10% of it is made in the UK – one massive reason why the UK is buying it.
Many thousand times no...
the UK is a prime customer which means it is allowed to buy a full spec craft. The government invested in the development which can be stopped at any point by the us government even during production with no call back. I think the investment was 6bilkion dollars or so.
there are no options for us from a “friendly” nation. We could form another partnership as was done for jaguar, tornado, typhoon but the consortium needs to buy maybe 700-1000 aircraft to bring the investment value back. The UK is not a power or even influencer in terms of military purchases and the government gave away control of the development decades ago.
We did have the nicest building on site when I was on the project though..
Sorry, you're right, its not 10%...
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-f-35/
...it's 15%.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but that seems fairly clear cut.
Perhaps I’m missing something here, but that seems fairly clear cut.
It is better for the UK to buy this aircraft as some of the money remains in the UK.
it is a higher spec aircraft than we could get from an alternate source.
the UK government is just a customer though they have not been instrumental in any developments. If the US government decides to not sell, restrict production or even cancel the entire project (there is a provision for this in the award) they can pay off contractors collect the drawings and walk away. BAE even shifted their holdings to make them a more “US” company to make this a more favourable partnership.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the UK government to buy is so that we are not going to the French and purchasing an aircraft. This would be admitting that we have finally managed to run down our final aero industry.... we were world leaders in airframes, engines, rockets etc. but no investment and buying from the USA has broken this. What we do do which is good is mostly heavily owned by EADS.
Anyone remember Carrier Cimmand for the Atari ST. Seemed like science fiction but how far off that are the drones we have now?
There is a huge amount of the most advanced technology flying developed in the UK by the UK off the back of F35. Technology and capability that we wouldn’t have developed if we’d just bought an off the shelf F18, which would be even more outdated in 20 yrs time than it is now. This is so much more than just buying a bunch of planes. How else do you think properly expensive technology gets invented.
our activities in the 50’a when we were world leaders in Aviation was done for political purposes to ‘buy’ our power and position in the world and demonstrate that we could continue to be a world player post WW2 going into the Cold War. The US knew they couldn’t rely on Europe to tackle the Soviets and we had to prove ourselves to the yanks which meant developing nukes and aviation. We never intended to sustain it, just develop it then exchange the technology for our place in he world. We were investing a stupid amount of our GDP to create our aviation industry which was completely unsustainable long term ever intended to be sustained. Airbus receives significant government support (as does Boeing) it’s hardly standing on it’s own two feet. We’ve opted for a different tack with our aviation industry, inventing and developing the highest technology off the back of programmes like the F35.
If the US government decides to not sell, restrict production or even cancel the entire project (there is a provision for this in the award) they can pay off contractors collect the drawings and walk away.
F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.
Yes, they could restrict production, or even cancel - but changing the UK contractors involved to US counterparts would be prohibitively expensive and is not going to happen without a massive change in world relationships, I'd say trying to do so would be the financial ruin of the project and reducing cost has been a massive focus for LM of late.
Concur with wobbliscotts post though. Our aviation biz is all prime and secondary subcontractors and IIRC we have one of the biggest aviation industries around (is it US - obvs - and France that are bigger?) which is not too shabby a thing to have here.
F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.
The F22 is a bit of a weird one, the Americans refused to sell it - because of ill informed political opinions - I think the Pentagon and USAF were happy to see allies get an export version.
The avionics in the F-35 are way ahead of the F-22, to the point that Japan has floated the idea of transplanting the F-35 avionics into a twin engine airframe. There are now grumblings of a new fighter program kicking off as the US seeks to capitalize on a fighter program subsidized by Japan.
As others have said, the F-35 has been great for our industry - without it, the BAE Tempest would probably not be being even considered as a viable option.
Another probable reason the UK opted for the F35B was that it would be the first of the JSF platforms to be finished. Primarily because the USMC has been using Harrier AV8Bs and II+'s and they need replacing ASAP. The USMC other airframes (legacy hornets) cant utilise the LHAs or LHDs of the MAGTFs, so the most impetus was put behind delivering the B over all the other models. I wouldn't be surprised if the USMC was a bigger customer of the F35 than the RAF/RN. So if we had gone for a CATOBAR F35 we'd be driving around a QE carrier with no planes for even longer.
Just read through this thread and i find it funny how people use the argument that the F-16 is better in a dogfight due to the very early tests, where the F-35 was very limited in how it could fly compared to now.
Since then F35 have had a kill death ratio against F16s of 20-1 during Red Flag.
Nerd alert.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the USMC was a bigger customer of the F35 than the RAF/RN
Of course they are. Current position seems to be that USMC are buying around 440 (thanks, wiki) and RAF/RN total is 138.
To nobody's surprise at all, the other US forces are also buying a lot of these things.
Primarily because the USMC has been using Harrier AV8Bs and II+’s and they need replacing ASAP.
No they plan to keep them in active service until 2030.
<p>A boiler that can generate enough steam to launch many tons of aircraft to 150mph in a very short distance would be no mean feat – then ask it to do it all over again 60 seconds later. I don’t believe there’s ever been a carrier thats done it. It would be a significant bit of kit that needs to find space inside and already crammed structure</p>
<p>Yup, it would be a mean piece of kit but totally doable - Kitty Hawk carriers managed to do it with C-13 catapults back in the 60's. My point was that it could have been designed in at the beginning but it was written off and we ended up where we did. F35B's could have been C's.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, Hawkeye was what I was thinking of.</p>
F35 has a level of technology the US is happy to share with friendly nations, but not such that it gets the Raptor treatment, so refusing to sell seems an unlikely option.
Its an odd contract. The development is cost plus with bonuses for meeting completion targets. This allows the US government to retain ownership of prototypes, tooling, IP etc. There is provision for cancelling the US orders at certain points.
This was done before on the day of launch of a previous aircraft (the name eludes me at the moment) and the entire line was stopped packed up and disposed of as per the contract.
so it’s not a case of not selling it to us, it’s a case of if the US decide (however unlikely) to cancel their orders and halt production everyone else stops getting theirs too.
Yup, it would be a mean piece of kit but totally doable – Kitty Hawk carriers managed to do it with C-13 catapults back in the 60’s
They were steam ships, steam wasn’t an accessory. If they didn’t have steam they weren’t going anywhere, they had 8 boilers producing it. Hence why the U.K. has also had catapults in the past