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Some U.S. allies are almost certainly going to bail out of the F-35 program. Spiraling costs, the ideology requiring VSTOL, and some bizarrely secretive aspects
by beloch 13y ago
Some U.S. allies are almost certainly going to bail out of the F-35 program. Spiraling costs, the ideology requiring VSTOL, and some bizarrely secretive aspects of the JSF project are conspiring to kill the F-35 as a viable option for countries like Canada.
A surprising thing is that countries taking part in development are not permitted complete access to program data. The U.S., despite making use of other nations expertise in the development and manufacturing of the F-35,is trying to keep some aspects classified from the nations who are supposed to buy the plane!
Some Canadian pundits have (not seriously) called for the F-35 to be ditched and the Avro Arrow resurrected. The Arrow was developed in the 50's as an interceptor and, other than being significantly faster than the F-35 is probably inferior for Canada's requirements. It was designed in the freakin' 50's! It really is amazing that Canada went from manufacturing other country's WWII propeller plane designs to building prototype's faster than today's state-of-the-art F-35 in just a little over a decade. The fact that the F-35 is significantly slower than a 55 year old jet really shines light on how compromised its design is.
There are many rumors surrounding the cancellation of the Avro Arrow since it was probably superior to any other interceptor of its time, and one that refuses to die is that the U.S. was pressuring Canada to drop the program since Boeing, Lockheed, etc. felt threatened by Avro. Avro was basically destroyed by the cancellation of the Arrow, and guess where Avro engineers wound up!
I mention all this because Canada, despite being a perpetually self-doubting nation, has significant aerospace and weapon expertise. Canada also has some pretty unique design requirements not met by any existing fighters. The budget to build fighters locally may not ultimately exist, but if the Canadian government decides to compromise to cut costs, the F-35 is a horrendous option. It doesn't meet Canadian requirements, isn't on time, is getting more expensive every day, and the U.S. is trying to treat them like turn-key installations rather than selling planes.
Why should the U.S. care? Every nation that bails on the JSF program will raise costs for those that remain. Once one nation leaves, a domino effect will likely ensue. Based on this article, I can't say that's necessarily bad!
- bch 13y ago"Ottawa officially scraps F-35 purchase as audit pegs costs at $45-billion" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-officially-scraps-f-35-purchase-as-audit-pegs-costs-at-45-billion/article6260601/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-official...
- beloch 13y agoThis doesn't mean Canada won't decide to buy F-35's in the future unfortunately. It just means the government is open to forming a committee to consider the concept of possibly examining alternatives at an undisclosed point in the future.
- rainman47 13y agoI have two anecdotes to share from my time on the program as a flight test engineer regarding access to data and aircraft. There are two types of F-35 test aircraft: flight sciences jets, which don't have the full avionics suite, but are instrumented for testing things like flutter, flight qualities, weapons testing, etc. -- and mission systems aircraft, which have the full suite of avionics and are thus more encumbered with restrictions. Foreign persons aren't allowed around the mission systems aircraft without an escort, and aren't supposed to even see the panoramic display in the cockpit. But what do you do when it's a night shift and the only flight systems engineer on duty who is officially qualified to perform certain operations is from the UK? You get a piece of foam, cut it to the size and shape of the display, and write "BRIT BLOCKER" on it in sharpie, and use it whenever the Brits are around. Further absurdity kicked in when some of the first jets built specifically for the UK were tested. Those jets had the full avionics systems, of course, which meant that foreigners couldn't work on them. So the UK engineers weren't even allowed to be around the jets that were to ultimately be owned and operated by the UK.
- efraim 13y agoWhat's wrong with buying the Saab Gripen instead? Wouldn't Canada have really similar design requirements as Sweden?
- bjelkeman-again 13y agoPolitics generally block these type of deals. I bet Finland also have similar requirements, but they went and purchased F-18 instead than whatever SAAB had to offer.
- kalleboo 13y agoAnd it was a huge snub to Sweden when Norway went with the F-35 for clearly political reasons (later confirmed by Wikileaks cables). There's probably a lot of Schadenfreude going around now…
- yxhuvud 13y agoPartly, assuming Canada wants to use them mainly for protecting their own airspace. However, I'm not certain the Gripen have enough range - at least not until Gripen NG comes around. That may change that equation.
- jeltz 13y agoThe NG will have longer range than the F-35 so I think Gripen would be an excellent choice for Canada.
- pedalpete 13y agoFor those not familiar with Avro and the Arrow, it was ages ahead of it's time and many of the top engineers went to NASA. Here is actually a link to a video of the plane http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8lTGTPQlDE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8lTGTPQlDE, note the old Canadian flag at the beginning, the Canadian flag we all know was created in '65.
- bencollier49 13y agoWow, what a plane! Thanks for the link, hadn't heard of the Arrow before. Shame was cancelled.
- pedalpete 13y agoIf you want to know more, their is an interesting film with Dan Ackroyd about it. I just realised it's on YouTube for free http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PMnlnqRex4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PMnlnqRex4 (it was created by the gov't of Canada, and probably isn't available through other channels. I'm in Oz, and can't get it here through iTunes). It is a very interesting look at this bit of Canadian and aviation history, and the conspiracy theory that the program was cancelled due to political pressure from the US.
- guiomie 13y agoMy perspective on the canadian matter would be to simply ditch the f-35 and wait or finance a full fighter drone. We really aren't far from this technology.
- marshray 13y agoSeems like a big place like Canada might prefer something with a larger combat radius than the Arrow (660 km). Maybe, say, an F-35 (1,080 km)? They could probably just build four times as many for less cost. I don't know what it would look like once you factored in readiness, basing, pilots, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35
- jeltz 13y agoOr they could opt for a plane like the Rafale or JAS 39 NG who both have longer ranges than F-35.
- nwzpaperman 13y agoWhat land were you born in? What's wrong with hackernews today are a bunch of musq-worshipping, "smartphone" toting, self-righteous dolts opining on subjects they have zero depth on. Let me guess, you are boss with a joystick on your Apple Thunderbolt display and MSFT Simulator-X. Do you understand what drives the cost of a physical good? Do you understand why the US government has structured the defense contractors into a prime-sub hierarchy? Do you understand why the US government has cost-plus contracts? What do you know that I can't read on Wikipedia? Why don't you Google the Forbes list and tell us about all of the billionaires the government is minting in the defense contracting industry? You know where the money is going? Look at raw materials. Why do we have prime contractors? So they aren't "too big to fail." Why do we have cost-plus contracts? Because no one can hedge raw material and labor costs for projects that are 10-30+ year contracts. You see, the US government issues its own currency and as we have seen the Federal Reserve do since 2008, it can spend and self-finance(quantitative easing) as long as the political will exists to spend. The government has no budget constraint other than the arbitrary ones we periodically invent for it. Canada's military budget is a fart in the wind and the only reason we are SHARING any piece of the development with anyone is diplomacy. Tell us all something substantive and save the impassioned platitudes.
- anoncowherd 13y agoThat was strangely hostile.
- kalleboo 13y agoYour monologue on the cost structure of the US military industrial complex is a non-sequitor
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y agoThe fact that the F-35 is significantly slower than a 55 year old jet really shines light on how compromised its design is. This is nonsense. The tradeoffs for speed are fantastically expensive and haven't made sense since the 1950's. You reach Mach 3 only with an extremely high fuel expense, with afterburners, so expensive it limits your combat time to minutes. This made sense in the obsolete 1950's role of interceptors (like Avro Arrow), which chased obsolete 1950's strategic bombers. The adversary is obsolete, the role is obsolete, and the tradeoff is also obsolete. While we're doing nonsensical comparisons with cold war interceptors -- they also carried air-to-air nuclear missiles [1][2]. The F-35 is not only slower and heavier, it also carries smaller weapons! (edit: I should clarify I'm not defending the F-35 (I'm ignorant about it), only criticizing the interceptor comparison, which is invalid). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon