsubstantiated, the report appears … to be directed at political and other decision makers in the UK. It should thus be seen for what it is - an intent to do harm to both UK and US defence strategy … those that direct it, and all those many thousands of skilled workers in the UK and elsewhere who are engaged in the F-35 build programme.
All that said, I am not for one moment going to suggest that there are not certain truths to be found in the Times article in respect of technical and software related issues that have needed to be resolved over time or that even now, everything is perfect on the F-35 programme.
……
[But] Times journalists engaged on this particular defence witch-hunt have dragged out a number of so-called specialists to add seeming value to this speculative, unnecessary and damaging article. One example of this comes from the now well-known critic of how the UK does defence in the form of Commander Nigel ‘Sharkey’ MacCartan-Ward, a former Royal Navy pilot some 35 and more years ago who this time has the effrontery to suggest that “Britain might have lost the Falklands war in 1982 had it relied on the F-35 jet” because, he adds, “of the length of time it takes to download and interpret critical battlefield data hoovered up by the aircraft”, something he suggests “can be done only back on the carrier”.
What absolute nonsense this is and, as far as I am concerned, those that were used to flying jets of a bygone age can have little comprehension of the level of situational awareness that a pilot of an F-35 has.
There is much more in Wheeldon’s commentary, and, whilst you might consider it to be somewhat establishment-friendly, it does set out arguments that need to be placed against the Times' tendentious article.