Aha, the switch to 'C'. As reported on Flight Global today:-

A possible UK decision to reverse a variant switch on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would not cause a problem for Lockheed Martin, according to one of the company's senior programme officials.

Speculation has mounted over recent weeks that the UK government could backtrack on its decision to shift its interest in the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B to the C-model carrier variant. The move was included as part of its Strategic Defence and Security Review of late 2010, but has prompted concerns over the costs involved with modifying the Royal Navy's future Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers with the required launch catapults and arrestor gear.

While deferring any comment on the likelihood of a reversal of the decision to the company's UK customer, Lockheed vice-president F-35 programme integration and business development Stephen O'Bryan says: "We have the [production] capacity if the UK went B. We are agnostic on the platform and our supply chain could handle a switch back."

In a statement, the UK Ministry of Defence says it is currently finalising its budget for 2012-13 and balancing its equipment plan. "As part of this process we are reviewing all programmes, including elements of the carrier strike programme, to validate costs and ensure risks are properly managed," it says.

Defence secretary Philip Hammond will announce the outcome of this process before Parliament's Easter recess starts on 27 March, but the MoD says the government remains committed to fielding a new carrier strike capability as part of its "Future Force 2020" plans.

LL - Of course LMT is agnostic about whether you buy the B or the C. They make about the same amount of money either way and you're not ratting out and going to St Louis.

Meanwhile the good news keeps rolling in (InsideDefense.com but the link is only good today).

Tweaks Allow Navy To Meet JSF Aircraft-Carrier Landing Speed Target

DefenseAlert, March 9, 2012 -- With the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft-carrier variant expected to miss a key performance parameter related to its maximum allowable landing speed, the Pentagon recently adjusted F-35C fuel storage calculations to ensure the aircraft met a critical operational requirement, according to Defense Department officials.

Well, it stands to reason that since the hook works so well, you won't have as many bolters... and night ops are where the fuel reserve is largest and the magic infrared hat turns night into day... wait, what?

Correct response is at 2:30 mark here (turn office speakers on full):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc

Not so much.

Top chip companies (phones/telecoms): Apple (US), Broadcom (US), Cavium (US), Freescale (US), Huawei/HiSilicon (China), Mediatek (Taiwan), NVidia (US), Renesas (Japan), Qualcomm (US), Samsung (Korea), STE (France), TI (US)

Top chip manufacturers (phones/telecoms): Global Foundries (Abu Dhabi/US), IBM (US), SMIC (China), TSMC (Taiwan), UMC (Taiwan)

F-35: Julian Fantino Raises Prospect Of Nixing Stealth Fighter Deal
F-35: Julian Fantino Raises Prospect Of Nixing Stealth Fighter Deal

If they're even mentioning it in public, it shows how deep the feelings (doubts) run. I expect it's topic of conversation on Air Force One. I wonder what inducements David might succumb to.

The Canadians are singing a different tune from a year and a half ago...

Oct 19, 2010, Minister Dan Ross:

Let’s remember we are acquiring a fighter for the next 30 or 40 years. I would ask whether you would want your son or daughter or future granddaughter in yesterday’s technology or in the most effective and secure aircraft in the future.

Let’s state the obvious: you must have more than one viable supplier to have a competition, and there is only one fifth-generation fighter available.

It's the only aircraft in the western world that meets the operational requirements of the CF.

... and when I say a different tune, I mean the difference between O Canada and The Lumberjack Song.

Just highlighting an interesting point in the link.
Maybe they are starting to realize that their financial numbers
where nothing more than pipedreams.



and

US Air Force sees delay in operational use of the F-35 fighter jet ~ Terminal X
All this makes one wonder how the Canadians can maintain their idea that a
purchase price of 9billion for 65 frames can be set in stone?


I cannot spell therefor I edit.

Questions
 

Used to post here in a different life, many summers ago.

Having kept a "watching brief", I see the standard of discussion is still, in the main, professional though there seem to be a few petulent types in our midst.

Some rather pointed questions that are circling the globe just lobbed on my desk. Am pretty sure most will find of interest but a few others will start (or is that continue) frothing around the mouth over, particularly at the mention of Dr Carlo Kopp.

1. In the post-2015 stealth-on-stealth world, in which Counter-VLO capable A2/AD weapons systems will also abound, what is the role, let alone where is there a role, for the F-35A CTOL JSF other than in operations in low threat, permissive environments; that is, those operational environments in which the legacy aircraft the JSF is intended to replace are already more than effective, as well as far more cost-effective, though none of these aircraft (including the JSF) can assure air parity, even superiority, let alone air dominance in a post-2015 world?

2. As a counter-air fighter aircraft as well as a self-defence capable battlefield interdiction strike/bomber, how can the F-35A CTOL JSF be competitive against supercruising, extremely agile, VLO analogues of the F-22A Raptor, such as the Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA and Chengdu J-20, or even the non-VLO Su-35S Super Flanker, when these aircraft almost certainly have, as one of their principal design aims, the ability to compete with and defeat the Raptor?

3. Like the others, this question is extremely important but unlike the others, requires a bit of a pre-amble.

The seminal research and techno-strategic analysis works of Dr Carlo Kopp published since 1998 accurately predicted the emergence and techno/strategic consequences of (A) the Russian Su-35S Super Flanker; (B) advanced, rapidly deployable (i.e. high mobility) highly integrated air defence systems (i.e. Counter-VLO A2/AD weapons systems); and, (C) United States military and fiscal “overstretch”; and, (D) the rise of China and the concept of using military force as a form of coercive soft power.

Unequivocal official acknowledgement of the threats posed by (B), (C) and (D) may be found in the Pentagon’s 2010 QDR; the CSBA think tank papers on Air Force Strategy of 2009 and Air-Sea-Battle of 2010; and, more stridently, in the POTUS Defense Strategic Guidance of January 2012. However, little if any mention has been made in US Military planning documents of the Russian Su-35S Super Flanker or the emergence of the Fifth Generation Fighter analogues of the F-22A Raptor, such as the Russian T-50 PAK-FA and China’s Chengdu J-20.

Independent analyses, employing standard PARCAA* methodologies, of this situation combined with other events and statements (e.g. Slide 8 from JSF JPO Director of Engineering Briefing on JSF Systems Engineering, August 2011 – copy attached) have determined an almost certain probability that consideration let alone inclusion of functional requirements to address these “Reference Threats” could not have been the dominant part of the development of the JSF Operational Requirements Document (ORD) they should have been; nor its approval by the JROC in March 2000; nor, the revalidation of the JSF ORD by the JROC in 2010, following acknowledgement of the 2009 breaches of the Nunn-McCurdy Act.

Could you please check the JSF JPO/PEO records and files, as well as those of the JROC, back to circa 2000 to independently validate and confirm or, if you can, provide any evidence that contradicts/countermands, the results of this PARCAA work?

* PARCAA –Performance Assessment/Root Cause Analysis & Assessment
(Refer the US WSAR Act of 2009 and Systems Engineering Doctrine, Methods & Processes)

4. Do you agree that an independently supervised counter-air profile fly-off between the F-35A CTOL JSF and the F-22A Raptor be the quickest, cheapest and most effective way of getting objective data and reliable answers to these questions; answers that are also devoid of any of the contaminating/corrupting influences of the MICC about which the 34th POTUS warned his fellow Americans?

If you don’t agree, then please explain in PARCAA and the related Systems Engineering terms why that is so?

Do you actually think the comparison will occur? If so, would we all line up and buy F 22. Not. Oh well, we'll just buy some PAK from the russkies. No wait, that won't buy us any advantage, will it? Maybe some J 20's then. No, wait, no advantage there, either. There is no doubt the whole process was well and truly f@cked up. But where to from here?

If you want to be competitive, (itself possibly arguable), you really only have 3 choices now. Pay the price demanded and accept the possible shortcomings, buy some PAK or J 20, (see above), or develop your own, yeah that one'll work!

Of course, you could always go the old method of older frames but plenty of them. After all, at 10 or 15 to 1 even the almighty gen 5 fighters won't have it all their own way, will they? No wait, that'll work out more expensive anyway. Everyone seems to coming up with problems, not seeing a lot of solutions tho.

Kopp lost whatever credibility he had with his farcical plans for the pig. Wonderful aircraft that it became, no amount of care and money made it survivable these days.

Great set of options, PM. The baby's ugly, but it's your baby now, so cough up the $10 billion in child support like a good chap.

What AFs need to do is evaluate their real options. Staying with the F-35 will leave the US, UK and some others with a mix of -35s and "classic" fighters - that is to say, not stealthy in the 22/35 sense but with signature reduction measures - through the 2020s. The overall coalition force will still be a mix because the US will still be replacing teen-series jets in 2037.

I don't think any adversary will be anything like all-LO before 2030 (although that's a long time to make any predictions).

Regardless of the 4gen/5gen sloganeering by LMT and its cheerleaders, current operational fighter types will have to be kept relevant through the 2020s, as fighters have always evolved - new sensors and weapons. But that will be difficult unless F-35 turns out to be much easier and cheaper to upgrade than the F-22, which has the same kind of architecture (central avionics processing and unique, complex apertures).

And if the F-35 is unaffordable in the required numbers, it isn't an option anyway.... as the F-22 was not, even for the US.

All the 4th , 4.5 and 5th generation marketing confusion terminology aside,
which of the current or future Russian or Chinese platforms poses any real treath to the Western fighterr ?

Honestly ,the Mig29 /SU27 and all of their derivatives never had anywhere
near the upperhand against most, if not almost all of their Western counterparts.

I would make an educated guess that with all the possible future upgrades of
'4th generation' fighters with regards to Radar, ECM, ECCM, Networking, engines, etc.... , the latest Flankers or even their PAK-FA or J20's still won't
bridge the gap that has been there post WWII.

The most significant threath that now exists is in the fact that technological information and equipment is now ,more than ever, available on the open market and can be reversed engineered or just implemented in almost all fighters regardless where they came from, no amount of F35 wizardry will change that.

As an example just look at what the IAI can do with a 50 yr old MiG21, after they are done with their upgrades it still is a very potent and dangerous adversary.

For us on the other side of the pond it is now time to put our eggs in our own basket and finnish what we started, the Rafale and Typhoon have to be developped to their full potential and both get their necessary upgrades, it would leave us with a top of the line platform that could keep us on top till 2030-2040 when we could invest in their successors , in the meantime catch up a lot of potential export orders.

This is by no means an anti american move but we shouldn't invest in the folly that is the F35, this is not the next F16-18, it's more like the next F104 and we all know what a miserable failure that was (also LM BTW).
Enough good US hardware we could invest our ever shrinking budgets in, the P8-Poseidon, B737AEW, C17, Chinooks, V22's,.... all make enough sense to be considered .

F35 costs concern the USAF
 

WEAR ABC 3 :: Top Stories - Air Force wants F35 locations cut
Bigger Squadron, less bases I wonder which have to close ultimately because of this.
Predictable next step is 30 bases with normal sized squadron meaning 25% less aircraft.

The Canadian Auditor General's report, including F-35 acquisition costs, is due April 3rd. It is likely to slag off the DND again, as it did the last 2 times, over F-35 estimates/costing.
The Associate Defence Minister has today stated that "All options are on the table" and the Government is committed to a $9bn budget for the CF-18 replacement.
Watch closely for the March 29th Canadian Federal Budget, which is due to lay the groundwork for several years ahead. I think the Conservative Government is more wedded to deficit reduction than it is to the F-35.
My personal guess is that they will delay the decision for 2/3 years, one year at a time, claiming production schedule slippage. Then they'll delay it for one more year for the next election.
Then, if Canada's flush and they win, they'll buy it whatever the price, or it will be Super Hornet.
Mind you, there may be quite a revision on the role depending on World events in the next 5 years! (Arctic/Middle East/China/New US President by then)

F3WMB -
The government must be hoping that the AG doesn't raise the issues of how and when the operational requirement (that allegedly only JSF can meet) was written, and why nobody else was asked if they could meet it. Due diligence, my :mad:.