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> “We want to be able to upgrade, advance [and] develop our capabilities ourselves, and as sovereign countries inside the partnership, each partner has that goa

> “We want to be able to upgrade, advance [and] develop our capabilities ourselves, and as sovereign countries inside the partnership, each partner has that goal,” Commodore Moreton explained. Is this flexibility really a worthy goal? I feel like it would be better for these countries to reduce the number of variables and work to scalably and cheaply build many of them. It doesn’t have to be one plane for every mission necessarily, but the ability to customize for each nation feels like a distraction rather than a feature.

ChuckMcM 5y ago
Generally yes. If you have domestic defense contractors they can participate in various fitting and retrofitting programs without having to back engineer some of the SWaP[1] specs for the stuff the US defense contractors are making for the F35. I also suspect it would help if you have air war doctrine differences with the US (like guns vs missiles as an example). [1] Space, Weight, and Power. It defines the envelope within which the avionics and other gear have to operate.
- elabajaba 5y ago
  Guns vs missiles is a bad example (missiles clearly won decades ago). It's more about eg. wanting to use a locally developed missile instead of using one of the US approved missiles (because missiles have to be tested, integrated, and approved to be used on an aircraft before you can actually use them, which can take years even before accounting for politics.) The MDBA Meteor (European AMRAAM competitor, generally viewed as the best beyond visual range air to air missile (BVRAAM) currently) has been in service since 2016, but won't work on F-35s until ~2026. For comparison, it only took ~1.5 years to integrate the Meteor on UK Eurofighters.
t43562 5y ago
I think it's because Britain in particular is desperate to get outside support for the programme whereas the Swedes and Japanese want to get access to technology but design their own aircraft. So the only way to get them onboard is to make the association loose. I can't tell if this is good or bad - it might mean that the Swedes will make something affordable out of it and the rest will blow billions on various Golden Geese (is that the right term?). There's some interesting Japanese technology - e.g. their AESA missile radars would go into the Meteor to bring it far out ahead of anything else. Also I think they have some ceramics in their fighter engines etc which are of high interest.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

Generally yes. If you have domestic defense contractors they can participate in various fitting and retrofitting programs without having to back engineer some of the SWaP[1] specs for the stuff the US defense contractors are making for the F35. I also suspect it would help if you have air war doctrine differences with the US (like guns vs missiles as an example). [1] Space, Weight, and Power. It defines the envelope within which the avionics and other gear have to operate.

elabajaba 5y ago
Guns vs missiles is a bad example (missiles clearly won decades ago). It's more about eg. wanting to use a locally developed missile instead of using one of the US approved missiles (because missiles have to be tested, integrated, and approved to be used on an aircraft before you can actually use them, which can take years even before accounting for politics.) The MDBA Meteor (European AMRAAM competitor, generally viewed as the best beyond visual range air to air missile (BVRAAM) currently) has been in service since 2016, but won't work on F-35s until ~2026. For comparison, it only took ~1.5 years to integrate the Meteor on UK Eurofighters.

t43562 5y ago

I think it's because Britain in particular is desperate to get outside support for the programme whereas the Swedes and Japanese want to get access to technology but design their own aircraft. So the only way to get them onboard is to make the association loose. I can't tell if this is good or bad - it might mean that the Swedes will make something affordable out of it and the rest will blow billions on various Golden Geese (is that the right term?). There's some interesting Japanese technology - e.g. their AESA missile radars would go into the Meteor to bring it far out ahead of anything else. Also I think they have some ceramics in their fighter engines etc which are of high interest.